Message to the Churches - Ephesus

Towards the end of the Apostle John's life, he received a divine message from God that we call revelation. And there's no book in the Bible that has been debated more, argued over more, created more controversy, has more interpretations of than the book of revelation. The question that very few people ask, and yet in doing so, helps us understand the context in which this book was written and helps us understand that some messages in this book for us today is who were the original people who got this.

You know, the book of revelation wasn't written to a specific church, but it wasn't one of the general epistles, too. You know, Peter and James wrote their letters to the churches at large. Revelation wasn't written to the churches at large, and revelation wasn't written to one church. Revelation was written to seven churches. Let's go to Revelation 1. Revelation 1. And we know that there is a series of sermons, and we'll talk about this because this is going to be a series of sermons.

We'll talk about the prophetic meaning of Revelation 2 and 3. But before we do that, let's go back to a basic principle that we talk about all the time. What did this mean to the original people who got it? Now, they got it. And they said, okay, I just received the letter from the apostle John, the last of the apostles that literally knew Jesus Christ.

And what did it mean to them when they read it? Revelation 1, verse 9, "'I, John, your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ was on the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.

He was imprisoned on the island of Patmos out in the Mediterranean in the presidency because of his beliefs, because he was a leader of this group that was persecuted throughout the Roman Empire known as the Christians. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice as a trumpet." Now, this is one of the major scriptures proved to say, that is used to say, see, Sunday is the Lord's day. And I always find that amazing, because it doesn't say Sunday.

See? See? That says Sunday is the Lord. It doesn't say that. Now all you have to do is read the rest of this and realize that the book of Revelation primarily is about the day of the Lord, which throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Day of the Lord is used in a sense of a, okay, people are receiving judgment from God in a limited sense, but in the greater sense, it's when Jesus Christ comes back to just the world.

So there have been small days of the Lord for people all through history. There's one big day of the Lord coming. So he's looking to that time. He's receiving information about that time. And his voice says to him, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. What you see right in a book and send it to the seven churches, which are in Asia, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and the Laodicea. He says this is to go to these seven specific churches because this is information they need to know.

Now this is in somewhere around 95, give or take a few years, AD. John is a very, very old man pushing towards a hundred years old. He's been in prison. He's probably quite, his health is probably shot. Here's a worn out old man that has received this vision from God while he's in prison. And he says, I'm going to let you out and you're going to take this and you're going to send it to these seven churches specifically.

They need to know this information. And they need to understand what I'm going to do. And it's interesting how this is so important. And this is why this has a prophetic context. This is more than these seven churches, although it was written originally to these seven churches. In other words, these were seven literal congregations. And these congregations all actually existed within a number of miles of each other.

I don't mean like two or three miles. These cities were apart by 30 and 40 and 50 miles. But they lived within what would be driving distance for us today. It was a lot harder for them to get to walk or go by horseback then.

But they were within driving distance. How important is this in a prophetic understanding we see in verse 12? Then I turned to see the voice that spoke to me, and having turned I saw seven golden lampstands.

And in the midst of the seven lampstands, one like the son of man cloned with a garment down to his feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. He had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was like the shining in its strength.

And I saw him and I fell at his feet. But he laid his right hand on me, and saying to me, Be not afraid, I am the first and the last. I am him who lives and was dead, and behold. So this is the resurrected Jesus Christ. John just collapses in front of him, seeing him who he is. John and Jesus were so close that – remember, we see in the last night that they were together, John leans over and lays his head on his shoulder.

They were that close. And when he sees him in his reality, he just collapses on the ground. He realizes how great this being really is. He says, I am alive forevermore, amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of death. Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this.

Then verse 20, the mystery of the seven stars. This is a mystery of what he's showing here, that he has seven stars in his hand, which you saw in my right hand. And the seven golden lampstands. The seven stars are the angels or messengers of the seven churches. And the seven lampstands, which you saw, are the seven churches.

So there is a prophetic importance to this, that there are seven churches, and somehow they fit into prophecy. So important that when Jesus is standing there, he has seven lampstands and seven stars, and they represent the angels that are sent to seven churches.

So he says, oh good, let's get into the prophecy, what that means prophetically. But before we do that, I'm going to go back to the original audience. Who are the people who sat down as they received this little book in Greek? No, it's not a very big book. They received this little book written in Greek, and their pastor gets up and reads it to them.

And of course, you can imagine when it's over, everybody says, what does that mean?

Two thousand years later, we're still saying, what does that mean? I can imagine what it would be like to be in Ephesus and get this little book. And your pastor reads it to you, and the apostle John says, this is what God told me to tell you. And when it's done, they all say, what did God tell us? Let's go back to those people.

I want to take some real time here over the next four or five sermons to go through these people. We need to understand who they were, their experience, what they went through.

And then we can try to look at the prophetic meaning of this. Some of the churches we know very little about. Some we know a great deal. They all were different. They're all commended by God for something different. And they're all condemned, except for two, by God for something different. So as we go through each one, there are lessons to be learned through all of them.

Because of understanding some of the prophetic meaning of Revelation 2 and 3, we tend to study two of these churches. We tend not to study all of them. And yet the book says that we're to study all of them. Some of the churches we know a lot about. Some of these churches, we will spend an entire sermon just going through what one church was like, because we know a lot about it. And as we do, we will start to see its problems. We will start to see why all these churches develop differently. You know why they develop differently? See, how can you have seven churches, all in what is modern-day Turkey, all of them basically in the same culture, all of them in the same language, all of them in not only the culture of Asia Minor, but the Roman culture, all of them speak Greek, all the same basic economic system, how could seven churches develop so differently?

Well, what happened was, was that all the apostles had died.

There was no church in Jerusalem anymore. Well, there was, but it wasn't much of one. By the time this was written, the church, well, the church, there was no church in Jerusalem. It had moved. It had moved. Because of what happened in 70 AD. And each church developed differently.

That is an important message we need to understand.

We need to understand that God holds us responsible for who we become personally and who we become collectively. And yes, who we become as an organization.

But it doesn't start there. It starts with individuals and it starts with congregations.

And when you read Revelation 2 and 3, you get it. You understand what those people went through.

