Loving Community (Part 2 of 3)

Jesus had a lot of good things to say about the Ephesian church. They were committed to the truth of the gospel. They steadfastly served God in spite of their suffering.

So why were they still in danger of going spiritually bankrupt? That's the question Alistair Begg explores today on Truth for Life. He's teaching from chapter 2 of the book of Revelation.

We're in verses 1 through 7. Now, let me just say a word of encouragement and exhortation to us in relationship to these things. How tough are you as a church?

How strong and steadfast and persevering? And how about the men? Because I'm pretty sure the women are fairly tough and strong and persevering. Why is the average teenage boy so turned off Christianity? In many cases, the answer lies in the absence of role models that have combined spiritual conviction, manly commitments, and a sense of living in a real world with a real love for Christ that gains his commendation as he looks upon the community. Well, he comes to urge us to step up, gentlemen, in the home and in the church and in the community. And it's tough, but so what? Your son comes home from his first game of rugby and he's crying.

What's wrong, Tom? Well, they threw me on the ground. Yeah. They took the ball away when I had it. Yeah. I don't like that.

Well, shut up, Tom. That's rugby. Do you want to play rugby or do you want to play tiddly wings?

If you want to play tiddly wings, we can look after you. But if you want to play rugby, that's what happens. Now I say that you can tell. I just look like a rugby player.

Don't I? When I left Glasgow, the second city of the British empire, and went and went to Ilkley Yorkshire. Hey, hey, hey, hey old lads. I discovered there to my great concern that there wasn't any commitment to football in the school. And so they endeavored to make me a rugby player.

They put me out on the wing as far away from the action as possible. I think there were some days when I'm not sure that I ever touched the ball at all because our team was so poor that the ball never made it that far out on the line. But eventually because I could kick, they made me the fullback. And I still recall the sense of absolute terror in waiting for the ball kicked from the opposing team to come to me, hoping desperately that the law of gravity would bring it down and into my arms before these horrible boys that were running at me would reach me.

And I think quite honestly to my shame there were occasions when I saw them and I saw the ball and I just moved off to one side. I can only recall one thing being said to me at halftime when the deputy rector, Mr. Whittaker, who was looking after the team at that point, gathered us all around and had a word for this one and that one. I'll never forget the look in his eyes. He couldn't conceal the sense of disappointment, almost disgust as he looked at me. And he said to me, look at you, Begg.

You've been out there for 40 minutes and you haven't even got your knees brown. And my shorts were immaculate. My shirt was beautiful. My hair was just nice. I was completely useless.

He looks down on the Ephesian church. He says, I commend you, folks. You're giving yourselves to the task.

You're tough. And thirdly, I want to commend you for the fact, I want to praise you for the fact that you're committed to the truth. They weren't susceptible to every passing wind of doctrine.

They were prepared to test those who came with claims, lest their claims prove to be spurious, as in some cases they did. You have checked these people out, he says in verse 2, and you have found them to be false. And down in verse 6, I'm able to praise you for this, that you hate the practices of the Nicolaitans.

That's good, he says, because I also hate the practice of the Nicolaitans. Now we don't know anything about these people beyond what is actually given to us here in Revelation, apart from external sources to Scripture that can fill in a little bit of the blanks. But they were clearly a heretical group. Their views were so close to orthodoxy that it made it difficult to detect.

One needed to be discerning. They were probably akin in their teaching to what we'll see later. That was the teaching of Balaam and the teaching of Jezebel. Indeed, the Nicolaitans and those who follow the teaching of Baal and Jezebel may actually be descriptive of one kind of three-headed monster of immorality and idolatry. And their immoral deeds and the impurity of so much that marked them probably related to the kind of gnostic notions which sought to divorce spiritual life and compact it and isolate it from the functions of the physicality of man, thereby allowing people to perversely convince themselves that they could do certain things with their bodies while at the same time maintaining the purity of their spiritual life. So they were able then to offer to men and women, as contemporary cults so often are able to do, the idea of religious experiences that in no way impinge upon their self-indulgent lifestyles, which of course is a powerful combination. You mean I can do anything I want and still have an intimate awareness of God? Yes.

Well, sign me up for that. And Jesus says, I hate the practices or the deeds of the Nicolaitans, and I know you also hate them. There are issues before us in the contemporary church in the West today, where if we have enough courage and conviction, we must be prepared to say, I hate these practices, and I know that Jesus does too.

I don't know how it is in the UK. I'm divorced from the ongoing development of things. But the church in America, if it loses its grasp more significantly than it already has, there is more than an even possibility that it will lose its ability to speak with clarity and power and conviction to the contemporary culture in the matter of human sexuality. First of all, as a result of total confusion and disobedience concerning the uniqueness of man and woman within the home, then in terms of that function within the church, and most pressingly in the steamroller drive, to include the perversity of homosexual practice within the framework of an acceptable Christian community.

