Grace Thoughts

Announcer: Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Tim Kelley: You've forgotten loving one another. You've forgotten loving the rest of the church. You've forgotten showing that love to the world so they can see who I am. And that's the one thing that I have with you, and for that you have to, if I can say this, repent. John's words, not mine.

So he says he holds, in verses one through three, I just want to pick out a few nuggets from here. The words of Him who holds the seven stars, that's representing the seven churches. And that word "holds" is an interesting word. It's in a genitive accusative, which is very unusual here. In other words, he's saying Jesus Christ holds the entire universal church within His hands and under His control. This is a corporate local church; the universal church is Christians across the globe. In other words, He is in absolute control and understands everything precisely happening universally in the world and corporately and locally in every local church. He's aware of it.

Then he says "work." I know your work, your toilsome labor. Your toil means to drain one of their strength. Your patience, the ability to withstand under pressure. And there's a great compliment. But I have this one thing: they lost their first love. If you go to Ephesus today, Ephesus is no longer a city there; there's a city that they would equate with it. I call it, if I can say it right, Ayasuluk is the city, and it comes from two Greek words, Hagios Theologos, which is holy theology or Saint Theologian, and it's referring to the Apostle John.

The church in Ephesus has long been forgotten, but the man that brought the Spirit of God there is still remembered to this day. He's the last remnant, really, of that day when the church in Acts chapter 20 and the subsequent years after, where they loved right and they were a testimony to a world in a very, very, very dark world. Now, how do you lose your first love? That's my main point. How does that happen? That's probably more messages than just the seven or eight minutes we're going to spend on it here today. But I have a few things here. I have six things.

We lose our first love when we replace a kingdom mindset with religious tradition and personal preference, sort of what happened here in Ephesus. They never saw the real kingdom of God anymore as a scope; they saw their own piece of the kingdom and they protected their own piece of the kingdom. Their desires became bigger than kingdom desires. So when you replace a kingdom mindset with my traditions or my preferences, I can lose my first love.

In other words, God may be calling me and leading me over here and guiding me over here, but I'm saying, "No, God, no, this is what I want and this is what I like and this is my preference over here." And God says, "I know that is, but I'm asking you, I'm trying to lead you over here because this is where you'll be my greatest witness and this is where you'll be the greatest effectiveness in the kingdom."

And Jesus hit this throughout the New Testament, especially in Matthew chapter 23 when He went after the Pharisees and He said, "Look, your tradition has strangled men." The doctrinal, theologically correct, morally perfect Pharisees. Jesus called them dead men's bones and whitened sepulchers because they missed the Messiah. The one they defended, the one they're going to crucify, the actual Messiah in the name of the Messiah. "We're going to crucify you in the name of the Messiah." "I am the Messiah." But the Messiah didn't fit their package. He didn't fit their description. He wasn't what they were expecting. He rattled their cage. He changed the rules. He exposed the hypocrisy of their hearts.

So the very reason why they served Him in the first place seemed to disappear. We can lose our first love when we lose our passion and pursuit for God's presence. I talked about this a little this Sunday morning. When my faith has become mechanical more than personal, when I don't clamor after God and the presence of God.

For me in my own life, I know when I get up early in the mornings, and sometimes I read the scriptures every day and I pray every day, but I find myself maybe after one or two or three days later and I really haven't sensed the presence of God like I would like. I'll get on my knees and I won't get off it, and I will sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and I'll praise Him and I'll thank Him for things until I really sense His presence because I don't want to go away without His presence. If I lose His presence in the course of my day, my day gets arduous and hard.

So we know when we lose our first love when we lose our passion for the pursuit and the presence of God. We don't even think really. When I talk about the presence of God, it's a foreign concept. It's nothing that I have even ever tasted or partook of. We lose our first love when we become self-focused and not mission-focused. I love missions because missions is the most selfless thing you could have. It takes the focus off us and sees the whole world.

One of the great privileges I've had, and there are people here—Pastor Brian, Pastor Lewis—so many have traveled around the world. At one time being in Budapest, in fact, Rob was with me, we were there and they were singing, I'll never forget it, they were singing "The Old Rugged Cross" in Russian. And I just never forget the moment of seeing—here's a song I've sung for so many years—and then to hear it sung in a foreign language with this passion and love and hands raised and people's eyes closed and just worshipping the Lord in a language I didn't understand.

I heard it in English, the words were in Russian. It was like three languages there. But the tune was still the same and the passion was still the same. See, I don't ever want to lose my mission focus. If I lose my mission focus, I begin understanding that this gospel goes much further than my circle right here. I begin to lose my first love.