Now, I have a handout if the ushers can go ahead and hand it out.

I just want to look at the map. It's not much of a map, but at least you get an idea. You're looking at what is now Asia Minor. You're looking at modern Turkey today, okay? And you're looking at Greece. You know, if you look across the GNC here, you're looking at Greece on the other side.

And you can see how close these churches were. In fact, some scholars believe, interesting enough, there was a road that connected all these churches. And what's interesting is that if this letter, if Paul is in Ephesus, or I'm sorry, John is in Ephesus, and that's what most historians believe. This was written actually in Ephesus. Then the letter would have gone out from Ephesus. I mean, he wrote it in Patmos, but I mean, he's in Ephesus when he delivers it. Because according to the only history we have in the second century, after John left Patmos, he went to Ephesus.

We have some letters that mention him being there. So he left Patmos, he went to Ephesus, and that's where he died. So that means he shows up in Ephesus, and I get a letter from you from God, and it gets sent out. And as it is sent out, if the if the road theory is correct, each church would have got this in the exact order in which they're mentioned in the letter.

Which is just an interesting side point. Laodicea got it last. Ephesus got it first.

And so you can see Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea.

Now those aren't the only cities there. These cities are very different, just like the congregations were very different. In fact, in some cases, the congregations took on the personality of the city they lived in.

They took on the personality of the city they lived in.

Which is a real problem we always face as Christians, right? That our congregation becomes more a reflection of the local culture than a reflection of the kingdom of God. Problem we always face.

And so these churches struggled with the same problem.

So I want to show you, I want to go through now Ephesus. We know more, there's two churches in this group that we know more about than any other church.

Now, I don't think that's by accident. There's something we learn from all these churches. There's two we learn the most from.

The two that we know the most about in terms of the Bible is Ephesus and Laodicea.

There's more we know about those two churches than any of the other churches in the seven.

Ephesus was one of the greatest cities in the entire Roman Empire. Now, you've got to remember, the Roman Empire had at this point, the lowest estimates are maybe 50 million. The highest estimate is 80 million people.

Now, there's over 300 million people in the United States. You're looking at what is now Europe. You're looking at the entire Middle East. You're looking at Turkey and that area there. You're looking at a huge area. You're looking at Egypt, Italy, Greece.

Much of what is now Germany. Half of what is now England. Much of what is now France. You're looking at this huge area and there's only 50 to 80 million people in there.

So, when you get a city over a couple thousand people, it's big.

Estimates are that Rome itself had a million people. That's why it was the biggest place in the world. By its sheer number. Ephesus had 300,000 people, the estimates, in the first century.

This is huge! This is a metropolis. This is a place that's very wealthy. This is a place that, for one reason, where it is. There's a river that flows into the Aegean Sea there. And it's situated, it was situated just where the river and the sea came together. So, if you wanted to go up that river to take goods into Asia Minor or down onto the Aegean Sea, Ephesus was a major port. And like most port cities, it had wealth. It had every religion you could think of. Corinth was the same way. You know, we forget, Corinth was actually a port city. It had, you know, its red light district. Well, they actually didn't have to have that because Temple Prostitution was one of the big businesses in town. So, you have a place that is cosmopolitan. You have a lot of very intelligent people. You have schools. You have all kinds of religions. You have all kinds of debate going on. And in a great, you know, this is the place to be if you live in Asia Minor, okay? It's hard for us to imagine how big it was when you think back about those days.

But it's interesting, one thing that can give us an idea, and by the way, the ruins of Ephesus today are a major, I mean, there's huge ruins there. But it's not on the sea anymore. Silt from the river has moved the shore out, so it's not on the sea anymore. But 2,000 years ago, it was on the sea. But just to give you an idea of the size of this, I want to show you the amphitheater, the ruins of the amphitheater. If we can show this on the screen up here. This is in Ephesus today. You could go there today, and this is what you would see.

I don't know if you can see the size of that.

That's bigger than some college football stadiums. You could comfortably sit or seat 25,000 people. If you notice down there at the bottom, you're looking at a person in a shadow, and even then you can't get the idea of how large this thing is. And now, 2,000 years later, that amphitheater is still there.

I don't think Jerry World will be here 2,000 years from now. I don't think it's built that well.

So you begin to realize the sheer size, the cosmopolitan attitude.

This would be like going into New York today, because it's a port city. San Antonio is not a port city. This would be like going into New York today to get an idea of size and excitement and things that are going on. And this is where this church is. Now, we can take that off, but I'll give you an idea of just the size of that. Now, if we go to Acts 18, we find out how the church at Ephesus started.

I know I'm taking some time here. I'm going through detail. And you say, well, I don't. Okay, what does this have to do with me? We are told in Acts 2 and 3, I mean Revelation 2 and 3, we are told he who has an ear, listen to what the messengers say to the churches. It's plural. We're supposed to listen to every messenger to every church.

We need to understand who the original audience was, and then we can begin to understand the message to us, who we are.

So let's go to Acts 18, verse 19. Talking about Paul.

Here's the person who founds the, you know, when your church is founded by the Apostle Paul, that's pretty amazing. For generations, people say, well, it was Paul that came and founded our church. And he came to Ephesus and left them there. These were the people that were traveling with them. But he himself entered the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. Now, as always, Paul goes into the synagogue and he begins to preach to Jews and God fears, and they begin to respond. When they asked him to stay a longer time with them, he did not consent. But he took leave of them, saying, I must by all means keep the coming feast of Jerusalem, but I will return again to you. God willing, and he sailed from Ephesus. So this is where he started. There's no church there. He just went to the synagogue, started preaching in the synagogue, and Jews and God fears Gentiles who had converted to Judaism became convinced. And he left, because like most the time at this point in time, the church was still attached to the Jewish synagogue. There wasn't another church. If you were a Christian, you went to the synagogue. There's any place you had to go. Now eventually, they would get kicked out of the synagogue. And as that happened, they began to meet in houses. Or as in this case, they actually met in a school. We talk about, well, we wish we had big church buildings today. The church at Ephesus started in a school. They rented a school hall. It's going to Acts 19.

