Revelation 3:14-22 "Knocking on the Door"

I. Standing at the Door

Last week we looked at the letter from Jesus to the church in Philadelphia. In this letter Jesus talked a bit about doors. He talked about the fact that he was holding a door open for us, his people, and when he held it open no one could close it on our face. In today’s scripture he again uses the door imagery but twists it around in a wonderful and powerful way.

Take a moment, if you will, to look at the windows around the church. You will notice that the full window pictures all have scenes from Jesus’ life on them. We have his birth, him welcoming the children and him praying in the garden of Gethsemane. And then we have a picture of him standing at a door, knocking. This isn’t actually a representation of an actual event that we find in the gospels. Oh, I’m sure he knocked on doors at some point in his life. But we know that this is symbolic, that it represents Jesus standing that the door to our hearts. It represents the scripture that we read this morning. Jesus is standing at our door knocking, wanting to enter into relationship with us, wanting to feast with us.

It’s a powerful image. It is one that truly makes sense to us. Jesus doesn’t force himself into our lives. He instead stands at our door and knocks, and he waits for us to come out and invite him in. Jesus could open the door himself and keep it open so no-one could ever close it. But he chooses, as he does so many times, the humble path of waiting for us.

Sometimes I wish God were a bit more forceful in his pursuit of his people. I wish he would do a bit more than knock. Some people, myself included, sometimes need to be woken up, to be shook around a bit to get our attention. Knocking at the door doesn’t always seem like it is enough. And yet it is what Jesus does. He gives us the choice. “Do you want to follow me? If so, let me in.” It’s an important choice, it’s a life changing choice. But what is it he offers if we do let him in? He offers to feast with us, to share food and fellowship with us, to nourish us with living water and the bread of life.

But when we talk about this powerful image of Jesus knocking at the door, we usually talk about the door being the door to our hearts. We individualize this passage and see it as something that we as individuals all have the opportunity to do. And this is a fair reading of this. But when we look at it closer we see that Jesus isn’t talking to individuals, he is talking to a group, to a church. And he is knocking on the door to their church, waiting for them to open up and let him in.

II. Lukewarm

Jesus also confronts the church in today’s letter. He accuses them of being lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. Now for us today this takes on a certain imagery. We think of someone who is lukewarm as someone who is wishy-washy. We think someone who is lukewarm in their faith is not terribly set on what it is they believe. I had a friend who accused the Covenant Church of being lukewarm because, in her understanding, the Covenant Church allows you to believe whatever you want, we don’t make people make decisions on things that aren’t clear in the Bible.

But this is not what Jesus is talking about in this scripture. Oh, certain truths are important to God, they are so important to God that he asks all of his followers, all of his children to accept them and believe them. We know what these truths are. They are the truth that we are all sinful people. We cannot earn our way to heaven on our own. We need help. They are the truth that God sent his Son to be that help for us, to take away our sins and offer us eternal life. They are the truth that if we believe in Christ, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That we need a personal relationship with God, that we are called to accept Jesus as both our Savior and Lord. To be a Christian, you must believe in some real things. You must believe in the resurrection. If Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, then everything we do really has not much meaning. These truths that all Christians agree on, that we all accept can best be found in the apostle’s creed, certain things that we believe about God, about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit and about what it means to be a part of God’s church.

But there are other things that are not as clear in the Bible. These things are not as obvious, and sometimes the Bible even seems to contradict itself in these areas. The Bible isn’t clear about baptism. On one hand, it tells people to repent from their sins and be baptized if they want to follow Christ. On the other hand, it talks about people not just being baptized themselves but having their whole household baptized, children, servants, everybody. And the Bible was written by and initially to first generation Christians. It did not talk about what to do with the next generation of Christian. So we as a denomination say that there is a legitimate argument that can be made on either side of this issue and we’re going to let individuals and churches baptize how they want to. Is this being lukewarm? Is this failing to stay true to the gospel? I don’t believe so.

Let me explain: Growing up, we had a neighbor who had a pool in their backyard. And the pool had a hot tub right next to it. We would swim around in the pool for a while, then we would hop into the hot tub. I remember we’d dare each other to hop from the hot tub into the pool. It was a shocking thing when you first did it, but it reinvigorated you like nothing else.

