Do the First Works

Good afternoon, everyone. Good to see all of you. Temperatures have moderated somewhat today over what they were previously. It has been a horrendous period of time. I think we all recognize that. But such as it is. I was down in Missouri this week for visiting family and stopped by the United Camp at Pinecrest to visit with the camp there. They were at 100 degrees on Wednesday when we were there. Humidity was something like the heat factor. I think it pushed it up to about 110, 112 degrees. Campers were having fun, and everybody was in good spirits. But it was very, very hot.

Melody Moss was doing a very good job as the camp nurse, but she was run rag. I can tell she was at midweek point, she was exhausted with what was going on with some of the heat strokes.

Well, not heat strokes, but one of the staff members who's on the canoe, they have a major event at Pinecrest as a canoe trip. And one of the staff members went out without any sunscreen and came out with two very large blisters. And he had to go home, and someone else required some stitches from an accident and heat exhaustion, dehydration, things like that.

And so it was keeping everybody hydrated, and spirits were good. It was a good experience for everybody there, but I'm sure that they are thankful for a little less heat here by the end of this week. Let me get to some announcements. Just have a few here before I get into the sermon.

Gentlemen who are going over to our home tonight for the dinner and the secondhand lions activity plan to be there between 5.30 and 6. And we'll get things going at that particular time. We'll heat the grills up and have a hot time in the patio tonight.

I think everything else pretty well is self-explanatory, and I won't take too much time there. I did want to mention something regarding the Beyond Today program for tomorrow. You'll see the front of the bulletin mentions that the title is Moving Beyond Tragedy. This is the one that I told you about. We taped back in May when we went over to Sugar Creek, Ohio and sat down with John and Susan Miller. John is an elder that serves our Akron Canton congregation, lives in that area, the businessman and minister on the side.

He and his wife had a tragic accident happen when they were younger with their third child, and they accidentally killed their child. And many of you know that story. They were willing to go on the film or on Beyond Today and tell that story. And we were able, I think, to piece together, I think, a very effective program, and that airs for the first time tomorrow on Beyond Today. So I wanted to let you know about that. For those of you that have WG in America, certainly you can watch that. I hope that you will.

If you have Internet access, you can watch that, obviously, on the Internet. I did bring a few copies. I did pick up a few extra copies of the program on DVD. And if anyone can't watch it, or if you watch it and perhaps know someone who might benefit from it, from their story, the program is largely their story. I just facilitate their telling of the story. I can't improve on that. And so we filmed on location where the accident happened in the cemetery where their son is buried and in their home. And the editors were able to piece together, I think, a pretty good program that tells that story and how they worked through it, which is most important, because the title is Moving Beyond Tragedy.

And essentially, their faith and their belief in the truth of God, especially in regard to the truth of the resurrection, was the key 26 years ago when they had to deal with that, and it's the key to dealing with that type of a tragedy. So I will have a few extra copies of it. I do have those. If you think that there may be someone you know that you might want to pass that on to that would not see the program after you reflect on it for a while, let me know, and I'll get copies of that.

And certainly it's on the Internet as well, but sometimes a DVD copy can suffice in regard to that. So that'll be coming up tomorrow, and certainly pray that we have a good response to that. One of the things I've been thinking about with Beyond today, and I would ask your prayers and asking God for his guidance on that, is the biggest key to the effectiveness of the program is not so much the responses that we get, although that is an indicator and certainly a measurement, but we have no idea what the audience size is and the impact of the audience, but you want to be watching or you want to be praying that God will provide an audience.

That's the most important thing. God can bring anyone to that particular spot on the dial or to the Internet location or through a link to bringittobeontoday.tv or in any number of ways, God can build an audience. That's his job. Let's not neglect or think that – and none of us think that we are so great that we will draw an audience, we will build an audience. None of us, certainly on the production team, are thinking that way.

The ultimate key is that God will provide the audience. So keep that in your prayers, that God would build that audience and bring that audience to the message there, plus all the other avenues – the Good News magazine, the Internet website that we have, and other literature – so that those that God is calling will be drawn to the message and the various means by which we have to distribute that message. That's what's most important and critical.

I was back in Missouri this week in my home and my hometown visiting with some of my family. I had dinner on Tuesday night with my dad's sisters, four of my dad's sisters and two uncles. And we just had a nice dinner and about five hours of just talking and listening to stories and whatever. But my aunts and uncles, at least one uncle, they watch Beyond Today.

They always let me know whenever I walk in, oh, I saw you on television. You had a good message last week or whatever. They're good Nazarenes, okay? And that's fine. My 95-year-old uncle, he kept saying, he says, you had a good message last week, son. He said, I listen to you every Sunday morning as I'm getting ready to go to church. I said, well, thanks, Uncle Roy.

I'm glad that it helps you to get ready to go to church or whatever. But I don't know what they are hearing or whatever, but they're watching their nephew on television. So a couple of years ago, one of my aunts said, I sure do like you. I'm not too sure about those other guys. But I said, I sure do like watching you.

So that's my 83-year-old aunt. So you know, you cut her a little slack. She's maybe a little bit prejudiced. So I'm sure Steve Ihres and Gary Petty's relatives watch, and they like them better than they like the rest of us as well. Okay. Just one festival-related announcement.

