Thank You, Lord, for the deep, deep love that You have shared with us. We worship You. We are just in awe and filled with Your love, and thank You so much for caring for us.
Thank You for holding us, keeping us, ministering to us this morning, and calling us to remember You at Your table. Lord, thank You for Your great love for us. All of us have a reason in our hearts to come back and thank You for such love, and we are just in awe of it.
We commit this time to You right now. We pray that we can fellowship in the fellowship between the Father and the Son, that we can share the life of Christ together. We can have that experience of seeing Christ as He really is, and then we can touch and know You and walk with You.
Lord, we pray for Your Word as we are reading and looking into it, that there would be enlightenment in our hearts, and that it would dwell richly in our hearts and expand into our experience as we walk away from here today. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I would like to read from Revelation 2. This is the letter to the church in Ephesus.
Last week, we looked at the seven churches as a whole package, and also a little bit at the church in Ephesus. Now we will mainly focus on this church in Ephesus: Revelation 2:1-7.
To the angel of the assembly in Ephesus write:
These things says He that holds the seven stars in His right hand,
He who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands:
I know thy works, and thy toil and patience,
and that thou canst not bear evil men,
and hast tried 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 whence thou art fallen,
and repent and do the first works;
or else I come to thee,
and will move thy lampstand 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 assemblies.
To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life,
which is in the Paradise of God.
Just like we mentioned last time, at the beginning of each letter there is a description of Christ based on the vision of Christ in Revelation 1, or on some description of Christ in that chapter. Parts of these beginning descriptions of Christ are not actually in the initial vision; some are in John’s own descriptions in Revelation 1.
In a sense, you can see beyond the initial vision. The vision kept growing. As John writes the book of Revelation, he has more to describe of Christ, so some of those descriptions are also in these letters.
The two things mentioned at the beginning of this letter are found in Revelation 1. In Revelation 1:12-13, John says:
I turned to see the voice that spoke with me.
And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands;
and in the midst of the lampstands One like unto a Son of man.
There, in the midst of the seven golden lampstands, is the One like the Son of Man. In this letter to the church in Ephesus, the One who writes is the One who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands.
Then, in Revelation 1:16, John says:
And He had in His right hand seven stars.
Later the interpretation is given: the stars are the messengers of the seven churches. So this is also part of the description at the beginning of the letter to Ephesus. These descriptions are from the vision.
Last time, we mentioned how the seven golden lampstands shine light. They shine this fire, which is Christ Himself. He is the life of the churches, and He is the testimony, or expression, of these golden lampstands.
Their work—or their reality, the way that a church should be—is that they express Christ. Each one has its own flame, which is its portion of Christ. That is why, at the beginning of each letter, there is a little portion of Christ described.
As He stands there in the vision in Revelation 1, every part of Him, every movement of Him, is like a flame of fire being ignited as the churches shine Christ. He looks and He steps, and suddenly the flames rise up in the church in Thyatira. As He holds the stars in His right hand, you see the flame in the church in Ephesus. As He speaks, the sharp two-edged sword goes out of His mouth, and the church in Pergamum shines its light almost like spotlights.
In another sense, it is almost as though, as He works, oil is added to these lamps. Work is done with them, and the flame comes. Every bit of their testimony is an experience of Christ Himself. He is the life of the church.
When we are looking at a letter itself, it is based on who Christ is. The perspective we are trying to emphasize is a spiritual perspective that everyone can receive.
There are a few ways to look at the seven churches. One is spiritual, one is prophetic, and one is geographical. Last time, toward the end, we tried to consider more of the spiritual side.
Even if you do not know anything of church history, and even if you do not know what was going on at that time, all of us have something to do with these letters. At the end of each letter, there is the message:
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the assemblies.
There is something for all churches of all time, in every location. There is some message. Basically, the message with each letter is the testimony at the beginning of the letter: it is who He is.
The message of the church in Ephesus—the main thing, the flame at the top of that golden lamp—is that He holds the seven stars in His right hand and walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands.
Toward the end of last time, we especially mentioned how we need the Lord Himself to work among us and keep us in His right hand. We cannot do all of these actions without Him.
When the church loses Him, when the church does not show that it relies on Him to do all that it does, the testimony is lost. The fire is down to the embers; it is almost out. With them, their lampstand was almost gone.
Today we will get more into the spiritual view, especially the matter of first love. But another viewpoint concerning the church in Ephesus, and all the churches, is the prophetic viewpoint.
From this viewpoint, we look back through church history and see a timeline that covers from the time of the apostles all the way until now. The last church, the church in Laodicea, would represent our age. The first church, the church in Ephesus, would represent the time of the apostle Paul.
As you follow it through, it is strange how much these match. You could say it is not perfect, but it is so obvious that it is teachable. It is not a guess.
After the Ephesian period, there was a movement that matches the church in Smyrna, with the suffering that was going to happen. After that, there was another movement, or an experience, or a sadness that happened, and so on. As you follow church history, you can follow it along these lines. It is really interesting.
It is like you can see the heart of the Lord for that particular time period of the church: what He is thinking of it, what He knows about what is going on, and what His Word is for the people of that time.