I can lose my first love, number four, when I become overwhelmed with a wound or a loss. When something tragic happens in your life, or unfulfilled dreams or a pursuit that doesn't come to pass like I hoped it would, it's easy to lose your first love. Maybe it's a business that you're building and it gets so overwhelming and so busy that it takes your time up and takes your attention, and you see everything as a business opportunity and not a ministry opportunity.

We could be losing our first love. When we lose our first love is when you begin to subtly begin to make the holy into something common. Gathering here tonight is holy. Inside of you is the Spirit of the living God in every Christian, and the gathering of the saints is a sacred moment. In Malachi 3:16, it says every time we gather together and every time we speak to one another, it's recorded in heaven.

We may not think it's that sacred; it might just be another Wednesday night or Sunday morning or whatever it is that we're doing, but God sees it as sacred. When the hymns are played and the music is worshipped, and people are worshipping, when we give as part of our worship, it's sacred. And lastly, we lose our first love when the gospel stops being glorious to me. When all of a sudden the wonder of it disappears. Paul never lost his wonder. He said, "Oh, it's so great a salvation. Oh, it's a glorious gospel. The grace which has appeared to all men."

He's never lost the wonder of the gospel of Jesus Christ that was revealed to him. When we stop being blown away by the grace of God and the mercy of God and the forgiveness of God, when those things become normal to us and not supernatural, especially over a long period of time, we may have lost our first love.

Guard your first love. When you see the temperature of your love for God and the temperature of your love for His people get cooler, there might be an issue in your heart. Not theirs, in yours. If there's aught against you and another believer, right or wrong, there's an issue in your heart. If there's an issue in your heart towards the people of God and loving the people of God and loving the things of God, you might have a case of Ephesus disease.

How do you fix that? It's not that hard, really. You just get on your knees and you repent, just like he said to the Ephesian church. Say, "God, I've got used to it. I've grown familiar with it. I've become religious, I've become opinionated, I've become a professional Christian. I'm self-based, not mission-based. I don't even think about the world, the church around the world, and I repent. Create in me a clean heart and do a new work in me." It's that easy and it's that quick.

Then we have this church called Smyrna. It's where you get the old herb myrrh from. To the angel of the church in Smyrna write: "The words of the First and the Last, who died and came to life. I know your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich. And the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are of a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you in prison that you may be tested for 10 days; you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. He that has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death."

One of the churches out of two that actually pleased God. There was nothing wrong here; God didn't bring out one fault. Today there's still a city called Smyrna, about a quarter of a million people, 35 miles north of Ephesus. Great harbor, great wealth, commerce. Had a golden street with different temples in there, huge theater, library, stadium. Homer was born there, I'm trying to remember some of the things. And this, like Ephesus, was an Assize city. It was free from the Roman government. But they had two big challenges facing this church. Number one was Caesar worship.

Promoted to keep peace, everyone worshipped Caesar. We just worship Caesar, then we don't have any religious problems, do we? That was the Roman mentality. We're just going to worship Caesar. The Jews won't worship their God, the Christians won't worship their God, and whatever other religions of the day. If we all worship Caesar, we just don't have to deal with the religions thing, that's all. So it was against the law and you know the many persecutions, the 10 major persecutions that faced the church. There was Caesar worship, made to bow down to Caesar. And this city, one of the spearheads, one of the capitals of people that started it because they were Christians and because they would not worship Caesar and bow down to Caesar, that brought tremendous persecution into their church.

But not only did they get it from the Roman government, they got it from the Jews. The Jews came in and said they're the Christian cult and they broke the law. So the Jews would make up trumped-up charges against them and attack the church. So they're getting it from the government and they're getting it from the Jews. They were undergoing tremendous local persecution. Persecution's never stopped. We don't hear about it much, but it's really been going on since the cross to present. People dying for their faith and people being put in prison for their faith, people facing political and social persecution has never really ceased in 2,000 years.

We've been somewhat inoculated by it in this generation and our country, but really if you go back even hundreds of years ago, it was happening all over the world. I think there's been a dramatic increase in the last 25, 30 years, but it's never stopped. But just as persecution has never stopped, this is important: persecution has never stopped the church. In fact, just the opposite. It seems like the persecuted church is the most effective church that there is. There's a toughness in them, a spiritual focus in the persecuted church where they know the cost of what it is to name the name of Jesus.

In our culture, we can get born again and we can be saved in a church service like this. There is no really downside to that. But in other cultures in our world—present-day cultures—and you see it on the news if you look, you'll find that if people claim the name of Christ, their family rejects them, their father wants to do honor killings and kill them, and they have to leave their country and leave their friends because of other religions. There's a price, a huge price.