You see, Laodicea was in a place where there were hot-springs. People came from all around to Laodicea to experience the healing and comfort of the hot-springs. There were pools that were heated from underground volcanoes so they were hot to the touch. But Laodicea had a shortage of cold water, running water, drinking water.

But a spring that is neither hot nor cold, this is pointless and worthless and unusable to the people of Laodicea. It doesn’t offer healing to the people as hot water offers, and it doesn’t offer nourishment to people like cold drinking water does. So, when Jesus confronts the people in the church from Laodicea for being lukewarm, he isn’t necessarily complaining about them being wishy-washy theologically, rather he is talking about how they interact with the world around them.

Jesus finds them lukewarm and therefore will spit them out of his mouth. If they were hot they would be offering healing to the world around them, if they were cold they would offer nourishment. Hot water and cold water are useful to God and to the world around them. Lukewarm water is not useful. And God wants his church to be useful. Jesus tells us “those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.” He is pushing the church to be useful because he cares for them, because he loves them, because he truly desires for them to be about what it is that he is about.

III. Many Letters, One Message

We have spent five weeks looking at five of the seven letters to the early churches in the book of Revelation. I hope you have seen some common themes, have found something to take away from these letters. We discover that the individual churches were all dealing with different things and had different things that God was saying to them, but there were certain things that were important to them all. God truly wants his people to be active. He wants us to be making a difference in the world around us. Whether it is him confronting a church with being lukewarm, neither offering healing nor nourishment to the people around it; or telling a sleeping church that they need to wake up so that they can complete the deeds he has planned for them; or encouraging a church that has been a faithful witness; we see that God wants faith from his people but he also wants faithfulness. He wants our actions to match our words. He wants us to be doers of the word and not just hearers.

At different points we see ourselves in these seven early churches. And we see that we have many of the same strengths and weaknesses they have. And we are called to the same life of witness that they are called to. Jesus tells them that it’s not going to be easy. There are rough times ahead. But he also promises that there is a great reward ahead. For those of us who are faithful, who are true, God has great and wonderful things planned. We will sit at his throne. We will spend eternity in his presence. We will feast with him. We will be given new names. We will be given the morning star. Jesus will acknowledge our names before the Father. It’s all somewhat mystical and confusing, but when we look at it together, we realize that if we do allow Christ in, if we do open that door that he is knocking on, he offers us something wonderful, something powerful, something eternal. I know that I am thankful I opened the door for him and invited him into my life. And I believe that he continually knocks. I believe that he may be knocking on your door today. Are you going to answer it? Amen.

Revelation 3:7-13 "I Have Loved You"

I. Two Churches

Two weeks ago we looked at a letter from Jesus to a church that was dying. And Jesus had an important message for them, “Wake Up!” He still had plans for them, he still had a mission for them, he still had a purpose for them. Today, we are looking at a letter to a church that is awake and alive and about God’s business in this world and Jesus has a message of comfort for them, a message of hope.

It is interesting to look at these two letters side by side, because some of what Jesus says is the same in them. In both letters Jesus talks about returning, about coming soon. But when he is talking to the sleeping church it is not something that is good for them. When he is talking to a group who is on track with him, though, it is truly wonderful news.

When I was at Midwinter back in January, we went to a session about the end times and it was interesting because as we talked about Jesus coming again, about his return, there were different people who had different hopes about it. Some truly saw the world as a difficult place, a place of trouble, a place where Jesus’ return was truly needed to make things right. But there were others among us who have often found ourselves not quite ready for Jesus to return. We still had things we wanted to do in this world. When I look at Bronte, I’m not crazy about Jesus returning tomorrow because I want to see her grow up and experience this world. I know others who have someone close to them that they want to see come to Christ. I think that these both are good reasons that we should want Jesus to wait before he returns. But there are selfish reasons as well. As a kid I didn’t want him to return until I could grow up and get married. There were parts of this world, of this life, that I wanted to experience. And I feared that if Jesus returned too quickly, he would take those things away from me.

