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 some about the book of the Revelation of John. As we are going to spend the next several weeks looking at the church and Jesus’ vision of what he wanted his church to be. We will start out today and look at what the church in 100 AD looked like in general, and how these churches in Asia Minor came to be.
As we learned last week there was no concept of ‘church’ in the way we think of church before Jesus. In the Old Testament period God gathered his people from Egypt and they worked and traveled and worshipped all as one people. They would Worship in the traveling tabernacle. After they made it to the promised land, God did send priests to live out among his people, but worship took place exclusively in the, permanent tabernacle 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 them, he began to teach this concept of ‘church’ not being just in the Temple and not the only place of worship, but instead Jesus’ taught ‘church’ was the idea of God’s people working together to do the work God had asked them to do - We read these words of Jesus 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 that the idea of ‘proper worship’ and worrying about conducting worship ‘in the right way’ because unfortunately how it was practiced in the synagogue the human rules had taken precedence over doing the work God had called his people to do. For Jesus corporate worship was important, but he also wanted to make sure in this new “church” that they would work together to bring about God’s love and grace to the community at large.
Most of us are familiar with Jesus’ words to the Apostle Peter ‘to you I will give the ‘keys to the kingdom’; ‘the kingdom’ , in this case, 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 care for one another.
After the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and then Jesus’ ascension the gospel message began to spread out from Jerusalem, people gathered together to share and talk about what was happening and they called the local congregations ‘church’ but there were no buildings, just groups of people who began to be called ‘Christians’. Which was a word coined by the Romans as a slanderous and derogatory term for them. We have read above several of the Apostles who left Jerusalem and began to travel various places, to teach about Jesus and form those who became believers into groups. However the most prolific founder of churches was the Apostle Paul.
Paul, in a vision, 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 a follower of Jesus in Antioch that Paul was on his way to arrest. 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. Luke recorded in Acts the actual ‘sending’ of Paul to do this work God had 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 have heard a lot about the catacombs and persecution of these Christians and it is hard for us to even conceive of what it would have been like to make the decision to hear Paul teach the message of Jesus and then decide you are going to give your life to him and become a ‘Christian’. Knowing that you could lose your job and/or your life so it probably was a good idea to hide it………
Except , as Jesus taught, being a ‘Christian’ meant you were to 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, to care for the poor, the widows and the orphans and the prisoners and all those 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’ - they would study (altho remember there was no New Testament for them to read so they would recall and discuss the stories Paul had taught them), they would share communion and would work to help others. But unfortunately people are human and whenever they would encounter a problem, because Yes even ‘Christian people’, encounter problems, they would contact Paul and he would write a letter to them to help them work through their issues. Some of these letters we now have as most of the New Testament - like Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, for example.
After Paul was martyred in Rome and persecution increased over the years of the Christians, it was during this time John the Apostle, was sent to the Island of Patmos and Jesus himself decided that he, 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 in 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 both 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 - very discreetly so that the members would not be arrested, tortured and killed. But as hard as they tried to keep themselves off the Roman and Jewish radar screens, people were still discovered and taken by the Jewish leaders to the Romans. Paul, before his conversion, being a prime example of people doing this.
So what we need to think about as we freely worship and we are concerned about how difficult we think it is and how inconvenient to have to “go to Church” it really is for us to try and live up to Christ’s call to the church, so, as we sit in our comfy chairs or fish on the lake, imagine how hard it was for these Christians to live up to Christ’s expectations and be persecuted at the same time like they were.
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 are 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 to remember , in spite of the dangers, 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.