The Feast of Tabernacles in Jamaica still has openings and availabilities. If anyone is interested in attending the Feast of Tabernacles in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, you've not yet sent in an application. You can do so by contacting Chuck Zimmerman, who is the pastor serving that area and coordinating that particular site. They're using a new resort this year, which is called the RIU near Ocho Rios. It's an all-inclusive resort. All costs, including room, food, beverages, taxes, and tips, are included in the daily price, which is as low as $188 per couple. That's a pretty good price, with $188 per couple for room and food, beverages, taxes, and tips, and everything else.

If anyone is still interested in that, Jamaica has openings. In Virginia Beach, there's a new company that they're using for homes and condominiums for the fisight. In Virginia Beach, if you want that information, I will have that as well. If anyone's going to the Wisconsin Dells, they are once again this year having an Arts and Crafts exhibition at the Dells fisight.

I have information regarding that, and I'll put this into the bulletin. Artwork would need to be registered no later than September 23rd. I'll put this into the bulletin, or at least my email update for next week. I don't know if anyone here is going to the Dells, but that is going to be there. There will be an Arts and Crafts exhibition as well, which sounds quite interesting.

The date for the Kingdom of God seminars is coming up upon us. That will be in about four or five weeks off, September 10th. We are planning to do a mailing of a letter that will invite all those on the Good News mailing list. I certainly want you to be praying for the success of these seminars as we prepare for those.

We wanted to make contact with our Good News subscribers in the Indianapolis area. We want to do that again this time. If at all possible, I'll be getting a printout, or at least the Excel file of all the subscribers, who have been on the list for 12 months or more in a few days. We're going to endeavor to put that together.

We will need to do something a little bit different this year. I'll just at least mention this and put this out and come back to it maybe next week, the week after when we get right down to the point of getting ready to mail these out. Instead of just doing a mailing, which we could do, I have no idea how many subscribers we would be mailing to. But an idea that I've come up with is to ask you, any of you, to volunteer to stuff and to mail and to foot the price of the postage. We would have to be doing this on a first-class mail basis of the letters to the Good News mailing list.

We don't have the budget to do this locally that we have had in the past. And so this mailing would be something that we will have to do a little bit differently. But that necessity may create another opportunity that might draw this a little bit closer to you and I and all of us. And if you think that you could volunteer to stuff, lick, and stamp any number and pay for the postage on a dozen, 20, 30 unbooked. Mailings to individuals, whether in your area or just in the general Indianapolis area served by our Good News mailing list. Be thinking about that. It would be a good opportunity to kind of bring this down a little bit more to a personal level and certainly help out for all of us. And, you know, when you see a few names on there, you could be praying for those names and even the 15, 20, or 30 envelopes that you might be responsible for mailing a two-page mail. And then, you know, having a two-page letter to inviting people to attend this would bring it down a little bit closer to reality and names and an opportunity there. So that may be something that we will be doing. I think that necessity will bring us to rethink how we reach out. And I think a direct mail to prime subscribers of the Good News is always something we want to do when we have something like this. And since we're going to be doing several ongoing over the next 18 months, that is an effort that I think we could do with very little cost. But perhaps the intangible benefit of your involvement, all of us together collectively making it a whole church effort, can make that a little bit closer to us. So think about that. I'll put that out just for consideration here today. We're going to be looking at it and making plans and more details regarding that once I get the mailing list in hand here in a few days. But we want, certainly, God's blessing upon these seminars as we begin to take these and reach out to people and invite them to come in and have contact with us.

Okay. That's all the announcements, and there's no sermon... there's a sermon. No special music today. As I remember, her name was Lucy Gray, and I was in the first grade, and she was my first crush. Puppy love, kitty love, whatever you want to call it, that happens. She was the first. It didn't last long, maybe a couple of days. I probably was spurned on the playground, and it ended. There were others over the years, as elementary school and junior high school and high school developed, any number of individuals, girls, that I had a crush on thought that I was madly in love with. How many of you remember the first person on which you fixed your gaze and your attention and had your first love?

I see... yeah, okay, well, raise your hands. I already saw a number of heads nodding as we went along there. Every one of us has someone probably like that. But then we settle on one, and we... or two, okay. But at some point we settle on one, that is, becomes our one love and our love for life. I did, and most of us have. First love is an interesting concept.

The Bible talks about first love. And the church, first love, used to be talked about in almost mythic terms. How many of you have heard the term first love when it comes to the church? Okay. We're all not too new and too jaded that that hasn't been something that has come up in the past. I remember 35, 40, 45 years ago, people talking about their first love, their zeal for the church, their zeal for God, their zeal for the truth, and what it prompted in response in one's life.

First love is an interesting concept. First love is, when it comes to our physical relationships, as I can demonstrate and you can as well, doesn't always come to mean true love. And enduring love. However, it does awaken something in us, at least, that we begin to be aware of in our earliest years. Spiritually, it's far more important than any of our physical loves that we might have for another human being.

Spiritually, it is a very, very significant force, something that we should take note of. In Revelation 2, Christ gives some directions to the church, in the famous letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3. And in the letter to the church in Ephesus, he makes a statement regarding this first love. Let's read this message to the church in Ephesus, in Revelation 2. Let's talk this afternoon about first love and what it is that Christ is talking about when it comes to the church, where they are and what is going on, and how this applies to us.

It has very important ramifications for every Christian, for every one of us, in regard to our relationship with Jesus Christ. In Ephesians 2, verse 1, the first message here to this church in Ephesus, he says, He says, Very positive, very upbeat message here that Christ has for the church here in Ephesus. Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love. You have left it. Remember, verse 5, therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

But this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. The Nicolaitans was a group, or a faction within the church, that the histories tell us centered around a teaching that essentially glorified sin and allowed sin in the guise of righteousness, and even taught people how to sin in that sense. For the purposes of this sermon, we're not going to get into that part of this admonition. They're just mentioned to the Ephesian church later in one of the other letters to the church of Pergamos.

