When Jesus Observes Our Love

Ancient Ephesus was a seaport in what is now modern Turkey. Known for a great temple to the pagan goddess called Artemis, Ephesus was also the location of a church founded by the apostle Paul. In Revelation chapter 2, we find a message to the Ephesians from Jesus himself, a message with lasting implications for us today.

Stay with us. From Chicago, this is The Moody Church Hour, a weekly service of worship and teaching with Pastor Erwin Lutzer. Today, we'll hear the second of eight messages on what Jesus thinks of his church. We welcome special musical guests, the National Christian Choir from Washington, D.C. Later in our broadcast, Erwin Lutzer will speak on When Jesus Observes Our Love.

The National Christian Choir comes now to open today's service. O Lord our God, O Lord our God, O Lord our God, how great Thou art! O Lord our God, when I hear awesome wonder, consider all the worlds Thy hands have made. I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, my power throughout the universe displayed. And when I think that God his Son must bury, send him to die, my sins can take it in.

That on the cross I burn and gladly bury, either and I do take away my sins. This is my soul, my Savior God, Savior God to Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art!

How great Thou art! my soul, my Savior, my Savior, Lord, who leads the grave of God. The grave of God. The grave of God.

The grave of God. When Christ shall come, He shall come back the picture and take me home. When Christ shall fill my heart, then I shall bow in humble adoration. And then proclaim, my God, how great Thou art. Then sing my soul, my Savior, my Savior, Lord. How great Thou art, how great Thou art.

Then sing my soul, my Savior, my Savior, Lord. How great Thou art, how great Thou art. How great Thou art, how great Thou art.

How great Thou art. How glad we are today that the National Christian Choir is with us, and they're going to be blessing us throughout the service with their lovely music of worship and adoration of our great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. And we're glad that you are here today. In a moment, we're going to be singing together hymn number three, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. And then number 87, Fairest Lord Jesus, 634 more love to thee. Our scripture reading today is by Harry Causey.

Harry is the leader, the founder, and the director of the National Christian Choir. We're glad that you are here today. And even as we worship the Lord, our God, let's give our hearts to him and say, Jesus, we give ourselves to you today, putting aside all distractions and concentrating on the one who redeemed us. Join me as we pray. And our Father today, we want to thank you that as we shall be singing in a moment, holy, holy, holy. And even as we are aware of our own sinfulness and our own need, we ask in Jesus' name that our hearts will be open to you like a flower toward the sun. And we ask that in an unhindered way, we shall worship you and love you because you are holy.

But you do receive us through Jesus Christ our Lord, in whose name we pray, amen. Holy, holy, holy, Lord almighty, early in the morning our song shall rise to thee. Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God with three persons, blessed be he. Holy, holy, holy, all the saints are glory, lasting now their golden crowns above the lasting sea. Holy, holy, holy, all the saints are glory, evermore shall we be. Holy, holy, holy, all the saints are glory, holy, there is none beside thee, perfect in God's name, amen to thee.

All thy works shall praise thy name in earth as thou hast seen. Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God with three persons, blessed be he. Holy, holy, holy, all the saints are glory, O come, O come, heaven and the sun. Be with thy servants, be with thy honor, thou my soul's glory, Lord and God, beautiful Savior, Lord of the nations, Son of God and Son of man.

Glory and honor, praise and o'eration, now and forevermore be thine. O love to thee, O Christ, O love to thee, hear thou the prayer and aim, amen in me. This is my mercy, O love, O Christ, to thee, O love to thee, O love to thee. In you, O Lord, I have taken refuge. Let me never be put to shame, deliver me in your righteousness.

Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue, be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. How great is your goodness which you have stored up for those who fear you, which you bestow in the sight of men on those who take refuge in you. Praise be to the Lord, for he showed his wonderful love to me. Love the Lord, all his saints.

The Lord preserves the faithful, but the proud he pays back in full. Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord. And say that we love him, for with our ears longed, and thou must to listen. Oh, let our hearts soar, we want to see Jesus.

