Remember Your First Love

Lucy Gray was the first girl that I ever had a crush on. This was in the first grade, Washington Elementary School, Cape Girardeau, Missouri. I don't know whatever happened to Lucy Gray. I got over the crush and had several others through my elementary years, and then eventually fell in love with Debbie Detweiler and married her.

How many of you can remember your first puppy love, first crush? Oh, quite a few of you can. We've all had one. Two, three, or whatever. We only have one first one. And I happen to remember this one, and I probably have to admit that it was from afar. Nothing was ever—no words were ever exchanged. Maybe I gave her a Valentine at the time. I don't even remember, but you know how first graders can be. The first love that we have can be something that can be memorable, and certainly the first true love should be extremely memorable and God willing, one that can last an entire life.

The concept of first love is a scriptural teaching. We find it in the book of Revelation, chapter 2. And this morning I'd like to talk about not the first puppy love, the first crush we may have had in our lives with a man or a woman, but the first love that God talks about here in Revelation, chapter 2, and the first message to the church at Ephesus, first of the seven churches, that have a unique message to each one delivered by Jesus Christ here in Revelation, chapters 2 and 3.

In Revelation 2, there is a message to a church, the first church, in the city of Ephesus. And we'll talk about the church in Ephesus in a minute, but let's just read what the message says here in an overview. Again, if you have a red letter Bible, you'll see that this section is in red, which means these are Christ's messages, words to the church.

It says in verse 1, "...to the angel of the church of Ephesus write, these things says he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks ... lampstands, I'm sorry. I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil, and you have tested those who say they are apostles and they're 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. Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love." The first thing that he mentions to them, that is their problem, and it seems to be therefore their primary problem that he has, and this is the pattern he follows with each of the seven churches, gives their strengths, and then shows a problem that they have, and in this one, you've left your first love.

Verse 5, he says, "... 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." So a very strong admonition in verse 5 to repent.

Repentance is not just to the world, but repentance is also incumbent upon the church. And that is very clear in each of these messages. He goes on, he says, "... but this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate." This was a group of people mentioned only by name in Ephesus.

They're later brought up again in the other messages to the churches, but it's a faction of people with a particular idea and proclivity to causing people in the church to stumble and disobey God. We're not going to really be talking about them today, but this is a historical group of people that had a philosophy that said, basically, thou shalt not surely die.

Go ahead and sin. And it's okay. Anyway, he said, you hate them and you hate their deeds, which I also hate. Verse 70 concludes, "... he who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." Each church had a unique ending in terms of what Christ promises to the church and to the church at Ephesus.

They are the ones, he says, I will, whoever overcomes, they will eat from the tree of life. And all the recurrent blessings that will come from that. So this is very short, succinct message to the church at Ephesus. And he tells him, first of all, in verse 4, you've left your first love. This first zeal, this first strong, passionate feeling, what is it that he's talking about to the church in Ephesus? What is it like to leave one's first love? What is a first love? How do you define it?

What really should it be? This is not a new concept for us to talk about, especially if you've been around the church for any length of time. The idea of the first love is something that probably we talked about it more in years, 20 or 30 years earlier, as opposed to more recent times. But it is still a very timely message because it is describing a zeal, a passion for and a love that one has.

And then it wanes. It grows cold. It leaves. And Christ says, you better get back to that. You better do your first works. It's another way of saying you better remember how you started or where you came from and get back to certain first principles, certain first things. What is it that he's talking about here when it comes to the church at Ephesus and its implication for you and I today? Because each of these messages to these seven churches apply to the church today. They are living messages and admonitions for us.

Not only were these seven churches that existed during the time of the first century in Asia Minor, I think as we all understand this, not only do these messages build through the period of church history and have a culminating effect to where you come down to Laodicea at the close of the age and a cumulative impact for down through time as well, but the messages to each of these churches is something that each Christian at any age could learn from.