Maybe they did not know it. We have a really good benefit in these last one hundred or two hundred years: we can look back over all of this and say, “Oh, this matches, and this matches, and this matches.”
I do not know when people discovered this. Maybe even as early as the second church period, when they started going through suffering, they may have said, “This is just like the church in Smyrna. I am over here in Corinth, but this is exactly like this. I wonder if this whole thing is prophetic. I wonder if there is a future with all these churches.”
Maybe it clicked. But it still would have been mysterious, because it was something that had not yet happened.
This prophetic viewpoint can be a nice message, a helpful and edifying thing for us now, as we look back and learn from church history. We can see the spiritual perspective of how God saw church history.
If you read a church history book, you learn church history, and it can be very edifying. But step back and see what was in God’s heart during that time period. I think that is wonderful.
There is also a geographical viewpoint. These seven churches were real. The seven churches mentioned in Revelation 2 and 3, and named in Revelation 1, were actual locations that you can find in Asia Minor, in the area of modern-day Turkey.
They received this book of Revelation. The book was written to them, and inside the book of Revelation there is a vision that has their names on it. They are right there in the vision, and the Lord Jesus is standing there, ministering to those seven churches.
As they received this, it was personally dear to them. Imagine being the church in Pergamum and receiving this letter with your name and your circumstance in it. You are in the book of Revelation, and it is really you.
We do not know everything that was going on with all these churches. Antipas is mentioned in the church in Pergamum, and he suffered and died for the Lord. We can take a spiritual meaning from his name, but he was probably a real man.
Probably there really was a man with that name who died for the Lord’s sake at that time. When the saints got the letter, it may have brought them encouragement as the Lord referred to him and said, “Remember him.”
Maybe his children or grandchildren were there. Maybe there were people who had all kinds of experiences with him. They could say, “I remember this. I remember this.” There may be notes in these letters that none of us will fully understand until the future.
Maybe there was a real woman named Jezebel in Thyatira; I do not know. We can see the spiritual meaning behind it, but some things were special and unique for that time. They were real churches, and they were really in time.
Among them, we do not know much. The church in Laodicea is mentioned in Colossians because they were right next to each other, almost like two sister towns. Paul says that the Colossians should read the letter to the Laodiceans, and that the Laodiceans should read the letter written to the Colossians.
Some people think he is referring to the letter to the Ephesians, but maybe there was another letter to the Laodiceans. Either way, that city is mentioned there, but not much else.
Thyatira is where Lydia, the seller of purple cloth in Philippi, was from. But besides that, there is not much we know about the church. I do not think the other churches are mentioned much either, except for Ephesus.
If you are going to pick a church to represent, prophetically speaking, the churches at that time, Ephesus would be perfect. This is what the Holy Spirit did. We actually know the whole history of the church in Ephesus. We know a very thorough history of that church.
Looking at it geographically, we see these churches, but one of them we know about. We can say, “Let us look at their experience, because it teaches us something about these dear churches at that time.”
The geographical and prophetic viewpoints merge together, because Ephesus represents all those churches at that time. The church in Ephesus could stand for all the churches at that time.
We know about other churches from reading the Bible, but the condition of the saints at the time Revelation was written can be summed up in the letter to the church in Ephesus.
Prophetically speaking, their condition was that they had lost their first love. This was the second, or even third, generation of Christians.
We read about the church in Corinth and remember that they allowed evil sin in their midst. But later on, the church in Corinth probably had overcome that thoroughly. One of the good things said of the churches at this time is that they could not bear evil.
There are actually seven good things mentioned about these churches, and one of them is that they could not bear evil. Some translations add “evil men.” If you cannot bear evil, you cannot bear evil men either.
All the churches at this time had a stance against evil. This is a really good thing. They had come through to a point where they could recognize false apostles.
We read warnings about false apostles coming in. In 2 Peter 2, Peter warns that apostasy will happen, that people will turn away from Jesus as Lord, and that they will try to lead others away. When Jude writes, he says this has already happened. He basically repeats 2 Peter 2 and says, “This is now what is going on.”
But a little later, at this time, the churches could not bear evil. They were not struggling so much with whether to go forward in lawlessness or to sin so grace might abound. That was not really their problem.
By God’s working—by His holding them in His hand, keeping them from evil, and not letting the enemy snatch them out of His hand—they had a history with the Lord in which they could not bear evil. This was one of the good characteristics of the church at the end of the first century.
All the apostles, except perhaps the apostle John, had passed away. John was the last of the Twelve. The other initial apostles, including Paul, had probably gone to be with the Lord as well. We call this the end of the apostolic age.
Another thing going on with the churches as a whole was that they hated the works of the Nicolaitans. They hated it.
This had tried to creep in. We have a great example of this in 3 John 9. There was a man who loved to have first place—Diotrephes, I think. He loved first place so much that he took a letter the apostle John wrote to the church where Gaius was and did not let anybody see it.
John says that he wrote something to the church, but Diotrephes, who loved to have the first place, would not receive them. This is the work of a Nicolaitan.
Maybe at that time there was a group that called themselves Nicolaitans. But spiritually speaking, there was a group of people with this desire to be first. Diotrephes was one of them. He loved to have first place.