Oh, let our hearts soar, we want to see Jesus. Hold me, unfold me, close to thy breast. Shelter me safe, with glad faith in your breast.

Shelter me safe, in that faith in your breast. Mirror, still mirror, nothing I bring, not as an offering to Jesus my King. Hold me, my saints, though not conscious heart, grant me the cleansing, my blood, my blood.

Grant me the cleansing, my blood of import. Mirror, still mirror, nothing I bring, not as an offering to Jesus my King. You endless ages, ever to be, mirror, my Savior, still mirror to Thee. Mirror, still mirror, my Savior, my Savior, my Savior, my Savior to Thee.

Mirror, mirror, close to Thee. Well, my friend, today I begin with a question, what does Jesus think of His church? That's the question. The question isn't what does George Barna think of the church? Because he does a great deal of analysis regarding church and culture.

That's not the question. Not the question of what a church consultant believes about the church, though they may be helpful in certain situations. The question before us very simply is this, what does Jesus think of His church? And more specifically, The Moody Church, or the church to which you belong?

What does he think of it? Well, today we're in Revelation chapter 2, as we learned last time, John had this marvelous revelation from Jesus. Jesus comes standing, the scripture says, standing amid the candlesticks.

And we learned that the candlesticks are the seven churches. By the time you get to chapter 2 of Revelation, he is not only standing among them, but he also walks among them. What does Jesus do on Sunday mornings? He comes to church. Oh, I know there's a sense in which he's everywhere and therefore simultaneously as being omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent, but there's a sense in which Jesus Christ's focus on the church is more important than, say, the political situation of the world, because it is the church for which he died. And today he goes among the aisles, he's up in the balcony, and he's observing.

And what he's looking for is the extent of our love, and that's the agenda. Why seven churches when we know that there were at least 12 churches in Asia Minor? These are representative churches. Every church that has ever existed since in one sense fits into one category or another, but at least loosely, the churches represent various churches throughout the history of the church.

And that's why, as I encourage you to read, ask yourself what one best describes our church. And so with that background, we look here at the letter to the church at Ephesus. By the way, it says to the angel of the church. And the word angel sometimes means messenger, and it may be that Jesus is thinking about the messenger of the church. It's also possible that every church has an angel, one specifically assigned to a congregation. Some people think that the angel is the pastor.

Well that could be if he's the messenger, but between you and me and nobody else listening, this pastor is not an angel. But nonetheless, I received the letter, I received the letter to the church at Ephesus and really at the end of the day to us. To the angel of the church in Ephesus, the words, write these words of him who holds the seven stars and the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. He not only has them in his hands, but he holds them in his hands.

Can you have a relationship that is any more direct than that? And then it says, and who walks amid the seven golden lampstands, amid the churches here at the aisles and in the choir loft and in the balcony and all over. Jesus is walking in our midst. Well the letter begins actually with a word of commendation. He gives them a compliment. He says, I know your works, by the way, and he does know omniscience. He knows our motives. He knows whether we are late or early. He knows exactly what our motivations are.

He knows like no consultant could possibly know. He says, I know your works and your toil. We put those together. In fact, the idea is that these people work to the, they labor to the point of weariness. I'm sure that they helped the sick. They responded to those who were lonely. They were a beehive of activity, just like Moody Church is from about eight o'clock on on Sunday morning. By the way, at seven o'clock, our men here who are part of our responsibility of maintenance, they're out sweeping the sidewalks.

If you don't get here at seven, you'll never see them do that. They're preparing the church, making sure that everything is in place for us. The technical crew is praying here at about, what is it, seven thirty or eight, asking God to help them, because the technology really is necessary for us to get the word out. And then the Sunday school teachers begin to arrive, and all kinds of other things happen, and it's a busy church, and the church at Ephesus was a busy church, but it was also busy outside of its walls as we are serving the Lord. What a church to be a pastor of, a beehive of activity. I remember a pastor saying that he lived in a little town with a church where everyone from the town went to church, and he used to go to the train station every day to watch the train come in and leave, and then afterwards he'd go home, and somebody said, why are you here every day doing that, and he said, this is the only thing in this town that moves that I don't have to push, and he loved to see that train. Well there's lots here at The Moody Church that I don't have to push.