Because rest assured that from the time of the – at least from the period of time in the Middle Ages, from the Reformation forward, where people and people of God had access to the Bible – a Bible in their language and they began to read it, whether it was the late 1500s into the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, where the people of God read these messages, they could glean information and spiritual teaching from each of these seven messages.

And for us today, at the end of the age, the cumulative impact of these messages is very, very strong.

So we can learn something from what is said here to the church at Ephesus and how things played out there. Now, what would Christ be saying and what would it mean to a member of the church in Ephesus in the first century reading this scripture? Having this letter read to them, how would they relate to that? And what can we learn from it? I think there's a great deal because the Ephesian church is unique to us in that we have the history in two chapters in the book of Acts of how the church began in Ephesus. So we have some detailed account of incidents and people from the church in Ephesus during that period of time. Secondly, we also have a whole epistle, the Ephesian epistle, that Paul wrote that letter to the Ephesian church that also gives us some instruction about the people there.

Even though Ephesians is in a sense universal that it would apply to all churches, it is still addressed to that church and there is instruction for us to learn in terms of what they were like that we can glean from those other verses. So we have a little bit more than just what is given to us here in Ephesia or in Revelation 2 about the church. Let's turn back first to Ephesians chapter 1, the epistle of the Ephesians, and look at something that Paul says here that can help us to begin to define this first love. Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 15. Paul makes a personal observation about the church here in Ephesians 1.15. He says to them, Therefore, I also, 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. Verse 16. All right. This is a little personal illusion, reference to the church in this letter, and keep it mindful. Ephesians started out in the mind of Paul as a letter to this congregation to instruct him on various things, and he gets into some pretty deep things in the book. But he does tell them, he says, I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for the saints. Right here we have a beginning point to understand, in a sense, what this first love or this love that the Ephesians had, that they had a very special connection with the Lord Jesus that they left. They had a love for Christ, and they had a love for the saints. Two points.

So if you're going to look for a biblical definition of what the love that Jesus is talking about to them in Revelation 2.4, it's right here. They loved God. They had a zeal for God. They loved His law. They loved His truth. They loved the relationship that they had. They loved the salvation that they had through Christ, forgiveness of their sins. They loved the message of the Gospel. They had a love for God. This is very plain as to what He is saying. And He says, secondly, you have a love for all the saints, for all the other members. The saints are the members of the church scattered throughout Asia Minor, and not only in Ephesus, but other surrounding churches, many of which were these, among them, were the seven churches that they would have had an interaction with and would have known many things about each other. They would have had this love. He says, you have this affection. You like being with God's people. You love them. We call it fellowship. You can call it brotherly love. The agape love that bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. They had that love for the people of God. They liked to be with them. They prayed for them. They would prefer their company above others, given a choice at various times.

So it's not difficult to understand then what it is that, in a sense, framed the love that they had, a love for God and a love for one another. Those are really two foundational pillars upon which love resides, as we'll talk a little bit more about later. So that's where we begin. Now, let's leave the epistle of Ephesians. We'll come back to it. Let's go back to the book of Acts, and let's look at what we can learn from the story of the church in Ephesus as Paul and his travels came to the city. It begins in verse 19 of the book of Acts. In verse 1.