The same loving Lord Jesus says, I hate the practice of these Nicolaitans, and I have a word of commendation for you too, because you're prepared to acknowledge that you do also. That's the first main heading, and you should know for your encouragement that I always spend longer there than I ever do on the remainder. So far, so good. It feels a little bit like when you're sitting in a room, you've just written a paper for your history tutor or your English tutor, and it's gone too well for too long, and you know that there's a but coming somewhere. Well, I think you were very good in the opening section, and in the middle you mentioned one or two things, and I see that you've paid good attention to the contrast with the such and such, and you just know from the tone of voice that they are about to drop the rest of it on you, and the rest, it might be fairly painful.

Well, that's exactly what happens here. Notice verse 4, it begins, Yet you are the folks who are to be commended for your commitment to the truth. You're to be commended for being tough. You are to be commended for fulfilling the task. But let me move now from the praise that he offers to the problem that he confronts. And it is summarized in just a phrase. Notice, I hold this against you. You have forsaken your first love. Here is the Achilles' heel for this task-oriented, tough-minded, truth-telling fellowship. Says Mounts, Every virtue carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. We noted yesterday that the church, the measure of a church, isn't to be found in its programs or its achievements, its reputation, or even in its doctrinal orthodoxy, but in its spiritual life.

Now, this morning we may simply substitute the word life with the word love, and say the same thing, that the test of a church is ultimately not in any of those things, but it is found in its love. If you, for example, took your paper and started on the right-hand side of the paper, moving back towards the left, just writing zeros. Put a zero and a zero and a zero and a zero and a zero. You put ten zeros there, and what do you have? Zero.

Put a one in front of it and all the other zeros change. So when you take the task and the toughness and the truth and everything else that may be commendatory concerning a fellowship, such as an emphasis, it all ultimately amounts to zero without the one of love placed strategically at the head of the list. Not only is Christ looking down upon that which is a living community, but he is looking down on that which must be a loving community.

Now, you can see how this happens, and some of us come from fellowships that tend in this direction. In seeking to ensure that the Ephesian Christians excluded those who were impostors, they may well have created amongst themselves a climate of suspicion that was not conducive to a sense of brotherly love. They were so on the lookout for the mistaken individuals, the mistaken men and women, that they had somehow in the process rooted out others who were just fledgling in their faith and who had genuine questions and concerns and who were still bringing with them the background of the mud that was still on the boots, if you like, of their newfound Christian experience, perhaps in the process of interviewing them for membership. And because they couldn't squeeze out of them the right kind of cliched expression and articulation of evangelical and conservative faith, they erred on the side of becoming cold and metallic and refrigerated and formalized, all because of a realistic and necessary commitment to truth. But what they had lost sight of was the fact that unless love envelops all of this and impinges upon all of this, then the same warning that is issued here needs to be issued in every location where this becomes a tendency. Beasley Murray, commentating on this, says, If the price paid by the Ephesians for the preservation of true Christianity was the loss of love, the price was too high, for Christianity without love is a perverted faith.

J. B. Phillips paraphrases this, You do not love as you did at the first. You do not love as you did at the first. It's a tragic thing to see, isn't it, in a marriage where people have grown cold to one another.

They're still together, but they're living singles. There's a formality to it. You can see it in their eyes.

You understand it in the way they express themselves to one another. There's no fresh discoveries. There's no vibrancy about it. It's just ho-hum.

It's the same old jazz. It's pretty hopeless. Many times it is sustained simply by fear rather than by any genuine sense of undying affection. Soon in Florida, you're living amongst the newlywed and the nearly dead. And there is nothing gives me a greater thrill than seeing these ancient couples—and I use the word ancient guardedly because I'm moving fast in that direction myself, I understand—but seeing these ancient couples walking in the morning sun, still holding hands with each other. Now admittedly, in some cases, it's to prevent each other falling down.

But they could do that with a stick, you know. And my only assumption is that it is an expression still of a love that exists between them. You see, Christianity is about the expulsive power of a new affection, the falling in love with Christ, the sense of the immensity of his pursuing, energizing grace, that I found a friend, oh, such a friend. He loved me ere I knew him, and he drew me with the cords of love, and thus he bound me to him and round my heart so closely twined these ties that naught can sever, for I am his and he is mine, forever and forever.

But when that begins to go, then we'll look a lot like this church. Well, was it their love for Christ you seem to be suggesting that? Or was it their love for each other? Or was it their love for those who were the unbelieving community around them?

I don't think we have to choose between them. I think Philip's paraphrase is quite careful. You're not loving the way you did at the beginning. From the heights of their ardent devotion to Jesus, they'd fallen into the plains of mediocrity, and the plain was very full of tents. This picture, of course, runs throughout the whole of the Old Testament, God speaking of his people in terms of the marriage covenant. Jeremiah 2, I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness in a land not sown. I remember that, he says, but look at what I have now.