The good news that Jesus gives this church in Philadelphia did not necessarily seem like good news to me. But there were others in our session, people who grew up struggling, people who grew up without the things that I grew up with. These were people who knew suffering in their lives and their communities, and they found true strength and hope in the promises of Christ. They truly believed that when Christ returned that he would make all things better, and they truly sought this, desired it with all their heart, longed for it.

The question I wonder about, the fear that I have, is whether we are so comfortable in this world, whether we enjoy the things this culture offers us so much, whether we’re so tied to the things of this earth that we aren’t really being about the things of God and his kingdom. My fear is that we are much more like the church we talked about two weeks ago, the church that was more interested in their image than their relationship with God.

God and his message is all about good news. Jesus is about bringing good news to those who need it. The danger is that we sometimes don’t realize that we are in need of the good news that Jesus offers. And when this is the case, we do find ourselves more like the church we read about two weeks ago and less like the church we read about this morning.

II. Strength to Go On

But today’s letter holds hope for us even still. “I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” Sometimes, though we feel weak, though we don’t think we can do it on our own, we somehow find the strength to move on, to follow, to go where God is calling us. Sometimes we are finding that we need to stand strong. Sometimes we are confronted with a difficult world around us, and we wonder how we are going to continue. Where are we going to find the strength to go on?

That is where the letter to the Philadelphians makes all the difference. In this letter God acknowledges the weakness of the people of Philadelphia. He realizes that they have a difficult road ahead of them. But he offers them hope. They have stayed strong and he will give them what they need to continue to stay strong. He promises to place an open door before them that no one can close. God knows that the people cannot do it themselves, and yet they persist in following him, and so he promises to help them, to lend them strength, to hold the door open for them so that no-one can close it on their face.

Jesus not only commends the people of Philadelphia for their faithfulness, he offers them strength to be faithful. And God offers us that same strength. As we, as a church, look forward to new missions that we want to be about, as we try new ministries that will reach out to the community around us, God will see this and will be thankful for it, but he will also give us the strength to do things that we aren’t necessarily thinking we’re ready to do.

I have found myself again and again surprised as I have stepped out in faith to do something that I don’t feel ready or prepared for, to find that God is able to use me in ways that I could not possibly imagine. And yet, I still find myself fearing that step of stepping out. I still find myself thinking that I’m not ready or able to do what God is clearly calling me to. One thing I can tell you for certain is that as long as you don’t step out in faith and trust him to hold the door open for you, you will not ever have the opportunity to actually see God working through you. It’s only when we trust in him and reach out that he is able to truly show us what it is that he can do through us, how it is that he can use us.

III. God’s Love

There is something else, though, that is mentioned in this letter that gives strength when strength seems lost. They are simple words, words that are worth hearing the Sunday after Valentine’s Day: “I have loved you.” Now in this letter they are being spoken in relation to someone else. There are people who are set against the Christians. These people set against them believe that they are better following God than the Christians, and they accuse the Christians of having fallen away from their faith. And Jesus promises that he will make these others acknowledge that God does love the Christians, that they have been faithful, that they have been true. Jesus promises that in the end they will be vindicated. The life they have lived, the faith they have been faithful to, will be shown to be true. Not only will they know, but all around them will know that God has loved them.

This is truly something that gives strength. Do you know that God loves you? Do you truly believe that he is coming back so that he can be with you again? We often push this truth away because it is hard to truly accept. Oh yes, he loves us all. He sort of has to, that’s his job. But it is truly deeper than that. God truly and deeply loves you. He created you, he knows you, and he loves you. Jesus tells the people of Philadelphia right here: I know that you have little strength. He knows your weaknesses, the things you struggle with. He knows your secret sins and those things that keep you away from him. And even so, he loves you. If this doesn’t give you strength to go on, I don’t know what will. Believe in God’s love. Trust that it is a real thing that is directed towards you. Know that when Jesus promises that he is returning again, it isn’t to keep you from having fun, it is so that he can be with you again. Find strength in this. Find purpose in it. And use that strength, that purpose to do great things in God’s name. Amen.

Revelation 3:1-6 - Wake Up!