Let me just say, by way of a general overview, Ephesus was a major, very important city in Asia Minor, what is now modern Turkey, during the first century. It was a major port of entry for the entire Asian continent from the Aegean Sea. It was a major city within the Roman Empire. It, as you will see in the story here, it was a center of learning. It was a center of pagan culture. They had, in the city, they had a monumental temple that was built and dedicated to one goddess of the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods at the time, and that was the goddess Diana, as we'll see in the story here. The temple of the goddess Diana in Ephesus was listed and is listed among the seven wonders of the ancient world, in terms of size, money, and beauty that went into it. So it was a massive structure that dominated the city, and it had a major impact upon the culture of the city. And as you'll see in the story here, what developed for them. But this is the importance of the city, and Paul came there in verse 1, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul, having passed through the upper regions, came to Ephesus. And finding some disciples, he said to them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? So they said to him, We have not as much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit. And he said to them, And to what were you baptized? And they said unto John's baptism. Paul said, Well, John indeed baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying to the people they should believe on him who would come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. So he found a small pocket of people who had come in contact with some of the disciples of John, and they had been baptized, but they had not had hands laid upon them, and they had not received the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so, verse 5, we're told that they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied, and there were about twelve in all. So this manifestation, again, much like what happened in Acts chapter 2, comes upon this group of people here. They spoke with an inspired language, or speaking and hearing among themselves, with a nucleus of twelve people. The number is interesting in that twelve is a number of organized beginnings, twelve apostles, twelve tribes of Israel. Twelve here, disciples formed the beginning of this church, and in a sense marks for at least the story in Acts and for the people. It seems that Luke is showing what happened here, and this didn't happen with every group of people that were baptized, but it did happen with this group here in the same way that it happened at the beginning on Pentecost in 31 A.D. to signify the importance of what they were doing and what they were being brought into. And so this is the beginning of the church. It begins with twelve people who had been baptized with the baptism of John. And he went into the synagogue, the Jewish synagogue, and he spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God, which was the main bulk of his message. 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 with reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus.

This continued for two years so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. So he had some success within the synagogue. And again, the custom of the synagogue was to allow others to stand up, read, and comment and teach in some way.

That was the custom of the first century Jewish experience. Paul, having been schooled in the school of Gamaliel, was able to do that to a degree. And then he started stepping on toads. You know, today we still, we get bulk requests for our literature on the Holy Days and on the Sabbath from Protestant teachers, ministers who want to use our literature to teach people about the Sabbath in their Sunday school classes.

And we honor those requests. We get those every week at the home office. We were careful not to send out multiple dozens or hundreds of booklets because that's not always wise, but we, they always evaluate every request.

And if it's something like, you know, 10, 12, or a dozen or 15 or 20 pieces, they'll send those out. And you wonder what kind of reception those receive when people begin to hear, because they may be eager people in a Sunday school Bible class somewhere and they're wanting to learn various things. But you know at some point when you start talking about the Sabbath in the Holy Days, you're going to step on somebody's toes and things will be brought to a halt.

Well, that's kind of what happened with Paul. He taught for a period of time in the synagogue as he was able and the custom allowed it. But then when he began to show that this Jesus, and it really began to sink on them, that this Jesus who was crucified as a common criminal was the Son of God fulfilling the Old Testament Scriptures. Maybe the light came on in some minds and they say, hey, wait a minute, we're not going to have any more of this. This is going to upset our little synagogue, our little synagogue on the corner, and our comfortable little situation, out the door you go.

And so he gathers those that were with him and those God was calling and they set up shop in another school of Uranus, probably an academy, a place where they could teach.

And for there, for over two years, he continues to teach there and throughout the area of Asia. Now, he goes on and Luke gives the account of some of the things that happened here and we should note this. In verse 11 it says, God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul. And keep in mind this is being done here at Ephesus. There's an interesting thing that we need to draw some conclusions from. So that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.

And from this we have always taken the tradition or the teaching that we can anoint a cloth when someone is sick and send that and God has honored that and when a minister cannot be physically present to pray for someone who is sick, we take it from this example here that Paul did and people were healed and evil spirits went out of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits saying, we exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.

So this knowledge of what Paul was doing began to spread and people, some took it upon themselves to do this. And then Luke records that this was not to be done by everybody. They didn't have the authority to do it because verse 14 tells the story of seven sons of Siva, a Jewish priest, a chief priest who did so. They tried to exorcise a demon. The spirit answered and said, Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you?

And then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them and prevailed against them so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded. This was quite a wrestling match that took place. Quite a humorous story in one sense when you try to picture these guys getting roughed up by a demon. Lots of lessons to learn from this. Number one, don't take it upon yourself to cast out demons. Number two, the spirit world is a very real world. Number three, they can inflict bodily harm on people as they overpower and overcome.

