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Sunday 7/26/26
Title: Remember… Repent… Recover!
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Remember… Repent… Recover!
We ended last week with a comparison between the sin of the Ephesian church and the confrontation of Jesus with Peter on the seashore regarding his failure to follow through with his vaunted love for Christ as being greater and more sincere than all his fellow disciples at the Seder meal after which he denied Jesus three times. The confrontation precisely corresponds in that the love Jesus was requiring was agape and that which Peter and the Ephesian church possessed was something less.
We then compared this to a married couple who, after the children had gone, and retirement was in view, they found themselves in the uncomfortable position of trying to rediscover the love they had for one another at the beginning of their marriage, which they should never have ‘neglected’.
Let’s draw our existing examples from last week into our passage in Revelation 2–
Jesus is essentially standing in the kitchen of the Ephesian Church after the kids have left, the bills have all been paid and with retirement on the horizon and He’s staring into His beloved’s eyes only to see that His gaze is not fully met with hers.
That while His ardor is as strong as ever, hers has waned into a settled familiarity devoid of passion.
Remember Jesus’ accusation to these Ephesians – “You have willfully forsaken Me as first priority and you have ‘abandoned’ the passion of our love that you possessed at the beginning”. [amplified paraphrase]
They had allowed duty and obligation and work and study ABOUT Jesus and FOR His cause to replace maintenance of that relationship, so that passion and priority for Him were no longer the most important thing in their lives.
Remember our passages in Matthew and Luke about what disqualifies one from being a worthy disciple?
At this point it’s healthy to remember that Who we’re dealing with is our Creator. Almighty God!
His claim to preeminence in our life it’s not a superficial one but a simple fact of creation.
There can be no higher authority, there can be no greater relationship and there can be no one to Whom we have a basis for being more grateful and to Whom we owe everything than our Creator.
So to place Him in any position below the first and most important, is to assign Him a place far beneath what He deserves. This is a distortion of reality and proof positive that we have lost sight of Who He is.
It decides against us in terms of proof that we still hold Him in the fear and respect He is due.
And the cure to all of this is not working harder, studying more, beating ourselves up for our failures or trying to stir up more faith – it’s finally and simply to remember the love we held for Him at the first. That unchallenged, unrivaled position of importance He once held alone when we first began our lives with Him.
The Ephesians replacing love with duty as first priority – being sin, is not to say obedience to our Lord is not important, but like Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees, “you ought to have done the one without forsaking the other.”
EXAMPLE:
Teri and I watched a film the other night called, The Sheep DETECTIVES.
It’s a cute movie of a Shepherd, played by Hugh Jackman, who loved and cared for a flock but who died relatively early in the movie.
The sheep had an aversion to things which caused them pain or sorrow, coupled with a near superhuman ability to forget such pain on command.
Upon learning of their Shepherd’s death, they were about to decide to “forget him” on purpose, due to the pain of his passing. But one of the sheep stepped in and encouraged them not to forget.
He was one of two “winter lambs”.
In this film, “winter lambs”, were lambs which other sheep reject because they weren’t born in the spring like most lambs and were therefore not considered part of the flock.
So these “winter lambs” all wound up having a more intimate connection with their Shepherd, since it was the only acceptance and affection they received.
This older winter lamb, who stopped them from forgetting, later told his story, which was one of mistreatment at the hands of a previous owner.
Their shepherd had purchased him and carried him home to his flock on his shoulders and this lamb never forgot the love and devotion that was shown to him.
Much like what Jesus said once regarding that one broken woman who had lived in sin, but in repentance came and washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and anointed them with expensive perfume – He said, “Those who are forgiven much, love much.”
In this movie, it wasn’t hard to get the other sheep to agree to not forget their shepherd and the reason was because he had loved them so much and had cared for them so well that it would dishonor his memory if they forgot Him.
So they chose rather to live with the pain of having lost him, in order to honor him and his memory.
Hopefully it isn’t hard to see why in preparing for this teaching, that movie presented me with a dramatization which held striking comparisons with our Ephesian church and which I thought would serve as a bit of a good example.
Now, I don’t know to what degree it was true, but on some level the Ephesian church was guilty of the sin of ancient Israel who God accused of “drawing near Him with their mouths and honoring Him with their lips but their hearts were far from Him”.
So while we cannot know the details of this departure, we know it had to have been something they were aware of and which they had done nothing about.
This confirms my early suspicion that this was not the first time the Ephesian believers had been confronted with this.
Perhaps a few teachers or pastors in Ephesus were still connected to Christ in the passion of holiness and they warned them.
No doubt the Holy Spirit within them was doing His work of wooing and warning.
Now they are receiving a prophetic word with a warning of urgency to respond quickly and that response was captured in three commands – one of which I already introduced to you last week.
Before we read it I want to set a hypothetical example before you to see if you can work through the simple steps of correcting a problem.
EXAMPLE PROBLEM:
You’re heading down the highway taking your son or daughter to college.
As you are traveling, you become so intent your conversation with your child that you entirely miss the exit you’re supposed to take.
At some point you recognize that the exit numbers are too high and climbing higher.
What are the three steps which would be necessary to get this parent back on track again?
- First, remember what your goal was and what exit you were supposed to have taken.
- Change the focus of your attention back on your goal.
