Revelation: The Church of Ephesus - “Learning to Love One Another”

Two weeks ago we looked at the book of Revelation and last week we talked about Jesus’ concept of church. We know that the book of Revelation is actually a letter written by John the Apostle at the direction of Jesus to Christians being persecuted in the area known as Asia Minor. In this letter, Jesus addresses 7 churches, pointing out how they are each living up to the being what Jesus calls them to be….. and how each of them fall short, Each Sunday for the next 7 weeks we will look at these churches to help us as the church see how we can better be the church Jesus calls us to be; how we can better live up to the the call of God to the work he has laid out before us - and to see how we are doing a good job of being the church of Jesus Christ.
It has been pointed out that more than seven churches existed in Asia at the time Revelation was written. Seven church addressed is hardly a coincidence, but rather a clue to the purpose of Jesus in helping us understand what he is saying. Throughout Revelation are not only 7 churches, but seven seals, seven trumpets, seven different images of people and angels, seven bowl, seven dooms, and finally seven new things. Seven, in Revelation, stands for completeness, meaning that even though seven churches are mentioned, what is said about them is complete - these letters to the seven churches represent all churches. Each of the seven churches has its unique strengths and weaknesses so that there is a distinct message given to each. However, the problems addressed in chapters 2 & 3 are those which have characterized the church throughout its history. The church world-wide of today would provide ample illustration of the same issues found in these seven churches of Revelation. Indeed, in any local church most, if not all, of the problems described here could be found among those in the congregation. By divine design, then, the Holy Spirit has not only spoken to the ancient church, but also to us as well. This is why the reader is urged to take seriously the Lord's words to the churches - to us: ’He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches’. In other words, Jesus is saying to us today, “Pay attention to my words in these letters because here you will find yourself.”
It is not that Jesus is wagging his finger at us and saying “Shame on you” - These letters are not designed to make us feel bad but it is Jesus saying - “I love you” and I want you to be the best you can be. The idea is to encourage us to learn and grow and adapt to the purpose God has for us as the church.
It is appropriate that the church at Ephesus is addressed first. Ephesus was the largest city of the Roman province of Asia. By the time the gospel was preached here it had a population of more than a quarter of a million people. Located at the mouth of a major river and also on a gulf of the Aegean Sea, it was a flourishing commercial and export center for Asia. Ephesus was also the end for the great road from the Euphrates, as well as a cross roads for many of the major cities in Europe and Asia. It was truly a breath-taking city: The traveler from Rome landing at Ephesus would proceed up a magnificent avenue thirty-five feet wide and lined with columns which led from the harbor to the center of the city. It boasted a major stadium, marketplace, and theater. The latter was built overlooking the harbor, and seated some 25,000 people. Ephesus was also a prominent religious center: Temples were built to Roman leaders Claudius, Hadrian, and Severus whom the people worshipped as gods. The major religious attraction, however, was the Temple of Artemis (Diana in Latin), one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. About four times the size of the Parthenon, it was adorned by the work of many great artists. The dimensions of the temple as 425 feet long, 220 feet wide, and sixty feet high. There were 127 pillars of Parian marble, with thirty-six of them overlaid with gold and jewels. We know a good deal about the Ephesian church from the New Testament. Paul's first visit to Ephesus was very brief. Paul’s disciple Apollos was there as well and had an effective ministry. When Paul returned to Ephesus, he stayed for three months, teaching in the synagogue at Ephesus, followed by two years of teaching in the school of Tyrannus. The result was that many came to believe in the gospel. Many of the new converts wished to make a complete break with the magic of their pagan past and burned their books publicly, books which were worth 50,000 pieces of silver. As a result, the gospel flourished in Ephesus. Jesus always begins his letter to each of these churches talking about the things the churches are doing right. Two things are commended in the Ephesian church, their persistence and their purity, their diligence and their doctrine. Jesus congratulates the Ephesians on the persistence of the church members in