In Christianity, we have the terms clergy and laity. Clergy would be the pastor, priest, or minister—the person who is definitely serving the Lord and is definitely in the priesthood. Then the laity are the common Christians. They do not have to do as much; they need to pray, pay, and keep the pew warm.
This is a misunderstanding in Christianity. I think more and more people realize that all Christians need to be Christians. But there is this concept, and it is openly used: “This person is part of the clergy.”
In some circles they say, “I am a man of the cloth,” because the clergy—or the Nicolaitans—have neat outfits and wear something different from the laity.
The word laity is part of this word Nicolaitan. It is the common people. The niko part is used in Scripture for victory, conquering, and overcoming.
If you take a conqueror of the common people, you have somebody who loves to be first among the others. You have somebody who likes to be the head over the body.
Really, in the church only Christ should be the Head of the Body. Only Christ should have the preeminence. Only Christ should have first place.
There is this crafty work of somebody trying to get first place in the church, trying to get control, influence, and people looking to him. This is a work of the Nicolaitans.
By God’s grace, even though much corruption had come in—and even in the church in Ephesus some wolves had come in, as Paul warned in Acts 20—the churches in general at that time had been delivered from the works of the Nicolaitans.
They hated the works of the Nicolaitans. They could spot it right away. When someone rose up trying to make the church his church, trying to take first place, they could say, “No, no, you are not Christ. Step down. We are going to call you brother from now on, and actually you have to sit in the corner.”
They could discover it right away. They were sharp, and they knew. They knew the priesthood of all believers. Everyone was in on this. Everyone was responsible. The practice of the church was for all of them to be active.
They were enduring. In general, they kept up all the actions. The Lord says, “I know your works, I know your labor, I know your endurance.” He knows all these things that are going on. The churches at that time were very honorable.
But there was one thing missing: they had lost their first love.
Without first love, the flame is gone. All of this noble character only shows that they had a good history. It does not show that Christ is there right now. It does not show the world, or the spiritual realm, that Christ is ministering today. It only shows that Christ did minister among them.
We can look at it respectfully. The Lord is not being sarcastic when He says, “I know these things that you are doing.” He says they are genuine. But the one thing missing should be behind all those seven good things.
The one thing of first love should be the life behind all of it. Without this one thing, their whole lampstand was about to be removed.
As they moved into the second and third generations, they had received so much understanding and clarity from the older generation. But one thing they let die down was the life behind it.
There was new wine in the very beginning. The Lord Jesus gave the picture of wine in a wineskin: you need the new wineskin with the new wine.
In the beginning, there was a discovery of Christ. Even as a whole church, all the churches were doing this. We read in the letters Paul and others wrote that they were discovering more and more of Christ. In a sense, as the wine bubbled over, the wineskin moved.
Sometimes, I think we want a balloon instead of a wineskin. A balloon moves very much, but that does not mean you are in the right place. A balloon can wiggle around; you can throw it, and if it is full of water, it can burst on somebody. It moves at anything. It trembles when a baby crawls on the floor.
We are not necessarily to hold the wine in a balloon. Just being changeable, flexible, and full of new things does not necessarily mean you are in the right way. It does not even mean that you have first love.
But when there is real wine and a real wineskin, as the wine matures, there are bubbles inside, and the wineskin moves just enough. It is flexible enough to grow with the wine.
We have a skilled winemaker among us, I know. But if you do it the old-fashioned way with one of these strange skins—there was one hanging on Lance Lambert’s wall—the skin would expand as the new wine expanded. You knew there was life inside that wineskin.
It is strange, but the grapes are turning into wine, and this maturing process is happening. In the first generation, the saints were discovering more and more of Christ. They were paying a lot of price and enduring, but they had hope and light and love behind it.
They failed, and we read about their failures, but they discovered more of Christ. They learned through trial and error. As it happened, they developed quite a good wineskin. They discovered the way of the church in practice.
Then the correctness of church practice was passed down to the second and third generation. They knew what they were doing. But one thing was missing: first love.
It is as though the wine had stopped. Unlike literal grapes becoming wine, the wine of the life of Christ never stops maturing. It never stops. The wineskin of the church—the way of the church—is always new.
Christ is always alive. If they can do their practices without Christ, they have lost the way of the church. They have forgotten the main thing of the church.
Prophetically speaking, let us come down to the church in Ephesus and look at its history. We want to see a literal, actual, local church that lost its first love. What was their experience?
When they started, if you look in Acts 18 through 20, Paul showed up with Priscilla and Aquila. They had come from Corinth, or somewhere like that. Paul did a little ministry there, then he left Priscilla and Aquila behind.
They were tentmakers, and almost wherever they showed up, a new church showed up in the book of Acts. Then Apollos came along, a great gifted teacher. It says that he knew something of the way of the Lord. He was preaching, people were being helped, and Priscilla and Aquila helped him discover more of the Lord.
Maybe he had half of the gospel, or some clarity, but he only knew the baptism of John. He was not clear on everything. So they taught him more, and then he left.
Then Paul came back and discovered twelve disciples, perhaps disciples of John the Baptist, probably people helped by Apollos. But they were unclear. Paul asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They said, “We did not even know about this.”
