Text: Revelation 2:1-5
Focus: The real mission of the Church
Purpose: To help people see what Jesus is all about.
Form: Story telling
Intro:
I was in prison last weekend doing a ministry so I am posting the first sermon I preached here at Bear Creek.
I have to admit that I am resisting temptation today.
I have always said that every preacher, no matter how poor he is, has at least one good sermon in him. My dad was also a pastor, and a pretty good preacher.
We were raised in a hell fire and brimstone setting. But although my dad and me believe in heaven and hell, eternal reward and eternal judgment – permanent separation from God, My dad was a preacher of grace.
When he preached, you wanted to serve Jesus because you could tell that he was close to God. Because of an heart attack, he didn’t care for a specific church from the time I was 10 until I was about 16. So he would travel often on a Sunday to preach, and he always brought me with him. He had this great sermon that I had memorized. He called it: “How Big is our God?” It was so full of faith and encouragement that you wanted to run right out and get busy serving God.
So my temptation is to preach my best. It would be the sermon that I always open up revival services with, when I am called on to go preach revival somewhere.
However, God has a different message for you this morning and I want to be faithful with what He wants me to preach.
So, let us go back to the scripture this morning
"To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this: 2 'I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot endure evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them [to be] false; 3 and you have perseverance and have endured for My name's sake, and have not grown weary. 4 'But I have [this] against you, that you have left your first love. 'Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you, and will remove your lampstand out of its place-- unless you repent.
John sees the Lord in the midst of 7 golden lampstands.
John is to write 7 warning letters to 7 churches represented by the lampstands.
As the warning letters are being spoken by the Lord He holds the individual lampstand that represents the individual Church.
Today’s text is the letter to Ephesus.
So remember, John sees Jesus holding this lampstand while he is hearing this warning.
He tells the church that unless they change, He will remove their lampstand.
The problem is that they have left their first love.
They have forgotten what it was like to be young Christians who know what it means to be saved by grace alone.
• It is a warning to this Church to renew their focus on the first things.
• And He makes it clear that change is inevitable and without it, they will be judged.
• To repent means to change direction.
Reggie Joiner, in preaching about this passage says: Maybe the problem is the church has been doing church for so long it has forgotten how to be the church.
Now the lampstand image comes from the OT.
And the lampstand has a very symbolic role in the OT.
(Walk out the space and describe its setting).
Look at where the lampstand sits in this incredibly complex image of how the tabernacle is to be set up.
The tabernacle was very ornate, and everything had to be just right. Just the right distance between the poles, just the right designs on the poles. Just the right dimensions for the different rooms.
Just the right formula for the incense burned. Just the right number of loaves of bread, changed at just the right time.
Inside this holy place, there is only one light:
• The lampstand.
• It is sitting right next to the bread of presence.
The light is there for one purpose, and that is to illuminate the bread.
Consider the symbol: The Bread of Presence represents the provision of God.
In the NT Jesus is the "Bread of life."
The Lampstand of the Church of Ephesus is also there for the specific purpose:
• To shine the light on the provision of God. Jesus Christ.
The Church is the lampstand and our purpose is to illuminate the provision of God.
Our purpose is to illuminate the Messiah, Jesus.
NOW LISTEN:
The Churches potential to influence is directly related to how it is positioned and what it illuminates.
We go back to the scripture in Revelation 2:4: “you have left your first love.”
This is really a very sad image.
A bride who has run off on her husband.
It speaks of pain, separation and longing on the part of the husband.
And here is the problem throughout the ages: The church has a tendency to drift from what it was originally intended to do.
Did God call the Church to light a candle and show the provision of God?
Or did God call the Church to merely curse the darkness?
God has called the Church to light a candle instead of merely cursing the darkness.
It is the gospel. John 3:16 and 17:
Say John 3:16 with me.
Now remember verse 17: For God did not send His Son into the World, to judge the world, but that they world would be saved through Him.
