"Don't neglect the most important thing!"

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Our reading today is from Revelation chapter 2 verses 1 to 7. To the angel of the church in ephesus. Right? These are the words of him who holds the 7 stars in his right hand and walks among the 7 golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work, and your perseverance.

I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people. That you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary. Yes. I hold this against you.

You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen. Repense and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove from your lampstand, remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favor.

You hate the practices of the nicolations, which I also hate. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the spirit says to the churches. To the 1 who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life. Which is in the paradise of god. Thank you, Kanita, for reading that for us.

Please keep the passage open, page 1 2 3 4, Revelation chapter 2, and that's what we're gonna be looking at. And thank you, Ben, for leading the service and praying for us, and so we'll get straight into the sermon. As we've said, it is great to celebrate together, 1 year of Hope Church, and it has been such an encouraging year I hope you've been encouraged. As you saw the video, thank you, Kanita, for making the video, and, as we went through various things to say, actually, yeah, do you remember how that happened and what that was like? And it was a real encouragement just to think back.

It's also a time to take stock as well and see, well, are we doing all the things that we should be doing? And wouldn't it be great if rather than just us trying to work that out? If Jesus were to send us a report, put it through the door, or, give us something to say, this is what you're doing well, and this is where you need to improve. I don't know how you'd feel about that elders, whether we'd be a bit scared to get that, or whether we'd feel confident. But it would be good to have, wouldn't it?

To know, Jesus, what do you think of what we're doing here? Well, I don't have that. But what we do have is these letters to the 7 church and it's good to keep coming back to these letters periodically to see because these are Jesus' words to these 7 churches. And in them, he says, this is what you're doing well. This is what I commend you for.

This is what you're not doing so well. And this is a warning for you, and this is a promise for you. And we can learn from these and look at what we're doing in the light of what these passages say. And so we're gonna look at this first letter, the letter to the church in Ephasis. And we're coming to this 1 because partly because we had an elder's morning a few, weekends ago.

And on that morning, 1 of the elders brought us to these letters. And said, actually, there are things here we need to make sure that we're doing. And 1 of them was this church in ephesus, and it really struck us. And it struck us it strikes me because Jesus is warning this church in ephesus that he might shut them down if they don't change. He warns them to say, if you don't repent, If you don't change what you're doing, I'm gonna shut you down.

Now that's a bit of a somber warning, isn't it on a first year celebration, but therefore we need to hear this. What would it take for Jesus to shut a church down, to say it would be better not to have you. After all, that's what's going on. Just have a look. Verse, verse 5, where Jesus says, halfway through the verse.

If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. Now the lampstands represent the churches, and we know from chapter 1, that that that's what it represented. At the beginning of the letter, Jesus says he walks amongst the lampstands. So for this lampstand, this lampstand to be removed from its places, to be removed from Jesus' presence, and would therefore be the end of this church. And Jesus is saying if you don't change, that's what's gonna happen.

So we need to ask What would it take for Jesus to say of a church? You know what? It would be better. It'd be better if you didn't meet. It'd be better if we stopped this.

What would it take for Jesus to say of Hope church? You've had a year and maybe a year's enough. Well, before we come to that, we first need to think to see what he commends them for. So we'll come back to that. But what does he commend them for?

What does he say you're doing well for? Cause he loves to praise his churches, and he begins with praise. It isn't all bad. And actually, as we see this church, we'll see it's a very impressive church. This is a very impressive church.

The first point is there we go. They are tough, and they're sharp. What we see is they are they're like a combination of a rugby player. And a mastermind. They're like a a combination of of Joe Marlowe, the rugby player, and Sherlock Holmes.

And then as any good preacher in their study, you then think wonder what image AI could come up with? There you go. Joe Marlowe dressed as Sherlock Holmes. Quite proud of that 1. You see, they've got brains, and they've got brawn.

They've got the brawn of the Joe Marlow, they personally, they keep going, and they've got brains. They're sharp. How do we see this? Let's see this in the verse. I think you might be a distraction to you, so I'm gonna go back to that.