He goes into a bit more detail, but that is not so much for us to consider at this time. It says, the Ephesian church hated those deeds which Christ also hates. And then as all these letters, these individual messages, concludes in verse 7, the admonition to repent goes on. He says, He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, to him who overcomes, I will give him to eat the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

And then he moves on to the letter to the church at Smyrna, through the angel of the church at Smyrna. Now, there are seven messages to seven different congregations. I think all of us realize that these were seven congregations in Asia Minor on a mail route in the first century who drew the distinction of receiving these messages from Jesus Christ as John was recording it here at the opening of the book of Revelation. They are direct messages from Christ to the church. If your Bible is like mine, you have a red letter edition, you see that chapters 2 and 3 and a good portion of chapter 1 are all in red, meaning that this is from Christ.

So it is the one who is standing in the midst of the candlesticks, which those candlesticks represent those churches. Now, again, in this sermon, we're not getting into all the whys and the wherefores of these seven churches and the distinction of seven and the progressive flow and the fullest meaning and discussion of them in regard to a prophetic understanding or how that fits into the message to the church from that point to this. For this purpose today, it's important that we realize that this message to the church at Ephesus, just like all the other churches, can apply to you and I today.

And there is admonition, there is instruction in regard to the spiritual state of people in the church at any given time. That is a distinct lesson from each of these messages to the churches, and this particular message to the church at Ephesus is extremely, extremely important here. What did he mean? You have left your first love, where he says to repent and do the first works. What does that mean? Now, I said that the idea of first love almost has a mythic proportions in the church.

Again, 45 years ago, I can remember people talking about their first love. And in general, some of the thoughts and feelings that we have had in regard to that over the years center around a zeal for the truth, coming to find the truth, wanting to be among God's people, wanting to be a part of the work in the church of God through one's initial feeling and euphoria of coming across certain truths.

And a zeal to find out more, and a zeal to be where that was being taught and to be with others of like mind. And that's very true. All of that, as we will see, is very important. And in the early days of the church, at least the early days of my experience, and that's going on 48 years, the stories that one tells and has about the church are quite significant.

You have yours and I have mine of interest and sacrifice and feeling of what one has found, having found that pearl of great price, being willing to sell all, to buy that one field, be a part of what God was doing. When I was back in Missouri this week, I always go by and visit one of the church members, Carl Hoffman, who just turned 80. He's an elder in the Cape Girardeau Church, and he has been a part of that church, that congregation, ever since the early 60s, mid-60s, when that congregation started.

I've known him virtually all my years in the church. He's been kind of like a spiritual mentor to me over the years, he and his wife, Paula. We've stayed with him. I went through Spokesons Club when I was in high school with him. We always go to their home, either to spend the night or to visit. This time we just visited with him one evening. Inevitably, in the time we spend together, we start talking about people and situations, going back all the years, and that congregation, the people we knew and what we've been through.

We talk about the church. We talk about the church then, and most importantly, we talk about the church now. One thing I've noticed about Carl Hoffman, he has the same enthusiasm today that he had when I was, oh, I guess I was 14 or 15 when I first walked through the door and he shook my hand and welcomed me to the Cape Girardeau Church, even though I was willing to live there, and he didn't. But he still has the same zeal for God, for the truth, and for the work.

It's truly inspiring. I get more from the visit with him than probably he gets from my visit with him. It's encouraging to see that. He has been steadfast and he has been faithful all these years in service to the people and to the work, and still going strong at age 80, traveling all over that part of the country to speak and to help people and to be a part of the congregation.

And so you find those attitudes, and they are uplifting, they're encouraging. In one sense, I don't know, I'm sure he's had his down moments, but I think perhaps Carl Hoffman may still be in his first love, and still having a zeal and a strength for the work and for the church of God. So those stories are real. Those experiences are very palpable. For some of us, though, however, time and circumstances and ups and downs can erode that away.

And that happened for the church at Ephesus, and that's why Christ said what he did. And the lesson is here for every one of us to examine and to apply to ourselves if we have lost ours, or if we never had it.

Sometimes you might be thinking, maybe, I don't know what he's talking about. I didn't have a first love. It just kind of evolved in the church, grew up in the church. It was because my parents were here, and it became kind of a social thing. And that too is something to consider, because Christ does talk about a first love.

Now, let's look at what the Bible defines as that first love, because you and I can define it based on our experience. And it can have important ramifications and be correct. But if it's not keyed exactly to the scriptural definition, then we might be off a little bit. And it's the scriptural definition of this first love that is really most important, because it's the one Christ is talking about here. And so we can go to scripture, and we can define what it is to mean by this phrase first love, because the church to which he is speaking, this church in the city of Ephesus, is a church that we know a little bit more about than the other seven churches that are mentioned here, the other six churches in this section. Because the church at Ephesus, we have their story of how it began in the book of Acts. And we also have one whole epistle, the book of Ephesians, written to the church at Ephesus in the first century, at the very time Jesus was talking about their first love. So we can go, I think, to those sections, and we can pull some lessons from the Bible to help us define exactly what this first love is all about. Let me give you a little bit of a setting of the city of Ephesus, just very brief history. It was a major city in Asia Minor, which is now Turkey. It was on the western coast of Asia Minor, and it was a major port city. There was a large river, the Kaster River, that flowed from the heartland of Asia Minor into the Aegean Sea, and at the mouth of that river is where the city of Ephesus was built. So it was a major port city. If you were coming from Greece, from Rome further west, and you were going into Asia, and you wanted to go into that part of that region of Upper Asia Minor, Ephesus would have been your port of entry. Not Antioch, not Japa, down further south, Ephesus. And as a result, it became a major city very early on in the ancient world, and especially during the time of the Roman Empire. A very, very large city built up there. And it was also a city that had a major presence of one of the temples to one of the pagan deities of that time, the goddess Diana.

