Welcome to the Kerwin Baptist Church broadcast today. God told him to. God said, you record this. So this is for our benefit. Each church is given a unique description, a command, and a promise.
Let me say that again. As we go through this, there's a little bit of groundwork today, but not much. As we go through this over the next few Sundays, that every one of them, every church that is mentioned, God gives a description, not only of the church, but He gives a brief new description of Himself. Then He gives every one of these churches a command, and then He gives every one of these churches a promise. Now, I like to kind of build up to the end, but we're really starting as good as it gets today, to be honest with you, because at the very end of this church at Ephesus is just some stuff, I'm gonna be honest with you, I did not know in the Bible. And it led me on, I love a biblical goose chase. That's what I call it. And when I found out some of the things I found out, I had to call some pastor friends of mine that are great on prophecy and great on Old Testament history and whatever, and I had to verify, and it just became exciting for me.
So I want you to just sit tight. I think it'll be well worth your time here this morning. Six of the churches are given specific praise, one is not. Five of the churches are given direct criticism, two are not. Chapter two is four of the churches, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, and Thyatira. So let's begin as we said that every one of these begins first with a description.
So first this morning is the description. First he says the church of Ephesus. The city of Ephesus was an important seaport along the Aegean coast. Now of the seven churches that Jesus addresses in these two, chapters two and three, Ephesus was the closest church to the island of Patmos, and that is where John was exiled, and that's where God gave John these messages for these churches. So John is on the island of Patmos.
God gives him these messages. He said write these letters to these churches, and Ephesus was the closest church. Now the apostle Paul had spent three years at Ephesus, and this was about 43 years after Paul was there that John writes this letter to the church at Ephesus. Now during Paul's ministry at Ephesus, the Word of God began from Ephesus to spread throughout Asia. So the church at Ephesus was a well-known church. It was a stable church.
It had been around a little bit, a little bit of time. And tradition places John, who is writing this, as the pastor of Ephesus until he was banned to the isle of Patmos for preaching God's Word. So John pastored Ephesus. John's now on an island, and God gives him a message to send back to the very church that he pastored. This is the same Ephesian church where Paul wrote the book of the Bible that we know as Ephesians. He was writing to this church. So there's a description of Ephesus. Second, he puts the angel of the church.
Notice this description. Unto the angel of the church. That's me. Just want you to know that. My wife said, I'm an angel. I'm always up in the air harping.
But anyway, Dan Hartree senior joke there. I just had to tell that real quick. The description here unto the angel of the church, it describes here in verse one, Jesus as holding the angels of the seven churches in his right hand. This word angel in the Greek literally translates out as messenger. So Jesus is the head of the church, but he is writing to the pastors of the church. Then he says this golden candlestick. So the seven stars are the churches. And then he says the seven golden candlesticks.
This is also referring to the seven churches. And the Bible says in this verse that Jesus says that God is walking around and in the midst of these seven golden candlesticks. Now, what do candlesticks hold?
They hold candles, but what do candles give off? Light. So we as churches are to be light to this world. But what's interesting here is that we're told that God moves amongst and in the midst of His churches. Let me just remind you in case you have forgotten, God is here today. He's not just here because He came inside of you if you've been saved. He's not just here because He came inside of me, He's here because we're His church. And He moves among us, the Bible says.
He kind of walks right by you as you're sitting in your seat. That'll keep you from falling asleep, won't it? If I was God, I would just poke somebody when they're sleeping. Thank God I'm not God, right? So we see the description.
Just giving you a little background here. Notice second we see the commendation. Now God starts off with the positive here.
And this church had a lot of positives. Look at verse two. He says, I know thy works and thy labor and thy patience and how thou canst not bear them which are evil and now thou hast tried them which say they are apostles and are not and has found them liars. Notice first, He commends them for a diligent work. He said, I know thy works and thy labor. Works are one thing. Labor is, it means that the works aren't easy. It means this, He says, I see that you not only have labored but you've been diligent about it. It hasn't been easy. And may I say that building a church and, and growing a church and having the kind of church that God wants is not easy. It takes work and it takes labor. And God here says, listen, I've seen it.