How do we see this in the verse? Go to verse 2. Have a look. Jesus says, he walks amongst the lampstands, and he says, I know your deeds. Love interesting.

Jesus is saying, I know what you're doing. I'm amongst stew. I'm in amongst you. I can see what you're doing. I notice it.

For some reason, my mind at that point went to, you know, the KFC Christmas ads, the recent 1 I quite like it, It starts with messages which come out messages people sent to KFC saying, can you do turkey for for Christmas? And all these messages, and they say, we heard you, and we ignored you. We're gonna keep doing chicken. Well, Jesus I don't know why my mind went there, maybe I was hungry at the time, but Jesus is saying, I see you. I see what you're doing.

I see your deeds, and I'm not ignoring you. Says verse 2. I know your deeds, your hard work. You're working hard as a church. I can see it.

They are a church which are not they're not they're not, afraid of hard work of getting up early of coming and setting out chairs early in the morning for a service. They're not afraid to to meet together and to do the hard work of Children's Ministry of digging into the passages or of doing the women's Bible study digging into the passage, working what it's about, how to how to teach it, how to ask the questions. They're prepared to do the the the hard work of setting up events for churches, giving lifts, making meals, doing all sorts of things. And Jesus says, I can see it. I can see what you're doing.

You're hardworking and it's brilliant. Well done. And that's great because ministry is often unseen, isn't it? There's a lot about ministry which you don't see. It's not noticed.

And there are many here who do a lot of very hard work for ministry, and that is good. Now we need to be careful not to make busyness and excuse for wrong priorities just because you're busy. Doesn't necessarily mean you're doing the best things. And we also need to be aware that at different stages of life, different stages of family life, there's different amounts you can do over this last year. We as a church, very thankful.

I think we've had 5 babies as a church. It's pretty I think it's 5. Someone can correct me afterwards. You can tell I've lost count. And that means that moms and dads are gonna have to spend more time with each other and with their kids, so you can't necessarily do all the ministry that maybe you would love to do.

But maybe there are others who would go, well, actually, you've been coming to, like, church, and you could step up. You could do a bit more. You're just attending. Don't be an attender. They weren't just attenders where they they they were working hard.

And Jesus says, well done. And they were persevering. Verse 2, I know your deeds, your hard work, your perseverance. And then verse 3, you've persevered and endured hardship for my name, you've not grown weary. They've suffered suffered for the name of Jesus.

This is a theme that runs through these letters at the beginning of Revelation, that there was persecution, for Christians and that that would go on. In fact, it would get worse. Part of the reasons for writing this letter of Revelation was to prepare the church because it was gonna get harder. And Jesus says, I I can see your perseverance. You've kept going well done.

And that's true for many Christians around the world. I open doors, an organization that supports persecuted Christians tells us 1 in 7 Christians, a persecuted worldwide. And I've been to several talks recently. We're about the persecuted church. You're just hearing more and more about the persecutions in Nigeria where they wouldn't be able to meet like this without having to have armed guards around them.

You'd be frightened as you go home of what might happen to you and your family as you head home. To live with that fear must be incredible. And to hear of Christians in the Middle East and in Egypt and elsewhere, where it is a daily reality that they could be persecuted could suffer for their faith. Maybe you know people who have. And we need to learn from this to say it is quite normal for a church to face opposition wonderfully.

So far, Hope jed, we have not faced this. We've been we've seen the lord open doors in incredible ways, the fact that we can meet here. The fact that when we approached the community, said that the, anya and her team setting up the toddler group, that they approached the community center. And the community center didn't just say, well, okay. You can you can have the space.

That they said, oh, you can have storage space. Have this space. Have that space. They were wanting a toddler group set up. And that is wonderful that people are going, yeah, come on in.

Come on, jump set things up. So far, there have been open arms. It's been welcoming, and it's been wonderful. But it may not stay that way. It's quite normal through church history and around the world that it becomes hard for Christians.

Well, we need a bit of Joe Marla in us. But when you're bashed, you get up and you keep going. They were tough. But they were sharp too, Tough and sharp. Here's the Sherlock Holmes bit.