In fact, the temple there to the goddess Diana was listed as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was a huge, beautifully ornate temple dedicated to this particular goddess, Diana. And it later crumbled, and by the fourth century AD, the Goths overran Ephesus, and it was destroyed, and it was never rebuilt. Other things happened to the city. The river filled in, actually, part of the city. And the harbor itself actually moved further out to sea, which made the city have to move as well. And that's interesting in relation to what Jesus says to the church there as well. We'll come back to that. The temple, one of the ancient wonders, was destroyed.

They say that some of its pillars wound up in one of the great temples or churches in Constantinople, St. Sophia. Quite likely that's what happened, and kind of from a pagan temple into a Christian church, things were changed. Just like pagan teachings were taken into Christianity in the ancient world and transformed the truth, so they took the remains of many of those great temples, and they found a second use on the secondary market in some of the Christian churches that went up. But it was one of the wonders of the world. Now, when we come to defining this, let's look quickly back at the book of Ephesians.

And it's very easy to lift a direct statement here in Ephesians chapter 1, and begin to define exactly what it is that Jesus is talking about.

Ephesians chapter 1 and in verse 15, Paul writes this. He says, Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith, and he's speaking directly to the church at Ephesus, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you making mention of you in my prayers. Now, here in verse 15, we get really the basic definition of this love that Jesus tells the Ephesians you've left.

Because here Paul says to them, I've heard of your faith. They had a strong faith in the Lord Jesus, in Christ.

They loved the truth. They loved what they had come to understand as a result of the revelation of Jesus Christ in the kingdom of God. The faith, the truth to which they were called. They loved it.

They had deep affection for it. They believed it. They wanted to hear more about it. They wanted to see that it was spread.

And secondly, he says, and your love for all the saints. That's for each other. Because the saints are you. The saints of the church. So Paul is saying, I've heard of your love.

Now, Paul, as we are going to see, he founded the church. But Timothy was the one who became, in a sense, the resident pastor. When you read 1 Timothy, you'll see in verse 2 or 3 of chapter 1 of 1 Timothy, that he was left at Ephesus to set things in order. So Timothy was really the pastor that carried on after Paul left. And Paul was there for over two years in its founding of the church. But Timothy became the resident pastor, and his nurturing, his care during those initial years, helped to establish the church to the point where Paul could say later on, when he wrote what he did here to the Ephesians, I've heard of your faith. Strong. It's still as strong as I remember it, in essence, as what he's saying. And your love for the saints. They loved to be together. They loved each other.

And this was not, keep in mind, the Philadelphia church, the church of brotherly love, which was the sixth of the seven churches there in Revelation 3. This is the church at Ephesus. So they had a great love for one another. Faith and love. Faith and love. If you want to hang yourself on, hang that as the basis for understanding what it is this first love was that Christ was referring to, I think you can go to this verse right here to begin to understand it. And again, keep in mind that I said it's important that we define this first love in scriptural terms. We can add our own stories from our own experience, and we need to be very careful that we shape it and define it along the biblical guidelines, because this was a historical body of people who existed, and their lesson for us exists.

Now let's go back to the book of Acts, chapter 19, because, as I said, we have a story of how the church began, and some of the episodes in the initial days of the church are told here in chapter 19 of Acts. And it's unusual for us to have that, but this can help us to again flesh out and to understand what it is Paul was getting at, and what Christ was directing the church to come back to.

In chapter 19 of Acts, Paul here is traveling, and he comes to Ephesus. After passing through the upper regions in verse 1, he came to Ephesus, and finding some disciples, he said to them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said, We have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit. These were some who had been baptized with the baptism of John, as they went on to say. So Paul said, Well, John did indeed baptize with that of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on him who would come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.

When Paul laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues, and they prophesied. The men were about twelve in all. So here is the nucleus of the church. Twelve individuals who had been baptized through the preaching of John the Baptist, probably some of the disciples of John who had fanned out, and they had an imperfect beginning, but their hearts were right.

And once they received further knowledge, they were baptized in a second time, no doubt. But with the laying on of hands, and they received the gift of God's Holy Spirit. So this is one of those sections that we certainly go to to understand how that works in terms of baptism, the laying on of hands. And being a significant episode in this region, in this area, they had the particular gift of speaking with tongues, in the sense that they did in Acts 2. And he went boldly in verse 8 into the synagogue, for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God.

And when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil of the way before the multitude, he departed from them and withdrew the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus. It was continued for two years, so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. So Paul's custom was to go into a synagogue, and he was allowed to teach, because that was the custom in the first century within a synagogue, and Paul being a rabbinic Jew, or at least having been trained by one of the top Jewish scholars, Gamaliel, he could get up and talk, and he reasoned and persuaded concerning the things of the kingdom of God.