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

What Luke brings out here, beginning with this story, is very instructive for us in terms of the love for the gospel, the love for the kingdom of God. At Ephesus there was a major clash between the two kingdoms that took place. That's what is being revealed to us. This became known, verse 17, both to the Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus, and fear fell on them all and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified.

They heard about the roughing up of these seven Jewish men who tried to take it on themselves to be exorcists. And that magnified the work. This was kind of, you know, it kind of got tweeted and spread virally among the people. I was listening to President Obama this week telling people to tweet their congressmen, tweet their senators about the debt problem, and I had to stop and think, I wonder if Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, or Winston Churchill would have urged citizens to tweet.

I can't picture those leaders saying, be sure and tweet, tweet, tweet, anyway, social media. Word of the spread. And it did go viral, and it did magnify the work that was being done of the gospel of Jesus Christ in this particular case. Many who believed came confessing and telling their deeds. 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 and it totaled 50,000 pieces of silver.

So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed. Now, again, this gets into sorcery, gets into magic. This emphasis, if you want to look at it, was kind of the seat of Harry Potter in this day. They were mad about Harry Potter in Ephesus. They brought their incantations, their spells. The idea of the magic was that the power behind the magicians was the secrecy, the mystery of what they had.

They never told their secret. They had an incantation, they had a string of words put together in the right way, and it did evoke a spirit, it did evoke a response. The power was in the secrecy of it. Once they came and revealed it, brought their books and burned them, it ended. And they were recanting from it as well, at least at this time. But this caused God's word to grow mightily and prevail.

Again, we have a clash in Ephesus between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. And that is very important to understanding the power of the gospel of the kingdom of God and what took place with Jesus' first coming as God's kingdom intruded into this world in the person of Jesus Christ, the son of God, and the works that he did and then began to do through his church.

And we see it focused in on Paul here at this particular time. The work of the kingdom of God began with Jesus coming, as Mark 1.14 says, the kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe the gospel. And you have this clash. And it comes, we're really being told something very profound here in this story of Ephesus, and it relates to our first love. It relates to the first love of the Ephesians that they lost. Well, the story goes on through chapter 19, and there was a riot that took place.

And these things were accomplished. Paul purposed in the spirit when he passed through Macedonia and Achaia to go to Jerusalem, saying, I must also see Rome. And he sent into Macedonia two of those who ministered to him, Timothy and Erastus. So he was making preparations to leave. But before that, in verse 23, there arose a great commotion about the Way, about the Church and the teaching that was called the Way here at this particular point, before they were all called Christians. And it revolved around a man named Demetrius, who was a silversmith who made silver shrines of Diana, and he made a lot of money from it.

And as people began, in other words, people were turning away from the cult, not only of sorcery, but also the pagan cult of Diana. That was very prominent here. And people were beginning to lose money. They were having to go on the unemployment rolls. They were having a recession, and they didn't like it. And so they began to blame Paul for it. He called together the people of the Silversmith Guild, and he said, men, you know that we make our money out of this.

And you see in here that not only here in Ephesus, but throughout all Asia, this man named Paul turns people away from the gods, saying that they are not gods, which are made with hands. And he's putting us out of business. This is purely a monetary thing. Nothing spiritual about his reaction. So not only is this trait of ours in danger of falling into disrepute, but also the temple of the great goddess Diana may be despised and her magnificence destroyed, whom all of the Asia and the world worship.

And when they heard this, they were full of wrath. And they cried out, saying, great is Diana of the Ephesians. The whole city was filled with confusion, rushed into the theater with one accord, having seized various companions of Paul. And Paul wanted to go in to the people, but they wouldn't let him. There was a huge theater, and this is where they were taken, where the people gathered. There was a communal gathering place, and you can see the remains of that still in Ephesus today. But the Greek or Roman theaters of that day all had a similar pattern. They were usually built into a hillside, stone steps and seats, and at the bottom, the large stage area. So you really had a good seat from any place that you were in one of these theaters. And they were quite large, and the noise would have been tremendous. We've been in the one in Amman, Jordan. It's a very nice, nicely preserved Roman theater in Amman. And you can stand on the stage, and a person way at the top seat, what we would call the nosebleed seats today, they can hear you perfectly without any electronic amplification. So the sound of these people all gathered into this theater and shouting great is Diana, the Ephesians would have been a deafening roar that everybody would have been drawn to. And that you see that here as verse 32 goes on, some therefore cried one thing, some another, kind of a mass hysteria, for the assembly was confused. Most of them did not know why they had come together. They just saw people streaming through the streets going into the theater.