They spotted false teaching. First 2 again. So it says, I know your deeds, your hard work, your perseverance. I know you cannot tolerate wicked people. That you've tested those who claimed to be apostles, but are not, and have found them false.

So they can't tolerate wicked people, which doesn't mean that they couldn't tolerate sinners. After all, we're all sinners. So they welcome sinners, but they said it's wicked people, and it seems like These people that, then describe, are a kind of example of this. These people who claim to be apostles. They're sort of self designated apostles, call themselves apostles, and an apostle is a sent 1, 1 who's been sent, they're kind of saying, we're, yeah, we're claiming to be sent by Jesus.

And yet this church are not just gonna take them at their word. They're gonna test them. Say, are you? What are you teaching? Where are you coming from?

Maybe they sent word to find out? Had they really been sent or not? They weren't gullible. They weren't gonna be taken in. We tried them out and found them to be false.

And verse 6, you could see another, another example says, but you have this in your favor. You hate the practices of the nicolaitans, which I also hate. Now we don't really know what the nicolaitans were doing or what they were teaching. They may well have been encouraging the Christians to engage in idle worship. There was a lot of idolatry in ephesus, and they might as well have been saying, well, you know, join in with that.

I mean, that's the way that you get trade done. It was so bound up in the way of life for them that they were saying, well, maybe it's okay to engage in some of this as well as being a Christian, but engaged in some of this, and maybe there was sexual immorality that somehow went in with that as well, some think, but it was certainly of taking them away from what was true and good, and, and they Jesus says these ephesians weren't having any of it. We're not gonna put up with that. They spotted it, saw it, named it, said that is not what we're doing. They seem to have heeded Paul's warning.

Paul had met with the Epesian elders, the leaders of the church, He would read about it in acts 20. And when he'd met with them, he warned them. He said savage wolves will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. And he said they should be on their guard and they were. That's what false teachers often do.

They didn't just oppose the truth, they twist it, distort it, and these ephesians have been on their guard. And we need to learn from them too. Some here joined Hope Church, partly to get away from the false teaching that is so prevalent in the Church of England to come away from that, but that doesn't mean that we're safe. We've got to keep being on our guard. Keep being sharp.

Keep having the sherlock hose, attitudes. Do you see this was an impressive church? I mean, these were impressive people. Tough, sharp, hardworking, persevering. They could spot heresy at 200 paces as much to admire.

So why does Jesus say? He will remove their lamp stand. If they don't change, what are they missing? Well, it's their first love, isn't it? First 4, have a look.

Yet I held this against you. You have forsaken the love you had at first. Here's the problem. They'd forsaken their first love. Now we need to ask what that means, and it is slightly tricky.

Different people go different ways on this, different commentators go different ways. You've got 4 options. 4 options to go for. First 1 is that it's love of God that they're lacking. Second 1, love for 1 another within the church.

Third 1, is love for their neighbors. And fourth 1 is their evangelistic witness. I've heard people say all of those different ones as being what this love could be. And it isn't easy to work out because this is all you've got. He says you've forsaken your first love, or you the love you had at first.

But and you might say, well, just go with all of them. In which case preach all of them, preach all 4, and you're bound to hit 1 of them that's right. But I'm not convinced on that, and that would make it a very long term. I think it's the first 1. And I think, though, which is love of god, and I think it for a few reasons.

Firstly, that love for God is the 1 that is underneath all the others. All the others depend on it. And if you want if you are lacking any of the others, the thing you need to do is go back to love for god. So, if you're not loving 1 another within a church family, the thing you do is go back to your love for God and god's love for you. If you're, lacking love for neighbor for other people, will you need to understand god's love more and love him more?

And if you're lacking reaching out as a church where you're still gonna go back to god's love? So I think they all depend on God's love. But also, it does say the love you had at first, or it could be your first love. And what is your first love as a Christian? Your first love is God.

Isn't it? Jesus was asked, what the the greatest commandment is. He said the first and greatest commandment is to love the lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And that, I think, is what Jesus is saying. They're lacking.

