May I invite you to turn with me
for a little while this morning to the
message that is recorded in the opening verses
of chapter 2 in the book of the
revelations, namely the message of the ascended and
exalted Lord of the church to the community
of his people living in Ephesus.
Now I'm not going to read that passage
again, but may I suggest that you keep
your New Testament open and we shall turn
to a number of verses as we move
along.
Delightfully situated on a hill near the mouth
of the river Caesar, Ephesus, you may remember,
was the chiefest city of the province of
Roman Asia.
The church was
greatly, greatly honored by those who ministered in
the midst of the believing community, and we
are given to understand that at one time
it really was he who brought light on
the church of the righteous.
Nevertheless, according to the words that we have
in our message, in our document before us
this morning, when at the instigation of the
Savior, a black spot appeared at the heart
of Ephesus, he in glory depicted a hidden
flaw that could very well lead to a
greater tragedy, even the removing of the lamp
from the church.
And so it is to the uncovering of
that hidden flaw that we turn to our
meditation this morning.
Now the first thing I would like us
to look at I would like us to
look at the decorum that characterized the outward
turn of the church.
The decorum that characterized the outward turn.
In the human eye, it would be very
difficult to find any flaw in the community
of God's people.
Besides the acute problems with which the community
of God's people has been presented, the interests
of the community have been settled, despite all
the signs of a paradigm shift.
Everything seems to have passed away.
The church has come as a tribute or
a gift to the unflagging dream and enterprise
of this believing community.
And not only that, we see that the
church has come in the presence of that
dream.
Over concerns of God the King, as it
has been given them once for all in
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now look for a moment at the important
text that we have today.
It's just three sentences.
First of all, the church showed a well
-parted dream in the garrison of the Master.
I know your work, Peter.
What horror and what chastity and fury!
I know you are enduring chastity and fury
not for my name's sake.
And you have not learned nearly.
I know your work.
The assembly of God's people here has passed
beyond the coffin in the coming day.
It's an act of the Lord.
The Lord looking down from his seat in
the glory says, I know your work, your
sins.
It is actually at work to steal a
divinely ordained treasure.
And then he goes on to say, I
not only know your work, but I know
your sins.
Now that refers to the puzzle that lay
behind the act of it.
The atmosphere all around was hidden.
And not only challenging, but sometimes menacingly so.
It was somewhat dangerous to the Savior, loyal
to the Savior and everything.
And so it inspired us not only to
begin the master's bidding.
Looking down upon the assembled people, the Lord
says, I want you to know that I'm
fully aware of the toil and of the
struggle that characterizes your ministry and your measure.
And then he goes further.
He says, I also want you to know
that I am aware of your faith and
your duty.
It is your faith that sets you free.
The harvest was slow at first, but they
gave them a time in very quickly.
We know it was difficult, but there weren't
many hundreds at this particular time.
But grace has been done.
They were such as you.
They were remaining faithful to their cause.
They were continuing to labor for the master
through a hard, dutiful experience of apparent grace.
And verse three underlines it.
I know it is the master.
You are enduring patiently and bearing up for
my ministry.
And you have not grown weary.
Then there was the church's holy boldness in
testing serious apostles.
Look at the second part of the second
verse again.
You have put these things before these days
of apostles, but are not, and have found
them to be false.
Not only did the church of Ephesus carry
out its mission with fortitude in an alien
environment, but it generously took the pretensions of
supposed apostles.
Coming in the guise of apostleship, these supposed
champions of the cause sought a foothold within
the community of Danteans in order to exercise
an influence that would have been evil.
But the young assemblers, perhaps I should say
established somewhat by this act, they gave the
praise and the tongues and the balance.
They listened to their testimony and their pretensions
and their slayings.
And in the light of all the facts,
they concluded that they were not apostles at
all and were no longer here.
And then there was this.
There was a perfect partnership between the two.
Look at that picture.
Yet this you have, you see the works
of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
Now I sometimes feel that this is a
most difficult question to address.
To have anyone's partnership manifest in one's life
a holy anger.
So often we pretend that we have this,
but God knows more often than not it
becomes a crime.
But here we will notice the church offices
in each village with their own lords see
that they don't wish it but they must
it.
The Lord says, I hate the Christians of
the Nicolaitans and so do you and the
Englishmen of Venice.
Let us repeat then without going any further
for a moment.
It was difficult for a Christian to find
any part of this community.
It seemed to be a paradigm of excellence.
There's a proverb that characterized the outlaw force.
May I come to your notice, my dear?
The deterioration of this community.
At the very same time as in this
village before the dawn of the hour to
atone of the life of the church of
the head of the church he who holds
the stern charge in his right hand he
who walks among the lampstands he who beholds
the sign of decay and deterioration in the
inner shrine of the house.
And he believes that this can so develop
that it can bring about the entire collapse
of the spiritual life of the church.