Last night I read the entire bulletin, all of the opportunities for ministry, we've got so much going on, thank God there's much going on that I don't have to push. Like the church at Ephesus, your weariness and your toil and your perseverance, you'll notice it says patient endurance. Now remember the context, the 19th chapter of the book of Acts tells us about the beginning of the church, and it is there where you had the great statue to the goddess Diana. And Demetrius, I believe that he was a silversmith who made little shrines to the goddess and made his money that way, and then when the church began, people stopped buying these shrines, and so he put pressure on Paul, and a riot began, and Paul was chased out of the city.

Goddess Diana, isn't she one of the seven wonders of the world, we are told. Now you can imagine the Christians, they were marginalized, they were persecuted, they didn't get the good jobs. Just like many of us are fearing in America, where freedom of religion is constantly being limited and will be eventually limited to the human mind, it seems to me. And what you find today is that through separation of church and state, you dare not impose your views or even state them in certain contexts. The church has always had situations like that, that's nothing new. So the church was marginalized, but they had patient endurance, in fact, notice what the text says, that they were working and they tested those who call themselves apostles and are not. So what you have is a busy church and a church that is doctrinally sound.

Again, we don't have time for it, but Acts 20. When Paul said goodbye to the elders at Ephesus, he says, grievous wolves shall come and shall devour the flock, take heed to the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood, and watch those false teachers. All right, fast forward, it's 30 or 40 years later now, and the church heeded Paul's warning and they rooted out false teachers.

You discern those who are false and you called them liars, and that's what they are. And we're living in a day and age of false teachers, particularly on television, not everybody on television is a false teachers, but they abound and they have huge followings and they make huge claims. What were the false teachers saying?

These Nicolaitans, which incidentally is a word that occurs later in the text and means destroyer of the people, they were saying things like this because Jesus Christ suffered, we don't have to. The false teachers were very much into oratory and huge fees for coming to speak. In fact, they criticized Paul because he would preach free and they said, you know, we won't come unless we've got money. They were the money baggers of their day. And they're all over television. I remember seeing with my own eyes and hearing with my own ears that one of these false teachers who was so obviously false, it's just unbelievable to me that people don't get it, he was saying, if you send me your mortgages from your house, we will burn them and you'll get a letter from your mortgage company saying that your house is paid for.

Really? But a year later, I had lunch with a pastor in the city where this man has his ministry and I said, what happened? He said, first of all, there were people who paid $2,000 to have him burn their mortgage and after that, they received letters from a collection agency telling them that they had better pay up or lose their house. We are living in a day of huge deception and I want to take my hat off to the church at Ephesus who discerned false prophets and who called them liars because they're out there. And have you ever noticed, by the way, that their crowds are largely poor people because these people are saying, if I only had the faith of my guru, if I only had the same kind of great faith to speak myself rich, I mean, I've heard people say, speak to your wallet and say, be thou filled.

I tried that and I opened it and it was full of air. Let's commend this church. They discerned false prophets, they nailed them and they said, you are a liar. Praise God for their doctrine.

So here you have a church that is busy, that is doctrinally sound, the kind that every pastor wants to be the pastor of and I might say, duplicates Moody Church. Now let's go on. The text says, but whenever you see that word, you have to ask yourself, oh, ouch. But verse four, word of commendation now turns to a word of complaint, but I have this against you that you have abandoned the love that you had at first.

Wow. You're doing it without love. I commend you for what you're doing, but where is the love? When the church got started, there was this enthusiasm, there was this sense of commitment to Jesus, this reckless abandonment in giving people gave generously. They witnessed and they were a united community and how important that is to have a strong church.

You can't have a church without community and that's what the church of Ephesus had. But now again, you're thinking of the apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians, a letter that was written to the church, he prayed for them, that your love may abound yet more and more, that you might know the height, the depth of the love of Christ, he said. And now 30 or 40 years have passed and we're talking second generation Christians.

