Mary Fairchild
The Faithful Word #JMREV3. Pastor Jim Mooberry
The Revelation is also called the apocalypse because the Greek word “apocolupso” is where we get revelation from. Most people when they think of the apocalypse or the revelation they think about something of great doom and of total destruction, which, in deed, there is some of that in this book. In the movie “Apocalypse Now” that was about the devastation in Vet Nam and some of the things that were going on there… but apocalypse really means “uncovering” or
“unveiling.”
So the book of Revelation is unveiling something that God wants us to see and to understand. He is unveiling Jesus Christ as He is today in all of His glory—the sovereign Son of God. This book unveils the body of Christ—the Church and His relationship to it. Then, this book unveils the consummation of God’s plan for earth and history as we know it. This morning we begin in chapter two—it has particular importance to “us.” These are the messages to the seven churches. The purposes of these messages is that, first of all, they were historical churches and Jesus was sending a message to them about their circumstances and about corrections that he wanted them to make.
Secondly, the purpose of these messages is that these are typical churches. Jesus chose churches and churches with certain problems and he chose them in order to give us a portrait of the Church throughout the age. There are churches today just like the church at Ephesus, Thyatira, … So those things that applied to them apply to us today. The third purpose for these letters, and many believe that they were written in order to foreshadow periods of time in church history. Each one of these churches, beginning with the church at Ephesus, which would be the apostolic age, then foreshadows significant periods of time in church history right up to the rapture.
These seven letters have a tremendous relevance to the Christian because the typical spiritual condition of these churches is something that can also be found in your own life as a Christian. As the Lord speaks to the churches he is also speaking to each one of us that know him and that are his children.
In verse one we have Christ’s call. The speaker is Jesus Christ—in chapter 1:13 John saw Him, one like the Son of Man standing in the midst of these seven golden lampstands. Verse 20, Jesus himself says that the golden lampstands represent the seven churches—so this is Jesus Christ. Christ in all of His power has always been available to the Church—in His words in Matthew 28, “though I am with you always, even unto the end of he age.” Do you think that Jesus Christ cares about your church? Look carefully at these letters. The Lord knew each of these churches and their precise circumstances. In fact, He sends a message to specific people about specific places and events. He praise them for success and he tells them how to correct their failures. He is still standing in the midst of the lampstands and your church is one of the lampstands that he has planted. Just as he has cared for these churches, he cares for the village church of Bartlett as well. He wants us to be the light that will be the instrument of His to bring others to Christ. So we should take that seriously. As we look at these letters we are going to find in these letters perhaps things that we need to pay attention to as a church and as individuals.
The recipients are two-fold. First, he says he’s writing to the angel of the church—the “angelos.” Normally it means a spirit being, what we think normally of as an angel, but its meaning is “messenger.” It is translated in other places for a human being who is a messenger. I believe that this is probably the pastor of the church, or the elder of the church that is the chief elder. Maybe even a specific messenger that was sent to John in order to get this letter and send it back to the church. But he writes to the angel of the
church, but its obvious that what he’s doing is he’s writing to the church itself or sending a message to the church at Ephesus. It was one of the finest and largest in New Testament times.
The city of Ephesus was the capital of Asia Minor, it was one of the three most influential cities in the Roman Empire in the eastern part of it along with Alexandria and Antioch. It was also a citadel of idolatry. The temple of Artemis was there. It was considered one of the seven wonders of the world and the Ephesians were very proud of the fact that the temple was there. In fact, Paul, when he was there ran into some silversmiths that caused a riot because when PAUL WAS PREACHING HE WAS TELLING PEOPLE THAT THE TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS WAS NOTHING AT ALL AND THEY WERE SELLING TRINKETS OF THE
TEMPLE.
In Acts 19: 11 says, “God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul.” In verse 20, “So the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing.” This was the most prominent church in all of Asia and it was the mother church of many other churches. He is in the midst of the churches and He is holding the messengers in His hand. He is the one with authority. He is the one that has intimate concern with the churches. WHO IS YOUR AUTHORITY? IT SHOULD NOT BE MAN’S OPINION. It should not be “society’s.” It should not be what is “politically correct or considered that way even for churches.” It should
always be the “Lord of the Church.” That we would listen to Him and that He would be our authority. What saith the Lord? Who is our focal point here? I hope it doesn’t become just programs and services, but that it will always be communion together with Jesus Christ—that is our focus as a church. He is in our midst and if we ever forget that then we are in trouble.