People began to listen. They heard him out for a while, until he started to step on toes, which is what happens at times when you are teaching the truth in an atmosphere where you have a mixed multitude, and where some are being called and others are not.

It seems like every week we get a request at the home office from someone who is teaching in a Sunday school, teaching a Sunday school class, and they're teaching about the Sabbath, or they're teaching about the Holy Days, because they've received some of our literature, and they want a bulk cop shipment of booklets on the Sabbath, or the Holy Days, to use in their Sunday school class. And we evaluate... Peter Eddington always evaluates those carefully, and usually honors most of them.

We don't send out dozens and dozens at once, but we will usually honor those. And I don't know how often we get a follow-up to find out what happened, but when you start passing out in a Sunday school class something about the Holy Days or the Sabbath, you wonder just how far that's going to go.

And because, you know, the pastor of the church or whatever is going to eventually at some point pull the plug on anyone doing that, because their heart's not being called. Their heart is hardened, just like this episode here. And we hear all kinds of stories of how that happens, and where God's working, people eventually may have to separate themselves out from that, and certainly become a part of the church, the body of believers, on the Sabbath in a whole different environment, just like they did here with Paul. This is how the church began. Paul moved into more accommodating quarters where everyone could work together and learn together, and this went on for over two years.

And so what's important to realize is, in the latter part of verse 10, that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus. They heard the gospel. Now, keep in mind what we read back in Ephesians 1.15, that they had faith in the Lord Jesus, he said. These people had a zeal for the knowledge that they were given, and they wanted to make sure that it spread outward within their particular region, which is what happened. And other satellite groups, churches, eventually would have sprung up, which they did in the region of Ephesus in that area, as a result of the work here.

The church has always been an evangelizing church. The message of the gospel is not something one can just sit on. You can't just kind of box it all up in a set number of booklets or 20 doctrines or a book of fundamentals of belief and just expect it to sit there.

The truth, the gospel, is alive. It really vibrates. It's kind of like a force always portrayed in mythic stories, in some cube, or like the force if you want to go back to the Indiana Jones movie within the Ark of the Covenant. There's a power there. The gospel is like that. It's moving, and it creates a drive and an energy among those who respond to it. This is what happened here. Verse 11, it says, God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them. This is where we get the tradition, the custom of an anointed cloth, praying over a cloth, sending it when a minister cannot go and be physically present for someone who is sick, because this is what we are shown from the example of Paul.

Diseases left people, they were healed, and the influence of evil spirits were released over people. Now, this is very interesting to note, especially in Ephesus. It goes into the next story here in verse 13, where some itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call on the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.

And seven sons of Siva, a Jewish chief priest, did this, and they ran smack into an evil spirit that answered and said, Jesus, I know, and Paul, I know, but who are you? And it's thrown right back at these, and the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them, prevailed against them, so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded. That would have been a sight to see.

People running around, having been mauled by a spirit being. Now, this was an early episode within the church. This is one of those stories, just like the stories that you and I might have, of our early days in the church here in Indianapolis, or wherever we were first in the church, of experiences of people in the faith. And we might not put in an exorcism, hopefully not, but maybe something else as dramatic to us of a healing, or of an intervention by God with someone's job, someone's walk of faith.

And that became the fabric of those stories of our life at the beginning, that we told it, that we talked about, like we do when we get together in a meal on a holy day or at the Feast of Tabernacles. This story, verse 17, we're told, became known to all the Jews in Greek dwelling in Ephesus. And fear fell on them, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified.

And many who believed came confessing and telling their deeds. And also many who had practiced magic through their books together, brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all, and counted up the value, and it came to 50,000 pieces of silver. And so the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.

What you see taking place here in Ephesus is a clash between the kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of God.

Ephesus was a center also of the black arts.

That's to be expected with the great temple that they had to the goddess, and the cult that sprung up around her. And as we will see later on in a riot ensuing, there was a spirit about the region and centered in that city, where people practiced the black arts of sorcery, and the kingdom of Satan was alive and well, and people were extremely interested in that. And it was a very real, dynamic, powerful force. And here comes Paul preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. And that clashed mightily in Ephesus and began to create episodes.

Now, another episode developed here in verse 21 of a riot that took place, because as these things were accomplished, and Paul traveled throughout the region of Macedonia and other places, and he came back, there was a great contention, verse 23, it calls it a great commotion, arose about the way. This is another way of referring. They used it at that time to refer to the truth and to the church. And a silversmith were told, named Demetrius, who made silver shrines to the goddess Diana, out of which they had no...they made a lot of money to this. Again, the cult center of this goddess was here. Silversmiths made images, replicas of the temple, sold them. People made a great living out of it. And as this work of the kingdom of God began to have its impact within the city, the trade diminished. Stocks in the goddess Diana went down. Dropped 500 points in one day. Maybe even more. To the point where this leader of probably the guild of silversmiths, Demetrius, stirred people up. And he basically said, as he said in verse 27, this trade of ours is in danger of falling into disrepute. But also the temple of the great goddess Diana may be despised and her magnificence destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worship. And he worked up the people to where they then came and created a riot, and they all rushed into the temple. Not the temple, but the theater. And there they cried, sitting there for hours at a time, against Paul and against his companions. Paul in verse 30, we're told he wanted to go in, but the other members, the disciples, wouldn't allow him. And some of the officials came in. They were involved.