I appreciate the diligent work that you've done. Notice secondly, He commends them for patience and suffering. He says thy patience and how thou canst not bear them which are evil. The church of Ephesus existed in the middle of a mixture of Greek and oriental cultures. This included a variety of false religions. The worship of the fertility goddess Diana was rampant in Ephesus and the temple which they built to adore her was considered one of the seven wonders of the world. Now I struggle sometimes as a pastor, I look at other buildings and I think, man, wouldn't it be nice if we at Kerwin had that kind of building? Well, the false religion that the church of Ephesus was fighting, the building they used was one of the seven wonders of the world.
So that's competition that you'll never quite reach to. But it reminds me of the worship to the goddess Diana. They had a temple that was one of the seven wonders of the world and the church at Ephesus knowing good Bible believing churches probably didn't have the nicest facility, struggling to make payments and pay the bills every week.
But it reminds me that you know what? The size of your building, the look of your building, the general mass of your property doesn't mean it's a good church. So Kerwin Baptist Church, let me just say this. We are in the midst of transition and we're going to be in two weeks painting this whole thing and then in July we're dropping all this new sound equipment in here because it's just the largest building on our property.
And who knows where we'll go, what we'll do, how we'll build a building, who knows what. But I'm going to tell you something, it would be a shame for Kerwin Baptist Church to end up getting a nice building and not be a good church. He said you've been patient in suffering. The Ephesian church stood its ground as it was made fun of and ridiculed and it wasn't what was popular and it wasn't what was in anymore. It wasn't the new cool religion. But they had stayed faithful and they had continued, they were patient in their suffering.
I hope that we will be. Notice thirdly, he commends them for exposing false teachers. Look at verse two, thou hast tried them which say they are apostles and are not and hast found them liars.
Also look at verse six, but this thou hast that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, God says, which I also hate. Now this church didn't tolerate evildoers and the love of truth caused this church to test those who professed to be apostles and concluded that they were self-professed apostles but not God-called apostles. So false teachers were infiltrating this church, trying to. But the church of Ephesus wouldn't let it happen. In fact, we find out that every church in this chapter, false teachers were trying to infiltrate it. In Kerwin Baptist Church, false teachers will always try to infiltrate this church. And it's not always, it's not gonna be people we bring up here in the pulpit.
It's gonna be what you listen to during the week. Be careful the sources you listen to. Be careful the sources you read.
I don't care how trendy it is and oh, it had this one chapter that was great. Yeah, that's fine, but that's how false doctrine slips in. If we're not careful about what we listen to and what we adhere to. Notice, fourthly, he commends them for carrying the burden. Look at verse three, he says, thou hast borne and hast patience. That word, borne, means to carry.
It's like, it's like getting down and getting a large weight and picking it up and then slowly just having to walk with it. He says you've borne the burden. There are times where ministry and church and even the Christian walk can feel like you're just grabbing weight and trying, you're trying your hardest, you're working hard, doesn't seem like you're getting very far, and you're just carrying this burden.
He commends them for that. Hey, you've stayed faithful, even when it got heavy. So he says here you've been faithful even when things got hard. You've got, you were faithful even when false teachers came, now you're faithful even when things get heavy. There are some times that we're so busy here, we have so many things going, it is hard ministering. But there are other times, it's not that there's so many things, it's that the things that are on us are heavy.
I've had weeks where I've had four or five funerals in a week. That's emotional, it's heavy. You love these people. Notice next he commends them for their steadfast endurance. Look at verse 3, he says, for my name's sake, has labored and has not fainted. He compliments the Ephesian believers for their steadfast endurance. Oh, if Kerwin Baptist Church would be steadfast in our endurance. A lot of good things, good church. Let's be honest, some of the things we've mentioned you might not be able to say about very many churches. And it reminds me that God notices what you do. God keeps track of what a church does right and when people are working hard and trying and we're not perfect but it shows that God is aware and God appreciates and God commends and He knows.