This is, it's hard to put it together. This is sometime the next year. You know, when you're trying to put this timeline together, and I don't know if it's a complete year, but it's sometime in the next year. Probably what we just read happened sometime in 52, around 52 A.D. It's around 53 A.D., somewhere in there. Paul shows up again. First one, and it happened while Paulus was at Corinth, that Paul, having passed through the upper regions, came to Ephesus and finding some disciples. Well, he had already planted a church there, remember? He had planted a church in the synagogue. And he comes back and says, wow, some of the people believed what I said.

And he said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said, no, we have not so much as heard that there is a Holy Spirit. So, Apollos had probably come through and also taught him. Somebody else had taught them, but they hadn't been, they had not repented and been baptized. In other words, Paul didn't baptize anybody while he was there. But he comes along, and somebody else has influenced them also, and now he's got people who say, no, no, no, we believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Now, they had to come out of that Jewish synagogue, right? We have not so much as heard that there is a Holy Spirit. And he said to them, and to what you were baptized. They said, well, John's Baptist, John the Baptist. And Paul said, John indeed baptized with the baptism, repented, saying to the people that they should believe on him, who should get him after him, that is, on Jesus Christ. So, now, some scholars believe, well, these guys somehow, this group of people, somehow were baptized by John the Baptist years earlier, or by disciples of John the Baptist. That's possible, too. The thing is, how this all got started, as Paul shows up, he's preaching. He comes back sometime the next year, and there's some people saying, well, we believe what you believe is all. You were baptized, yes. But did you receive the Holy Spirit? We don't know what that means, which shows that you can be baptized and not have God's Spirit. There's a two-part process to this. So, they had repented, and they had been baptized, but they had not received God's Spirit. So, they had to go through the second part.

So, in verse 5, it says, when they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. So, now they were baptized the second time in the name of Christ. And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied. Now, there are about 12 men. Verse 7. So, now they went through the second part of the commandment. They had done the first part, but it wasn't complete. So, he went ahead and rebaptized them in the name of Jesus Christ and now laid hands on them. And the second part of this process took place. They received God's Spirit. They now had a church. They had 12 men and their families. This is how the church at Ephesus started. And he went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God. So, for three months now, Paul and his disciples do what? They go into the synagogue. They're still part of the synagogue, telling Jews and God fears every Sabbath. You should go to church on Sunday. Every Sabbath, they show up, and they're in a synagogue, and they teach. But 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. And this he continued for two years, so that all who dwelled in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus in both Jews and Greeks. So here now we have the beginning of the church. After three months in the synagogue, a bunch of the Jews say, look, no, we don't, we reject this. He went, got a hall, rented a room at a school, and both Jews and Gentiles started to come. And so now he had, and for two years he works creating this church. You're going to see where Paul has a special emotional attachment to Ephesus, because Ephesus went through serious problems that at times almost destroyed the congregation. And the reason he's so attached to it is because he was their pastor for a while. And so his attachment to them is just incredibly emotional because of that. So he now is in Ephesus. But you have to understand something about Ephesus. Ephesus is a very, very superstitious place. Ephesus is an extremely superstitious place, like the whole pagan world was. You know, one of the reasons they believed in astrology, because when they thought people died, you became a star. So that's why they believed in astrology so much. Those were the souls of people. Those were the souls of gods. And if you could connect with them, they would tell you what to do. So you studied that, and that would tell you how you're supposed to live your life. There was in Ephesus little scrolls that had little sayings on them. And people would buy these scrolls and put them in their house, or sew them into their clothes because they were magic. They believed in black magic. There was every kind of god in goddesses and Ephesus you could imagine, including a temple to the emperor. So just in case you missed something, you could go sacrifice to the emperor, who was the son of God, and make sure that one of the gods heard you. At least maybe Zeus would hear you, because his son was the emperor.

But the number one religion there was the religion of Diana.

Now, before I go on to that, verses 11 through 20 are very interesting, because I won't read all of them. It talks about how Paul started sending out anointed cloths because he couldn't get out to everybody. This is where we get our teaching on the anointed cloths and sending them out. And God honors that, because he started doing that in verse 11. It talks about exorcism, because there are demon-possessed people all over the place. Well, of course, the more paganism you have, the more demon influence you have. So they have all kinds of problems in this city with people being demon-possessed, and people are exercising demons in the name of Jesus. And, of course, it doesn't work, because they're not truly Christians. In verse 17, this became known, this is what happened after this incident with these exorcists, who they were going around saying that they were exercising demons in the name of Jesus. And they did at one time, and this demon said, I know Jesus, I know Paul, I have no idea who you are. And they found themselves in real trouble, real quick. Verse 17, this became known to all the Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus, and fear fell on them, all in the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. And many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds. Now, what's important to understand here, Ephesus now is beginning to have a heyday, and they're sowing the seeds for the problems they're going to have.

You are now moved out of the Jewish synagogue, and you're in your school, and you had Jews and God fears there. And now people are coming into the church in droves, and they're pagans. They have no background in the scripture. They have no background in a sense of morality. So pagans are now flooding into the church. Look, it says, verse 19, and many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted up the value of them and had totaled 50,000 pieces of silver. The piece of silver that's mentioned here, the drachma is probably worth basically one day's wages for a common laborer.

So if you make minimum wage—and of course back then they worked about 10-12 hours a day—you figure out what that would be and multiply that by 50,000, and you probably get a modern equivalency of the amount of money that they had spent on all these magic stuff. It also tells you that there had to be a fairly large number of people doing this. And this wasn't three people showing up one day and had a book burning. This is a huge thing! Hundreds, probably, of people showing up and saying, we're giving up paganism, we're giving up magic, we're turning to this God, this God, and we're turning to Christ as His Son, and we're going to follow Paul. And His Church just explodes. It just explodes as people come in.

Now, the Temple of Diana is very important.

Because in verse 23 here of 19, we have, and about that time there arose a great commotion about the way. Verse 24 says, For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Diana, brought no small prophet to the craftsmen. What you have here is Diana, this Temple of Diana, which is the Roman goddess in Greek, it was Artemis. The Greeks and Romans just used the same gods and goddesses, just used Greek and Roman names. So you have the Temple of Artemis in Greek, the Temple of Diana in Latin and Greek, or in Roman.