It is usually Lisa who wakes Bronte up either in the morning or after her nap. But sometimes I get that joy. Sometimes, Bronte is already awake and I just have to go into her room and see her smiling at me. Recently, she’s been pulling herself to a standing position in her crib, so that when Lisa or I go in there, she’s standing, holding on to the rail as she smiles at us.

But sometimes we have to wake Bronte up and she’s not awake yet. It’s a different story, though not terribly bad. We go in and turn on her light and then go and stand over her. She usually begins to stir and stretch and wake up. Sometimes she spends a couple minutes stretching out and trying to wake up. Sometimes her eyes just open and she’s ready to go. But there have been times where I’ve gone in to wake her up and she hasn’t been terribly happy about it. Then she wakes up crying and it is not terribly fun.

I know that there’s an art form to waking someone up, one that Lisa and I are going to have to learn or we’re going to be having difficulty as Bronte gets older. I had a friend in college who helped at a camp that had a wonderful way to wake people up. In the morning, as it was time to wake up, this would blare over the sound system:

Listen to In the Morning Time

From what I hear, it wasn’t a pretty sight. People don’t like being awakened in such a cheery way when they aren’t feeling that themselves. But, sometimes people have to be woken up from where they’re at. Today’s scripture is designed to wake a church up from their current ways, and I wonder how much we have in common with this church? Do we need to be awakened as well?

I. Reputation/Reality

The people of Sardis had a good reputation. They were known as a church that had it together, that was heading in the right direction, that was following God. They had a reputation for being a place where God was working, but this wasn’t their reality. In truth they were near death. In truth, they were just going through the motions. In truth, they were falling away from the faith they had once had. It may be that they once were the church that their reputation said they were. Maybe they had been a church that was alive and faithful, and had lost this, began resting on their past laurels, blamed their fall on things that they had no control over. Or maybe they were just a church that was good at going through the motions and pretending they were something that they were not. I tend to think that it is the first of these, that their reputation is there for a reason, that they once were an alive and vibrant church, but they have now fallen asleep. They are now content to just continue on with what they are doing, and hope that Jesus returns before they completely die out as a church.

But this isn’t what Jesus wants for his church. He tells them to wake up. He wants to see them be the church that they are reputed to be. Jesus finds that the deeds of the church are uncompleted. That is a loaded phrase that we are going to have to spend some time talking about. He warns them, he threatens them almost, that he is coming like a thief. He will come for them, and if they aren’t awake, if they aren’t alive, they will not like his coming. A dead church, a sleeping church, isn’t going to like Jesus’ return. It is not going to find the joy in it that a living, Spirit filled church will find.

But those who are awake, those whose faith is alive, they will walk with Jesus in garments of white. They will know what it is like to walk with Christ in the new world. Now it is clear which group you want to be a part of. Do you want to be a part of the sleeping church that will fear Jesus’ coming because with that coming will come judgment? Or do you want to be a part of the church that is alive and unsoiled, that looks forward to Jesus’ coming because when it happens you will be able to walk with Jesus in a new heaven and on a new earth. I know where I want to be.

And yet I sometimes look at our church, and I wonder where we are. Are we just going through the motions, waiting for our church to die, allowing ourselves to sleep through the work that we are called to do in this world?

II. Uncompleted Deeds

I mentioned a bit earlier that Jesus finds the deeds of the church unfinished. This is an interesting turn of phrase, and maybe it might work better to put it in a way that we might better understand. Jesus is saying that the church hasn’t met the purpose that he has given them. He is saying that he’s not done using them. He’s saying that there’s still work to do. And he sees them as dead because they aren’t doing that which he has put before them.

Again, I have to ask these questions about our church. What is God calling for us to do? What are his plans for us? Are we here just to care for each other? Are we here just to worship God and study scripture, so that Christians can, hopefully, grow deeper in their faith? This is actually a good thing, to see people grow deeper in their faiths. But it is only a starting point. As a church we are also called, just like every church, to reach out to those around us with love and truth. We are called to help those around us in need, to love our neighbors as ourselves. And we are called to share the good news of salvation with those around us. Does waking up mean that we need to be looking outside of ourselves? Does waking up mean that we need to be reaching out in love to the community and the people around us? Does waking up mean that maybe we need to move outside where we’re comfortable as individuals and as a church and step out in faith to make a difference in this world? Does waking up mean that we need to take risks, do things that we may not have done before, risking failure because we are truly taking on more than we can handle? Does it mean that we have to rely on God to give us the resources we need to bring about his plan for us?