Some therefore cried one thing, some another, for the assembly was confused, and most of them did not know why they had come together in verse 32. This great commotion, this great riot was generated, and as so often happens in some of these situations, people get caught up in the spirit of an event, and they don't know why they were there. Many people came rushing into this theater, the central theater there, which was kind of a central focal point in the city. And the whole city came in, it says in verse 29, into the theater, and it was quite a commotion. The amphitheater was built in such a way that this noise would have just rolled through and would have been magnified by the number of people there, and the configuration of the theater. It became quite a commotion, and it just kept drawing people into it. So this was no small event. Again, it's important to realize that because, again, this is one of those events in the first few years of the church that impacted the whole situation there in Ephesus. And eventually, a city clerk, the high official in verse 25, quieted the crowd down.

And he basically said, look, if there is a problem here that needs to be addressed, take it to the courts. Calm down, everybody. Go home, and we're not going to have a mob lynch room here in Ephesus, because that will create an even bigger problem. And so he quieted the crowd down, basically said to Demetrius and the other silversmiths, if you've got a case, take it through the courts. But not in this way. This isn't going to fly here, because we'll be called into question because of this uproar. And in verse 41, he dismissed the assembly. And verse 1 of chapter 20 says, After the uproar had ceased, Paul called them together and embraced them and departed to go into Macedonia. So it was time for him to leave. Chapter 19 tells us the story of the church in Ephesus in its beginning years. What happened? Their zeal for the truth, their faith for Christ, their love for the kingdom of God, their evangelizing zeal. And it also gives you a feeling that this is why Paul later wrote to them and said, You have a love for the saints. You have a love for one another. For the church to have gone through something like this to where their leader, Paul, and their leader and their whole church life was basically the subject of this mass riot that took place one day in the city of Ephesus. And it brought the spotlight upon the church and the individual members in such a way they could not escape. To be a member of the church in Ephesus at this point in time, you were in the city spotlight. I mean, the social media tweeted this real quick. And they all knew who and what was the church of God and who the members were. You could not hide. You could not hide. Oh, you're part of the church that all this excitement was about last month. Oh, okay. Now I know. What do you know? I know that you're a part of this strange church that's going against the tide of the culture of our city. If you had been a member of that church in Ephesus, your backs would have been against the wall, but you would have been watching each other's back. You would have shrunk down into a group, you know, circled your wagons to protect one another, to support one another, to encourage one another. This is what would have happened. I would imagine they had a great deal of affection for one another as a result of what they lived through on this day. And the other events that chapter 19 was inspired, Luke was inspired to bring out here, they drew together.

Persecution, attention like this, will draw people together.

It may sound strange. I'll make a statement. But I yearn for the day some time. I found myself, I thought in the last couple of years, I found myself wishing for the day when this would be the kind of trouble we would find within the church.

Persecution from without rather than persecution from within.

One day we will. What we just lived through is nothing compared to an experience like this, where a whole culture or a city is turned against you and me because of what we believe.

We turned on one another for a whole lot less. And Satan did his work. This was nothing.

What God said to Jeremiah, chapter 12 verse 5 has been in my head and heart for a long time in recent days.

If you can't run with a footman, how are you going to run with the horses?

Compared to anything like this, what we've been through in recent years is nothing.

I hope we are prepared for what can come. And I would much rather deal with persecution from without.

And maybe God wants to know who will deal and who will stand like that. Because this is what drew the people in Ephesus together.

This is why Paul could later say in Ephesians 1 verse 15, you have a love for each other. That will do it.

This drew people together rather than divide them because of their zeal for the truth, for the gospel, for Jesus Christ and the work of the gospel.

This was their first love. This was their first works. This is what they came together within.

And so when Jesus tells them in Revelation chapter 2, you have left your first love.

Those that were still around in 30, 40, keep in mind by the time they get that letter from Christ through John that we now call Revelation, when they got that letter sometime in the 90s AD, it was 30 to 40 years from the events that we just read about.

It was 30 to 40 years later a generation had passed.

Many who had been there in that theater that day had died.

But their children or others to whom they had passed the story were still a part of the church.

And there were some who were still alive, no doubt, that were there that day.

And remember these events firsthand. And Christ was talking to them.

But a generation had gone, and a lot had happened in the meantime. A lot had happened.

There's one other episode to keep in mind, and in chapter 20, Paul kind of leaves, we just read in verse 1 of chapter 20, but he circles back, and he's on his way to Jerusalem.

And keep in mind, I'm not going to read all of it, but toward the end of chapter 20, or down at verse 17, it says he sent to Ephesus. He didn't go back to Ephesus. He went to nearby city Miletus.

And he sent somebody, and he called for the elders of the church, and they came to him.

And it was to the elders at Ephesus that Paul said what he did here in this latter part of Acts 20, where he recounted what he had done, and the episodes that we just read about, which were still fresh in their minds, and he warned them about wolves and sheep's clothing that are going to come, and he commends them to God. And so, just to the elders at Ephesus, again, this church that left their first love, that Paul warns them, and encourages them, and admonishes them. He says, look, I've preached the gospel to you.

I've given you the whole counsel of God. And I came among you. I didn't spare anything. I gave you the full knowledge of the truth.

And he said, but be aware, after I leave, there will be some that will rise up wolves and sheep's clothing seeking to draw away.

Be aware of that. But God is with you. And he knelt down and he prayed with them.

So this speaks to the great affection that Paul had for them. And you know that that rubbed off and was generated even among themselves, even at that particular time.

And so the story of Ephesus ends in Acts. We don't have any more firsthand knowledge about it until we then come to the letter of Ephesians.