Oh, that's what's going on. And they heard it, you know, blocks away. So everybody came out, it was, you know, entertainment for the time. They were drawn to it. And they wouldn't let Paul go in.

They drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting him forward, and Alexander motioned with his hand and he wanted to make his defense to the people. And when they found out that he was a Jew, all of them with one voice went on for another two hours, great is Diana, the Ephesians. You see, the fervor and the frenzy with which people were whipped up at this particular time.

One of the city clerk quieted the crowd and said, Men of Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of Ephesians, city of the Ephesians, is temple guardian of the great goddess Diana and the image which fell down from Zeus? Therefore, since these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rashly. For you have brought these men here who are neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers of your goddess. He actually began to quiet the crowd. Therefore, if Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a case against anyone, the courts are open and there are pro-councils. Let them bring their charge against one another. But if you have any other inquiry to make, it shall be determined in the lawful assembly. And we are in danger of being called into question for today's uproar. There being no reason which we may go to give this account for this disorderly gathering. And when he said these things, he dismissed the assembly. So he brought everybody to reason. But again, you see this tremendous clash here of this kingdom of God as opposed to the kingdom of Satan. And this was the atmosphere in which the church here at Ephesus, in a sense, developed in some of their earliest scenes. These were formative events for this church. That's the point. These stories were long told of what happened of seven Jews who had a demon jump on them and beat them up because they misappropriated a power and authority that was not theirs. Of numbers of people hearing about it, rescinding their belief in Diana or their belief in magic and sorcery, coming to the church, not only in Ephesus but in the surrounding region there that was serviced by Ephesus in the area. And a great work being done. Paul staying there for over two years to do it. It was an evangelizing effort of the gospel that was centered here in Ephesus. And these events formed the early years, the first two to three years of the church's experience. This would have been then in the late forties or the early fifties. The timing, I don't have exactly in my mind at this point in time. But if you contrast it with the timing of the message to the church in Revelation chapter 2, you've got a period of 30 to 40 years that elapses from the time the church began to when Christ says through John, repent, return to your first love. 30 to 40 years is a long time. Think back 40 years right now. 1971. Where were you? How old were you? Some of you weren't even born. I don't like to think about that.

How many of you here this morning were in the church in 1971? How many of us? Okay. A couple of handfuls were in the church in that period of time. Think back what's happened in your life and in the church life in 40 years. A lot of things happen. Okay, let's take it back into the period of Ephesus. These were the formative stories and events of the church. They were told and retold in their potlucks, yearly the Feast of Tabernacles, might be much observed, gatherings. Well, you remember what happened to that man Demetrius. You remember when Paul wanted to go in, we said, no, go in. And those guys that got beat up by that demon, wasn't that funny when they ran out without any clothes on. These were the stories that they told and by retelling them, they remembered the work of God. They remembered their faith. They remembered how they came into the church. And their love for Jesus Christ, as Paul said to them in Ephesians 1.15, was anchored and solid and grew. And the church grew from that point. They had a deep affection with Paul. In chapter 20, Paul leaves and then he circles around and is coming back toward Jerusalem.

