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Sunday 10/11/26
Title: Examining our lives in their light – Part 1
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Examining our lives in their light – Part 1
Well we finished up last week with Jesus’ letters to the 7 churches as tangible examples of how to live out our lives From Faith to Faith. This part of our series covered 4 months. As such today, I am going to take what we’ve learned and help you turn it into a lens through which you can judge your own life in light of these 7 letters.
However, due to the sheer scope of all we covered, we are only addressing the first 3 of the 7 letters to the churches.
1st letter – Ephesians –
We spent the greatest portion of our time in this letter – it literally took a month of Sundays.
This is what He said,
“‘The words of Him Who holds the seven stars in His right hand, Who walks among the seven golden lampstands.”
Jesus was walking among them but He was largely unperceived by them. As we continue this was the result of what they were focused upon! Jesus had not diminished the consistency of His living among them, nor had He reduced His attempts as influencing them towards intimacy. The issue was one of attention and passion – not exposure.
He then praised them for the laborious Kingdom work, their patient endurance, their hatred of evil and their diligent search to confirm the validity of both teachers and message.
The issue Jesus brought to their attention was that in their faithfulness to ground themselves in sound doctrine, they had abandoned the type of passion they had for Him at the beginning of the walk as well as His place of top priority in their lives. Love for Christ had been replaced by passion to be solid in doctrine.
In other words, theirs was a sin of omission and willful omission at that!
Their diligence over doctrine had replaced Jesus as the passion of their lives and the priority in their lives.
They hated evil, false doctrine.
But they neglected the love they had at first.
Now you may remember that the word “neglected” was better represented by the concept of “abandoning”.
This means on some level, they had been aware of this and had made this decision with eyes at least partially open.
It’s anyone’s guess as to why – though we know for certain that it was not because they didn’t love Him. They did – they were just loving Him less and He was no longer top priority in their lives.
They also were committed to His lordship and His doctrine and would not deny His name – so allegiance isn’t really the focus either.
The only guess I could come up with (and it is a guess) is that at the first, their love for Jesus was passionate. But in their passion they lacked a grounding sound doctrine.
They had to be reprimanded and instructed several times about this and it MAY HAVE become a source of embarrassment for them both internally and possibly before the Apostle Paul, their local pastors and teachers, and maybe even other churches in the region.
If that is the case, and something like this MUST be the case, then it makes sense that to some degree they would almost come to regret and even deliberately distanced themselves from the passion they had for Christ. They may have associated it with blindness and ignorance. That their emotions of love for Jesus made them easy prey to suggestions and influences of false doctrine.
So not being firmly rooted, they began to see themselves as easily swayed and the source of that swing was their emotional and passionate love for Jesus.
I’ve witnessed this myself in many congregations and among many believers and at times even in myself. And once you feel as if you’ve been made the fool, you want to back pedal from that pretty quickly. You want to set yourself apart and distinguish yourself as someone solid in the faith and not some simpleton who can be influenced in any direction. And in pursuits such as these, you can easily leave the ardency of first love in the dust.
What Jesus demands here in this letter is both.
Nothing we do as humans is 100% pure. There’s always an admixture of competing ambitions and thoughts.
If the Ephesians‘ love for Jesus had been a complete and full love, it would have driven them to know Jesus for Who He really is and therefore have made them less pray to false doctrine.
As it was, their passion for Jesus blinded them to certain truths, which made them easier to manipulate.
But love for God is so central to life as the Creator intended, and it is so because it most clearly represents what exists within the godhead from eternity past – that to miss it in regard to purity and passion of love is to present before the world of false gospel.
Like Nadab and Abahu theirs was “strange fire”.
It was a light before the world that was guiding towards a false harbor – towards a distortion of the truth.
It would seem that this is why Jesus’ clearly stated judgment if they did not change their minds and their actions would be to remove their church.
But the promise was to eat from the tree of life which again represents intimacy and union with Christ, the very thing He wrote them to address.
For all of this Jesus offered them a three step solution:
- Remember
- Repent
- Do the first works
So the problem of the first church was one of priorities. They never stopped loving Christ, they just began to pursue correctness in doctrine first rather than Him. To know ABOUT Him rather than knowing Him.
The solution? Pursuit Christ.
Do things on purpose to maintain, stir and encourage your heart on, in a forward direction of self-sacrificial love and devotion to Him. Do things that encourage reverence and difference and respect and fear of God.
Establish routines and patterns in your life which safeguard you from drifting into distance, diminished ardor or God forbid, indifference.