And it's the major religion. Now, she is a goddess of fertility. There's a lot of sexuality connected with her. But you have to understand, this isn't just any little temple. All throughout the pagan world, any city you went into, there were hundreds of temples. I mean, Athens, think of the Pantheon. Think of what they would have seen if they would have gone to Athens. Think of what it would have been when Paul was here, there was no Colosseum yet in Rome, but the Circus Maximus was there, and there were huge temples, huge temples, that had been around for hundreds of years, longer than the United States has been a country. See, we forget what it was like to walk into a temple that was three or four hundred years old. How grand was this temple? It's one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Now, you think of the pyramids, you think of the great wonders of the ancient world. This temple to Diana was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, sitting in a city of 300,000 people. Now, they built a model. I don't think this is to scale, but let's show this model. This is a model that's in Greece of what it would have looked like. I don't know if this is to scale or not. If it's not, that means the building was a lot bigger than this.

But you get an idea, a little bit, of the very size of this thing.

The size of this huge building, and the sacrifices, and the ceremonies that would go on every day, all day long. And of course, there were people making money off of this because you sold little statues of Diana. Now, if you want to know what Diana looked like, this next picture is actually a picture from the first century of a statue of Diana. That's what she looked like. Something looks like a horror movie, doesn't it? There she is!

That's Diana. This is from the first century. This is actually, this is, in fact, this statue is from the Museum in Ephesus.

You can go and take that off because that's disturbing. They'll leave it up there very long. Now, what happened is, all the people who make the little statues and sell them all over the world, because people come from all over the world worship Diana, because she's a known goddess worshiped by everybody. But boy, when you go to her main temple, it's like if you want to really worship Athena, you've got to get to Athens once in your life. I mean, if you ask the average Jew in the first century, at least once in your life, you have to get to the temple in Jerusalem.

This idea that you had to go, it's common today in Islam. At least once in your life, you need to get the Mecca. Okay? This isn't a foreign concept. And so people would come here to worship Diana. And these people who make the statues get upset because Paul in his little church is having such an impact that people aren't buying the statues anymore. Now, we're not talking about a little city of a thousand people. We're talking about a city of 300,000 people, and a great work is done in Ephesus. A great work, more than any other place I can find in the Bible, the work of preaching the gospel was done in Ephesus. So much so, it changed their economy, because people wouldn't buy the little statues anymore. So they riot. They get the people stirred up. And the result is, you look at 28. Now, when they heard this, the people, they were full of wrath and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. And so the whole city was filled with confusion, verse 29, and rushed into the theater with one accord. And they seized members who had been with Paul. Paul wanted to go out into the mob, but church members grabbed him and said, No way! And they took him out and hit him, while the mob took other church members out and roughed them up. Verse 34 says, finally, the Jews tried to send out somebody. Say, Wait, wait, wait a minute. You know, Paul's a Jew here. He's just teaching about Jesus Christ.

He's preaching about the Messiah, you know, and stop this. But when they find out he's a Jew, verse 34, when they found out that he was a Jew, with all one voice cried out for two hours, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. You see the pagan fervor here. Now, you see the fervor of the Christians when they first came into this church, they burned what would be hundreds of thousand dollars, probably millions of dollars of books and paraphernalia and magic stuff. They came into the church with a high hand. And when they did, this gospel was preached so much it had a profound effect on this city. And then the pagans launched back with their fervor. Can you imagine thousands of people chanting this for two hours? In other words, nobody will talk. We will chant until they shut up. And they did. And the only thing that kept them from killing the members of the church was that finally one of the local officials, government officials, got up and said, do you realize if we don't stop this, we will be called into account. Now, what he meant was, this will get to Rome. And there's one thing the Romans would not put up with. And that was internal violence in one of their cities. They just wouldn't put up with it.

We don't stop this. In other words, the message was, we don't stop this. And a month from now, a legion showing up in Ephesus. Do you really want that?

Do you really want that? And so they calmed down. They realized, wait a minute, we're now going to get Rome mad. So they stopped.

And so Paul hides. Now, oh, by the way, interesting.

Some believe from some of the writings from the time that the temple of Diana was a sanctuary, which any political prisoner or any criminal, if they got to the temple, they received asylum. Which probably meant there was an awful big criminal element in Ephesus. Because you got to get there and get to the temple of Diana and you get an asylum.

So I don't know how much is that. I've been able to track all that down, but there are some who believe that that was true there.

Now, Paul leaves. Paul leaves. A few years later, he wants to come back and talk to these people. A few years later, he wants to come back and talk to these people, because he sees a problem in their congregation.

And so he returns. Now, if you look at your map, what happens is, if you look at Ephesus and you look south on your map, you'll see Miletus. Paul decides he lands at Miletus and he tells the Ephesian elders, all the elders in the church, he says, you come down here and meet me. You come down here and meet me in Miletus because I have something to tell you. I don't have time to get up to Ephesus. And so the elders come down to Miletus to meet him. So let's go to Acts 20.

And verse 16.

For Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus, so he was headed south, he sailed past Ephesus, so that he would not have to spend time in Asia, for he was in a hurry to be in Jerusalem, if possible, for the day of Pentecost. So he's trying to get back to Jerusalem to observe Pentecost, and he doesn't have time. So he sails right past Ephesus, but they make port in Miletus. So 17. From Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church. And when they came to him, he said, you know, upon the first day that I came to Asia, in what manner I always lived among you, serving the Lord with all humility, with many tears and trials, which happened to me by the plotting of the Jews. He said, remember, you know, he got him together. They're sharing those stories. He says, remember when I was there for those, when you add it all up, it's almost three years. Remember when I was there for all that time?

He says, remember when we got kicked out of the synagogue? We couldn't find a place to meet. We thought we were going to meet in someone's house. Remember we got in that school of Tyrannus?

Someone says, you know, we're still there. That's where we still meet. Was so-and-so there? No. Is this happened? No. Someone went back and became a pagan.

I mean, how many times have we seen someone, a brother, go back and become a pagan?

Yeah. I mean, you go back out into the world and we say, how can they do that?