III. A Wakeup Call

My friend’s wakeup song is so jarring because it is so loud and obnoxious and cheery, when loud, obnoxious and cheery are the last thing you want to be dealing with. Someone who is asleep does not like things that are loud. Someone who is asleep definitely does not want to deal with something that is obnoxious. And someone who is asleep doesn’t want to see someone else be so happy and wonderful, especially when all they can think about is trying to go back to sleep. And what’s with trumpets in the morning, they should be illegal until after lunch at least.

And yet the jolt is precisely what some of us need to wake us up. We need to be awakened from our slumber before it is too late. We need to find a way to get back on track. We need to find out how to become the church that some people think we are; that we hope to be. We cannot do it ourselves. If we rely on our own strength, we’ll just fall back asleep. We need to allow Christ to give us the energy we need to truly wake up and make a difference where it needs to be made.

Does our church need a wake-up call? Do we? Are we falling asleep? If we are we definitely need to be worried about this. God doesn’t look too kindly on sleeping churches. When churches sleep they die. And when churches die they quit doing the things that God has planned for them.

What is our purpose as a church, here in Albert City? Are we just here to take care of our own? Or does God have greater things planned for us? Does God want to continue to use us to make a difference in this community or should we just roll over and go back to sleep? I think we should wake up. I think that Jesus is giving us a wakeup call, and we need to respond.

And I think the previous letters we’ve looked at give us a good idea of how we can wake up. First, we need to rediscover our first love. First, we need to remember the passion that we once had for mission and ministry. As we discover that passion, as we remember the things that we have done in the past, we must realize that we aren’t just going to be able to do things the same way again. Something that worked to bring our community to Christ in the past won’t necessarily work again. But we can find new ways to bring our world to Christ today, finding the same passion and joy that we once had. And when ministry is happening, when you are involved in something that is making a difference, you realize how wonderful it is; you find that it no longer feels like a burden to spend time and energy bringing Christ’s love and truth to those around you. You go home tired but excited, having worked hard, but worked for something that is so very fulfilling. You rediscover your first love.

And second, we need to learn how to reach out to a culture, a world, that isn’t where we’d like it to be. When we see the difference between where we are as Christians and where those around us are, we find that we long to show them how to come where we are. When this longing begins, we will find that we are awake in a way that we hadn’t been for a long time.

And so, are we ready to wake up? Are we ready to bring God’s love and truth to those around us? Are we ready to make a difference for God in our world? This is what we’re called to. We cannot flee this pull on our lives. It might feel good to roll over and cover our ears and try to go back to sleep, but this is not what God wants from us, this is not the place for us to go. Let us awaken to the mighty plans that God has for us. Amen.

Revelation 2:12-17 - Living Where Satan Is

When I was ten my family went on a trip to the South Pacific. I believe I’ve mentioned it before. Seeing the joy in the hearts of the people of Tonga who really had nothing was a life-changing moment for me. But it wasn’t all joy like that. Throughout the trip we would go from country to country, Tonga, Tahiti, Australia and New Zealand and at each place we would sit down at a restaurant and my dad would ask for ketchup. “I’m sorry, we don’t have any.” Well, on the last day of our trip we’re sitting in a restaurant and we look over at a table near us; there’s a bottle of ketchup. My dad asks the waiter if we could have some ketchup. “I’m sorry, we don’t have any.” My dad points across at the bottle on the other table. “Oh, you mean tomato sauce? Right away.”

One neat thing, though, was that we flew into New Zealand and spent a couple days there at the beginning of our trip, and then another couple days at the end, before we headed home. As we flew into New Zealand, the pilot came over the radio, informed us of the weather and welcomed us to Auckland. “You are now entering New Zealand, set your watches back twenty years.”