And if I'm wrong, it's still an important message to hear, isn't it? But if they've forsaken their first love, doesn't that surprise you? They're hardworking, they're persevering. They've even persevered under persecution. And they've kept going.

And they can spot heresy. But Jesus is saying, yep, but you don't love god. And that is at the core. That's at the very center of Christianity. Oh, don't stop doing the other things.

Don't think, oh, well, you're lacking that therefore. Just stop doing all the others. No. No. No.

Keep doing them. They're still very important, but love God at the center of what you're doing. And this is why we as elders were so struck by this. And by 1 of the other letters in Revelation, where it says at the beginning of it, you have a rep it's the letter to the church in Sardis, where Jesus says you have a reputation for being alive, but you're dead? And we said, well, we as a church plant?

What reputation might we have? Started, grown, suck up a whole load of ministries. We're alive, aren't we? Are we? Question is very simple, actually.

It's a very simple sermon. And you may have thought that, yeah, it is quite simple, actually. But it is. It's a simple message. Do you love god?

Do we love god? Now we may have been busy. We may have done all sorts of things, but do we love God more now? Than we did a year ago, or have we let the busyness get in the way? Why else would you be doing all these things?

Well, maybe you think, for the approval of others, maybe, or or out of duty? If it's duty, well, duty quickly becomes a chore, doesn't it, in a trial, and people quickly get grumpy and wanna give up and become a trial to other people? We may persevere, but the heart won't be there. And that will affect your love for others. Your love for others within the church, others around us, and we won't want to witness to others about Jesus if we don't love him.

We must above all else, love god. And what needs to be true of the church as a whole must be true of the individual. Right? So that heard this illustration last week, a a bonfire, you want the bonfire to be blazing on fire, but what's gotta be true of the bonfire must be true of the individual sticks as well. It must be true of you and me.

It must be true of the elders. Do we blaze with love for god? And if you're thinking, I don't know that I do, actually. Jesus has 3 things for us to do to turn that around. He says, verse 5.

Consider how far you have fallen. Others translate that as remember. Here's the first thing to do. If you're feeling like I just I'm not sure I do love gold as much as I use to. Remember what it was like before.

Remember how things used to be when you were loving god, loving Jesus. What was it like? Think back. We we like looking back, don't we? We often like looking back at photos.

You look back at family photos from events from the past. Your phone makes you do it now, doesn't they? You all of a sudden, at some point, it just flashes up an image or something from 10 years ago, and suddenly you're back on holiday and you're just thinking about what that was like or that family occasion side event. And those emotions come back, and it's a wonderful thing. It's a lovely thing.

All of the photo comes up and you go, I don't remember being there. But but hopefully it sparks some memory, and Jesus is saying do that with him. Do you remember what it was like when you were on fire for Jesus? It's good to look back. And then he says repent.

Consider how far you have fallen verse 5. Repent. Repent is turnaround. This is something from which you need to repent. Repentance isn't just when you become a pro we've got to keep repenting.

And if you're feeling I'm just cold towards god, repent, which has gotta mean coming before God and saying, Lord, I am sorry that I have let my love for you grow cold. I'm sorry. Please change me. And then thirdly, he says, do the things you did at first. First, 5, repent.

Do the things you did at first. Take action. We tend to think love is like sort of the sun coming out from behind the clouds wonderful to have the sun today, but we think love is like that, that it sort of comes and goes, but there's not much you can do about it. And if you don't love God at the moment so much, you might just say, oh, I'll just wait a bit and see what happens. And Jesus says, no, don't do that.

Do something about it. Do the things you did at first. We can be good advice to have married couples as well if things have got a bit dull. You say, well, what, what did you used to do? What are the things you used to do?

You say, well, we didn't have kids. Well, you can't go back to that. I can't go back to that, but you and kids are a wonderful thing. So you can't say you can say, what did you used to do? What were the things you did?

You went out. You went out for me, or you did dancing or welding or something. What what was it that you did? There must be some couple somewhere. What did you do?