THESE LETTERS FOLLOW A PATERN. IN EACH LETTER THERE IS USUALLY A COMMENDATION OF THE CHURCH, AND THEN THERE IS A CONDEMNATION (something the Lord sees that He doesn’t like),
AND THEN THERE IS A CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH. The commendation to this church is in verses 2 and 3. The Lord says that this church is a working church, it is a pure church, and it is an enduring church and He commends them for that.
They are a “working church.” “I know your deeds and your toil and your perseverance.” You see service to Jesus Christ involves work—labor. For those that know Him and are abiding in Him it’s a labor of love—it’s a joy. Some of the messages that are being sent out the church that we need to be a consumer
church—consumer friendly and that people come and they “want something” and they “need something”… they don’t come in order to give something. This, I think, disgusts the Lord. He doesn’t want us to be a “consume church.” He wants us to be a “servant church” and that’s what He is looking for.
Whether we work for Him in Sunday School, or a nursing home, or at home with our children—He wants a servant church. One who is willing to work for Him and He praises them for that. Jesus Christ knows and records all faithful service—He says “I know your deeds.” Jesus knows the deeds and the good things that you do for Him. Even if other men and other women don’t know them, He knows them and He remembers them.
“And whoever shall give to drink unto one of these little one a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward” (Matthew 10:42). Jesus knows what you are doing for Him—it’s not important whether other people do. It’s not really important whether they tell you “thank you”…. Jesus is the one who knows.
Then He praises them for being a “pure church” in verse 2. The word “church” “ecclaisia” literally means “called out ones.” When you come to Jesus Christ you have been called by Him out of this kingdom into His kingdom. So while we are in the world we are not of the world so the church is always to manifest that. We are in the world, we are salt, we are light, we are permeating the world for Jesus Christ but we are not “of the world” if we are a pure church. The church is to keep itself pure and chaste in a wicked and sinful world.
“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret” (Ephesians 5;11-13). We are not to participate in the thing that happen in the dark we are supposed to expose them because if they are not exposed by the light then they’ll never become found out—men will not be convicted, they will not know Jesus Christ. Purity of life comes from the purity of doctrine—that’s what he’s talking about here.
The Scriptures say as a man thinks so he is and Paul has warned them in Acts 20 when he left the elders of Ephesus, “After I leave there are going to be false teachers come in—wolves will come in the flock to try to ravage it and already they have begun to do their work.” But the church at Ephesus was vigilant. Satan has already begun to sow tares in God’s wheat field right after Pentecost and it says here that some of these tares disguise themselves as apostles and they would follow around the real apostles and they
would enter churches and they would say that they “have more message for you” or that they “have something in addition to what Paul has said” and they began to bring these false messages to the churches. They went around deceiving the church.
It doesn’t matter how we set the chairs up, what kind of music we play, all of these things are simply part of Christian liberty and we can do as it seems to please the Lord… What really matters is we are always grounded in the truth because purity of life comes from purity of doctrine not knowledge. There are a lot of false teachers that are out in the world today—there are a lot of corrupt doctrines and the spirit of our age is “pluralism” and “tolerance.” Everyone has an opinion and no one should ever criticize anyone’s
opinion—that attitude has crept into the church as well. Today there is a lack of discernment in many churches, there’s a lack of accountability—people don’t want to be held up to the standard of the Scriptures, there’s an incorporation of worldly techniques and substitutes like marketing and business management and psychology… all that stuff you see in the church today and none of that will change lives, none of that will show us the truth or expose error.
Jesus says we have a responsibility to test men and their messages to see if they’re from God even as the Ephesian church did. If their teachings are not consistent with what the word of God says then they should be exposed and they should be rejected in order to maintain a pure church. Jesus Christ commends that kind of vigilance and he praised the church at Ephesus for maintaining purity in their
teaching.
The third thing he commends them for is that they are an enduring church in verse 3. The Ephesian church was consistent, it was faithfully carrying out its mission, and the church of Jesus Christ has always
needed perseverance. Year in and year out we should not be looking for something new and novel, but we should be holding forth the word of God and clinging to the truths of the gospel. Year after year consistently serving Jesus Christ.
Endurance means that you are steady under pressure. The image of a man carrying a great load yet he able to walk steadily and Jesus wants us to be that way—he wants us to have endurance, perseverance, so that no matter what the circumstances we move forward steadily by his power.