their personal commitment to obedience and ministry, even in the face of difficulty and opposition. Doctrinal purity was
diligently preserved by the Ephesian church - in other words, the church was willing to stick by what was taught in the message of Jesus Christ instead of allowing themselves to be influenced by what is popular, or current. Because Ephesus was located on commercial sea and land routes, many Christian travelers passed through, some of whom were teachers who were teaching false information about living as the people of God. These travelers actively promoted their false doctrines. The warning of the apostle Paul had been taken very seriously by the Ephesian church. They had not allowed false doctrine to corrupt their congregation, even though some false apostles had attempted to do so. For this the Ephesian church was sincerely praised. But Jesus said there was a very serious problem in the church,: 'But I have this against you, that you have left your first love’. When the church in Ephesians was first formed, the Apostle Paul had commended them on their love for one another. But even though the church was strong in their faith and their holding to the truth of the gospel, they lost their love of one another. The Ephesian Christians were caught completely off guard by this charge, for the simple reason that they had almost unconsciously forgotten the priority Jesus taught in loving one another. In the passage Jesus says that because they have lost their call to love each other, their lampstand would be removed. What this refers to is the lampstand which illuminated the Holy Place in the temple. The lampstand then became a symbol of the illumination to the world of Jesus Christ through the church. Remember Jesus’ passage at the end of the Beatitudes which said to let our light shine - you don’t put your light under a basket, but you let it shine so that the world will see the love and grace of Jesus Christ. According to Jesus, one of the chief ways we show the love of Jesus, is to show the community around us that even though we are a collection of different people, because we share the love of Jesus, we can truly love one another as different as we are. This letter to the Ephesians says that if we lose that love of each other, we will lose our witness to the world and therefore the purpose God has given us.
So what does that mean practically for us as a church - it means to love one another even when someone annoys us, or someone disagrees with us, or because we know something about a persons past, or maybe even their present, or because a person hurts us, or does something we disapprove of, or because a person is not part of our ‘circle’ of friends or part of our family. It means that we truly believe that everyone in this congregation is here because God placed them here and we are all one in the eyes of God - even if we don’t like someone or who they are or what they have done or who they support or which political party they are a member of……
Remember Jesus’ words, in John 13 - “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” What Jesus is saying is that we can do all the good deeds we can and give loads of money to good causes and serve people in the community and live pious and obedient lives, but we don’t love each other, we don’t love everyone who is part of this church, then all that good stuff is worthless. What Jesus is saying is that the best witness we can have for the community is to show the people around us that we can love each other - different and imperfect as we are. “How can you go to church with so and so, didn’t you know that they did whatever” and the response is, “Because we come together in the love of Jesus and because he can love everyone, we can to.” And those who are unloved in our community begin to think, “If Jesus can love so and so, then maybe he can love me as well. If that church can love and embrace so and so, then maybe they can love and accept me as well….” What a powerful witness we can be simply by being willing to allow the love of Jesus to teach us that we can not only love ourselves, love everyone here…. It is not that we can neglect sticking to proper doctrine and continuing in our mission regardless of what form it may take, but that we remember that of all the things we do, the greatest thing is to love.
Amen!