Now the Lord pinpoints it all in this
phrase that we all know.
Thou hast let thy birth come.
I have this again to say to you.
Thou hast let thy birth come.
All of you are appreciative of the love
that you have expressed.
Now in order to appreciate the significance of
this charge I think we must first of
all contribute this peacefulness of love.
What is love?
It's not purely the cancer that the heart
feels.
It's a waning emotion.
It is the flame on the inner altar
moving, slow and extensive.
The fire is not yet burnt out by
any means.
It's still radiant heat that can be felt.
The power still rides the machinery of constant
activity and it inspires perseverance in one's own
self-efficacy.
It's not burnt out yet.
But the burn is still there.
And the flame is receding.
And a process has begun that can lead
first of all to allow the flame state
of pittance in the church.
And ultimately the consequences that are very powerful
because the Lord says, if you don't repent
I will take away the candle.
First love then is something that teaches something
profound, it's something of primary importance.
What is it?
May I suggest in the first place that
first love is an exclusive It is given
whole and exclusively to one person at a
time.
Others will only share with one insofar as
they come under the umbrella of that one
person's concern or companion.
You may remember this exclusive note coming out
in the testimony of a cinematographer in the
time of Solomon.
Somebody told her by asking her the question,
what is your beloved more than another beloved?
And impatiently she replied, we seem all together
lovely.
There is no one else like it who
stands alone, aloof and unique.
And my heart is ravaged by him and
him alone.
That first love its focus is the whole
of its being upon one chosen object and
it is completely absorbed, exclusively absorbed by him.
First love is also love that is unflinchingly
unique.
It can no more withhold its stream of
warm ardent outflow than the rising sun can
withhold its reach in the sky.
The emergence of first love is the full
sunrise of the day.
And wherever you find it you will also
discover a buoyancy and a frivolousness that loops
over obstacles and delivers all difficulties in the
service of the Lord.
In the heart of an expert, first love
takes the life in its hand, as it
were, and takes the state by state and
by state.
And first love is imaginative in some people.
They can always do what is required of
it, of course, and it will always honour
the commands of the Beloved.
But first love is so special, spontaneous, it
is even more special than unwrapping.
You can't limit its expression to that which
is being proper and customary.
It will think of some special way of
expressing itself.
First love is always preparing some eruductive, rustic,
precious ointment before it can master its use
at some appropriate moment.
You can't make out what it's going to
do next, as long as it's confronting you,
as it were, at its peak.
And, may I say this, first love is
coming to you.
By that I mean this.
First is a deep longing that it cannot
live on past experience, nor upon the concentration
of things that are yet to be in
the future.
I find that sometimes you can divide the
Christian community into two.
There are those who always go back to
the past.
When you find other people they're always living
in the future.
Oh, when the Lord comes again, what a
day of rejoicing that will be.
Now, I'm not suggesting that either of these
two attitudes are wrong.
But what I am suggesting, my friend, is
this, that first love is satisfied with neither
of them, nor even with both of them.
First love demands the presence of the Lord
Jesus now.
It looks back with gratitude to all that
it has known of Him, and it looks
forward believingly in hope of the glory of
God.
But it must have Jesus now.
It judges everything by this.
It goes to church, it goes to the
prayer meeting, it comes to a convention, and
this is the criterion of judgment.
Was Jesus there?
And if Jesus is not there knowingly then
it is not satisfied.
And then may I say this about first
love?
It is trustful love.
It believes and it trusts even when it
cannot trace and understand.
The late Dr. Campbell Morgan relates a very
delightful story which I think I can use
this morning to illustrate this.
Some of you may know it.
He speaks, or rather writes, of a nun
who saw three people in prayer in a
dream.
As they kneeled, the Lord appeared apparently, and
coming to the first of the three that
were kneeling in prayer, he put his hand
upon her shoulder and knelt lovingly over her,
full of tender solicitude and smiles and obviously
exuding radiant love for her.
Then he came to the second, he put
his hand upon her shoulder and said a
few words to her and passed on to
the third.
When the nun in her dream expected him
to say something to the third, he just
gave her a look and barely smiled and
passed on.
And the nun in the story concluded, oh,
how he loved the first of the three.
He must have had a special place in
his heart for her.
And the second, yes, he must have thought
much of her too.
But what could the third have done to
displease her Lord?
And at that point still the story goes,
the Lord appeared to the nun and explained
to her that she was all out of
focus in her judgment.
These are the recorded words.
He said to her, oh, woman of the
world, how wrongly hast thou judged.
The first kneeling woman needs all the succor
of my constant care to keep her feet
in the narrow way.
The second has stronger faith and deeper love.
But the third, whom I seem to pass
abruptly by, has faith and love of the
finest fiber.
And her I am preparing by swift processes
for highest and holiest service.