“When we are tested we become stronger because the Lord works in our life. It makes sense that
churches will go through periods of time of testing too. In order to be enduring we must be able to handle difficulty and persevere under stress. So they are praised for that—they are a solid, hard working, Bible believing church of Jesus Christ. But he says he sees something else that disturbs Him and that’s the
condemnation in verse 4. The Ephesian had many good works, but they should have done them from a sincere love of Jesus Christ and Jesus says “you have left that first love.” Forty years earlier Paul, on his letter to the Ephesians, commended them for love and now this second generation has come and they have lost some of the enthusiasm and the thrill of knowing Jesus Christ and to the wonder of loving Him. So they are a very busy church, they’re an orthodox church, but they were acting from the wrong motives and for the wrong reason.
Orthodoxy and service are not enough, Jesus Christ wants our hearts as well as our heads and hands—He wants us and our love. Business is not next to godliness—we can be so busy and so disappointing to the Lord if we don’t do it for the right reason. We cannot please God if we don’t love Him.
ONE DAY JESUS WAS SPEAKING TO THE PHARISEES AND, AS USUAL, THEY WERE TRYING TO FIND A WAY TO TRICK HIM. Someone asked him “What’s the most important thing in the law as far as God and man are concerned?” Jesus answered him in Matthew 22:37, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
You see we cannot please God if we don’t love Him and he wants us to love Him with all of our strength. He says later that that means that we must love him more than our families, that we must love him more than our own life. That doesn’t mean that we don’t love our families, but they should not be number
one—only Christ, only God should be that. He wants all of our life. When the love of your Saviour begins to wane it is the forerunner of some serious problems in your life and in the life of a church. Think about when you became a Christian—this is a very typical pattern when you first become a believer you just bask in the glow of the wonder of what’s happened to you. You know Jesus Christ personally, He loves you, you’re forgiven and it’s just thrilling and you just ride along on the crest of all of that emotion…
Then as you get farther along you begin to grow in your faith something strange will happen if you’re
not careful—you begin to lose that. In any relationship that initial infatuation has to change, there has to be a maturing of that love—a deepening, but beware that it does not simply disappear. That’s what was happening here. Sometimes when you are a young believer you can have enthusiasm without knowledge, but UNFORTUNATELY AS A MATURE BELIEVER YOU CAN HAVE KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT ENTHUSIASM.
They left their first love. If this is true in your life it’s going to set in motion a chain reaction unless you stop it, unless you ask the Lord to stop it this is what will happen. First their will be the cooling of the heart and then if that’s not checked there will be spiritual apathy that will result. It that’s not checked, then that will lead to the love of God replaced by the love of the world. The next step down is compromise and spiritual corruption. The next is loss of your testimony and finally you just apostatize. Loving Jesus Christ is at the center of being a disciple of Jesus Christ.
The first lesson is that orthodoxy and service are not enough. Jesus Christ wants all of us—He wants
our love, He wants our hearts. The second thing that we learn from this is the importance of discipling our children because this was the second generation and we need to remember that we have to communicate not only our convictions to our children, but our passion to them—our love of Jesus Christ. Someone has said that in the first generation you may have the conviction and the passion which leads to serving Christ, but if that passion is not communicated, then the second generation will have the convictions, but no passion and they may still serve the Lord but it’s hollow. The third generation will chuck the whole thing.
The importance of communicating our love for Jesus Christ to our children…. The third lesson is that the loss of love in a church brings legalism. When the love of Jesus Christ leaves a church, legalism enters in and then human standards are set up and outward conformity is goal. Generosity and warmth and enthusiasm and sacrifice all leave—it’s just maintaining a standard.
Paul speaks in Galatians 5:6 “… circumcision does not mean anything, but only faith working through love.” When we love Jesus Christ, then we will trust Him—we will believe Him. When we love Jesus Christ we will love his children. And when we love Jesus Christ we will lay down our lives for His children and Him. It all begins with that motivation that God so desires and that is simply that we love Him. And
when we stop loving Him we have spiritual problems. Jesus says to this church… “you are in danger of falling because you have lost your first love.” And He gives us the correction in verses 5 and 6—Jesus tells them that the very first thing that they need to do is to take a personal inventory spiritually. He says
wait a minute—remember where you were and where you are now and repent.
The word repent means to “change your mind,” “to turn in your thinking.” He says to turn back and do the works that you did at first. When was the last time that the Word of God changed your mind about something? If has been so long ago that you can’t even remember—that’s an indicator of where you are spiritually. We need to ask God to give us grace to help us to take an honest, objective, spiritual
inventory of our lives and really look at ourselves as He does and then ask Him for the grace to change to the way He wants us to be.