You know, just go back out and become a Catholic. I think, how can they do that? So they had this discussion. Remember when that happened? We had to get kicked out of the synagogue. He says, now I kept back nothing that was helpful but proclaimed it to you and taught you publicly and from house to house. He says, I got up and said it publicly. And remember how we used to visit from house to house? We get together, had meals together. We'd talk half the night about the Bible, you know, and about Christ and about the prophecies and about the way of life. And we had to teach, remember we had to teach people about the Sabbath. Remember the pagans came in?

We had to teach them about, you know, simple things like don't commit adultery. Because adultery was common. Everybody just went to the house of prostitution, which was the temple of Diana. It was part of their culture. They didn't think anything about it. We had to teach them not to do that. He says, testifying to Jews and the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. He talked about now how he must go. He must now go to Jerusalem, even though he knows he's going to probably be arrested. Verse 28, he says, therefore, take heed among yourselves to all the flock among whom the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.

And this is something that's said to every elders, every place. There's a point. These people are God's flock, and they were paid for. You were paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ. For I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Now, other churches aren't going to suffer this problem. It says, we go through each of these churches, you're going to find different problems. Ephesus' problem was that they were going to have savage wolves come in teaching false doctrines. Well, of course they were. They had this huge amount of pagans come in all at one time. You know, conversion is a process, even before you're baptized is a process. Sometimes when a church grows too fast, and some of you may have had this experience in the past, when a church had just grew, just exploded, then you find out, well, wait a minute, half these people don't even believe what we teach.

Grows too fast. This is what happened in Ephesus. Now, I've never been involved in a church that had that problem, but they did. I've heard people talk about churches that had that problem, where people just came in in such droves, but just sort of brought the world with them. He says, Savage rules will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after themselves. Therefore, watch, remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.

So he goes on and he explains to them what they should do. They should take care of the week. Verse 25, I have shown you in every way by laboring like this that you must support the week. There was always a concern by Paul to make sure that the elders supported the week, because it's easy for leaders to spend time with the strong and not the weak.

So he said, be sure and take care of the week. And remember the words in the Lord Jesus when he said, his Lord blessed to give then to receive. He kneels down and he prays. And the last part of this, he prayed with all of them in verse 36, verse 37, then they all wept freely and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he had spoke. He just told him, your church is going to be ripped to shreds, because you have people there that are just coming to you. Because you have people there that just come out of paganism and they're bringing wrong ideas with them. But not only that, he was in this case, he was telling some of the elders, some of you are already getting wrong ideas. See, this was a doctoral issue. When you get into some of the other churches, they didn't have any doctoral issues. Ephesus did. But remember, they exploded. Incredible things happened. They made an impact on a city like no other church in the entire Bible. So they sorrowed for the words that he spoke and that they would see his face no more. And they accompanied him to his ship. And Paul leaves. And Paul never goes back to Ephesus.

He never goes back. The church that he worked so hard, he worked three years to get that church going. And he got it together and he kept that church going. And now he's leaving it. It exploded. It was big. It was vibrant. And he says, but you know, in all this vibrancy, you've got some seeds here or something that's really, really frightening.

Because of doctrinal issues you're going to have.

So he leaves. You think, well, that's the end of the story then. Well, not really.

Because probably, I don't know, five to six years later, around 60 A.D., Paul sends them a letter.

Paul sends them a letter. We call it the epistle of the Ephesians. Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians. And he sends them a letter because he's very, very concerned about the problems they're having. Now, it's interesting. There are scholars who say, well, Paul's writings in Ephesians are so different than, say, Colossians or Galatians, that maybe he didn't write it. Well, of course he wrote it. He's just writing about a different set of problems. I mean, there's this idea that Paul almost had to be a robot and say the same things all the time. He's writing to a different church with a whole different set of problems.

And so, when he writes to Galatians, it's different. When he writes to Colossians, when he writes to Ephesus, it's different than he writes to Thessalonica, because they're different issues. In fact, Thessalonica doesn't seem to have a lot of problems. And there's a Greek city right in the middle of Greece. They seem to be fairly good, at least from the letters.

Ephesus has problems. He's concerned. He's worried about them. He knows he's never going to get back there. You know, Paul's reaching an age. He's probably in 60 AD. He's probably in his 60s, late 50s, early 60s, because he was born somewhere around the first of the century, at the turn of the century. And 60 years old back then was old.

Life expectancy in the cities, many of the cities in Rome, wasn't more than 40. I mean, he had people who lived old. I mean, John lived to be old, but there were a lot of young people that died, too. And Paul writes from the letter. Now, on the back of your handout, you have a very, very general outline that I put together of Paul's letter to Ephesus. But if we're going to understand the message to the Ephesians, as we are told to do in Revelation, we have to understand who they were.

When we do this, we will be able to understand prophetically what happened also, because Ephesus has a prophetic meaning. There was an Ephesian era of the church. There was an Ephesian era of the church. And we understand that era because we understand what we know about this, these people, these real people. Now, when you look at your handout, you'll see that they were faced with internal and external stresses at the same time. And so in Ephesians 1, 1 through 14, Paul tells him, remember about God's forgiveness and his adoption into his family made possible by Christ. He drives home the point, you are the family of God. You are the family of God. You must remember that. You must remember God chose you to be his children. You have to act like his children, which was, you know, the sermonette. We must act like his children.

It's easy to act like his children when times are good.

It's hard to act like his children when times are hard. Ephesians 1, 15 through 23, he reminds them of God's power through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He gets them back to remember, if Christ isn't resurrected and your sins are forgiven, then your religion means nothing. You know, this is why many times I keep going back to this. I talk about Christ. We must understand his second coming, but we must understand his first coming. Neither of them are complete without the other. You won't be part of. I can't be part of the second coming if I'm not part of the first coming. It won't happen. And Paul takes him back there. He says, remember, Christ is resurrected. Remember, he was resurrected. He died for your sins. That should change the way we look at other people. It should make us a whole lot more patient because we remember that without that we're nothing.