And, you know, we're not going to go through the whole letter of Ephesians. We really don't have time. But when you read it again, after going back through Acts 19 and realizing the origins of the story, you read Ephesians as a letter again.

It'll make a very good Bible study for all of us. Because then some of the things that Paul says about Christ and the cosmic powers that, you know, keep in mind it's in Ephesians 6 that we read about the armor of God.

And he says, you know, that's where he says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and against powers and spiritual wickedness in high places.

That's to the church in Ephesus that he says that. That's to the same people who watched seven Jewish boys get beat up by a demon and run out naked.

Or saw a riot because their faith and the impact of their preaching and their work actually tilted the economic balance of the city, creating an uproar.

It was in Ephesus that the kingdom of God came and clashed with the kingdom of Satan.

And that's what Paul says to them. You've been raised in higher places, he says. We have a different relationship as a result of your baptism, your conversion.

And that's what he told them and left them in the letter to Ephesus. And so you see the clash of those two kingdoms.

Now, when we go back to Revelation 2, look at verse 4 again.

Nevertheless, let's look at verse 2 again. He says, I know your labor. We've just read about their labor.

Your patience. You can't bear those who are evil. They withdrew themselves from evil. They didn't want anything to do with it.

In Ephesus, they weren't going to see the latest Harry Potter movie. They weren't reading the vampire novels. They were not mesmerized by that.

They could not bear those who are evil who dabbled with evil. Those things have no place among the people of God. Those stories, that life, that culture, which our society is so enamored with and fascinated by, should have no place among the child of God.

A member of the Church of God. He says, you have tested those who say they are apostles and not. Many of them did discern those who were wolves posing as ministers of God.

There were those who then were able to pick it out and they tested them, found them to be liars, and withdrew themselves.

They didn't want to have anything to do with their works, their church, their fellowship.

Then in verse 3, he says, you have persevered, you have patience, and you have labored for my name's sake, and have not become weary.

Nevertheless, I have this against you that you have left your first love.

Now, decades went by, keep in mind. From the time of Acts 19 to Revelation 2, when this was read to the church, as it was, let's say 94, 95 AD when they first heard this message.

And you have to recognize that there were those who had been worn down because of working hard, being patient, and resisting sin.

You know, resisting evil wears on you. Resisting false teachers takes its toll, separates people.

It creates a lack of enthusiasm, creates all kinds of difficulties.

To be patient, even without quitting, year after year, can wear people down. That was the story of the church in the first century.

For any of us who have been around 30 or 40 years, we know that this is also the story of the church in our time.

Patiently forbearing, dealing with resisting sin, resisting evil, and yet recognizing its impact.

And so Christ says to the church, some have left your first love. You've left it.

What was that first love? Faith in the Lord Jesus and a love for the saints. Ephesians 1, 15.

Again, it's the only scriptural definition we can go to.

A love for God. Faith in God. In the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God, we are told, is the very first priority we should have.

In Matthew 6 and verse 33, Seek you first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, Christ said, and all of these things shall be added to you.

Seek you first the Kingdom of God.

I personally believe that it was a stroke of divine inspiration that led us to get our minds focused on Kingdom of God seminars.

Not even World News and Prophecy seminars, but Kingdom of God seminars.

To focus the Church first.

And I'm confident that as God wills and desires and will call, others will respond to that.

But the Kingdom of God is the most important, hopeful, vital message that we need right now.

Certainly what the Church needs, we need to get our minds focused on it.

I think we're all in agreement that the world needs it.

I was reading this morning how some of the financial analysts were reacting on Thursday as they watched things go down.

I was driving on Thursday, so I couldn't do anything.

Whatever I had dropped off with just like yours did.

But I was reading some interesting stories about what some of the analysts, financial managers, were watching all of. They couldn't do it. They didn't know what to do. Of course, they were reliving the events of three years ago.

One guy said he went home and had a strong double single malt scotch after the day. Didn't know what else to do. That was his way of coping. People were watching their pensions just be sliced off, tranche at a time, as a result of it.

So we're in uncharted territory economically and financially right now.

The markets spoke to the recent debt ceiling deal done by the President and Congress.

They spoke this week. This was their response to it, in part. We'll see how the rest of that plays out.

But the world needs a message of the Kingdom of God. And all of its ramifications, that message of hope, is even stronger and more imperative right now for the Church of God to be giving it. We need to be praying that that can find a ready audience. It's out there. But the Church itself needs it. The Church itself needs it. The people of God need to be focused on it as well. All of us. That's what the love of God is all about. Secondly, the love for God is about His commandments, about His law, about His way of life. 1 John 2.