She knows and loves and trusts me so
perfectly as to be independent of works and
looks first love trusts.
The distinctiveness of first love.
But now look at the departure from that
first love.
Now will you please notice the words that
are used here.
There are three words which are most revealing.
And it may very well be that as
we examine our own hearts we shall find
that these three words will remind us of
certain things that have taken place within the
sanctuary of our own hearts.
In our own experiences.
Now first of all thou hast left thy
first love.
There is the thought there of a deliberate
change of course.
You're traveling in the car and you're going
straight forward.
You're following the main highway and then suddenly
you turn one side.
Now that's the thought.
A deliberate change of course.
Now look at the second again in verse
five.
Remember then from what you have fallen.
Fallen.
It has been claimed by some folk that
first love is an immature love in personal
relations.
And that to leave it behind is necessary
to progress as if there was something better
further on.
That is certainly not true in the soul's
relation to the Savior.
Listen my friends.
Departure from first love is a fall.
It's never an ascent but a descent.
A come down.
There is no stage of love that supersedes
it and to deviate from it is to
fall.
But look again.
Repent of the Savior.
And that means of course that it is
a sin to forsake one's first love.
You are only called upon to repent when
you have sinned.
And the Master says look you have sinned.
It is a shortcoming.
It is an evil.
It is a sin.
And when once a man has departed from
this his spiritual life will sooner or later
decay and degenerate.
For a while the outward appearance may still
bear the marks of evangelical receptability.
The language may remain meticulously orthodox and a
man's sheer activity to continue apace with his
opposition to and condemnation of current sin losing
none of its trust or ferocity.
But something has done.
The leaves are beginning to wither on the
trees.
And that's betoken the oncoming of winter and
of death and disaster.
And then what happens?
Well, when the thing blossoms forth into what
is not ultimately what happens is this.
The love that was exclusively given to the
one is shared by many.
And you know as well as I do
that the biblical term for this is harlotry.
My friend, is your love this morning a
shared love?
A love that is given to the world
and its sin and its evil and its
whatnot.
Given to things that are utterly inconsistent with
the person of Him whom you call your
Savior and your Lord.
The love that was exclusively given to one
is shared with many.
The love that was once offered ungrudgingly in
service still is the inspiration of some kind
of service, perhaps but that moaning, groaning, grousing
kind of obedience of which some of the
prophets speak.
Malachi, for example.
You remember Malachi quotes some of the people
of his deity saying, it is vain to
serve God.
What is the good?
What is the profit of it to the
atheist?
Although keeping his charge or of walking as
in mourning before the Lord of hosts.
My friend, when first love vanishes it's so
difficult to go to the prayer meeting.
It's so difficult to study the Word of
God.
Oh, the whole world is against one.
You may still be continuing but in your
heart there's a grouse and a grumble.
And it's all a misery in the shrine
of the soul.
Friend, is that you this morning?
And the love that once was imaginative and
spontaneous has degenerated into a cold icy mechanical
punctiliousness that strains itself to keep the letter
of the Lord perhaps but has lost all
thought of that bounteous exuberance and self-giving
against which there is no law.
And the love that once was dissatisfied with
anything short of the very presence of the
beloved is now quite satisfied if it can
just remember a few blessed things that happened
long ago.
Or be reminded of things that are yet
to be by the mercy and the incalculable
grace of God.
And the love that was trustful and full
of faith has become a seething state of
doubt and uncertainty.
That is the alternative to first love.
That is the end product, my friend, despite
the fact that the lapse may appear trivial
and harmless in its early stages.
You may be tempted to say to me
at this moment, ah yes but it's not
all that important.
I'm not such a sinner after all.
I've not gone with those worldlings that are
back in their evil haunts or with other
backslidden folks that are living a life of
open sin.
I'm not there.
My good friend, listen.
This is a very serious state of affairs.
And if things continue as they are, God
only knows the end of what begins as
first love vanishing.
The passion for orthodoxy and the preaching of
truth without first love, I believe the apostle
Paul would brand as sounding brass or tinkling
cymbal.
We could say in the idiom of our
day perhaps that it is more like a
mechanical computer spitting out the right answers but
all the while remaining remote and aloof from
the real life and the troubles and the
problems of men and women having no feeling
with them in their pains and their trials.
Such irony, such iron exponents of truth are
as remote from being the ideal Christian as
parrots are from being apostles.
My good friend, the question that faces you
and faces me this morning is this.
Not what we appear to be.
It's not what we are as far as
men can see.
But the real question is this.
The Lord upon the throne looks down upon
our hearts and he knows us through and
through.
What does he see?
And I'm not speaking to the out-and
-out sinner in Zion this morning but to
that respectable God-fearing believer, apparently who's eager
to condemn sin in all and sundry.
If any man trips up, you'll be the
first to point your finger.