Revelation and the Church

Last week we talked about the book of the Revelation of John. We are going to spend the next several weeks looking at the church and Jesus’ vision of what he wanted his church to be. So today, we are going to look at the church in general, and how these churches in Asia Minor came to be.
There is no concept of ‘church’ in the way we think of church in the Old Testament. God gathered his people and they worked and traveled and worshipped all as one people. After God’s people made it to the promised land, God did send priests to live out among his people, but worship took place exclusively in the Temple in Jerusalem. Eventually there were synagogues in different locations among the people which became a center for the people to gather for study and activities, but worship was still only in the temple in Jerusalem.
When Jesus came and began to teach the people, he began to teach this concept of ‘church’ was not a place of worship, but Jesus’ taught ‘church’ was the idea of God’s people working together to do the work God had asked them to do - In Matthew 25 Jesus says: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, "I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’” Jesus was concerned the idea of ‘proper worship’ and worrying about conducting worship ‘in the right way’ had taken precedence over doing the work God had called the church to do. For Jesus corporate worship was important, but he also wanted to make sure the church worked together to bring about God’s love and grace to the community.
Pretty familiar are Jesus’ words to the Apostle Peter, also in the book of Matthew, ‘to you I will give the ‘keys to the kingdom’; ‘the kingdom’ being God’s people whom Jesus envisioned to be gathered together in ‘churches’ - not buildings but in groups who gathered together to study, break bread (which was their term for what we call communion) and to do care for one another.
After Jesus’ ascension and the gospel message began to spread out from Jerusalem, people gathered together and they called the local congregations ‘church’ but there were no buildings, just groups of people who began to be called ‘Christians’. We have recorded several of the Apostles who left Jerusalem and began to travel various places, teach about Jesus and form those who became believers into groups. However the most prolific founder of churches was the Apostle Paul.
Paul was called by Jesus on the road to Damascus and given the responsibility of teaching Gentiles about Jesus. Paul was commissioned to do this work interestingly enough by the follower of Jesus in Antioch. The people in the church there decided the mission of their church would be to finance Paul’s mission to spread the gospel of Jesus to the people living in what we would call Greece and Turkey today - back then it was known as Asia Minor. So we have recorded in Acts the actual ‘sending’ of Paul to do this work God has called him to do.
But there was much resistance to this Gospel message both by the Romans and by the Jews.
Becoming a follower of Jesus in this territory called for Jesus’ followers to be very courageous and very brave. It would have been impossible to have a ‘church building’ because these followers had to work and worship in secret.
You’ve probably heard a lot about the persecution of these Christians and it is hard for us to even conceive of what it would have been like to made the decision to hear Paul teach the message of Jesus and then decide you are going to give you life to him and become a ‘Christian’. And then you had to hide it………
Except being a ‘Christian’ meant you were to then change your life and do the things Jesus taught you should do - you were to gather together with other believers and you were to care for those in society who were in need - and those who made the decision to follow Jesus took this calling very seriously. They were constantly putting their lives on the line to do what they were called to do…….. To gather and to care for the poor and the widows and the orphans and the prisoners and all in need.
Much of the mission of Paul as he traveled was to stop by the congregations he had formed and take up an offering that he then took to those who were in need. We have recorded how those within the church would sell their possessions to raise money to help others who were in need.
So Paul would travel, he would form ‘churches’ - which were groups of people who gathered in various locations, usually homes, and would study (altho remember there were no Bibles for them to read so they would recall and discuss the stories Paul had taught them), would share in communion and would work to help others. But people are people and whenever they would encounter a problem, cause groups of people, even ‘Christian people’, encounter problems, would contact Paul and he would write a letter to them to help them work through their issues. Some of these letters we have as most of the New Testament - Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, for example.
Then John, the Apostle, was sent to the Island of Patmos and Jesus himself decided he, himself, needed to address these seven churches in Asia Minor. So Jesus tells John to write down Jesus’ words as he addresses the issues that are going on these specific churches in Asia Minor. These churches were founded by the Apostle Paul and we don’t really know exactly why these particular churches were targeted by Jesus although many biblical scholars think it is mainly because of their closeness geographically and it would be easy for this circular letter to be distributed between them - and also because these churches and their good and bad practices could easily represent any and all churches and the issues that pop up as congregations throughout history struggle to work and worship as God’s people.
The biggest difference between our experience today and the experience of those in the seven churches of Revelation would be the society in which we live. These groups of Christians met in houses - although they had to be very discrete about it so that the members would not be arrested, tortured and killed. And as hard as they tried to keep themselves of the Roman and Jewish radar screen, people in the congregations were still discovered and taken by the Jewish leaders and by the Romans.
What we need to think about as we freely worship and work together, is to think about how difficult it is for us to try and live up to Christ’s call to the church, and imagine how hard it was to live up to the Christ’s expectations and be persecuted at the same time.
This letter of Revelation is Jesus’ words to these people, who are trying to remain faithful during this time of persecution. Jesus encourages them by reminding them why they part of Christ’s church and about the ‘great reward’ if they can remain faithful in the midst of the severe persecution they experienced and admonishes them them to remember they are still to ‘be God’s people’ - to usher God’s kingdom into the world where people worship God in spirit and truth and where God’s people spread God’s love as they care for those who are in need.
As we hear Jesus’ words to these churches through John’s writings in Revelation, we are to think about ourselves - where do we see ourselves in this church? What are we doing right and where does Jesus see room for improvement in our work and worship?

We are the people of God; we are gathered into congregations put together by God - blessed and loved and charged to be the arms and legs and feet of Jesus in this community.
Amen.

A FEELING OF PEACE

Back when I was young and newly married and didn’t have any children, I began working on a Masters Degree in Genetics. It was fascinating but the down side to this program was in order to finish the program I had to take a class in statistics. Understanding statistics is pretty key to being able to work in Genetics but the process and the charts and graphs and the numbers about did me in. I did finish the statistics class, but it was a struggle.
Later on when I began working on a Masters in Education, statistics was also a requirement for that program as well - I thought that since I had taken it before maybe I could count that first course for the statistics credit, but no - they decided since I had Statistics part one I would need to take Statistics part 2 which had more charts and graphs and more numbers and I was a wreck by the time I made it through that class…..
Statistics are all around us right now. You cannot watch or listen to or read any news that isn’t full of statistics - COVID statistics. We are at 8% now and we need to get to 5%. 4% of the people who are exposed end up in the hospital. There is a 92% recovery rate except if you are part of the 30% of the population who are of A+ blood or over 65 and on and on. And each day there are new statistics and different statistics and we end up looking for ourselves in those statistics and where we fit in….
What this social distancing and this bombardment of statistics has done for us is to make us feel like we have been reduced to a number. We look at the charts and graphs and try to see where we are and this creates anxiety if we are in one of the categories where the statistics done’t look so good…… Those who are spouting these statistics seem like they forget that these are not just numbers and percentages, but they are real people…. Those are not just numbers, they are Moms and Dads and Grandparents and Sons and Daughters and friends and colleagues……..
And we begin to feel less like a person, we begin to believe that we are nothing more than a number……. And our anxiety and our worry grows……
We do have reason to be anxious. Decisions we took for granted before now were simple - I’m going to jump into the car and run to the grocery store. But now that decision is much harder - simple tasks like going to the grocery have become real life and death decisions - we have to think about what the statistics are on going into the store……
And you cry out to God to just make it all go away and when you wake up in the morning and COVID is still there and you still have to think twice before you do just about anything you wonder if God even heard you…
That is where the Hebrew people found themselves. They had been living in slavery, times were hard and they cried out to God who sent them Moses to free them - and he did……. They packed up and headed out - they were on their way to their own land; they were going to be free. And then they looked back and Pharaoh had changed his mind and now the Egyptian army was baring down on them to recapture them and take them back to slavery - and right in front of the them was the Red Sea. They had no boats; it was too wide to swim across - there truly was no where to go. They yelled at Moses - what have you done to us… you got our hopes up and we thought we were going to be free and now we are going to die! There is no where to go. Either the Egyptians will get us or we are going to drown….
We all kind of felt that way when we first thought this COVID was going to be gone in a couple months and Phase One came and went and we went into Phase 2 and we thought there was light at the end of the tunnel - only to have Phase 2 extended again, and again and we see those statistics which proclaim doom and we begin to feel like the Hebrews who are on the bank of the Red Sea and the Egyptians are bearing down on us and we begin to lose hope.