As he helped them, they were filled with the Spirit. Then Paul began to teach in the synagogue for at least three months. As he preached, people were probably getting saved and becoming clear.
Then there was some rejection—not quite persecution—and Paul went to the school of Tyrannus. For two years, at least, he taught there every day. Imagine the apostle Paul in your city. The church is brand new; everything is young.
This was the church in the first stage of first love: newly saved believers. Apollos had just come through, and that was awesome. Then Paul was actually there, staying with them. He ended up staying there for three full years.
For two whole years, he taught daily. In Acts 20, he mentions that he was preaching openly, but he also shared house to house. There was a lot of shepherding by the apostle Paul, a man full of first love.
The love of Christ constrained him. He was trying to help all the saints be filled with the love of Christ, truly serving the Lord and walking in this way. He says in Acts 20 that he did not hold back anything. Everything he knew, he was able to share with them.
They received all of this enlightenment and experience. During that time, all of Asia heard. These seven churches were in that area, and even though their names are not mentioned in Acts, it says all of Asia heard.
People came into the city of Ephesus for business, or because they heard about this exciting thing. It was like when Billy Graham would come to a city in the 1970s or 1980s and everybody would come. Even if you did not care about God, you might say, “Well, everybody is going. This is like the circus. Let’s go.” Then people would get saved.
People were asking, “Who is this man teaching in the school of Tyrannus?” Strange things were happening. It says unusual miracles were happening.
They would take aprons and handkerchiefs that had touched Paul, bring them to sick people, and they would be healed. We should not try this, but this happened. They would bring them to demon-possessed people, and some demons would be cast out.
I would not try handkerchief casting-out, but this happened. Diseases were leaving people. It says aprons and handkerchiefs. It was not a method. Paul was not on television saying, “Purchase my handkerchiefs, and I will pray for you.” It was not like that.
Now you can buy handkerchiefs from people, but it does not work the same. It was such an overflow of the anointing on that city, the movement and work of God. He was holding them in His hand and walking in their midst. Their flame was bursting and shining so brightly that not only Ephesus but all Asia saw their flame.
There were professional exorcists, and they saw that Paul’s way worked—not the handkerchiefs necessarily. The seven sons of Sceva went to a demon-possessed man and said:
I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth.
But the demon answered, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?” Then the man jumped on them. They got beaten up and ran away missing a number of their clothes.
This story became known throughout the whole area—not only what happened, but the words the demon said. Imagine being an unbeliever and hearing that this demon-possessed man knew Jesus and was acquainted with Paul.
Demons were cast out in the name of Jesus, but there was such a work happening that the demon was acquainted with Paul. He knew what was going on.
In church history, some revivals have been bad for certain businesses. Pubs and bars have shut down because there were no more customers. Places of ill repute have shut down. Businesses that make money off people’s sin do not do well when revival comes.
That happened in Ephesus. The saints were getting saved, and out of their first love their reaction was like Romans 12:1: by the mercies and compassions of God, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.
When they repented and were saved, they were filled with first love and pursued Him. They had idols they used to pray to, and books of magic and sorcery. They used to read lines in people’s hands and tell them who their granddaughter was going to be, or something.
They burned all these things. They did not sell them to make money and give it to the poor.
I remember standing with a friend one time, and we had hundreds of CDs. He said, “Do you know how much money this cost me?” We were like, “Yeah, but who are you going to sell it to? They will have to listen to that.”
Who are you going to give your books of magic to? Who are you going to give your idols to? They may pay you money, but then they have this sinful thing. So we crushed them in the dumpster.
That is what the saints did. The value of what they burned was fifty thousand pieces of silver.
Google does not have a translation of that into United States dollars right now. It has everything else. If you say, “One pound to United States dollar,” it is right there; you do not even need to find a website. But for this, I do not know how to figure it out.
Think of the thirty pieces of silver Judas got for Jesus. That was thirty pieces of silver. This was fifty thousand pieces of silver. I am not saying Judas got a lot of money; I do not think he did. But one piece of silver could be a day’s wage.
If you take that with American wages and multiply it by fifty thousand pieces of silver, you are approaching an incredible amount. I do not know whether it is quite that much, because living standards are different. Either way, the money is mentioned because it was so significant. Fifty thousand pieces of silver—nobody has that.
The value of all these things was being burned as saints were getting saved. Think about what the world was thinking at that time. Think about the unbelievers, the rulers, and especially those who made idols. They were saying, “All this stuff is ruined and burned. This guy, the apostle Paul, is terrible.”
But the testimony in the city of Ephesus shined. Everybody knew Christ was doing something there. They knew something powerful was happening. There was a flame of fire, and it was turning everything upside down.
Demetrius, an idol maker and one of their leaders, tried to get everybody to get rid of Paul. It did not work, but eventually the apostle Paul left.
Paul left after a few years of this amazing first-love experience. Their first stage of first love may have lasted longer than that of any of the other churches. It was bursting for a few years, full of first love—the kind you cannot help but have, not the kind you have to pursue, but the kind that just happens.