And the pilot was right. It was a different world. Things were much slower, and we happened to be staying there over a Sunday, and pretty much the only thing open on that Sunday was our hotel. We walked around town near our hotel and no restaurants were open, we turned on the television and watched sheep dog herding and lawn bowling and there were no commercials on Sundays. Life stopped on Sundays so that people could celebrate the Sabbath.

It used to be that being American meant that it was mostly assumed that you were a Christian. It used to be that on Sundays nothing was open and nothing was done so that people could go to church and not break the Sabbath. What a different world we live in today, what a different pace we live at, and what different expectations we have for Sundays.

I. Where Satan Lives

Many Christians bemoan the loss of the Christian values of our country. Many Christians look with longing at the times past where Christians were deciding the values of the culture. But there are some who think that this might actually be something that will be good for Christianity. They will say that it is good that as a Church we are competing with so many other things in people’s lives. They will say that it is good that our faith doesn’t make us fit in with the culture around us, but rather causes us to stand out, to be different.

I must admit that I like the theology that says this; I like the idea of standing out as Christians and being a prophetic voice to the world and the culture around us. But, practically, this is much harder. When we compete with the entertainment and self-centeredness that the culture around us glorifies, we find it much harder to be heard. Life in the majority is a lot easier than life in the minority.

A Muslim scholar, someone who is pretty wise, actually, pointed out that reading through the New Testament, he could not find anything that talked about living life as a Christian where Christianity was in charge of the culture. Whereas, when he read through the Koran he could not find anything that talked about how to live as a Muslim as part of the minority. This is an interesting point to be made. Islam, as a religion, one that we believe was made up by humans, was designed to be in charge, to control and rule over a culture, to shape that culture into what it wanted the culture to be. But Christianity, a religion that we believe was handed to us by God, was lived out for us in the words and works of Jesus, doesn’t talk about ruling over people but rather talks about what it is like to live in a culture that may not accept you, that may disagree with you about what it means to follow God, that may attack you or punish you for your faith.

And when we look at the church throughout history, when we look at the church in the world today, it is precisely where the church is persecuted, where people are dying for their faith that God is really working and that Christianity is so very alive.

Today’s scripture, another letter from Jesus to an early church, this time in Pergamum, talks about what it means to be a part of God’s kingdom even when the earthly culture around you is turned against God. Jesus tells the Christians of Pergamum that he knows where they live. He tells them that they live in the place that Satan has his throne. Wow, they are living in the center of evil. And yet he is thankful that they are remaining true to his name, that they do not renounce their faith in him.

Jesus wasn’t just being symbolic; he wasn’t just being poetic when he talked about Satan having his throne in Pergamum. It was the city that was the center of emperor worship in Asia Minor. This was the place where people went to worship the emperor. This is where there was a temple set up to the emperor, the real sign of power in the day. And yet, even in this haven of evil, even in this center of, well, Satan’s power there were Christians, meeting, praying, praising, and remaining faithful. It is in the places of darkness that the light can truly shine so very brightly.

II. My Faithful Witness

We would love to see the world go back to a place where Christians were completely in charge of our culture. But perhaps we can be a stronger voice by standing up and telling those around us, not that they have to live the way we want them to live, but rather telling them that there is an option, that there is a better way to live.

Many in the culture around us look down on Evangelicals. They think that we’re hypocrites who want to push our agenda and our values on the people around us. And some of their attacks on us are fair. But if we started taking a different approach, if we began to look at the world around us and stop treating it like we were living in the New Jerusalem but rather realized that we were living where Satan had his throne, then we could truly make a difference to the world around us. And we could put an end to the complaints people have about Evangelicals.

What if we were telling those around us not that they had to live the way we thought they should, but rather that there was something worthwhile about living this way. What if we were standing out as an example of a better way to live, what if we were being faithful witnesses for God. It is interesting because Jesus does mention a faithful witness by name, Antipas. And the reason Antipas is mentioned by name is that he was killed for his faith. Is this something that we are willing to give up for our faith, our very lives? It’s hard to figure because it’s just a question to us; it is one that is not based in reality around us. But, it helps us to see that having faith, being faithful, isn’t always going to be easy for us, sometimes it will mean that we need to sacrifice. Faith that doesn’t sacrifice isn’t necessarily faith at all. And so we can learn from the people of Pergamum. We can learn what it means to live in a place that is not welcoming to our faith. We can learn how to follow Jesus when it is not the popular thing, the expected thing to do.