The Christian or the church that makes excuses for a lack of commitment to Jesus Christ only proves
that they have a love problem. If a Christian is unwilling to turn over all of His talents and his capabilities to Jesus Christ it only proves by its conduct that he doesn’t love Jesus Christ with all his heart. The Lord knows these things.
He gives the alternative in verse 5. He says if you don’t do this I’m going to come and remove your lampstand. The church that continues to move away from the Saviour is going to be less and less in tune to His authority, it’s going to become less and less a light in the world, and finally it will just cease to exist because Jesus will close the doors. And if the day we turn away from Him is the day that we are out of existence—or headed that way.
He gives them one more affirmation though, just like the Lord—He affirms them in what they do. “Nicolaitan” means conquerors of the people and they were the original source of a separate priesthood in the church—they brought together Judaism and paganism into the church and began to establish a separate class of priests whereas the Scriptures tell us that we all believer priests and there is no real laity and clergy—they are all one in Christ. We are a body of believers.
It developed then finally into Roman Catholicism. The enemy is already at work trying to divide the body of Christ and they are standing against this. Pastors are not the “professionals” who should be doing all the work…. That is a false distinction. Pastors are being paid because of the gifts they have so that they
can concentrate on that—but we are all alike… We all have gifts and we all serve the same Lord. Jesus hates when the church gets divided like that and the concept of a member active ministry is lost.
The last thing he gives to them is a challenge in verse 7. The intended hearers are those who have an ear
to hear—this was a very common statement of Jesus Christ. Sometime go back to Matthew 13 when He talks of the parables and He explains to the disciples why He taught in parables—He said it’s TO REVEAL TRUTH TO THOSE WHO CAN HEAR IT, BUT IT’S TO COVER TRUTH TO THOSE WHO DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT. Those who have ears are those who have SPIRITUAL LIFE. THEY HAVE THE MINISTRY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THEIR MIND and so they are able to understand it and to take it to heart. If you know Jesus Christ you have the ears to hear. And He gives a promise to us, He says THOSE WHO OVERCOME I WILL GRANT TO EAT OF THE TREE OF LIFE WHICH IS IN THE PARADISE OF GOD.
When did the tree of life first appear? Genesis 3—in the Garden of Eden there where two trees of great importance. There was the TREE OF LIFE, whereby if you ate from it you would live for eternity and there was the TREE OF CONSCIENCE because that’s what it was when Adam and Eve ate from that forbidden tree—their conscience became active and convicted them of personal sin and they died spiritually.
So they were barred from the Garden because God said “if they now eat from the tree of life they will live forever in this condition.” And He had a better plan. He had a plan for Jesus Christ to come and die for them and for you and I—and so they were banned from the Garden. But the tree of life reappears in the last chapter of the book of Revelation (Rev. 22:2—Speaking there of the new Jerusalem the heavenly city of which you and I will once be inhabitance: “…in the middle of it’s street and on either side of the river was the tree of life bearing twelve kinds of fruit. Yielding its fruit every month and the leaves of the tree where for the healing of nations”).
The Tree of Life reappears and those who are in this heavenly city will be able to eat from it—which is another symbolic way of saying that they will live forever. But the most important thing here is who is this OVERCOMER… Who is this promise really pointed at? John in one of his other letters to a church tells us who the overcomer is: “Whatever is born of God overcomes the world”(1 John 5:4). This is the victory our faith—and who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Who is the overcomer? It is the believer. And the believer is the one who will persevere because of the Spirit’s work in his life. He will remain ultimately faithful—that doesn’t mean we are immune from problems and trials. It doesn’t mean that we will never fall or fail—we have all failed the Lord many times…. And sometimes we’ve even fallen down—some have even been in a back-slidden condition for a number of years, but we always seem to get back up. We can’t seem to not be with Him. We can’t seem to not acknowledge Him in our life… because that’s the work of the Spirit. To every “believer” He says “I have something for you—you can eat of the Tree of Life in My paradise.”
What an encouragement to believers… especially those who are undergoing persecution. Don’t be like the Hebrews who were “dull of hearing.” Ask God to take your life and make it to be what He wants it to be.
References
- “YOU LEFT YOUR FIRST LOVE”: REVELATION 2:1-7; The Faithful Word #JMREV3, *Pastor James Mooberry, “The Faithful Word: Two Decades of Expository Teaching Tapes.”