And he gathers the leaders of Ephesus in verse 17 of Acts 20. He's at a place called Miletus. He didn't have time to go into Ephesus. And so he sent for the elders from Ephesus to come and meet with him. Verse 18, he says, you know from the first day that I came to Asia and what manner I lived among you. He begins to tell the story. This was some period later. He begins to tell the story. You remember what it was like. You remember what I did. He called these elders. He had an affection for them. And he basically, through this, he's telling them goodbye. Down in verse 25, he said, indeed, now I know that you all among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God will see my face no more. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. So he reminds them that I taught you the kingdom of God. I preached everything from the scriptures that we knew and had. And he reminds them of that. So he had a deep affection for them. And that's reflected in the letter then that he wrote that is called the Ephesians Epistle. Again, we see the clash of the two kingdoms, Satan's and God's. If you look at the Ephesian Epistle, you see some of the strongest teaching about the kingdom of God and what has come upon the world through Christ and his teaching and through the church. You also see some very strong admonition that the reality of the cosmic battle that is. If you go back to Ephesians chapter 6. Remember, this is where we have the description of the armor of God. But in Ephesians 6 and verse 12, Paul makes this very strong statement. And you'll see that it flows from much of what he's already said here in this letter to remind us that there are two kingdoms. There are two worlds.

In the spirit realm, there is this clash. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. And so here he's showing the struggle, the spiritual struggle, against powers, the rulers of the darkness of this age.

And so you see the setting for the church here. Now, bring this back to the message in Revelation chapter 2.

Where Christ says to the church, I have this against you that you've left your first love.

Repent. Do the first works. Come back. Get back to recover what has been lost. What is his first love? Well, we've already defined it in one sense right from the letter to the Ephesians in Ephesians 1.15. It's a love for God and a love for the saints, is what Paul said. That really parallels what Christ said in Matthew 22, verse 36, when he was asked, what is the great commandment? And he summed up the commandments in two principles. Do you remember the principles that he summed it up by in Matthew chapter 22, verses 36 through 40? He said, Love God with all of your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.

On this, hang all the law. He sums up the law on those two great principles. Love God, love man.

Now, there's details under both of those. The first four commandments tell us how to love God.

The last six commandments teach us how to love man, our fellow, our neighbor as ourself.

That is where you begin to talk about, if you will, first love or a deep and abiding love that Christ is talking about here. Love God. Our first love must be toward God, and then a proper love for each other. Without those two fundamentals, our love will not endure.

Can we grow? Can our love for God grow cold? Can our love for our fellow saint, Christian, can it grow cold? Yes, it can. Scripture tells us that it can.

Because iniquity will abound, the love of many will grow cold, Jesus said in Matthew 24.

Because of sin, transgression, the love of many will grow cold. It goes on later in Matthew 24. He talks about a time when people will start to beat their fellow servants.

Beat their fellow servants. So, yeah, it can grow cold among people who have shared the same belief.

Can it grow cold toward God? Yes, it can.

When we lose a zeal for obeying God, talking to God, believing God because of time, for those of you that have been around for 40 years, think back 40 years.

With the zeal that you may have first had as you learned the truth and studied the scriptures, has that been maintained over the years? Four decades? Three decades? One decade?

Has that been maintained? Have there been moments when our love for God may have grown cold?

You know, if you look at this message to the Ephesians, look at what he commends them on in verse three or two. He says, I know your works. You can't bear those that are evil. You've tested those who say they are apostles and are not and have found the flyers. The church in Ephesus, as the church at any time, especially the church today, has found, you know, that the church today has found, you know, will find some people who make claims to leadership, being an apostle, being a great spiritual leader, by their fruits to be basically hollow and liars. And we have had to make decisions over four decades, I can say, about that in any number of different situations. People who, who let, my, Debbie and I were talking about this last night as we were, I was talking, telling her what I was talking about. And she remembers when she was a teenager, there was an elder in the church who left. This was one of the first elders to ever leave the church. Came up with some heretical ideas and he tried to draw the following away, tried to draw her parents away. She was very good friends with this guy's teenage sons in the church. They were all friends. He left. They left.

Debbie didn't go start a Facebook site.

She didn't start a social media campaign to, you know, stand up for this father of one of her friends. It was a different time.

It went on in the church.

Because there was the church. Because there was a love for God there, at least in her family, that translated into her life as a, as a teenage girl at that point in time.