Then he went off to Macedonia. On his way back to Jerusalem, he did not want to stop in Ephesus, because he knew that if he went there, he would not be able to leave quickly. The love of the saints was so strong. There would be so many hugs to have and so many people to see.
So he passed by Ephesus. But when he came to Miletus, he called the elders to him. In Acts 20, the elders came and met with him.
This was probably not long after he had left them, but he knew he was going to Jerusalem. Every time he thought about it and prayed about it, he knew persecution awaited him. But he did not care about his own life. He was after the Lord’s will.
He said:
I hold not my life of any account as dear unto myself,
so that I may accomplish my course,
and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus,
to testify the gospel of the grace of God.
But he also told them, “I know some wolves are going to come in among you.” He said that even from among the leaders some would rise up. He warned them and committed them to the grace of God.
It was a very specific and detailed warning. “You are about to go through something terrible. Even from the leaders, something will happen. Wolves will come in among you.” But the Lord was able to keep them. The Lord was still ministering among them.
Paul went on to Jerusalem, and we know how he eventually ended up in Rome under house arrest. One of the letters he wrote there was the letter to the church in Ephesus.
Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians while in Rome. He had just stopped by Ephesus on his way to Jerusalem, and now, for two years, he was under house arrest. He wrote this very deep letter.
In Ephesians, he has a couple of prayers. One is a prayer for enlightenment for the saints. It is like the prayer of the great High Priest, Christ Himself. Paul prayed that they would have the spirit of wisdom and revelation, that they would see the purpose God had always had, and that they would see Christ and the church.
Paul was praying for a deepening in the church in Ephesus. The other thing he prayed for, in Ephesians 3, was their love.
He prayed that their love would expand from the depths within. They had been rooted and grounded in love, but he prayed that they would experience this love growing out into their hearts, overflowing from the spirit to the soul, so that they would know the breadth, length, height, and depth—the deep, deep love of Jesus.
He was praying that they would be brought into the depth of the love of Christ. Then, throughout Ephesians, he gets into experiencing those depths of Christ’s love through their actions.
I believe the Lord answered those prayers. Imagine this church about to experience wolves coming in, and then this timely letter to the Ephesians arrives. As they read it, enlightenment comes. If you read that letter openly, there is much enlightenment to be had about God’s purpose and the church.
If these believers caught these things, received enlightenment, and began to practice them, then the first love of the first stage could move into a second or third stage. The love they had been experiencing would become deeper.
They would no longer simply say, “I am pulled by first love because this is amazing, and I am in the first stage of first love.” They would go into deeper stages of first love.
As we mentioned last time, first love is basically like 1 John 4:19:
We love, because He first loved us.
This relationship—His loving us and our loving Him back—is continual. In the beginning stage, the first stage of first love, we are constrained by the love of Christ, as 2 Corinthians 5:14 says.
Because Christ died for me, when I get saved on that basis, there is a bursting of first love. But as you move into more stages of first love, it has to do with a deepening of the love of Christ.
It has to do more with the love of Christ living through you. It has to do more with the fact that you died with Christ. One died for all, and all died also.
I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I that live,
but Christ liveth in me:
and that life which I now live in the flesh
I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God,
who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
This is Galatians 2:20. This is the deepening of first love.
The more stages you get into, the more it has to do with His grace and His love being expressed through you. First love is that we love because He first loved us.
The first stage of first love happens automatically because you receive His love. He loved you first, and you respond back. How did He love you first? Your sins were forgiven. You received eternal life. You were born again. You were brought into the church. You received His love at salvation.
But you have to receive His love again. How do you receive His love again? It is when Christ lives through you. The love of Christ is that very grace of life inside us.
Christ in us, living by that love, is an experience of His love. When you experience that, there is a reaction of first love. The whole process is more and more of His love in me, living through me, as my first-love relationship with Him.
I believe this is probably what happened with the church in Ephesus. They got into these kinds of experiences. This probably helped keep them during the time of trial that was about to come.
The preparation was there. The church in Ephesus was getting spiritually ready for something terrible to happen.
We can only guess based on Paul’s prophecy and what we see in 1 Timothy. When Paul got out of house arrest, it seems from 1 Timothy that he passed through Ephesus again, because Timothy was left in Ephesus to establish elders.
This was about five years after the writing of Ephesians. Paul had been free from house arrest, traveling through different places, and he went through Ephesus. What had happened?
What Paul prophesied about must have happened. He had said, “I know I will never see you elders again.” Something terrible happened. Maybe some were gone because they were the ones who rose up as wolves. As the saints were strengthened by the love of Christ and the reality of His life, perhaps they recognized the works of the Nicolaitans and rejected them.
But what happened to the others? Maybe they died; maybe something worse happened. Either way, none of the elders who met Paul in Acts 20 would have been there when he came through again.
The church in Ephesus had no established elders, and Timothy was left behind. But the Lord was working. The Lord was keeping them and holding them in His hand. He was bringing them into deeper stages of first love.
They had gone through suffering, heartache, division, and the loss of people they loved. Through all of this, Someone was holding them in His hand. Through all of this, the great High Priest was praying for them.
Through all of this, the love inside them was expanding, growing, and changing. There was a new breadth, a new depth, and a new height. There was more of the love of Christ happening.