But now we see the accusation. Verse 4 he says, nevertheless, all these good things you've done have got somewhat against Thee because Thou hast left Thy first love. Somehow the church at Ephesus and all the good things they had done, they had abandoned the love that characterized that church at the beginning. You say, what do you mean, the love for people? Well, yeah, the love for people but it's the love for God.
Can I say something? You can't love people like you should until you love God like you should. A church that loves people, you'll hear that, a church that loves people, that's only because it's a church that really loves God.
They had abandoned that. Listen to me, what remained was devotion to the truth but not devotion to the Lord. Are you here on Sunday mornings because you're devoted to do what you know you have to do or are you here because you love the Lord?
It's a good minute. Now either way, you ought to be here. But, why are you here? I appreciate we have people here that are, we have ladies that help in the nursery and they give up their time in here. Maybe they don't want to hear me preach, maybe that's like I volunteer for every nursery. I don't know what goes on, I don't know.
But we have ladies that volunteer and help and people that work with the children's ministries and serve and our children's programs on Wednesday, all these different things. But why do you do that? Or do you do that because it makes you feel better? Do you do that because it gives you something to do?
Or are you doing that deep down because you just really love the Lord? Can I ask you something, what would a marriage be like if a wife performed all the duties of a wife but didn't have genuine love for her husband? What would a marriage be like if a husband continued to work to provide an income for his family and kept on performing the usual household duties that fall to a husband but he no longer really loved his wife? It would produce a cold, sterile relationship. On the other hand, when those duties are performed out of love for one's spouse, it gives meaning and it gives warmth and it gives a bonding to a relationship. The Ephesian church's love for Jesus had grown cold, and what it left was slavish obedience to rules and doctrines.
It was a cold, sterile relationship. What needed to be done kept being done. But there was no real love communicated between them and God. Sound doctrine and service are important but they should be grounded in a deep love for Jesus. It's a good question for us today.
I guess I probably am doing a whole series on these churches because this week God took me back to Revelation chapter 2. Why are you doing what you do, Daniel? Why do you get up?
Why do you go? Why do you do what you do? Are you doing because Kerwin expects it of you? Are you doing it because your mom and dad taught you that you got a job, you do it right? Are you doing it because you're trying to make sure you don't mess up all that Brother Joe built for 50 years? Are you doing it so that you can please the people here at Kerwin? Are you doing it so that maybe you could be around some preachers one day and they think, boy, that church has really grown.
Boy, you must really know a lot about church growth. Why do you do what you do? And all of us cannot even trust our own heart as a motive for things sometimes. Is your love, is your heart still in it?
I'm asking — some of you have been here for more years than I've been alive. But is your heart in it? Have you left your first love? That first love is the first time you realized that God loved you, that God died for you, that He paid the sacrifice for you.
He loved you. We love Him because He first loved us. And that love that we first felt when we heard the truth and realized the Gospel, that love is the love that we cannot lose and we cannot leave.
I don't care how many good things a church does. If it's not being done out of love, God sees a problem. So God gives, after the — what we would call the accusation, He gives a recommendation. This is what He says, verse five.
Number one, He says, remember. He says, remember therefore from whence thou art fallen. He calls upon the church of Ephesus to remember the love that it used to have. I'm calling on you today for you to remember the love you used to have for the Lord. Every teenager here, you ought to look — you ought to think back to the — where you were the closest to the Lord in your life and see where you are right now and how far away are we all from that, where you just at the drop of a hat. You're ready to praise God at the drop of a hat. You're ready to hear God's Word preached at the drop of a hat. You're ready to hit an altar because you're in love with the Lord so much. I'm calling on every person here to look back to where you were the most in love with God. And I don't mean where you did the most or where you accomplished the most, I mean where you were the most in love with God. You'll never get back there until you remember it. Just like a marriage, you've got to go back and remember when you were in love.
What brought that love in the first place? The New Testament places a high priority on loving God. Jesus taught that our love for Him must exceed our love for our closest relatives.
Did you know that? The Bible says that we should love God even more than we love our closest relatives. We should even be willing to forsake father and mother and husband or wife because we love God so much. Listen to this, Paul indicates that our love for God should exceed our love for our spouse.