She tested, her parents tested this one minister and found him to be a liar and what he was teaching. Didn't follow him.

Didn't go out with him. Stayed, stayed faithful. So the Ephesians did that.

It goes and says, you have persevered in verse three and have patience. You've labored for my name's sake and have not become weary. You know, the very things that Christ commends the church for. Working hard. Being patient. Resisting sin. Resisting false teachers.

Or people who try to get a following for themselves. By whatever method and means.

And the, they're always clever means. And they're always cloaked in righteousness.

I've never seen a false teacher cloak themselves in a garb that says, I am a false teacher. Follow me. Out the door. Now they're always cloaked in righteousness. As Paul said to the Ephesian elders, they're wolves in sheep's clothing. They put on nice, soft, fluffy fleece.

When you go into the auto stores to buy a covering for your car, do you find them selling wolf fleece? No, they sell sheep fleece. Sheep's skins to put on a car seat to sit on. Soft. Warm. Fuzzy. But you've got to lift the hood sometimes.

Those various qualities, year after year, can cause a person to wear down and lose a love for God. And that's what happened to the Ephesians. He said, get back to your first love.

The first love has to revolve around three things. A love for God. Christ said in Matthew 6, 33, seek you first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. That's what the Ephesians had. They had a love for God and His kingdom.

They recognized that the message of the kingdom of God was far superior to the message of Satan's kingdom that they were steeped in in the city of Ephesus. And they left it. They ditched their idols and most of them probably couldn't afford a silver idol. They probably had a clay idol or a porcelain idol, inferior. And they ditched them. They left them and they embraced the kingdom of God that didn't and a God who didn't live in a temple made with hands was not worshiped in that way by sight. A love for God also involves a love for God's law and His commandments.

In 1 John chapter 2, 1 John chapter 2 and verse 3, 1 John chapter 3, 1 John chapter 3, Now this, 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 is a liar and the 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. They go hand in hand. So we have to love Thy law. We have to love the way of God.

Thirdly, this love for God is embodied in a love for the work of God.

Remember that the Ephesians supported and were involved in a work that reached out to the entire region of Asia Minor that were told back in Acts 20 that drew people to the faith beyond their confines and to the church. They had that evangelizing zeal. And any time you have that, there will always be the danger of letting down over a period of an extended period of time, because you grow tired of doing it and just we're all human. And the Ephesians grew tired of that. Not that they would have admitted it, but perhaps some of the programs lapsed.

Perhaps some of their prayers began to drift off into other areas and their interests as they grew older and as a generation died off. Keep in mind 30 to 40 years as a generation, for people to grow old and die and a new one to come on who don't always remember.

They weren't there in the theater that day.

And they didn't see the marks on these Jews from the spirit that jumped on them.

And they forgot. And other things in life, children, grandchildren, jobs, aches and pains took over. It caused those things to just be crowded out. It is inevitable with any organization, especially within the church where there is evangelizing to take place.

The antidote to lethargy is to look outward and to have passion for sharing the gospel. You cannot have a love of God that just turns inward. A great mistake anyone makes at any time in this journey is to remove themselves into a cloistered relationship, almost monkess relationship with God, to just love God apart from a work and apart from each other. The reason why you are here to withdraw from fellowship is to let your love begin to grow cold.

You cannot just profess love for God and study of God in His Word and read the Bible in a cloistered environment. That's to go toward the abbeys and the friars and the monks of the medieval church where people left society and left for took a vow of whatever to go into a cloister, into an abbey, to read the Word, to write the Word, to pray for people, whatever the bent of that particular grouping was. But it was to remove themselves from any active involvement with the world and even their own church world to worship God. By itself, it's empty.

Paul tells us that this love that the Ephesians had, that is the love that I think that Jesus was referring to, was not only a love for God but also a love for the fellow saints. You cannot withdraw yourself from the fellowship of converted minds an active engagement with your neighbor and your closest neighbor spiritually within the church and maintain that first love.

