October 5

Transcript

(Transcribed by TurboScribe)

Thank you for your words, which gives light for us to walk in the darkness, because sometimes, Lord, this world can be really dark. Thank you for the words that are not just words, but that grow in our lives through the work of your Holy Spirit, and that brings the fruit that you ask. In a world that is ever-changing, and in a world where you are becoming less and less according to the world, we pray, Lord, that we will see you more, and that we will live more and more that you may be seen.

But that is what you ask. Again, in this morning, we pray our prayer where we ask that we may see Jesus, and only Jesus. Amen.

It is a new series, so not the same that we did. We're starting a new series on the seven churches in the book of Revelation. So we're doing the study on a Tuesday, and feel free to join us.

We have room for maybe one or two more in the hall. It's kind of pretty full, so it's wonderful to see that. I touched on this with them a little bit, so I'm going to do far more than that.

The thing about the seven churches, it's a little more of just breaking open the Word, and us taking what we hear, and applying it to our own lives. And when I was still a teacher with Walk Through the Bible, we would also say, always say, one of the most important things about teaching people is that you have to teach them to apply for life change. So when you listen to this Word this morning, please take what you hear, and apply it to your own life for life change, because that's what the Word does.

We don't remain the same after we learn. Ted, if you want to put that first slide up there, we'll start there with just a little picture of where we are. We are at the church in Ephesus.

Ephesus, as you can see, is on the Aegean Sea, and it was one of the largest harbour cities in Asia Minor. It had one of the largest harbours. So many of these trade ships would come in there.

Of course, when the trade ships come in, they bring people, they bring teachings, they bring all kinds of stuff with that. So all of these things just landed in Ephesus, and it became this huge melting pot of people, of theology, of, can I call it religion? Just a little air quotes when I say religion. It was a huge city, 250,000 people, quarter million people at some stage in Ephesus.

It was a secular world. They didn't need much. They had everything.

Money was in supply as much as you wanted. They could buy anything. They had everything.

They didn't need anything. They worshipped idols. It was pagan worship.

It was so-called magic. I don't know what the magic was, but they called it magic. Sexual immorality.

There's a picture that I have. It's kind of gross, but right across from the temple that I'll show you in a second was this huge walkway that took them from the temple right into the brothel that was two stories high with 30 rooms on each story. It was a busy place in those days, just to give you a little feel for what this was.

But there was a congregation in Ephesus. You can read about this in Acts chapter 18 is when Paul and Aquila and Priscilla go with Paul, and they end up there, and they plant the congregation. Aquila and Priscilla plant that congregation together with a man who was a Greek called Apollos, who came to Christ.

In those days, they called the Greeks pagans. So, in any case, there was also a lot of pagan worship going on in this place called Ephesus. One of the things that was really hard for the Christians was that it was also a place of Caesar worship.

So, they also had these huge images of the Caesar, and they had to go bow before Caesar and say that Caesar was Lord. If you didn't do that, there were consequences. Now, come back to the consequences in a second.

They also had a patron god, and you can go to that slide now, Ted. The patron god of Ephesus was a god called Artemis or Diana. In Acts chapter 19, there's a little story about Artemis.

They made these little images of them of silver, and then they sold them. So, when Paul and the apostles came and they started preaching the gospel, people changed their hearts. And then Paul said to them, you see these little things in your homes? They're not gods.

They're just little things that were made by people. So, Demetrius and his buddies who were making these got really ticked off at them, and they got a whole riot going. It took the city clerk to settle them down because they were so angry at these people stealing their money because they couldn't make money anymore.

Artemis or Diana is known as the god of fertility. Now, I don't have to say more when I say that. Now, you can imagine why they went from the temple to the wonderful two-story place with 60 rooms.

All part of the Diana cult and the Diana worship. She had a temple. Ted, there's a slide for that.

Temple was one of the seven wonders of the world. It was larger than the Acropolis in Athens. It was a temple of immorality.

They had about a thousand priests, a thousand female priests, and then a number, I don't even know the number, of so-called temple prostitutes. That was around male and female prostitutes that were in there. And to worship, it was everything to do with sexual immorality that was going on in that place.

So, this is the world of Ephesus. It doesn't need a thing. It's got all the money it wants.

It is as immoral and as pagan as you can get. Anything goes in Ephesus. Imagine trying to be a church in Ephesus.

It would have been okay if people let you be who you wanted to be. But because you were a Christian and you were not prepared to bow before Caesar or to go worship Artemis in her temple, they would take you to the theatre. And Ted, there's a picture for that.