We're talking children whose parents were on fire for God, but they themselves have not picked up the same zeal. So their love had grown cold and indifferent, still busy, still doctrinally sound, still active, but without the passion and love for Jesus. Now what is it that makes us lose our first love? Maybe not lose it, but at least move away from it. You have abandoned, that's what my text says, you have abandoned your first love.

What makes us do that? The Old Testament, God says regarding Israel, he says, I have chosen you as my bride. He says, I have loved you, I'm your husband, but you've gone on after other gods. What will most assuredly ruin a marriage and that is to find another lover. Someone else who steals your affection, someone else who draws your soul away from the person whom you are committed to, and that's what happens. James says in his book, he says, you adulterers and you adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity against God? And there you have it, other lovers. Jesus put it this way in one of his parables, he says that the seed is sown and that the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, now there's a phrase that I need to preach a message on, the deceitfulness of riches. It chokes the word and it becomes unfruitful. So there you have it. Nobody ever wakes up in the morning and says, today I'm going to move away from my love for Jesus.

Nobody ever says that. It drifts, drifting. Like when my wife and I were on a ship, we were talking to some people out on the deck and it was only later that we looked back to shore and realized that we'd already gone perhaps a mile. You don't notice it and you don't notice what happens in your life. The coldness sets in, the rationalization set in, and before you know it, the fervency of your love is gone. So you're still doing it. You're still into theology, you're still into service, you're still active, but the passion for Jesus has drained. Now it's just a chore. It's just work and no delight. Wow. Well, we've looked at the compliment Jesus paid them and then he gives them, of course, this complaint.

You're hurting me because you don't love me like you should. And now a command, very directly, verse five, remember therefore from when you've fallen. Just take out time and remember. I remember when I was converted and how the next day it seemed as if I could do anything. I said to myself, and I still remember this clearly, walking into my father's garage and saying, I know God. There was this great sense of a fervency. You know, a friend of mine and I, we were so enthusiastic for Jesus that in high school we used to hitchhike. Now you can't hitchhike nowadays, but we used to do it. And we'd go to a town of about 16 people and we'd buy, previously, we'd take with us, I should say, thousands of tracts. Some of these were not very attractive. They were printed on cheap paper.

And we'd go to a fair and we'd give them out as the people were leaving, giving out thousands. That's where I learned to preach. I remember out on the street corner, we'd have people hassle us and we'd be out there, you know, because really the love for Jesus was all that mattered. You know, I look back now and I say, wow, I was pretty fervent back then. I hope I haven't lost it, but there's a good chance that I'm moving away from it if I don't repent, as the Bible's going to tell me in just a moment. What was it like when you received Christ as Savior? When just coming to church and coming to prayer meeting and reading God's word was just, was just your appetite.

Now it's gone. Remember from whence you were fallen. And then Jesus said, repent. Now as I contemplated this, it dawned on me that we would never be asked to repent from something unless it was a sin.

So as you look into your heart today, as I look into my heart today, and if there is coldness and indifference, it isn't just something that you need to live with or you need to adjust to. According to the scriptures, it is a sin that demands your repentance. Repent. That is sin. You say, well, Pastor Lutzer, my heart is cold, but I have no idea what it could possibly be.

Well, I have frequently taken advice from one pastor who said that he had a parishioner come up and say, oh, you know, my heart is so cold. I'm far from God. But I have no idea what it could be. He said, get on your knees and guess at it.

Just guess at it. Last night I spent perhaps 10 or 15 minutes in quietness before the Lord just saying, all right, Lord, what's in here that I need to confess? Because I'm not loving Jesus as fervently as I should. And I was amazed at what the Holy Spirit pointed out that I needed to confess and to repent of.

Give God five minutes, give him 10 minutes, and you will discover why the love is drained and why the passion is gone, perhaps because of bitterness, perhaps because of an addiction, perhaps of whatever, perhaps because of self will, which I see in my heart, repent. That means change your mind. Call it sin. Don't call it a weakness.