- Make a course correction and start heading back towards your goal.
This is precisely the very simple counsel Jesus offers the Ephesian Church .
Let’s read,
“(5) Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.”
Remember the love you possessed back when your love was new. Let the sting of that departure and infidelity move your hearts towards response.
Change your minds! This would be unnecessary had they not made up their minds to do wrong in the first place.
We need to realize that not every willful departure even has the one departed from, in their view.
Returning to our example of marriage as a side-by-side comparison – more times than you might think is likely, infidelity in marriage is not with a focus the unhappiness one has with their mate. At least not precisely. Many people who fall pray to infidelity and adultery, find themselves lured away towards that person – not due to a focus on what they are not getting in their marriage, but rather due to an attraction to something that fills a vacuum that they’ve found in someone else.
The point is that marital unfaithfulness is often the result of letting your loving gaze drift FROM your first Love. Rather than an over attention on aspects of the relationship with which you are dissatisfied. And it would appear that is what happened with the Ephesian church.
It is also a strong contender for what could cause any believer or congregation to drift.
In fact, most acts of adultery do not begin in the bedroom. And most could never gain enough MOMENTUM to get there, if one’s attention were to stay rooted at home.
Affairs of the heart always precede affairs of the body. Even as enticements within the heart always proceed the action of sin.
It might surprise you to learn that such affairs often are not even fully focused upon the other person themselves but rather in what they represent.
Something in the lives of these Ephesian believers had supplanted Christ as the “apple of their eye” and the focus of their devotions… and they knew it.
So they needed to change their minds!
Given their diligence regarding sound doctrine and what appears to be a focus on the work of the Kingdom for His namesake, it’s very possible that theirs was merely a shift in focus and priority to kingdom work, which compromised the passion of their intimacy with Jesus.
I’m telling you – this is more of a cataclysmic warning and wake up call than I think any surface reading allows us to be aware of.
This church, by today’s standards, was doing amazingly well.
- They loved Jesus
- They served Jesus
- They were devoted to and were never swayed from His teachings and
- They were enduring the middle of very difficult circumstances and surroundings.
Yet for all of that, Jesus was not satisfied – to the point that He was about to judge their church in what I am convinced, most people in the modern church would consider a rather harsh way.
This forces me to reevaluate the weight I put on, relationship with Jesus.
This letter to the Ephesians leaves no room for question regarding the supremacy of maintaining passionate an intimate vulnerability and relationship with Jesus even above things like…
- Rooting ourselves in sound doctrine
- Doing the work of the Kingdom.
Because Jesus isn’t wrong here. His judgment is both just and in fact even merciful, because we know Who He is and we know His ways.
So anything in us which views what happened in the lives of the Ephesian church as unduly hard or harsh, actually reveals a deep misunderstanding of the nature of our relationship to God through Jesus.
I would say that agape love is to Kingdom work and diligence over sound doctrine, what faith is to works.
Meaning I can do the work of the Kingdom and be diligent over sound doctrine and NOT possess a driving passion for Jesus.
However it is impossible to possess a driving passion for Jesus without it producing diligence regarding sound doctrine and being busy in Kingdom work.
Now due to the teaching nature of church assemblies as represented in the New Testament and to which we try to adhere, we have done much in the way of seeking out, studying and trying to offer instruction in sound doctrine.
But that love, is even more important is a truth that literally supports and teaches itself in scripture – throughout both the Old and New Testaments.
Jesus’ command was to return to your former love – (do the first works)! Be passionate about Me again.
But how do we do this?
This difficult thing is, love cannot be taught.
- It can be taught ABOUT.
- It can be encouraged,
- it can be modeled before,
but unlike many aspects of the Christian life, love is more caught than taught.
It has to be fostered, and inwardly encouraged by the individual.
So I believe the best I can do is attempt to use my own experiences as a sample guide.
In times when I have grown cold and indifferent I have found four things to help.
- Confess my indifference to God, seeking His supernatural intervention to help me stir the cooling coals of passion into a raging fire again.
- Actively trust in and rely upon His inner work, knowing and confessing that I know I would not even have the awareness of my need or deficiency in this area if it were not for the faithfulness of the Holy Spirit. And in that environment, begin to worship Him for His faithfulness and for His completing His work in me.
- REMEMBER – past experiences, scripture, songs, places, events and recreate those that I can – JUST like one would do to stir back up passion in a human romance.
- Get around others who are passionate for Christ.
Now these are not being set before you as a formula, as much as a loose road map to follow. Furthermore, they are the steps any one would naturally take to rekindle a flame that has died down.
The rekindling of love’s fire will automatically produce the other external forms of diligence – only they will no longer feel so much like work.
Now I am not attempting to over romanticize this, but there is a component which very closely correlates with human romance.
Consider the language God uses regarding His people throughout scripture. It is rich in romantic language and sentiments.
Having just recently gone through the Song of Solomon, in our Wednesday nights trek ‘Thru the Bible’, we know the type of ardor God is both capable of and which He desires from His bride.
It is interesting that Jesus calls this love – a work!
This is a modern church ‘trigger word’.
We have many trigger words in greater society today and nearly every one of them is rooted in a distorted and bloated opinion of one’s own importance and we will start off with this point next week.
Blessings!