It wasn't to go see a Shakespeare play. You got it? It was this huge theatre. It's still there today.

You can still see it. And in this theatre, they did not do the plays. The plays were the Christians.

If you were not prepared to bow before Caesar and call him God and go to the temple of Artemis, they take you there. And this is a beautiful rendition of what they did. On your left side, you can see in the back a little bit, the lions going there.

You'll see the cross. You'll see the people. So, this is what they did.

If they didn't feed them to the lions and have fun seeing how the lions chased them around, they'd sometimes get the gladiators just to go out and just have fun before they chopped their heads off and leave them there. Or they'll nail them to crosses and leave them until they die. Or on this picture, you don't see it.

They would take tar and they would just paint them with this stuff and then they light them up and leave them there to burn until they're dead. So, to be a Christian in Ephesus was really, really dangerous. You could lose your life.

This is the world in which this congregation had to grow. No wonder Paul told them Ephesians 6, put on whole, what of God, armour of God, because they needed this protection. Not just from physically being killed, but from all of these things that are asking something of them.

Because the problem came, you wanted to send your kids to school? Well, there was no Christian school. They had to be part of all of these things that were going on. You wanted to run your business? You didn't want to play with them, with all of their immorality and things that went with that? They would kick you out.

You just wouldn't be able to be part of that world. So, this is the church that we're going to meet. Now, Ted, there's a slide after this where there's a quote, and if you can't get it, I have it.

Eugene Peterson writes this. He says, so, what must you do when you start wondering if you should remain a Christian? Seeing that it's no longer fashionable to be a Christian, wherever you go, at work, in school, in your business, people make it difficult for you because you are a Christian. Well, he says, the book of Revelation gives a very honest answer.

Acknowledge God in your life again, and then look closely at who really is in control of what happens in the world, and you will see God. What do you do when things around you change so much, and you wonder, should I continue on? And so, the Lord writes them a letter. Write this letter to the angel of the church in Ephesus.

The word angel, angelos, means messenger. It can also be translated as the leader or the pastor of the church. So, he's talking to the leaders of the church.

This is the message from the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, and the one who walks among the seven gold lampstands. Again, for those who are not in the Bible study, go back one chapter, start at verse 12, read, you'll see this. So, they're talking about Jesus.

Jesus is shown there as the one who walks among the lampstands, which are an indication of the seven churches that we're going to do, and the seven stars are just this image of the leaders of the church, or the pastors, or whatever you want to call them. So, a message from Jesus to the church. Starts with this beautiful commendation, and I want you to learn something.

I'll show you a little something this morning, how God works with us. I know all the things you do, and I've seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know everything you do.

I've taught you this before, the word no in the Bible, Old and New Testament, never has to do with this. The word no has to do everything with a relational knowledge. I always use the example, Adam knew his wife, and she bore him a child.

It's that intimate, relational knowledge that God has to the church. I know you. I know everything about you.

I know when you do well, and I know when you fail, and I know how much you love me, and I know about all the things that happen there. I've seen your hard work. The Greek word for I've seen your hard work says, it's the word that they use.

It's such a beautiful image of a farmer. Some of you have been farmers and are farmers. You know how hard that is.

Before daylight, you're out, and you're ploughing the fields, and you're planting, and you're ploughing, and you're planting, and the more you do this, the longer the day goes, and by the end of the day, you are so exhausted because of all of this hard work. That's the image. I have seen your hard work because here's the thing.

It wasn't as easy for them as it is for us. We walk in. The church is not that cool.

It's hot. We walk in. This church is there.

It's ready. It's beautiful. We have the table.

We can come sit. We can eat. We go home, and we are fed, and we're so well taken care of.

With them, they had to hide sometimes. They had to find places where they couldn't be found. I know it's insatiable.

I know the hard work. Also, the hard work of trying to bring the gospel to a world that did not want to hear the gospel because the gospel stood completely opposite to what that world was all about. I know your hard work, and I know your patient endurance.

Now, that's a cool word, and Ted, there is a slide for that. You have to go to the one that is the black Greek slide. There you go.

It's a beautiful word for endurance. It's the word hupomeno. Hupomeno, two words again, meaning under and stay with, endure, abide, comes down to stay strong under immense pressure.

I know your hard work, and I know how you try your best to stay strong under this immense pressure. Thanks, Ted. You can go back to the text.