1 John 2.

3. By this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, I know Him and does not keep His commandments, He is a liar and His truth is not in Him. Whoever keeps His word truly, the love of God is perfected in Him. By this we know that we are in Him. Those define very succinctly the love of God. What did Christ say? Go back to Matthew 22. What did Jesus say when He was asked, what is the greatest commandment? Matthew 22. In verse 36, a lawyer came and asked Christ the question, in verse 36, teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And Jesus said, you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments, hang all the law on the prophets. So Christ summed up the law on two great principles. Love God, which the first four commandments define specifically how that love is expressed, and love your neighbor as yourself. The other six commandments define how we are to love our neighbor. Again, we have a love for God, and God's work defined by this as well as a love for one another. Is this not the great first love to which we were called to be a part? Ask yourself how much love you have for the work of God to see His work go. Keep in mind what we read about the Ephesian church in its initial days. Those who were called enabled the whole region to hear the same thing they had heard. They wanted to see the work expand, and it did, and it grew. They had a zeal for that. They had a love for the work of God. The antidote to lethargy, to letting down, to a lack of love, always is and always has been looking outward and having a passion for sharing the truths of God, for sharing the gospel. Always has been. I can't reiterate it anymore. I can't do anything, folks, but go back to that. I had this conversation with one of our pastors down in Pinecrest this week. We were sitting at lunch talking about the church and the state of the church, and we were both talking about this and wanting to see the work grow and the gospel go out with the same passion and fervency that he and I both had when we were 11 and 12 years old and learned about as we came into the church and wanted to be a part of. That's what we were called to. I've said this before, and I'll say it again here. I've come to realize that so many over the years have identified the work of the church as strictly a social affair of camps, Y.O.U., Y.E.S., S.E.P., United Youth Camps, Ambassador College, as if that was the work of and by itself and solely. And to be blunt, past leadership was of the same mind, and so I can't be surprised that so many people didn't see any further than that. That's where so much of the past leadership was. They equated growth in the church to those elements and couldn't identify, scripturally and by the historic example of 80 years, how the church of God grew, biblically and from our own modern example.

It's always grown because of the gospel being preached. And all the other things that we do prepare a people, and they are important and they are vital, and I got inspired to maybe go to two camps next summer. So I'm not backing off, ratcheting off from that. But I can get excited about helping other people, and especially the next generation that is with us, to understand these very same things, because we cannot afford to lose sight of it. To me, heeding Jesus' admonition to get back to our first love and to do the first works begins with having a passion for the work of preaching the gospel and showing from the Bible and from our own example that that's how and why we set where we do. And all the other must flow from that. And when we get it right, then the love for one another, the love for the saints, will have an environment to grow in a way that, quite frankly, can endure. The ups and downs and the problems of sin and evil, of apostles who are liars. The very things that Jesus spoke to there in Revelation 2, when we are able to. Look, 48 years in this church has taught me that unity is a very ephemeral, fleeting thing within the church. You can say we're unified at any particular point in time, and there's always problems, because we're human beings, and the church is not perfect. The times of unity that I've seen, when we had some true unity, was when we were focused on the mission. And we were focused on a love for the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. And everything flows from that. It will flow from that. And so that love for the work is there. Now, getting back to Ephesians 1.15, where he says, a love for God, then he says, and a love for the saints. Faith in the Lord Jesus, love for God is another way of putting it. The secondary aspect of that first love is a love for your neighbor. Now, I'm not going to give a long set of 17 principles and keys about loving your neighbor here today. You all know what I'm talking about. You all know what it's about. I'm going to tell you a story. Time for a story. I have a neighbor, and I love my neighbor. There's a fence between us, and just like Robert Frost said, good fences do make good neighbors. I've lived next to this neighbor for 21 years. But it's just in recent times that we've become neighbors. Okay? Their fault, my fault, everybody's fault. But we're neighbors. 21 years took us to become good neighbors. Their dogs stay on their side of the fence. My cat never did stay on my side of the fence. Of course, my cat's gone now. But those things never bother us. And what's in my garden is his. They water my plants, and I look after theirs, and pray for them, and we talk. It takes a while. It takes sometimes a long time to get to the point where you love the saints. But you know what? Miracles happen. You talk, you listen, you be patient, and you grow. And we can love our neighbor as ourselves. That's the end of that story. You know what to do. You know what it means. When you go back to Revelation 2, Jesus said to them, you better heed this message. He said, Repent. He says in verse 5, If you don't, I'm going to come quickly to you, and remove your lampstand from its place. Unless you repent. Christ wanted the Ephesian church to get back to this first love, and to do the first works. To do the things that you did then. I don't know how else to put your first works.

What did you first do for one another in the church? Were you willing to do whatever to help them out physically? Visit? Fellowship? Talk? Move them? Mow their yard? Feed them a meal? What were the first works? You see Mrs. Blouder here, I'm going to embarrass her. So many stories I've heard over the years was how she and her husband would always take people to their home and feed them. People who were new at church. How many people came through the doors of the church over the years and had a meal there? There are other things for all of us to do. As part of whatever the first works were done to us, or we may have done, and we kind of got away from it because we got burned. We got tired. Or whatever. Those are the things that we have to do. We have to define them. And Christ says, do it, or I'm going to take your lampstand, move it out of its place. Now to the Ephia, here's why that's important. Remember I said earlier, the city of Ephesus actually moved? This great river that came out of the mountains of Asia Minor, like every great river, carried dirt, silt. And it filled in the harbor over the years to where the city had to move further out to the west to still be a city for ships to dock, and eventually that harbor filled in. And eventually that city didn't exist because the Goths vandalized it in the fourth century, and it was never rebuilt. But by that time, what Paul had been a part of in the city had moved out because the city itself was literally moved out of its place, as cities like that happened over a period of time. So Ephesus actually did move, and even the members who were hearing this being read would have known it and understood what was taking place even at their time. Because the city had been around for several hundred years, and it had already moved. Things change, and Christ will deal with His church to get them to repent. The changes should be in our heart and in our minds to bring us to God. And so, what was your first love? What were the elements of it? That first love is still there, and it can be found, and it can be generated. It's all up to us to grab hold of that opportunity and to make sure that our place within that lampstand doesn't get changed, doesn't get moved.