2nd church – Smyrna
The issue Jesus brought to their attention was that in their faithfulness to Him, they had gained the attention of the devil and he was going to come and try them for a time. This was going to end in imprisonment for some. Jesus’ encouragement was to not allow fear in their hearts and to stand strong.
He said,
““Blessed is the one who is not able to be made to stumble in offense at Me.”
Now this lack of fear in the attacks of the devil that Jesus is wanting to see in them, He states as existing IN HIS PERSON.
Jesus identifies Himself here as the One Who died, but Who also came back to life. In other words, He is the One over Whom death holds no power! He conquered sin and death and holds the keys of death and the realm of the dead – as He said in His introduction to this book in Revelation 1:18.
Distress, suffering and opposition
Suffering is an unpopular part of the Christian life and one that many go to great lengths to avoid or even attempt to explain out of scripture – but it is there. Powerfully, unapologetically there.
The word means Tribulation.
The writer of Hebrews, tells us that following the conversion of those Jews to whom the letter was written, they had,
“endured a great conflict of sufferings; partly, being made a gazing stock, both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, becoming partakers with them that were so used” (Hebrews 10:33; 11:37).
Yet, suffering, persecution and tribulation is literally set forth as the source of one of our chief joys in Christ since it is in suffering that we often experience some of the most intimate times of fellowship we ever have with Jesus in this life.
In Acts 5 we are told that the apostles were arrested, subjected to an inquiry, then beaten and released only because they didn’t have a charge that would stick and this is how the apostles responded.
“(41) Then they left the presence of the council, REJOICING that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. (42) And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus.” – Acts 5:41-42
1 Peter 4:13 encourages believers to rejoice as they participate in the sufferings of Christ.
In the face of much affliction the churches of Macedonia had an abundance of joy, Paul told the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 8:2.
The Thessalonians received the word with much tribulation, and with the joy of the Holy Ghost (1 Thessalonians 1:6).
Far from something we should seek to avoid, the New Testament tells us that we are literally appointed to suffering which Paul reminded the Thessalonian believers of in his first letter to them.
1 Thessalonians 3:1-5,
“(1) So when we could bear it no longer, we decided to stay on in Athens alone. (2) We sent Timothy, our brother and fellow worker for God in the gospel of Christ, to strengthen you and encourage you about your faith, (3) so that no one would be shaken by these afflictions.
For you yourselves know that we are destined for this.
(4) For in fact when we were with you, we were telling you in advance that we would suffer affliction, and so it has happened, as you well know.
(5) So when I could bear it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith, for fear that the tempter somehow tempted you and our toil had proven useless.”
John in writing this very letter of Revelation also said that he was a “partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and patience which are in Jesus“ – Revelation 1:9.
That the threats of the devil might conjure mental images of being martyred for Christ (something Jesus did not say would happen) seems evident in what Jesus pointed to in His person as their answer and ability to stand strong.
Jesus’ words were, “This is the solemn pronouncement of the One Who is the first and the last, the One Who was dead, but came to life:”
This church was the polar opposite of Laodicea in many ways. Laodicea saw themselves as rich and in need of nothing, and Jesus said they were poor, blind, wretched and naked. These saints in Smyrna were considered poor, but Jesus called them rich.
(9) “‘I know the distress you are suffering and your poverty (but you are rich). I also know the slander against you by those who call themselves Jews and really are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.”
So Jesus says to these believers in Smyrna,
“Remain faithful even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown that is life itself.
The reward is intimacy with God forever!
(11) “The one who has an ear had better hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will in no way be harmed by the second death.’”
This brings us full circle back to Jesus’ introductory statement,
“This is the solemn pronouncement of the One Who is the first and the last, the One Who was dead, but came to life: .”
So what was the lesson in this? That we must NOT look to our circumstances or entertain the taunts and threats of the enemy. Resolve within your heart when persecution, tribulation or threats come that you were appointed to this and are to be a source of Joy BECAUSE it is in these crucibles, that we experience our greatest times of intimacy with Christ. Also it is where we shine the brightest for God through our association with Him which also speaks to its association with our Joy. The REASON we are a threat to the enemy is BECAUSE, not only has Jesus placed His name and hand upon us, and not only do you belong to Him, we have begun to be more like Him, Christ is being formed in us SO MUCH that we have been singled out by the enemy as targets. This is an honor. But rather than looking to the threats of the enemy, we are to look to Jesus. Not merely to His written word, but to God directly in both prayer and trust.