Don't blame your schedule. Just say I'm sinning here. My fervency and love for Jesus is gone. So the text says, remember, repent, and then it says, do the first works. That's what the text says here as it is before you. It says and do the works you did at first. Now, the order here is very important. You don't get your love back by doing the works that you did at first, simply by beginning to pray, beginning to read the Bible.

That's part of the things that you'll have to do. But you have to repent first because you see the love of God is not something that can simply be worked up. It is really a gift whom having not seen ye love, the scripture says. In fact, a parenthesis, if you do not love Jesus at all, it is almost certain that you have never received him as your savior. I'm not talking just about the fact that you admire him. We've got people all over who admire Jesus, but do they love him? It's a mark of the new birth that we would actually love someone whom we've never seen. And yet the text says that's exactly what God implants in our hearts when we are born of the spirit. And we can move from that love, but it's been planted there by God. And then you do the works that you did at first. And then he says, and if you don't, he says, I will remove your candlestick from its place, your lampstand.

This is very serious stuff. Recent years I've been studying why it is that the church was stamped out in North Africa because of Islam. At some point, when I have more time to study it out more directly, I'm trying to find answers for that. Incidentally, all seven of these churches are in Turkey today, and there is no church essentially in any of these places. What happened historically is when this church received this letter, apparently they had a revival. And you can understand why. I mean, if Jesus wrote a letter to Moody Church and I were to say this is from Jesus and this is what he said, we would take it so seriously that we would repent.

I am sure that we would. And apparently they had a revival. But as time went on and as the centuries progressed, having left and abandoned their first love, they faded into oblivion. And you can go to Ephesus today where there is no church. No church can say we have a permanent place in the economy of God.

I say to myself, I say to Moody Church, to future generations here, don't take anything for granted. Now Jesus says, remember. And then he says, if you are an overcomer, and it appears in this passage at least as if all believers are overcomers, because he says, I have a place for you.

He says, this you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, to the one who conquers, here we are, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is planted in the paradise of God. The very tree that Adam and Eve were told they could not eat from, they were barred from eating it.

I will allow him to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. And you can read more about this in Revelation chapter 22, where it is about the heavenly city and how you have this river. And on the river on both sides of it, you have this gorgeous, gorgeous description of heaven. Whether or not this is symbolical or whether or not it is literal, one thing is sure, to the person who overcomes, to the person who repents, they will have easy access for all of eternity, to the tree of life.

The tree of life symbolizing eternal life, not just eternal existence, but life to the full. Do you remember day by day when you go to work that eternity is coming? And after that flips through your mind, you realize that eternity is a long time, really long.

Today as the National Christian Choir was coming down the stairs, I said to someone, well, we get to walk down the stairs with you, we walked with the choir members for a few moments, and I said, I'd like to hear every one of your stories. But I said, that's going to have to wait for heaven. And they all agreed it would have to wait for heaven. But you know, in heaven, you want to spend five years with Abraham, take your time. You know, we've got all of eternity. We can get all the stories of the National Christian Choir and hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of others, and you know, eternity really is long. And to him who overcomes, to him who lives with a full recognition that Jesus is first, all false lovers are confessed and forsaken. To him, I will give to eat of the tree of life, the paradise of God.

That is going to be great. Bottom line. First of all, I want you to remember that doctrine is not a substitute for devotion. Doctrine is not a substitute for devotion. They had the right doctrine and I commend them. And I personally decry the lack of doctrine in our churches today.

I think that eventually it's going to weaken the church as we shy away from doctrine. That's a very, very serious thing, but doctrine is no substitute for devotion. There's a man here who's probably here this morning. He was a pastor for many years and he wouldn't mind if I told you his story.

In fact, if I asked him, he'd come up and tell you it himself. He was a pastor. He preached the gospel, he says, just as it is preached at Moody Church, and he was not born again until about six years ago. And then he said this, to me, it was justification by belief. You believe the right things.