If there is a preacher in the pulpit
that doesn't come down absolutely full square on
every orthodox point, you'll be the first to
note.
And I'm not saying that that is wrong
in and of itself.
God forbid.
But what I am saying is this.
My good friend, in your heart at this
moment there may be a poison that is
insidious and evil.
And as far as you are concerned can
bring about the total eclipse of your spiritual
life.
Now just one word as we close.
The demand for immediate reformation.
Three words sum up our Lord's message to
this church.
You read the commentaries and they so often
refer to these words by three R's.
Two are found in the text, of course.
Remember, Repent, and Repeat.
Our Lord says Remember them from what you
have fallen.
The call is to sit alongside their present
experience the past as they remember it.
And they're commended to remember it.
My friend, you and I are commended this
morning I believe, in the light of this
word, to dig up from the graveyard of
forgotten things some of the experiences of the
past which are so precious.
Remember the glory.
Remember the joy you had in the presence
of the Lord in days that have gone.
Remember how your first love made you run
uphill as well as downhill.
There were no obstacles that stood in your
way.
You were early up if the Master demanded
it.
You were late to bed if the Master
required it.
There was nothing too great for you to
do.
You were glad to give and to do
and to be and to say anything that
Jesus said.
And in the quietness of this tent in
my Master's name I want to invite you
this morning to remember.
Oh, remember.
Remember.
You've tried to forget some of those glorious
mountaintop experiences and you've wandered away from them.
But here in Keswick this morning, in the
name of my Lord I plead with you,
let them come back again.
Let them come crowding to the memories.
Oh, Spirit of God, help us in this.
But wait a moment, that's a means to
an end.
Why should we remember these forgotten things?
I'll tell you.
In order that they may goad us to
repent.
In order that they may bring us to
the place where we shall abandon our present
way of life and return to the way
of obedience and live in the light of
the full glare of Christian truth.
And what then?
Well now, what are we to do?
Does the Lord want us this morning to
say that we loved him as once we
did?
No, no, my friend.
The Lord wants something far, far more significant
than that and more costly.
Listen to what he wants.
Do the work you did at first.
Now this I think is very very important.
The first love had been active love, but
it was activity with a difference.
And the command to the church is to
repent and then repeat the same kind of
activity as characterized the first love.
Jesus Christ is not interested in mere gushing
emotional expressions.
The first love had been active love, but
it was activity with a difference.
And the command to the church is to
repent and then repeat the same kind of
activity as characterized the first love.
Jesus Christ is not interested in mere gushing
emotional expressions.
He is anxious to see the activity that
is penetrated through and through by vital love.
It's not the testimony of the mouth, but
it's the expression of my love in life.
That's what he's after.
Emotion, my friend, is useless unless it launches
the soul into the orbit of obedience and
gives quality and feeling to the entire round
of common duty.
And this is consistent with a whole of
biblical truth.
You remember our Lord's threefold question to Simon
Peter?
Simon, son of Jonas, love his son?
Three times the master told him, then if
you do love me, do this.
Feed my sheep.
Feed my lambs.
Feed my sheep.
In other words, I'm not concerned, says the
master, that you should merely tell me that
you love me.
It's so easy, especially in an environment such
as this.
My good friend, what he wants is this.
Remember, repent, and repeat.
He wants us to be seeking his grace
in such a manner that when we go
back from this convention, we may go back
as men and women that are utterly and
irrevocably dedicated to do the work that once
characterized our lives.
And first, love was glowing on the altar
of the heart.
Has he anything against you this morning?
Can it be that the Lord Jesus is
underscoring this very word and using my feeble
voice to impress it upon your heart and
conscience?
Let me remind you, it is with a
view to a larger blessing, because this will
open for you the way to the tree
of life again, then to the sweet life
-enriching fellowship with the Son of God, in
which all the fullness and the plenitude of
his grace will be constantly availing for you
as you trust in him.
Oh, may God grant it.
May the ministry of his word during this
day enable us further to abandon the things
that are wrong in our lives, and that
some of us may recapture what we have
long since lost.
And all of us rejoice in the fullness
of the blessing of the gospel.
Let us pray.
Oh, God, our Heavenly Father, we bless thee
with all our hearts, that thou art so
full of grace and of compassion.
We are the recipients of so many favors,
favors brought for us with precious blood.
And yet, our Father, it is so true
of us that in some measure or other
we have the fine things so dearly purchased.
We have allowed the evil things of this
world to steal our heart's affection.
Oh, help us now to set our affection
on things above.
Lord God Almighty, pursue thy sanctifying ministry within
our every heart and life.
Continue the work that thou hast begun, and
grant that we may adorn the doctrine of
Christ with a life that is lived in
the fullness of the provision of thy grace.
Till that end, may the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God
our Father and the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit remain with us all, now and always.
Amen.