III. Cultural Compliance

But God criticizes the people of Pergamum as well. They are standing out, they are living amongst a culture that does not accept them, they are being a light in the darkness, but they are also giving in to the culture around them. They are allowing themselves to be influenced, to be changed, to be tempted by the culture around them. This, of course, is the danger of being that light in the midst of the darkness. The danger is that you might start accepting the darkness as light. The danger is that your eyes might adjust enough that you don’t realize that you’re living in darkness at all anymore.

We are called to be faithful. We are called to shine in the darkness. We are called to live in a way that might not be popular and in doing so, encourage others towards this path. This means that the way we live may not match up with the way that the culture around us lives. This means that we cannot expect the culture around us to change, but we can invite people to live like us instead of living as our culture suggests. What if, instead of telling those around us that they must be faithful to their spouses, we instead showed them how faithful living truly can be better for them. When talking to our youth, encouraging them to wait until they’re married, instead of telling them just to do it because it’s what God commands, we can explain to them that it truly will lead to a better relationship with their future spouse. Instead of trying to get our culture to become what we want it to be, we can show those around us that sometimes it is better to live in a different way than the culture around us lives. We can be faithful witnesses by showing the contrast, by living faithfully in a world where faithfulness to God is not the norm. This is what the people of Pergamum dealt with, and this is what we have the opportunity to deal with. How are we going to follow God in the coming decades? As our culture continues to move away from faithfulness in God? Are we going to be that light? Are we going to shine Jesus’ truth out to those around us? Or are we going to comply with the norms and the beliefs of the culture around us? Perhaps, instead of putting our energy into trying to change the world into the way we want it to be, we can stand up against the world and teach those around us what it truly means to follow Christ. Amen.

Revelation 1:17-2:7 - Remember Your First Love

I. Important Teachings in Revelation

I have mentioned before that the book of Revelation is a difficult book to look at. It is full of confusing and difficult sayings and many a Christian has found him or herself falling off track as they try to figure out what Revelation is about to the point of ignoring the other, important teachings of the Bible. That being said, there is an important section of the book of Revelation, that moves away from the apocalyptical writing and basically talks to real people struggling with real issues as they are parts of real churches. I believe that Revelation 2 and 3 are the real power of the book of Revelation, not because they avoid apocalyptic writings but because they are surrounded by apocalyptic writings.

Revelation 2 and 3 spend time talking to seven churches that were going while Revelation was being written. And these chapters look at these churches and commend what they are doing right and correct when they are off track. In taking time to look at the problems and joys in these individual churches in the midst of a book talking about the end times, God is making it very clear where his priorities are.

Now I, like many Christians before me, believe that these were letters written to specific churches with specific problems that are being addressed. But I also believe that they have greater truths that speak not only to the church receiving the letter but to all Christians. So I believe that it is worthwhile to look at these letters to the angels of the seven churches to see what they say to us. Some of these will speak more to us than others. Some will show us that we, as a church and as Christians, are on the right track and we can rejoice in that. Other letters will challenge us where it hurts and help us to realize that we are falling short in our call to follow God as his people. Whatever we get from these letters from Jesus to these early churches, we know that they will not hit us all at the same place. But when we look at what Jesus rejoiced about in his early church and what he was disappointed by, we can better understand how to be a part of his church today.

II. The Ephesians

The first letter that we come across in the book of Revelation is to the church in Ephesus. This is a church that we know something about, after all, we have a letter to this church from Paul.

And here, like with Paul, the letter begins by commending the people of Ephesus. They have been faithful, they have worked hard at their faith, they have stayed true to good theology. You see, in the early church, much like today, there were different ideas going around about what it meant to be a Christian. There were different leaders who focused on different things. For some one thing was more important, for others something else was. And some Christian leaders, even back then, would head off on the wrong track. They would head in a direction that was taking them away from the faith. The Nicolaitans are mentioned in this passage. They were people who wanted to make Christianity too much like the culture around it. They felt that it was fine to eat food that had been sacrificed to idols, they felt that it was okay if you went ahead and denied Jesus verbally, because what really mattered was what was in your heart. They believed that the Christian faith could accommodate the culture around it to the point that it didn’t look any different from the culture around it. But the people of Ephesus rejected this teaching. And they are commended for it.