Do those things again, but the thing probably you'll find is where you spent time together, didn't you? You spent time together. You'd enjoyed spending time together. Jesus says, do the things you did at first or the first things, the most important things. And that's gonna mean spending time with god, isn't it?

Which means we need to ask how you're doing with your daily times with the lord. How you're doing reading god's word and praying? It feels a bit mundane, doesn't it? But actually it's 1 of the first things, 1 of the most important things. How are you doing?

Has busyness got in the way of them? Are you taking time with the lord and having good time with the lord every day? Bit of time in his word. Maybe you don't have much time for it. Maybe it's just 5 minutes, but can you take time to be with the lord?

To read his word? And don't let it just be a tick box thing. You can do it. Pastors can do it when you when you kinda do it. Yeah.

I've done it so that just in case someone asks me later in the day, have you had your quiet time? Yeah. Yeah. I did that. Yeah.

I don't take that box. Yeah. We're good. But actually, it wasn't good time with the lord. Do you need to refresh it?

Maybe buy 1 of the books from the bookstore. Thank you, Jackie, for for doing that again. There are some advent devotionals. You could grab 1 of them, take you through advent, a daily reading in it, through advent. Maybe that would be a fresh thing to do.

And to pray, pour out your heart to the law. Maybe you've got lists of people you pray for there, great thing to have, but maybe you just need a bit of time where you're going, I'm just gonna pour my heart out to the lord. Talked in. Say that I'm struggling with you know, if you're struggling to love him, say, talk to him about it, and dwell on god's grace to you. I reckon when you were loving Jesus more, that's what you were doing.

You that his grace to you was just fresh. Go back to that. Dwell on it. Think about it. Passages which speak of God's grace, maybe Ephesians 1 or Psalm 23 of God's love for you, and just dwell in them.

Soak in them. And maybe you're someone who would say, like, you know, I didn't know they've ever loved the dude, actually. Maybe just you're not a Christian this morning. You say, I yeah. That's fair.

Command carried you to go there as well. The place to look, if you're thinking, I I ought to love God, maybe you're, I'm not sure how to do that. Go to god's grace as poured out at the cross of Jesus. That's the key place to go because that's where you see god's love for us, and that's what will spark your understanding of god's love and see what he did for us and then respond to that. This church, this effusion church had a serious problem.

Jesus was saying, if you don't change, this could be the end for you. Hope, church, and if you're from another church. We need to make sure, first and foremost, we are loving god. That's what they lacked. And there's that warning that he'll remove the lampstand, but then there's the promise as well, and this is where we're gonna end.

Verse 7, whoever has ears let them hear what the spirit says to the churches, to the 1 who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of god. You see, he ends the letter by taking them back to the Garden of Eden at the beginning of the Bible, where Adam and Eve were placed and in that garden, there was this tree, the tree of life. They could have eaten from it, but they rebelled against god, were sent out of the garden, and an angel was put in the way to guard the entrance to the garden. So they couldn't get that tree of life. And Jesus is saying, if you overcome, if you love God first, then you will enter that garden and eat from that tree.

But you know the most important thing about that garden. Was it was where God would walk with Adam and Eve, was with them. And therefore, there's a theme running through this letter. It begins with Jesus walking amongst the lampstands present with the churches. And then he says, but you're lacking love for god.

And then he says, at the end, if you overcome, you'll be in the paradise of God with god, walking with god. See, set your love on god, and what do you get? God. At the end, you'll be with him. In glory.

That is what we're looking forward to. The thing that makes heaven, new creation, glory, whatever you wanna call it, and what the bible uses different terms. Whatever you want to call that future thing, what's special about it is we will be with god. So making your deepest delight now. Hope church, we are so thankful for the last year.

All that the lord has done for us. And as we go to the future, let's learn from this letter. Let's be tough and sharp, but above all, Let's love the lord. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we praise you for this letter.

Thank you for this assessment of these Epesian church, and we pray you would help us to learn from it, help us to be tough as they were. So although often we don't feel it, but help us to persevere, to be hardworking, and to spot, false teaching, but help us above all to love you. And to grow in that loss over the coming year. Our men.