And we hope that others can receive that saying, forgiveness, that same mercy. Ephesians 2, 1-10. Ephesians are reminded that their calling is of God's grace and that there ought to be his workmanship. He reminds them Jew and Greek, because remember this church is a mixture of Jew and Greek. And he even has to explain that in Ephesians. The wall separating you was done. You are now all the same people. You're not separate people anymore. It's not like the synagogue where the Jews sit in one place, Gentiles sit in another place. You all are the same people now. And he reminds them of that. And he explains to them that you were saved by grace so you could become something. Grace isn't a license to sin. He explains it to them.

You weren't saved by your power, but once God gives you that grace, you are to become his workmanship. A work must be done in you and you must respond to that. And you must work at it. And it's not easy all the time. And he reminds them of that. Ephesians 2, 11-13, 12. God calls all people Israelites and Gentiles into the church. Once again, the petition is gone. Ephesians 3, 13-21. Paul encourages the Ephesians not to lose heart, but trust in the love and power of Christ in the church. He tells them, don't lose heart because your church is in trouble.

If you try to fix it, you'll fail, go to God, and let Christ as the head of the church fix it. And you must believe that. And then you do what you can do, which is take care of yourself and the person next to you. I don't know how many times I've talked to people who, you know, they talk about combat. I've seen interview after interview after interview on the History Channel, which I just love the History Channel. I've got four of them, and I watch them all the time. That's why I do it late at night. I'm too tired to do anything else. I watch the History Channel. It's amazing how many times they interview guys from World War II, from Vietnam, from Iraq, and they all say the same thing. You know, there was a point. This had nothing to do with patriotism.

This had to do with me and the guy next to me.

That's the way combat is. There's times where it's you and the person next to you. And we're in combat, folks, with Satan. Just like in a different way than—I mean, we're in combat all the time.

We forget that when we have times of peace. Oh, good. The war is over. No, there's a law between battles. Christianity is a war. That's what it is. And yet we're told this oxymoron that we're told to become peaceful during the war. Now, these people had a different set of problems.

Some of you have been in churches where some of you can remember a time in this church, right here, where heresy was an issue, wasn't it?

Well, you know a little bit of what the people in Ephesus went through.

That's why we're to study everyone in these churches.

You know a little bit of what they went through. Ephesians 4, 1-16, Paul teaches unity in the church and the purpose and goals of church leaders. In fact, Paul spends a lot of time in 1 Corinthians 4 telling church leaders what they're supposed to do.

What we're supposed to do, the goal of the people in a congregation and what they're supposed to become is the children of God and the leaders of the church, that's their only purpose, is to bring these people into a right relationship with God and a right relationship with each other so that they become the family of God. That's the whole purpose. And he does say, and one of the purposes is, and it's very interesting, is to stop the people who are bringing in heresy, because that's what they had a problem with in Ephesians. So he keeps hitting that point.

Ephesians 4, 17-24, he talks about how each Christian must become a new person.

In chapter 4, verse 25-32, he talks about how not to grieve the Holy Spirit through bitterness, anger, and fighting in the church. They were having a problem with that. In Ephesians 5, 1, verse 21, he warns against sinful lifestyles and lawlessness, which was one of the problems they were having. In Ephesians 5, 22-33, he talks about marriage and gives practical marriage instructions, but he says, by the way, this is an analogy of the church. Ephesians 6, 1-9, Paul gives practical relationship instructions for members inside a congregation, how they are to relate to each other. In Ephesians 6, 10-20, Paul tells the members to put on the armor of God because, guess what? You're involved in a war.

And we think the war is with each other, and it's with powers and principalities that we can't even see. And the more we think it's with each other, the more Satan's winning.

The more we think this fight is with each other, the more he wins. We forget who we're really fighting here. This is the problem this church was going through.

You can study the book of Ephesus now. If you look at Acts, if you look at Revelation, you take the book of Ephesus, it makes sense. What were these people going through? And this was only about eight years after Paul showed up and started the church. This is maybe at most a decade between Paul shows up and he writes this letter and this church exploded. It went from 12 people to probably, I don't know, maybe hundreds. Most churches in the New Testament weren't that big. This may have been the biggest one in the world, I don't know, because its impact on the city was so great. I mean, if this was, like I said, a little village like I grew up in with a thousand people, it wouldn't take much to make impact. This is a city of 300,000 people. This city is the size of what, Corpus Christi? Is it 300,000 people in Corpus Christi?

They had this kind of impact on a city that size.

Now, we know how it started. Jews and Godfares in the synagogue forced into a school hall, pagans respond, give up the occult, all this fervor, explosion.

Paul tells them, but you've got the seeds here of real trouble, and now he's writing to them about the trouble. And they're only eight to ten years into their existence.

You think, well, that's interesting. That's the end of the story. Actually, it's not. But because Paul wrote another letter, not to the Ephesians, but to the pastor in Ephesus, his name was Timothy. Four or five years after he writes the book of Ephesians, he writes, look at 1 Timothy 1, he writes to the pastor there. Now, remember, Timothy was one of Paul's firemen. He and Titus got sent out where there were problems. So he's now sent Timothy there.

He loves his congregation. Now, he never sent him to Laodicea or some of the other places, it's because he didn't start those congregations. He started Ephesus. He pastored in Ephesus.

Timothy, go to Ephesus. 1 Timothy chapter 1.

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, this is verse 1 of chapter 1. By the commandment of our God, our Savior, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, to Timothy, a true Son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God, our Father, and Jesus Christ, our Lord. I urged you when I was in Macedonia, remain in Ephesus, that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine. Uh-oh, we have all the doctrinal problems. We're 12, maybe 14 years after he starts the church, and now the church is just tearing itself apart for doctrinal problems.

And Paul says, Timothy, I know you're supposed to go all throughout Macedonia, but don't. Go down into Asia Minor, go to Ephesus, and save my people. Save my church that I started there.

And so Timothy goes.

If you read through the book of Timothy, the letter he wrote, you see all kinds of doctrinal issues. People fighting about the law, people who thought they had more knowledge than others, people who were teaching some stuff that's, you know, sort of like a secret knowledge probably came from paganism.

And there's the church that Paul loved so much was being ripped apart. So Timothy went and put it back together. Notice in verse 5. Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from some seer faith, which some have, having strayed, have turned aside to idle talk, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm. Now he gives three reasons why these doctoral problems were happening within Ephesus. And it's because you have a lack of a pure heart. I mean, these false teachers had a lack of a pure heart. It seems to be from you read through Timothy, it seems to be probably...