THE REVELATION OF JOHN

The book of Revelation has always been a great mystery. And I will grant you that if you just sit down and try to read through it, your head will be spinning around before you are done! It is no wonder so many strange and weird interpretations have been made concerning this last book of the Bible. As I sat and prayed about what God was wanting the church to hear, I thought about the concept of ‘church’. We over the last several months have had to consider what ‘church’ is. The certainly isn’t what it once was - whether 30 years ago or 10 years ago or even 5 months ago. And that is OK because Jesus is always asking his church to evolve into what Christ needs us to be in a certain place and a certain time. We have had to consider how we work and worship together as a church while maintaining social distancing and masks and other measures to insure our safety.
For the next couple months we are going to look at the picture of ‘church’ that is presented to us in the book of Revelation. Now even though this book is a bit strange and difficult, the book of Revelation does present to us a blueprint of what Jesus wanted ‘church’ to be - and we do always need to keep in mind that ‘church’ was something ushered in by Jesus himself and as the designer of church we need to hear what he wants his church to be. We will begin this week and next week talking about the book of Revelation and then begin to look at the specific churches mentioned in these words.
The book was written by John. John had been arrested for teaching about Jesus and his punishment was for him to be put in exile on the island of Patmos. While he is there he has a vision. This vision is of Jesus who tells him that he is to write down everything that Jesus tells him and everything he sees. One of the reasons the images in this book are so bizarre, is because John is seeing things that aren’t describable in human terms. He is trying to teach us of things that are more than we can truly ever understand. The only way he can do this is to stretch our imagination to use earthly words to describe heavenly things. An impossible task! The other reason there are these images of flying dragons and multi-headed beasts and flying women comes from the fact that John is using images from popular stories that existed during the time period in which John is writing. One of the stories reflected the birth of the Greek God Zeus to allude to the miraculous birth of Jesus . If we knew that story we would recognize it, but for most of us the story is lost. Just like we use TV shows and movies to illustrate our understandings of some of Jesus’ teaching, John uses stories the people ‘back then’ would have known - and we don’t. He also uses references to Old Testament images – several times he uses the stories of the Exodus and we also see images from the prophetic books of Daniel and Ezekiel. If we know our Old Testament better, we would recognize these metaphors as well!! So the descriptions used throughout the book are not so much mysterious – but images unfamiliar to us in the 21st century!
What else we need to learn to truly understand this book of scripture is the audience. When Jesus instructed John to write this letter down, he told John to write it and then send it to the 7 churches of Asia Minor. We would know this as Turkey today. These churches were suffering terrible persecution and John is trying to give the members of these churches a message of hope – a message which reminds them of the promises of God. The overall message of the book is that as terrible as things may be right now, we have the promise of the people of God of this glorious eternity, living in the presence of God forever. Things may be difficult now, but there will be a time when we will live in peace, with no more tears and no more pain and no more suffering. However, Jesus spends the first 3 chapters explaining to the members of these specific churches that it is important how they live now. That in the face of all this persecution, they are the witness to the love and grace of Jesus Christ, and they need to live and conduct themselves accordingly!
This ‘book’ of The Revelation of John is actually a letter. John wrote down what Jesus told him and put it in the form of a letter and sent the letter to each of the churches mentioned in the book. This was a time when they didn’t have copiers, so this letter became what was known as a circular letter – there was just one copy, and as each church read the letter, they would send it on to the next church. The interesting part of this was that each church would see the good and bad comments Jesus was making about the other churches!
We will look at each of these churches over the next couple months, however it is interesting to mention that of the 7 churches, 2 churches Jesus pointed out were doing nothing wrong, 2 churches Jesus condemned for doing nothing right and the remaining 3 churches had some good some bad. The purpose Jesus tells them, is not to be condemning (although he was really hard on the church of Laodicea), but to help them correct their problems so they could be true witnesses to Jesus. As the church of the 21st century we can read these messages from Jesus to help us get ourselves as a church back on track! Many times throughout the entire book, the point is made that no matter what is going on in our life, the main thing we need to think about, is our witness to Jesus and his church. And when you read the historical accounts of the spread of Christianity, not the Bible stories, but the secular history that was recorded, it was the willingness of Christians to stand by Jesus Christ even in the face of persecution that pulled people into the faith. The people looking in from the outside felt that if these people were willing to put up with the persecution they were suffering – which often was just horrific – then Jesus must really have something important to offer.
Revelation means just what it sounds like, the word ‘reveal’ – the purpose of the book is to ‘reveal’ something – to reveal our hope in eternity with Jesus Christ. Often the book is looked at as a picture of the future – our future. And it is in the ‘heavenly’ sense. It is not a picture of our future here on earth. Many have interpreted this book as a picture of the ‘end times’; of our life here on earth. But nowhere does the book say anything about Tribulation or Armageddon or‘rapture’. What John is doing in this book is portraying in images current to that time, the awfulness of what Rome was doing to the Christians. And then Jesus, through John, is using horrific images to point out that Rome would meet her destruction some day. It is that same encouragement we receive from Jesus during his ministry – that God will make things right in the end. To these Christians getting burned up and thrown to lions and turned into candles and imprisoned, they hear that not only will they have this wonderful future in the presence of God, but that the one persecuting them, the Empire of Rome, will get theirs. And of course history proves this to be so as the Barbarians destroyed Rome in the year 390.
One of the wonders of this book, is its emphasis on worship. Revelation is a book of worship. Over 40 of the hymns we sing on a regular basis come from the book of Revelation! Every story John tells, every moment of bizarre pictures, is framed by times of worship. These wonderful pictures of people gathering together, of sharing a meal in the form of a heavenly banquet, of singing joyous songs and just praising God, of a great reunion of all the people of God from every time and every place. John is saying to us that one of the reasons we gather now to worship we are in effect ‘rehearsing’ for this great communion and this great worship we will participate in one day in the Kingdom of God. The message is also that no matter what is going on, it is important and necessary for us to take time out to worship together as the community of God. All the worship we see is a worship praising God as a people of God – all together.

While it is still a rather difficult book to read, and while it does admonish us to remember that we do have standards we need to live by, the book of the Revelation of John is a picture of the fulfillment of the promise of God – that no matter what is going on in our life right now, no matter what we are experiencing, in the end, God will make all things new and we will live forever in paradise with our savior Jesus Christ!

Amen!