You do not love as you loved at the first, in terms of their love for one another. When love for Christ is not what it should be, then our love for each other will be sadly affected. If you're a miserable customer in your congregation, I can tell you that you do not love Jesus as you once did, or as you ought.

If you're a miserable soul in the community, you're just a miserable soul. Bill Gaither wrote this song, I'm so glad that you're part of the family of God. You now sing it, looking round on your congregation, I'm surprised that you're part of the family of God.

You sing the chorus as you go home in the car. Everybody should know. Everybody should know. I have such a critical spirit that everybody should know. What happened to you, ma'am? What happened to you, sir? You do not love the way you once did.

Your eyes are dry. Your prayers are cold. Doesn't it creep upon us so easily? When we love God, we keep his commandments. For this is love for God, John tells us, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. Therefore, failure to love God will mean disobedience. The diminution of my love for Jesus will be directly related to disobedience in my life, and disobedient Christians are not good people to plan on spending much time with. You do not want to commit yourself in friendship to a disobedient boy, young lady.

I don't care what he says about your eyes. If he is disobedient to Christ, he will sour whatever love you have for Jesus. And the same is true in reverse. And also, what about love for the unbeliever? Presumably, in Ephesus, their evangelistic zeal which had made it the most significant church in the first century had begun to dissipate. Somehow or another, their words and their actions were no longer conveying the love of the Lord Jesus. Their borders were growing tighter. Their actions were smacking more of religious formalism.

They were going through the routines. They still held onto it, but they didn't have that compassionate interest in the non-Christian world. I don't know why my sense of application is going in this direction this morning, but I'll just stay with it. Listen to the student community and to the young people. Listen. I have grown weary listening to a young man or a young woman tell me again and again how, as a result of disobedience to Christ, they got involved with a non-Christian person to whom they took a shine. The non-Christian person was a very nice person and upright and so on. It's the same story.

You hear it a million times. They never, ever told their unbelieving friend that they had an undying devotion to Jesus because, in fact, they had been disobedient, and therefore they had no undying devotion to Jesus. And when all of the thing had fallen apart and disintegrated, they wept.

And what had happened? Well, they had not loved Jesus as they loved at the first. And the draining away of love expressed itself in disobedience.

A backslidden condition made it easy for them to hang with the wrong crowd. A loss of conviction about the absolute necessity of the curbs that are provided in the Word of God to keep us on track and on the straight and narrow so that we don't end up in Douters Castle or in Bypath Meadow. We don't end up listening to Timorous and Mistrust. We don't listen to formalist and hypocrisy. We stay on track.

Unfortunately, we got way off in all of that. And some of you are off this morning. You may have come out to this Word Alive week and you said, maybe there'll be a word for me somewhere along the line. It's the absence of brotherly love. Because if you have a non-Christian friend and you have an undying devotion to Jesus, and you believe that your non-Christian friend stands between time and eternity, then presumably your undying devotion to Jesus is going to convey itself to this new non-Christian friend that you've made. Jesus says, you were much better at this Ephesus than you are. Now there's a discordant sound among you.

There's a lot of resounding gongs, clanging symbols. It's replaced the harmony of hearts entwined with devotion to the Lord Jesus. If the problem in Laodicea was that of spiritual complacency, then the problem here in Ephesus is that they're staring in the face, spiritual bankruptcy. Christianity without love is a perverted faith. You're listening to Truth for Life. Alistair Begg is explaining why true faith involves love for Christ, love for one another, and love for the unbelieving community. You often hear me talk about our mission here at Truth for Life. Our goal is to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance. We do this knowing there are three outcomes that will result as God's Word is taught. First, unbelievers will become followers of Jesus. Second, those who already believe will have a better understanding of Scripture.

They'll be more established in their faith. And third, pastors and church members will be encouraged to rely solely on the Bible as the centerpiece for their worship and the source of their fellowship. We also take great care to select biblically-sound books on a wide variety of topics. These books are chosen to help you grow in your faith. We're recommending today a book titled Women and God, Hard Questions, Beautiful Truth. The author of the book looks to Scripture to explore why God made women the way He did. What is His plan for a woman's role? Why is it different from the role He gave to men?

How should we honor these unique differences in a world that often blurs them together? We have just a few days left for you to request your copy of Women and God. It's available when you give to support the teaching you here on this program. Just click on the picture of the book in the app or visit truthforlife.org slash donate. And if you request Women and God with a donation and would like to purchase additional copies to share with others, they're always available in our online store and they're available to purchase at cost. Our books are available while supplies last, so if you'd like to purchase additional books, it's best to do so while the book is being offered.

Popular titles often sell out quickly. To find out what's currently available, go to truthforlife.org slash store. I'm Bob Lapine. We're glad you joined us today. Hope you have a wonderful weekend and can worship together with your local church. Be sure to listen Monday when we'll learn how to restore a dwindling church by doing the basics well most of the time. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.