Things were not the same as those first three years of the first stage of first love. But in a real sense, things were better. It was deeper. It was the deep, deep love of Jesus they were experiencing. It was a deeper first love as a church.
If they stood there and said, “I wish it was just like those days when we had those awesome handkerchiefs,” they would misunderstand the Lord’s desire. The Lord’s desire was not to take them back to those days, though they were wonderful. He wanted them to have a deeper first love now. There was something more for them.
Timothy was there, and 1 Timothy was written to him because Paul was not sure when he would get back. Paul told Timothy how to conduct himself in the house of God, how to establish elders, and all these things.
It seems like that probably happened well, because Revelation 2 shows that the church in Ephesus had the form and conduct of the house of God very correct. Their seven good works show that they listened to 1 Timothy.
Then Paul seems to have passed through again, based on 2 Timothy. Suddenly he had to leave Ephesus. We do not know exactly what happened, but Timothy was crying. Paul says in 2 Timothy, “I remember your tears when I left.”
Maybe Timothy felt something was going to happen. Maybe he knew Paul would never come back to Ephesus. Either way, Timothy had tears.
Paul left, and sometime later he was taken because open persecution came against Christians. Paul was put into a real dungeon-type jail, a terrible sepulchre jail where people often died before trial because there was no good food, no care, and no warmth.
He was there awaiting trial. In 2 Timothy, he knew he was going to die. He said he had finished his course and had a crown. He said, “Come before winter. Bring the coat. Bring my books, and especially the parchments.”
He also said that at his first defense, no one stood with him. He says that all in Asia turned away from him. This was the area of these seven churches.
We do not know exactly what the church in Ephesus did, but during Paul’s trial, when people were asked, “Who will vouch for this man? Who will own Paul as their apostle? Who will say he helped me and is a good man?” hardly anybody stood with him.
This was part of the experience of the church in Ephesus. Probably they recovered from it and were brought into a deeper love, a deeper first love.
Early writings outside the Bible say that the apostle John wrote his letters and Gospel from Ephesus. Later he went to that area and especially made Ephesus his headquarters.
Irenaeus says John’s tomb was there. Another writer, Polycrates, says those letters were written there. Then there are all these crazy stories you do not want to read about—how John never died and floated away and stuff.
But basically, the apostle John probably ministered in Ephesus after all this happened with Paul. There were another thirty years or so after Paul was gone. John, the apostle of love, was there.
From reading John’s writings, we know that this man, of all people, knew about first love. If he was ministering among them, he was definitely ministering life. He was not saying, “Do these good works. I know you have life, but I want to see your works.”
He was saying: Life. Christ. Love. Light. This was it. His emphasis was the inward reality.
The church in Ephesus had a great first-love history. But at the point Revelation was written, even though they had done all these works, they had somehow gotten out of first love.
We should look at this spiritually, because this would be their experience and ours as well.
For them, no obvious sins had come in. No worldliness had stopped them or taken away their love. They simply stopped pursuing Him. They stopped the growth of life. They stopped needing Him.
Whatever stage of first love they were at, I would guess they were at a very deep stage. I think we can be too harsh on the church in Ephesus. If you reach the depth of their stage of first love, you may stop and be satisfied.
At every stage of first love, there is more of Christ to walk in. There is more of His love to respond to.
If you read Song of Songs, there is a way of first love throughout that book. It is helpful if you want to look at these stages of first love. It helps deliver us from the mindset that says, “I just want an injection, and I want everything to be like it was at first.” It cannot be that way on purpose.
The Shulamite is at His banqueting table. His banner over her is love, and she falls asleep in sweet first love. The Lord says, “Do not waken love until it is ready.” Let her sleep.
That is what happens with first love. You are in a stage, it is sweet, and you enjoy it. For a time, that is it.
Then suddenly she sees Him leaping on the mountains. He is outside her house, jumping like gazelles on the mountains. If you have seen them jump, they can do amazing things. It is like a picture of resurrection: He is overcoming all these hills.
She watches Him, and He is not there with her right then. But He looks through the lattice and says, “Come with Me. Come with Me.” He calls her to something further.
She pursues Him. She is out there, making sure the foxes do not spoil the vines, and all these things. It is wonderful. Then she falls asleep in another good stage of first love—not stage one, but another stage.
Then she wakes up and cannot find Him. This is the way of first love. Sometimes when you think you are out of first love, maybe you are not actually out of first love. Maybe you are being pushed into another stage.
So many times I have felt, “Oh, I have done it again. I lost first love. Where did it go?” You get frustrated because you did not think you sinned, joined up with worldly things, or lost your concentration. You are doing everything. Where did it go?
What is happening is that He is drawing you to something further. She says, “I cannot find Him.” Then she goes out seeking Him, asking the watchmen, and she finds Him. She enjoys more of His love, and it gets deeper.
Even her responses become deeper. At first, she says, “My Beloved is mine. This is awesome.” But then it gets deeper, and she says, “I am also His.” It is not just about me. It is getting more and more about Him. His desire is for me, but I am His.
At another point, she falls asleep in first love, in whatever stage she is at. Then He is gone, but He is knocking on the door. It is raining outside, and His hair has dew on it. He says:
Open to Me, My sister, My love, My dove, My undefiled.