You have to have that love for God along with a love of your neighbor.

How do you develop that love for your neighbor? For your church neighbor?

Well, I could quote John 1334, but you know John 1334. I could quote any number of other scriptures we could talk for another hour on getting along, bearing with one another and all of that.

I'm not going to do that this morning. I'm just going to say we should love our neighbor.

I've got a neighbor right next door to me. We've been neighbors for 21 years.

We've not always neighbor. But in recent years, we've neighbor.

We've been neighbor-centered.

We start talking to one another, helping one another, being a neighbor.

We've got a fence between us, but like Robert Frost said, good fences make good neighbors.

It keeps their dogs over there and kept my cat. Well, it did keep my cat out. Cats jump fences, but they tolerated my cat.

We haven't always been cordial neighbors. We are now.

You live long enough. You engage often enough.

You learn to like people. You learn to work through the idiosyncrasies. You can cycle in and out of disagreements. You can become a neighbor. It takes patience, talk, growth.

But you have to do it. I have to do it. We all do.

Paul said to the Ephesians, you've loved Jesus, the Lord Jesus, and you have had your love for the fellow saints. I think that those are the foundation of the first love that they had to get back to. Christ said something else to them in Ephesus in chapter 2. He said, if you don't do this, I'm going to remove your lampstand from its place. Now, what did that mean? Well, Christ is in the midst of the lampstands. The lampstand is one of the churches. He's in the midst of his church.

To them, listening to this, it offered a very stark reality that I don't think they understood fully then. But we can look back and perhaps understand.

The city of Ephesus itself physically changed through the centuries. The city to which Paul went was not the city that is there today. In fact, within a few hundred years, it changed. The harbor that was created by the river that flows down from the mountains into the Aegean, if that made it a harbor in a port city, filled in. And the wharfs and the docks where Paul would have docked in Ephesus eventually filled in with dirt and silt to where that theater was. And the water changed over a period of time.

The city changed because of the geography. And someone, an Ephesian going back to that location today would not recognize. Of course, it's an ancient city then, but even within a few hundred years, they would not have recognized it. The actual physical geography of Ephesus changed. The city, in essence, was removed. It moved out toward the sea as the land filled in.

And that impacted the culture and the economy of Ephesus and led to its demise.

The city was literally removed physically.

Change happens. Change was unique to Ephesus of all of the seven churches. Everything about it changed. Time has a way of doing that, to change those matters upon which our faith was grounded and founded. The message to us here to recapture that first love is very, very strong.

As you and I apply it to our lives, some of us, we can't go back 40 years.

Too much water has gone under the bridge.

For some, you may think, well, I didn't have that. I kind of grew up in the church, and I just kind of morphed into the church. That's true, too.

But the love that he's talking about here is for every one of us to go back to, to recapture, to hold, and to maintain. And it is anchored in a love for God, a deep, mature love for God, and a deep, abiding, mature love for one another, with all the warts and the wrinkles, with all the challenges that come even with holding to the relationship with God. Time can change that if we allow it. But I think the first love that is important for you and I to measure is measured by our love for Jesus Christ, God the Father.

And that relationship that baptism puts us into, a spiritual relationship that is nurtured day in and day out by contact with Him through the reading of the word, by prayer. And that translates into our relationships with one another, to where we are willing to go the extra mile. We are willing to be patient, and we are willing to love the saints. With those two in place, the love of God within us can endure a great deal of change and attrition. For Christ would not have to say to us, get back to your first love. But if we ever find ourselves needing that, it is important to go back to some of those first principles and first values, first impressions that we had.

It's not a puppy love like I had with Lucy Gray.

It's a deep love like we have with marriage, with those that we commit ourselves to for a whole lifetime. That love that I have with my wife, that you have with your mate, is far different from any passing love that we might have had as a young person, the first experience of it.

Spiritually with God, it is always anchored in a love for Him and a love for each other as ourselves.

So, if we can maintain that first love, then we can be strong in faith and confidence that God is not going to remove us from that place in His relationship with Him.