I don't know. The problem seems to be just not one problem. You know, at first Timothy 1 talks about problems of the law. You know, he actually tells him to put some guys out of the church because they're blaspheming God. So you go through here and you say, well, this is a real problem. They've got people getting drunk. They have lawless lifestyles. Well, where did those things come from? This massive influx of pagans. This massive influx of pagans that had come in.

And they were so happy to have them part of the church. And God had done a great work.

So, a lack of love from a pure heart.

Many times, a person or we can latch onto a heresy. Remember, a heresy isn't just a misunderstanding.

None of us understand all the counsel of God. None of us understand all the mysteries and teachings of the Bible. We just don't. I'm always a little bit scared of somebody who says they do.

But what happens is we latch onto a heresy. A heresy is a decision to believe something that's false. You actually decide to believe something because you believe that you convince yourself it's true. And the reason you convince yourself it's true is because you don't have love from a pure heart. We don't love from a pure heart. So what happens is we begin to believe that we are saved by knowledge. Now, you can't be saved without knowledge. You know, I have to go back and always make these little caveats. You can't be saved without knowledge.

But we're back to 1 Corinthians 13. Paul says, if I have all knowledge and I don't have agape, I have nothing. So what happens with heresies? We latch onto them sometimes because they make us feel so good because we're so much better. We're so much better. I've seen people...

I've actually had people say to me, why is it that God has revealed this truth to me and not to you and everybody else? Because they don't believe it's true. And then years later, I meet them and they say, you know what? I've given up that. I now believe this. But at the time, you know, God had revealed something to them so personal that they just couldn't figure out why everybody else couldn't get it because it was so obvious that God had revealed it. And yet five years later, they believe something different. I've had it happen a number of times. We latch onto heresies because we don't... instead of being motivated by love, we're motivated by a need to feel superior.

A seared conscience. Remember it says here, he said, from a pure heart and from a good conscience. In other words, we're so caught up in some sins that we have. And remember, the most dangerous sins aren't always the ones that are most obvious. They're the ones that are inside our heads. They're the ones that are inside our hearts. And those ones are the most dangerous. And so we have a conscience that's seared. I've seen people believe heresies because they didn't like somebody. I've seen people believe heresies because they were filled with covetousness and they wanted to find a way, you know, they wanted to find a way to break the Sabbath. Or they wanted to find it a way to let greed be okay. So they found a way to do it. Seared conscience. And it says here, sincere faith.

We just don't have a sincere faith.

What we have is a superficial faith. And so here we have this heresy and he hits him first with idle talk and teachers of the law. I'm reading a fascinating book, a member here meant to me, that I've recommended all the elders to read and that I'm going to work some sermons out of.

And it's by an organization that just goes around and helps create peace. I mean, they're negotiators. They're mediators, right? I mean, that's what they are basically. The guy was associated with a group that does that. I don't know if he does it. But he talks about this mediator group and helps people resolve conflict. And one of the things that I found interesting is I went through, okay, here's these ways to stop conflict. I thought, oh, I don't do that one. I don't do that one very well. Oh, I didn't even know that one. And there's one point that he makes is very important. He calls it idle talk. I don't know the exact phrase he uses, but idle talk. Even if something's true, is it a benefit to say it at that time?

And I looked at that and I thought, oh, I don't do that one at all. If it's true, I just say it. Or there's a time to say it and there's a time not to. And knowing when and how to do that is a key element of conflict resolution.

Idle talk about doctrine here. Now, remember, there are problems with doctrine. We'll get all kinds of other problems as we go through each church. And you think, wow, some of these problems you and I haven't even ever been confronted with, maybe, because they're just each congregation developed and what it went through. But this had to do with the law.

Now, there's a lot of when you go through the New Testament, there's a number of problems that have to do with the law. And I'm just going to mention a few of these. Actually, this is from a list I saw in the Jewish New Testament commentary, which is a Messianic Jewish viewpoint of the New Testament. Fascinating commentary. And they looked at the problems in the New Testament concerning law. One is they require Gentiles to be circumcised. Major problems shouldn't be done. Two, believe that the possession of the law guarantees salvation. That's a problem we have fallen into, or some of us over time. I have met people who believe possession of the law guarantees salvation. I have the Ten Commandments, I have the Holy Days, therefore, and I don't eat pork, therefore I'm guaranteed salvation. No, we don't. Possession of the law doesn't guarantee salvation. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ is resurrection, receiving the Holy Spirit, and then receiving the law. Okay? That's salvation.

But having the law of itself doesn't guarantee salvation. It guarantees a definition of right and wrong and shows you that you're doomed. Three, regarding human traditions as authoritative as God's word. Now, some of us have been in the church a long time. We've seen that happen, too, in our experience at times. I mean, there were times when having white sugar in your house was as bad. Now, not every place, not every congregation went through this, not every person thought this, not it, but there are places where having white sugar in your house was as bad as committing arson or stealing. Right?

That sugar might not be bad for you, but it's not the same as stealing.

Four, ignoring that Jesus Christ is the one who now sits in Moses' seat and arbitrates the law through his church so that there is an ignorance of the New Testament teaching of the law. In other words, ignorance of the law because you refuse to understand that Jesus Christ is now the arbiter of the law. But the Old Testament said the Messiah would magnify the law.

It would be his interpretation of the law that we would follow. Well, if you don't believe there's any law, you're denying Jesus Christ's position. That's a very serious charge. Now, we don't have that. There were probably pagans in Ephesus that had that problem. Using the law to lead people away from Christ as the center of what God is doing, emphasizing the law to the detriment of emphasizing the gospel. It's very interesting that in 1 Timothy here, he talks about that the law is part of the gospel because the law describes what's against the gospel. Go read 1 Timothy 1, the whole chapter, when you go home. He says the law is part of the gospel because it describes what is against the gospel. So it's part of it. But if we make the law all the gospel, we're in trouble. Just like if we make Christ first coming all the gospel and forget the second coming. Or we make the second coming all the gospel and we get the first coming.