The truth that we find here is that we are called out as Christians to be different. We cannot allow ourselves to accommodate to what we think the world around us wants us to be. No, we have to stay true to what God is calling us to be, even when this means hardship for us. Even when this means that we might not be treated in the same way as those around us. We aren’t offered food that had been sacrificed to idols anymore, and we might wonder why this was a problem in the early church, but when you realize that the restaurants all served food that had been sacrificed, and when you realize that that was where people would go to do business, all of a sudden you realize that the people weren’t able to do business the way that those around them did, they were giving up something important so they could stay true to what the Gospel asked of them.

The Ephesians were doing the right things. They were testing those who came to them, they were making sure that their theology was on track. They were studying not only God’s word but also the teachings of the apostles. And the Ephesians are commended for this. They are on track. They are heading in the right direction. But they are missing something. There is something lacking in their faith, in their walk with the Lord.

III. Your First Love

What is it that is missing? It is put so eloquently in verse 4. “You have forgotten your first love.” What is the first love that Jesus is talking about? I believe that it is twofold. The first love is the love you have for God when you really understand what it is that he has done for you. And the first love is also the love that you have for things of God like church and missions and doing God’s will. Jesus goes on to tell the people of Ephesus to remember the heights that they’ve fallen from. And I think it is worthwhile for us to remember what our faith used to be like.

Remember how excited you used to be about the gospel? Remember how you just devoured scripture because it was new to you and you couldn’t get enough? Remember what it felt like at camp when you walked down that isle to accept Christ into your life because you realized that you wanted to take the next step? Remember when you lost track of time because you were worshipping God and you had caught a glimpse of heaven? Remember when you looked forward to every opportunity you had to get together with other Christians because there was something exciting about talking about God with others.

But that excitement, that joy, that exuberance doesn’t seem to last and we end up finding ourselves going through the motions. We end up having to drag ourselves to church because we’d much rather sleep in. Some people blame this loss of the excitement on the church and they will try a different church that will be new and exciting once again, but that doesn’t last, either. Others dismiss their excitement for the Gospel and the things of God as youthful exuberance. They dismiss it as something that they cannot ever get back. They’ve had their honeymoon with God and now the relationship has moved past that stage.

But in his message to the Ephesians, Jesus tells them how to remember their first love. He doesn’t just tell them to do it, he tells them how. He tells them to do the things they used to do. It’s the way we’re built. Our emotions, our feelings are affected by what we do. We like to look at it the other way and we like to allow our actions to be decided by our emotions, but it can happen the other way around. People who feel like their relationships are going downhill and don’t see much joy in them anymore often allow their emotions, their lack of love, to keep them from working towards growing those relationships. And yet, if they started doing things that would help the relationships grow stronger, they would find that their feelings would follow. We often wait for our feelings, when what we need to do is start living as if our feelings were different and we would find them changing.

The summer between high school and college, I was working at a grocery store as a box boy. It was a good job that I quite enjoyed, though I’ve got to say that you can only talk about the weather so many times a day as you take people’s groceries out to their cars. One day I came to work very upset and very depressed. My girlfriend had broken up with me the night before. But my job was such that I had to smile and make light conversation with strangers, though I didn’t feel like it at all. At the beginning of the day, I felt that I had a fake smile plastered on my face when I was around people, and it would disappear when there was nobody around. But as the day progressed the fake smile became real, as I made the effort to be friendly and have conversations with people, my heart started warming up.

I think this can be true in many ways with our relationships. When we don’t feel like things are going well, we can start acting as if they are and discover that things can and will turn around. And I believe that this can happen in our relationship with God. We need to rediscover our first love. This doesn’t mean that we have to wait until we hear a song we like. It doesn’t mean that we need to find a church that matches our worship style. What it means is that we need to begin treating God as if he were first in our lives again. And we just may discover that when we begin to do this, God will take that place in our world and in our lives once again.