My question is always this. Is that what God would write? Because here's the thing. Don't we live in a world that is so secular that it's not even strange? I remember when I came to do my interview 24 years ago in the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

I sat there, and they looked at me, and they said, you come from a different world. Do you think that you would be able to work in a secular world? I said, of course I can. I did not have an idea of what I said, because it is not the same world that we knew, where the church was important, where Christians had a say in the world.

We've become smaller and smaller and smaller, and the world has become way bigger, influencing us in our lives. And yet God says to these people who were in a world that was way worse than ours, I know what you're doing. I know how hard you work, and I know how you persevere despite the pressure that you are being killed, that you are being persecuted, that you are seen as nothing in this world.

I pray that we never get to that point. Perhaps it was good we sang that song, there is another in the fire, because they really went through fire, to say Jesus is my Lord, and I will not stand before this world. And I think sometimes that's the problem with the church.

We follow the world, and not the words. They didn't turn around. Goes on, it says, I know you can't tolerate those evil people who have examined the claim, and you've examined the claims of those who say they're apostles, but they're not.

You've discovered that they are liars, because what happened is people saw an opportunity here, and all of a sudden they would convert and say, oh I'm a Christian. But then they just get these other people in, and all of a sudden they turn around, and they start with these immoral things again, and all of these wrong teaching, and the next thing you know you're back into pagan worship. But they've got this flag saying outside, I am a Christian church, and I belong to Jesus, and come join us.

It is important for the church to stay true to who we are, and where we come from in this world in which we live. And as I said, apply this to your own life. I can't change this.

It's difficult preaching stuff that I'm doing here with you. You have to think of your own life as you live your life in this world, because the question is always to me too. I love it when people ask me, so what do you do? And I can say, I'm a pastor, so can I tell you about Jesus? And it's like, I love that.

Or they'll ask, and they'll say, what do you do? And I say, I'm a shepherd. I beg your pardon? Oh yeah, I'm a farmer. I have sheep.

What kind of sheep? Two-legged ones. And it's so amazing. And then sometimes they don't know what to do with me.

They still don't know what to do with me, right? That's the problem, because the Germans have a word, you're ein fremdkörper, a strange body, because you're strange. We're not supposed to look the same. And I love that.

Sometimes it's hard, because when I want to hang out with the boys, they don't know how to hang out with me, because I'm a strange body, because I'm a pastor. I'm not a person, right? We should look different and act different, because we are different. Even in this world in which we live, that's where the salt and the light thing comes in.

I can't be salt if I don't have the salt. I can't be the light. But it is hard.

I know your hard work, but I also know your perseverance, how it feels, huppomenno, when it feels that it all comes down on you. And under this severe pressure, you have to stand up and say, this is who I am, and this is what I believe. Let me finish up.

I don't want to keep you the whole day. So Jesus says these first words to them. He says, I love to see how hard you work, how you are there as children of the Lord.

He says, verse 3, you have patiently suffered for me without quitting. And then there is a biblical but. You know that but, verse 4, but I have a complaint against you.

Let me show you something. God doesn't walk in and He says, you're a bunch of so-and-sos. Look at you.

He looks at us and He says, look at who you are. I really love you. Look at all the things that you've achieved in your life.

He doesn't just come down. And sometimes we do that, right? Instead of seeing the positive, seeing the good things, we'll just go straight for the negatives. You know what that does? Gives you tunnel vision.

You focus on the negative, and you don't see the little negative things all you see, but you don't see all the beautiful other things. God starts with the beautiful other things. Then He says, a little something that we need to talk about.

Can we do that in our relationships too? We're so quick to see the negative. And then we messed up. He says, I got a little bit of a complaint against you.

You don't love me or each other as you did. You see what happened? Money, all the things around them, the prosperity, it just changed. I don't need to worry about my brother, sister.

Can you remember what they did in the beginning of Acts? It says they all came together. They ate together. They took care of each other.

They sold their stuff so that everyone could have enough and they could all be taken care of. And now it's kind of you for you, me for me. I'll take care of me.

It's the I trouble. It's me alone. That's what happened to them.

God wasn't that important anymore because they had it all. I can buy it all. I can do it all online.

I can do. Does that sound a little familiar? That's what happens. That's what happens.

You don't love me or each other as you did at first. Look. Call to mind.

Think about it. How far you have fallen. It's a beautiful, beautiful image.

And I want to go to another book. It's a beautiful image. It's an image of a ladder.