You have to have all these components together to understand the gospel.

Using the law is a means to feel superior to others.

I have to admit I've done that one before. I got the law and you ain't.

Perverting the law, number seven, into a legalistic system.

In other words, we keep the gospel isn't enough. We get to make more laws and more laws and more laws and more laws. Which is what the Pharisees did. And then number eight is lawlessness. In other words, total abandonment to sin. We just give up the law entirely.

Probably there were many a number of those problems within Ephesus at this time.

So now let's go to Revelation 2.

Because now we jump ahead around 30 years. Paul starts the church. He comes back a year later. He's a pastor there for a while. There's a riot. He leaves.

Six, seven, eight years later, he sends a letter. Then a couple years after that, he sends another letter to the pastor there because he says, Timothy, you go there, take over that church and fix it because it's a mess. And now we jump ahead 30 years. Paul's dead. Timothy's maybe dead, probably dead at this point. And John writes to them in Revelation 2. Revelation 2. Verse 1, To the angel of the church of Ephesus write, These things says he who holds the seven churches in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands, I know your works, your labor, your patience, that you cannot bear those who are evil, and that you test those who say they are apostles or not and have found them liars, and you have persevered and have patience and have labored for my name's sake and have not become weary. Wow! What a church!

If this church starts at around 52, and this is 95, you know, it's 40-some years later. They've got three generations, four generations of Christians in this church. And God says to them, I know your works. You have stood up against evil. You have... there were false teachers, false apostles, and you stood up against them.

See, if they had not listened to the book of Ephesus, or the letter of Ephesus written to them by Paul, if they had not listened to Timothy, this would have not happened. But they did it. They survived that crisis. I don't know how many years they went through it, but they survived it. This church did not crumble under the weight of the false teachers. They didn't crumble under the lawlessness that was coming in. They did not crumble under the misunderstanding of the law.

This church survived. This church stayed. This church, this congregation, was what it was supposed to be.

Verse 4, Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Two ways to look at this, because they're connected. They had lost their love for the truth. They had lost their love for God. They were still doctrinally correct. Ephesus stood up and was doctrinally correct. When John writes to them here, they don't have a doctoral problem. They fixed their doctoral problem, but they didn't have love. But they didn't have love. Which means they didn't have love for God, and they lost their love for each other. But they kept the doctrines.

They kept the truth in a battle that had gone on.

And that battle, they're not fighting that battle anymore. They get it right.

But they lost something.

Remember, 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. Now, the Nicolaitans were a Gnostic group that believed in free grace.

They believed in free grace. He says, you stood up against people who believe in free grace. I'm glad you did so. He who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. He noticed something. I wish you really noticed something here.

He says, he who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

We better study all seven.

We better know all seven.

And then verse five says, what you notice is, now we think of Christ's coming for Laodicea, right?

Because we understand Laodicea and the churches, but I want you to notice.

Verse five says, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

Christ's coming is still coming for Ephesus, too. There will be people on Christ's returns who have the Ephesian attitude.

People who stood up, people who lasted for generations, people who did what they were supposed to do, but they lost something along the way. And God says, I will not accept what you have lost, so you'd better repent.

And it's not a doctoral problem and how we describe doctrine. It's a heart problem. They don't love the way they're supposed to.

Sometimes I look at this letter to Ephesians, and there's many times I have felt, just in all honesty from my personal viewpoint, I have felt that letter was written to me personally.

We can fight. We fought. We stood the ground. A whole other generation went on, and yet we've lost something.

We lost something.

Go back and do the original works. That's what we're supposed to do. You're going to find that every one of these churches, there's something in that message you're going to say, oh, wow, that sort of applies to me. Every one of them. That's the thing of it. Maybe not this, maybe not this, maybe not this. Maybe the situation's different. But every one of them, there's something you say, oh, that message is for me. Let all who have an ear to hear listen to the message to the churches.

So now we've gone through Ephesus. God tells him, remember at the end, he says, repent and you get eternal life. It's a very positive message at the end of the Ephesians, but they're told you have to repent.

Next time, we will continue the message to the seven churches.

Thank you, Mr. Petty.

Remember the meeting here in front of the stage immediately after the closing prayer, the cake in the coffee room and choir practice. So if you'll please take your hymnals and rise, turn to page number 143, after which will be led in the closing prayer by Mr. Terry Lee Bauer.

I am your God who watches over you.

I do not speak, and neither will I slumber. Sons be not afraid of man, be not afraid.

What can man do to those who I love so? What can man do to those who fear my name?

I am the Lord, protecting you from danger.

Though the mountains quake and roar, peening on the fray. I will return, with thee shall thee always. My steps as one shall not depart from you. I am the God of Abraham and Jacob. His who heads the temptions near, he not afraid.

Mr. Bauer. Our eternal God in heaven, our great loving Father and creator God, we come before you to close the v service today a little sadder at the loss of our sister Solve. We ask Father that you would comfort her family, and we know, Father, that though we might be saddened, you view the end of her life as precious in your sight, because Solve has finished her work, and when next she wakes, she will be with you and with Christ.

Father, we thank you for the men that you've sent to us today to speak to us, and for the messages that they brought. We ask, Father, that you would, through the washing of the water of your word, cleanse us, cleanse our hearts and our minds, wash us free of all the self-righteousness that we possess, that your righteousness may dwell in us richly. Father, we heard the message of the Church of Ephesus today, and we asked, Father, that you would help us to recapture that we might have lost our first love, and look toward you and toward Christ to fill us with your spirit, guide us, and lead us in the way. Father, we just ask you for three things as we leave here today. We ask that you would grant us a pure heart, that you would grant us a good conscience, and that you would let our faith be sincere toward you and toward Christ. Father, we ask that you would help us to remember that we're more than just a congregation here, we're more than just a group of people that meet once a week. We are a family. Fill us with your spirit, fill us with your love, and if it be your will, help us, Father, to return here again next week to fellowship with you and Christ and to fellowship with one another. And we give you thanks now for all these things and everything that you do for us and all the riches that you pour out upon us, and we thank you in the name of the one that makes it possible, our King and our Savior, Jesus Christ, amen.