What? Paul says we ought to love God more than we love our husband or our wife. And by the way, I agree with that. I'm not saying I'm always good at that, but I agree with that because I will tell you this, if I can love God, then I can love my wife. 1 Corinthians 13 verse 3, he declared that even voluntarily dying as a martyr amounts to nothing if love is absent.
Did you hear that? 1 Corinthians 13, we're told that you can even die a martyr's death, but if it's not done out of love, it's done out of duty or obligation. But it's not done out of love, it means nothing to God.
This is how important love is to God. Everything in our life should be motivated by our love for Him, not our duty to people. He says remember, second he says, repent. He says remember therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent. Jesus commands this church to repent, and I am saying this, nothing will change in our life, in my life, or your life until we're ready to repent. Until, what do you say, well preacher, what is repentance? Repentance is turning from ourselves and turning to God. The Ephesian believers needed to reverse their spiritual decline, and it wouldn't happen until they were willing to humble themselves and admit it and repent. You know why a lot of people don't repent? Because to repent means you have to admit, and they are still in denial. He said remember, repent, then he said, return.
Notice what he says in verse 5, do the first works. Go back to doing what you did. This marriage has gotten cold, let me tell you that. What did you do dating? Did you spend time dating? Did you do little things when you dated? Did you say little things, do little things, thoughtful things?
You know, made sure you spent time together, made it a priority, all these different things. Well as all that stuff has fallen off, and the love is not there anymore, the only way you'll ever get it back is to return to the first works. And that's what Jesus says here, return, do the first works. Look at this little warning here, he says or else I will come unto thee quickly and will remove thy candlestick out of this place. They had worked, look at me, they had worked so hard to keep the candlestick in place, but they hadn't done it for love, they had done it out of obligation, they had done it out of duty. Listen to this, God said I'd rather the candlestick not be there if it's only going to be there out of duty.
He says the only way I want a candlestick there shining my light is if that candlestick loves me. Then we see the proclamation. Look at verse seven. First we see the response, he that hath an ear.
This is what he's going to say to every church. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto me. You and I have a responsibility to respond, to listen and not just to listen but to hear. Hey, every Sunday morning a lot of you are listening but only a few are actually hearing. I've seen people listen while they sleep.
Their eyes are even open, but they're gone. He says if you have an ear, listen and hear what the Spirit has to say. Okay, second he says there's a reward. If you will return, if you'll go back. I said preacher it's hard to go back.
Yeah, I know. Remember when you were dating? You showed up at the house for a date.
I mean I remember, I remember my first date with my wife. We actually this week went and ate at the restaurant when we had our first date. It was Kanpai Japanese Steakhouse in Winston-Salem. Probably the worst Japanese steakhouse now in our area. You know what the word Kanpai means in Japanese?
It means hello. So I took her there. Anyway, so we went on our first date. I remember when I got to our house, got out of the house, went up, met the family. They were very mean to me, very rude. If I'm lying, I'm dying.
The worst one was her. The greatest news that anyone can receive is the news of the free gift of salvation found in Jesus Christ. It is our desire for you to know him personally.
Would you take a moment to hear this today? Every man is born with a sin nature. Romans 3 23 says for all of sin and come short of the glory of God.
No matter how hard we try, we're not good enough to obtain God's glory or to get to heaven. Because of that, sin carries the penalty of death. Romans 6 23 says for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. The wages of our sin or the payment of our sin only equals death and separation from God. But it's only through God's gift of salvation through Jesus Christ that we can accept him as our Savior.
Jesus Christ paid for your sin debt. The Bible says in Romans 5 8, but God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. All you have to do is receive Christ by faith as your Savior. Romans 10 9 says that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Verse 13 continues for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It's as simple as admitting that you're a sinner believing that Jesus is the only way and calling upon his name. The Bible says whosoever, that's anyone, can call upon the name of the Lord to be saved. Have you accepted Christ as your personal Savior? There is no greater day than today to take care of this. Would you accept Christ as your Savior? If you have any questions, please give us a call at 336-993-5192 or visit our website at carwinbaptistchurch.com or visit us at person at one of our three service times. We hope you have a great rest of your day. God bless you.