They were at the top of the rung, living with God, working for God, standing for God. But slowly but surely looking down, down, down. Look how far you have fallen.

Instead of being up there, you are right down. And how often does that happen? I did a sermon for you on this about 10 years ago. Can you remember the three chairs that I put on the stage? Three chairs.

And I put three people in the chairs. And it came from this. And I'll explain that in a second.

From Joshua and Judges. The end of Joshua reads like this. Israel served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua.

And the elders who outlived him would experience everything the Lord had done for Israel. Two chapters from there. Judges chapter 2. The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua.

And the elders said what outlived him and who had seen the great things the Lord had done for Israel. Then Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110. After that whole generation, number two, had died, their children grew up and they did not know the Lord or what he had done for Israel.

Oh how far you have fallen. Remember I put them in there. I said Abraham, Isaac, Jacob knew the Lord, knew of the Lord, didn't know the Lord.

Commitment, compromise, conflict. That's what happens. Or you could put them in there.

David knew the Lord, loved the Lord, sold out. Solomon knew about the Lord, kind of loved the Lord. Rehoboam, the whole kingdom fell apart.

Three generations. We often still see that. God says look how far you have, not me, look how far you have fallen.

This is where you were but look where you are now. Where are your children? Are your children like you sold out? Are your children there to stand under this pressure? Where are you? I'm going to leave that with you because otherwise we'll stay here the whole day. Where are we? Central.

Commitment runs to compromise and the next thing you know that we're in conflict. Remember old Jacob? He was in conflict with his brother. He was in conflict with his father.

He was in conflict with the good Lord himself. He was in conflict with his father-in-law. Always that conflict until that moment where God turned him back and put him back on the ladder.

I have this against you. You don't love me anymore. Look how far you have fallen.

And then this beautiful word. Turn back and do the works you did. The word turn back and there's a Greek word for that.

That's the green one. Metanoeo is your Greek. At the end of the seven churches you're all going to be fluent in Greek.

You got it, Ted? It's the one with the three green thingamajigs. There you go. Metanoeo is your word.

You know the word meta. Metadata. Meta everything.

Means after. And noeo means to know or understand. And when you put the two together it means to think differently.

To change your mind the way in which you thought. So now if we go back to that. Turn back and do the works you did at first.

You see there's a difference between repenting and having remorse or regret. To have remorse or regret doesn't mean I have to take an action. I can just say, ah well yeah I shouldn't have done that.

But to repent means to change what you're thinking. And then when you change what you're thinking you change what you're doing and you turn away from that and start doing new. Come back.

Come back to what you did. Let me end. Because if you don't repent I will come and remove your lampstand, your church, from its place among the churches.

But there's a but. This is in your favour. You hate the evil deeds of the Nicolaitans.

I'm not going to talk about them today. I'll talk about that next time. Immoral pagan worship going on with the Nicolaitans.

Verse 7. Anyone who has ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he's saying to the churches. And here's the most beautiful part of the whole church. To everyone who is victorious, not to everyone, to everyone who is victorious, who stands, who stays where they were standing, continues with the Lord.

To everyone who is victorious I will give fruit from the tree of life. Let me explain this and then I'll say amen. For those who stay strong, for those who stay in the Lord, there is this wonderful promise.

You will eat of the fruit of life in the paradise. Paradise is a Persian word. Means a garden, beautiful garden, that has a wall around it to protect the garden from everything.

That's where the word paradise comes from. So if you think back to that temple that I showed you earlier, the temple of Artemis was this beautiful temple with all these gardens and it had this wall around it. And the wall was a wall of protection.

If you got in trouble and you ran to the temple through the walls, they were not allowed to touch you. There's a story about this that you may have read. Cleopatra wanted to kill her sister.

Her sister lived in Ephesus. She ran into the temple of Artemis and she hid there for two years thinking that she'd make it. But her sister was meaner than she thought and she still killed her.

Comes from Ephesus, by the way. It's this place of sanctuary, this place of safety. So he says in the paradise of God, where you will be safe, where you will be protected.

But here's the most beautiful. You will eat of the tree of life. Goes back to Genesis, right? God says two trees don't eat.

One of knowledge and the one of life thank the good Lord, they only ate the tree of knowledge, which messed them up. Because all of a sudden it was, holy smokes, you make it. And they knew all these kinds of things.

Before that, they lived together, broke them up. Can you imagine if they ate the tree of life? We would have lived these lives with these broken bones.