But he said it never entered into my heart as an act of faith. Wow. There are people like that who are doctrinally sound. They are right. Catch this now. But they are dead right.

Do I have to say that again? They're dead right. Years ago I learned, you know the little ditty, here lies the body of William Jay, who died while maintaining his right of way.

He was right, completely right as he sped along, but he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong. Here at The Moody Church, we want to hold to sound doctrine. We want Jesus to write the same part of the letter to us until you get to verse four. We want to hold the truth, but not with an edge. Not with a self-righteous edge, not with a judgmental edge. We want to always hold it with deep, passionate devotion to Jesus. And so remember that doctrine is no substitute for devotion, and remember that labor, labor is no substitute for love.

You can prove it there in the text. They've done all this, and Jesus said, yeah, but I have this against you. This complaint that's hurting me, you've left the love that you had at first.

And all the work in the world can never make that up. The Bible says that we love him because he first loved us, the text says. Somebody said, I asked Jesus, how much do you love me?

And he stretched forth his hands, and he said, so much. He stretched forth his hands and died on the cross. Can we not love him with fervency and get rid of the false idols and the false loves in our life? Can we not do that so that we, as God's people, can serve with passionate love for Christ?

Michael Tate is a young scholar who is on our staff here actually at The Moody Church as missions coordinator, and last Sunday evening he used an illustration, and I said Michael would sure fit with what I'm doing, so he gave me permission to use it. He said that we should love Christ so much, this is as I remember the story. He said we should love Christ so much that if he doesn't come for us, if he doesn't come for us, we're proven to be fools because we've risked everything for Jesus. Everything is risked for Jesus. Our time, our talents, our money, our abilities, our affections, everything is risked for Jesus.

And then he gave this illustration. He says that a young woman saying goodbye to her lover who goes to war, she says goodbye to him and then she lives a very pure life because she's keeping herself for him. She has the possibility of other suitors, but she says no to them all because she's passionately in love with a man to whom she is betrothed. And so she spends her life helping others to see the glories of purity and commitment. Now if he doesn't come back, she may say to himself, well, I might just as well have accepted another proposal. After all, you know, I was waiting here and so in a sense she's a bit of a fool actually because you know, she waited for him and she kept herself for him when she could have had somebody else and had a fling maybe.

Now don't miss the point. The point is simply this, that we know our lover is coming back. There's no doubt for that. We know that our lover is coming back. Let's risk everything for him, everything. And in risking everything, say we're going to love him passionately. We're going to get back on track. We're going to be fervent in our work. But we're going to be people who love Jesus and in the process love one another because you can't love Jesus without loving his people despite all of their imperfections.

Just can't work. You love him, you'll love others. Gustav Dorr was a very famous painter in Europe and he painted a picture of Jesus and someone said, oh, you must love him to paint him like that.

Gustav Dorr said, I do love him, but if I loved him more, I could paint him better. Can we as a church today commit ourselves to loving him more so that we can paint him better? Are you with me up here? Can we commit ourselves to that as a congregation? We're not to lose our first love or else.

We're going to sing together actually 390, but the words will be on the screens. It's really a prayer. Spirit of the Lord descend upon my heart, first, second, and last stanzas, but it's a prayer of asking the Holy Spirit to give us love.

Let's sing it together, shall we? On today's Moody Church Hour, Pastor Lutzer spoke on When Jesus Observes Our Love, taken from Revelation chapter 2, the second of eight messages on what Jesus thinks of his church. Next week, we'll learn about a message to the church at Smyrna as we hear Dr. Lutzer preach on When Jesus Observes Our Suffering. What Jesus thinks of his church can be yours on CD for a gift of any amount to The Moody Church Hour. Call 1-800-215-5001. Let us know you'd like to support Moody Church's ministry.

Our thank you to you is a CD album with eight powerful messages you can hear and then pass on to others. Call 1-800-215-5001 or you can write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Online go to moodyoffer.com. That's moodyoffer.com. Join us next time for another Moody Church Hour with Pastor Erwin Lutzer and the Congregation of Historic Moody Church in Chicago.