And then the Hebrews see the big cloud that has led them away from their captivity rise up from in front of them and move to behind them to hide them from the Egyptians - and then God opens the sea and leads them to safety…..
We are God’s people and we can never give up hope….. God knows exactly what is going on and no he doesn’t often clue us in on what he is doing but he keeps trying to assure us that if we just have faith, if we just trust, if we just wait…. if instead of reacting in fear or anger we remember how God shows us in his word how he always is working…..
But we can relate to those Hebrew people - they thought everything was going to be OK. They thought they were home free, they had a moment to take a deep breath and think everything was going to be fine and then they found themselves between the Egyptians and the Red Sea….
And right now in the midst of all this we just want God to somehow open up the world again like he did the Red Sea cause this waiting and not knowing and this wondering and this feeling of being reduced to a statistic just weighs heavy on us. We are tired of making real life life and death decisions….
We are all suffering in our own way. From isolation, from things going on in our lives that are unrelated to COVID but still affected by this pandemic, from having to work in situations where we are concerned we might be exposed, from trying to decide what to do with our children….
But you know, if we are certain of anything, we are certain that Jesus understands. Think about Jesus on the cross who calls out “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”
Are there not moments where that is how you feel? And Jesus lets us know that is OK…..
for a moment. We can’t stay there… God didn’t allow the Hebrew people to stay between the Egyptians and the Red Sea. Jesus may have felt abandoned the cross, but he rose from the dead.
While God says it is OK to cry out in moments of weariness and weakness, we see that Jesus isn’t alone in his suffering. There are two others with Jesus when he is on the cross. There is one person on each side of Jesus and these 2 people are there because each of these ‘thieves’ on the cross show us the choices we can make when we feel like we are between the Egyptians and the Red Sea….
The one criminal lashed out at Jesus in anger - If you really are the Messiah, you have the power to end this right now! You can get us all off these crosses and save our lives! He was saying to Jesus - if you want me to believe you are the Messiah then prove it to me by doing what I want…. by stopping this suffering right now!
But the criminal on the other side of Jesus says to the one talking - ‘What’s wrong with you? Why are you angry at the only person who can help us? Why are you disrespectful to the one who can save us? And this thief looks at Jesus and doesn’t say - ‘End this suffering right now’ - but “Have mercy on me. I know you are the Messiah - you are our only hope.” And Jesus looks at this theif and says, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’.
Now I want you to notice something important - the cross didn’t go away. The suffering of having to die on that cross didn’t go away. But the thief knew now that he wasn’t alone. The thief knew that Jesus was hanging on that cross right with him - the paradise the thief received was not relief from the suffering - but the peace of knowing that Jesus was right there; that Jesus knew precisely what the cross was like…..
We can react to this COVID in anger and anxiousness and fear and wondering why God isn’t ‘fixing’ everything, or we can reach out to Jesus and ask him to be with us and to help us through and live in the assurance that Jesus can give us something no one else can; that Jesus can give us peace in the midst of however we may be suffering through this time…..
As the Hebrew people continued their journey it wasn’t easy. There were problems, their were issues, there were anxious moments and sometimes they reacted in anger and sometimes they cried out for mercy…. and God continually says to them: The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.
As we continue forward, always remember that. Even though the current situation doesn’t go away remember:; 8 The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” You are going to have moments - of anger, of fear, of discouragement, of feeling weighed down of wondering why circumstances don’t change… But don’t let that be where you stay….. reach out and Jesus is there and Jesus will bring you peace…. Amen.