But she says:
I have put off my garment; how shall I put it on?
I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?
She is so comfortable in her stage of first love. She has her slippers on. But then He reaches His hand through the door. She sees Him, and her heart yearns for Him. She goes and opens the door, but He is gone.
She goes out looking for Him. One time when she goes out asking about Him, she gets beaten up by the watchmen—by those who should be helping her.
Then she runs into the daughters of Jerusalem and says, “Have you seen my Beloved? Have you seen Him? I am missing Him.” They ask, “What is thy Beloved more than another beloved? Who is this?”
Then she begins to describe Him. Detail upon detail, she describes Him as a person. At the end, first love is welling up in her heart.
The daughters of Jerusalem are in awe and ask, “Where is this man? Where is thy Beloved?” But she knows where He is. She says, “He is down by His garden.”
She found Him by describing Him. This is something to remember.
Throughout all these stages, she is brought into more and more. But each time, something we can learn from the Shulamite is that she pursued Him. She found Him. The thing that was missing was Him.
Even after a stage of first love, the bed may be comfortable, the tunic may be put off, and you may be cozy. But that is not where it is at. Where it is at is this: Is He there with you or not? Is He inside the house or outside the house?
If we are harsh with the church in Ephesus, we should at least step back and say that for them to be in first love required a further pursuit than perhaps we have reached. Their depth of first love was deep.
But foundationally, it is the same at all stages and at all times: Do you need Him, or do you not need Him? Do you have Him with you, or can you do everything without Him?
The Lord gives instruction to help us return. He says, “I have this against you: you have left your first love.” Then He tells them to remember from where they fell, repent, and do the first works. If they do not, He will remove their lampstand unless they repent.
These three words form a package: remember, repent, and do. They all go together.
Just like the Shulamite, there was a remembrance of Him. The Lord says, “Remember from where you fell.”
When Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia, they had, in a real way, lost their first love. They had fallen into a problem. He told them, “You have fallen from grace.” They started by Christ, but were they going to finish by works without Him? He said this cannot be.
This is the same thing: remember from where you fell. At the basis, where you have fallen from is the person of Christ. When you are out of first love, what you are missing is Him. He is actually what is missing.
Sometimes remembering helps in other ways. There may be other problems going on. Maybe you realize, “I am out of first love because I let laziness slip in,” or, “I let sin or worldliness slip in.”
It is true that in many cases other conditions and factors are happening. But with the church in Ephesus, we can look at it in the simplest way: at the bare minimum, they lost the Person.
They had fallen from grace. They had fallen from having Him involved in everything.
When we break bread, there should be a remembrance. The Lord Jesus said:
Do this in remembrance of Me.
He was not saying merely, “Remember about Me,” “Remember My stories,” or “Remember the actions I have done.” He was saying, “Remember Me.”
When we do it properly, we meet Him anew in fellowship, and we have Him back. It is almost like, suddenly, He is here.
As often as we do this in remembrance of Him, it can help bring us back into first love. The beginning point is to remember from where we fell. The place where we fell was where we had Christ, and He was our love that we received.
Then repentance comes. Repentance has to be to something. It is from something to something. This is why remembrance comes first. What you repent to is what you just remembered.
Remember Christ. Then when you repent, when you come back into first love, you know where you are turning.
“I am turning away from doing these seven action items by myself. I am turning away from being able to be active in the church without Christ.”
I remember when I did not know how to pray with the right words. I messed up a lot. But I remember needing Him when I prayed. I needed Him so much, and He would give me some bit of Himself. Though my words would fumble, we did prayer time together.
When you come to the prayer meeting now, perhaps you have a history of praying and you know how to pray for a certain subject. But if you can do it without Him, you need to remember what it was like to do it with Him.
The same is true with sharing. If you have had experiences of enlightenment in the Word of God, and you are in Bible fellowship or eating lunch with the saints, you may know words to say about everything. I mean, however old you get, eventually you have something to tell everybody.
But remember what it was like when you knew nothing. Remember when you said, “I think I got something from the Lord, but I am probably wrong. Anyway, here goes.” You depended on Him, and it was an experience together with Him in those fellowship times.
That is what you repent back to. Remember what it was like when you had Him and were with Him in all the things that you did.
Then there is this word do. He says, “Do the first works.”
Sometimes doing something means action items. Repentance by nature has an outflow of action. When John the Baptist preached repentance, he said, “Bring forth fruit worthy of repentance.” He would tell everybody what to do.
The Pharisees and Sadducees did not even ask. He saw them and said, “You all are snakes, and you need to produce fruit worthy of repentance.”
The crowd asked, “What do we do?” He said, “If you have an extra coat and this person is freezing, share your coat.” Tax collectors asked, “What do we do?” He said, “Stop cheating and stop asking for more money.” Soldiers asked, “What do we do?” He said, “Stop bullying people. Be content. Do not take advantage of people.”
If you are repenting, you are turning to something in the right way, the righteous way. There is some action to do.
But if all your actions are correct, what do you do? How do you do the first works if you are already doing works? The Lord said to Ephesus, “I know your works.” But the first works were different. The first works were works of faith.
Works, labor, and endurance are found in 1 Thessalonians 1:3, but there they are different:
Your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
If you do the first works, the first works are works done by faith. In first love, every action you do is a reaction to the love of Christ. Every action is based on faith.
In the very first stage, you do not even know that is what is happening. Faith is just like a big, globby thing all over you, and you do not know where it is. You just know, “I am reacting to something. I am being pulled by this. I am in first love.”
As you do things, you are doing them together with the Lord. It is because you have this store of Christ juice inside you that is just coming out.
But as you continue through different stages, “do the first works” becomes so important. It is about how you do works of faith. This comes down to the reality of Christ living in us.
I live in this body, but I live by faith in the Son of God.
For those brought into different stages of first love, or being pulled into a new stage of first love, doing the first works is a step that brings you right into first love.
It is almost automatic: “I am walking into first love right now.” Remember, when you first get saved, the first step is baptism. It is repentance. They could preach in Acts 2: “Repent, and be baptized.” That is the first work.
But all these works are works by faith.
Christ Himself is your first love. If you can receive it, you can step into first love by faith. If you can pursue Him and turn to Him, Christ Himself is the first love you are looking for.
You do not have to yearn for first love to come back. You have to receive Christ as your first love.
God’s desire is that Christ Himself would be your all in all. What He wants in the further stages is that you discover Christ as your first love.
You wake up in the morning. It used to be that you wanted to get up because you were in first love and could feel first love. But this morning you wake up with a deep yearning to be in first love, and you cannot do it.
But you look up to Him and say, “Lord, I receive You as my first love. I do not have first love. You are my first love.”
Then by God’s grace, you get up. You overcome tiredness, your love for the bed, and all those things.
You sit in your car after a long day of work, about to go inside and see your family or do whatever is going to happen that evening. As the whole day stops, you look up to the Lord and say, “You are my all in all. You are my first love. I receive You as my portion for everything.”
Whatever measure you are at in walking with Christ, that is the measure you can walk in by faith right then, because it is Christ Himself.
Your measure of Christ becomes your first-love experience right then. As you look away to Him in faith, something reacts inside. Suddenly, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, the life of Christ rises up in you, and first love happens.
It does not always feel the same, but you experience first love going through you. This is deeper, and this is more pleasing to the Lord.
Sometimes it is joyful. Other times it is endurance, but it is endurance together with Him. Someone looking at you might not say, “Yeah, that person is in first love.” But the Lord would say, “Have you seen My servant trudging along through this? He is depending on Me. He is calling out to Me. He is looking to Me and believing on Me to be first love.”
If you do not have any desire, you are probably in an in-between stage, or perhaps you have been resting for so long. But one thing will always bring us through: the Lord showing us something of Himself.
Begin describing what you used to know. Remember Him as you used to know Him.
I remember one time having a consecration issue. I was in the clutches of, “Do I stay where I am, or do I go into another thing?” I set myself to pray to the Lord and seek Him as I had in the past.
It was like I just saw—almost like the Shulamite saw—His hand come through the door. As soon as I saw that, I did not need any more details. I just said, “Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. I am in. I am all in right now.”
I did not know how, except that I saw Him. Then suddenly He was there.
If you see Him and look away to Him, you forget all your circumstances. Suddenly everything is clear. “I do not know the Lord’s will. I do not know whether He wants me to do this or not. I do not know whether I am fully consecrated or what is going on. But I saw Him as I sought after Him.”
Then I am back. It is not that I am back and doing something; it is that He is back and He is with me. This is first love. This is the way of first love.
I want to encourage us. We are probably at different stages, even as a church. Things may look different, but the test is this: Is He with you or not? Are you with Him or not?
It may be more difficult as you go further into first love, because you are walking in a higher measure of Christ. But all of it is a work of faith.
In John 6:28-29, they said, “Show us the works of God, and we will do them.” Jesus said:
This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.
This is all you have to do. Do that work. Believe on Him whom God sent, and you are brought into first love. That is the way through.
Let us pray together.
Dear Lord, we pray that these feeble words would have Your blessing inside our hearts, and that the reality You are bringing us into, and working among us, would be our portion today.
Lord, we pray that we can receive real help from You. Wherever people are at, may all of us be brought into the depth of first love.
Lord, we pray for each other. As we follow the way each other are going and take encouragement from each other, may we discover You together.
We pray that, as a whole, we would pursue You together as one people. May we be an assembly that is in first love, learning more of You. There is so much to discover of You.
Lord, we pray that there would be that drawing of Your love, so that we can testify and say, “The love of Christ constrains us.” Though it looks different, feels different, is harder, is more enjoyable, and though there is fullness of joy—and though at times we do not even know where we are at—Lord, we can say it is Your love that constrains us.
We can look away from ourselves and call out to You, knowing that You are the One keeping us and holding us in Your hand. We can trust in You, the One who has held us all this way. You have not given us over to the enemy. You have not let us go. You have kept us.
It is out of Your love and shepherding care that we are here where we are today.
Lord, it is You working and praying for us, out of all that love, that we can fellowship together today concerning all these things. We trust ourselves to You in Jesus’ name. Amen.