Turn on the TV church today and it seems like a Christian 4-h club
I am going to say this tongue in cheek to help us see how we can be merely cursing the darkness.
The 4h club:
1. Hollywood
2. Homosexuality
3. Halloween
4. Harry Potter.
• What is wrong with Hollywood?
• We didn’t get to go to movies until I was 12.
• When I asked my parents why, I heard something about the lifestyle of the actors and going to movies supported it.
• Or, the theatre was dark, and that symbolized evil.
• Listen, the real problem with Hollywood is not the sex and violence, but it comes from the culture of materialism it creates.
• It is fueled by advertising and the message is that you deserve more and you are incomplete unless you have more.
• But look at Jesus:
• To the woman at the well who craved men and had moved into her 6th relationship:
• Drink from the water I give you and you will never thirst again.
• Move to bread: Here is the Church shining the light on Jesus: “Jesus said, whoever drinks of the water I feed him will never thirst again.”
• The Church is here to point to the meaning in life given to us by knowing Jesus.
• The problem with homosexuality
• Not the sex act.
• It is sin, but Jesus makes it clear that the sin of lust is just as bad.
• The gay agenda does not accept the concept that there is such a thing as sin.
• But that message is far beyond the so called “gay agenda.”
• That message is prevalent in worldly thinking.
• We reject it because Jesus died to save us from sin.
• But when we merely curse the darkness of homosexuality, we actually make it sound like we are good in comparison to them.
• I don’t know any person that doesn’t have to fight the temptation to lust. And sometimes they all fail.
• But the divorce rate is as high in the church as it is in the culture.
• Instead of being against homosexuals, we need to be for wholeness and healing at the foot of the cross.
• Especially for people whose lives are broken sexually.
• How are we going to win people if the message we communicate is that we are “against them?”
• It is at the foot of the cross that people find wholeness from whatever sin is binding them.
• But it is easier for the 4H club to condemn someone else than to look at themselves.
• The problem with Halloween is not so much the fact that it celebrates the devil’s holiday.
• But it isn’t the devils holiday.
• It was originally created as a means to keep safe from the devils pranks.
• But instead of being against Halloween, we need to be for the power and protection afforded the people of God because they belong to Him.
• The Bible says that when we are believers, we are held in the hand of the Father and not one sparrow can fall outside of His sovereignty.
• The problem with Harry Potter isn’t witchcraft.
• I read the books. I couldn’t find anything wrong with them.
• It is simply creative fantasy that teaches good morals while capturing the imagination of children.
• I just read the last book, and it actually does what CS Lewis does with Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia.
• There is death, resurrection, the sacrifice of one for another.
• This 4H thing is the Church thinking somehow that it can prove itself better than the world.
• The only thing we should be proving is the provision of God to the world.
• God wants us to love the world that Jesus died for.
• And we do that by showing the world God’s provision.
They need the provision of God.
• Look, it is important to take a stand, but when we lose sight of standing for Jesus, we start merely standing against things.
• Taking a stand “against things” is not preaching the gospel.
• Because the word gospel means “good news.”
• When the only thing we do is curse the darkness, we lose our influence.
• It is a serious problem.
• Did you know that statistics show that %70-80 of students who grow up in church abandon their faith when they graduate from High School?
• This isn't that percentage of all kids, but of the 1/3 of those who grew up in church, 2/3 of them leave their faith.
• It signifies is that the church is losing its influence.
The Lord tells John to tell this Church: “Because you have left your first love, your lampstand has been removed.”
He tells them to change back to the former things.
Jesus does not want us to lose our influence.
He promises to be with us in the process:
I will never leave you or forsake you.
You shall have power…
So, it isn't God who has changed, the problem is that too often the church has moved the lampstand to a position where it no longer focuses on the provision of God.
Kathy and I were attending a church in the eighties.
The church had a dynamic youth ministry.
Our kids were not yet in the youth
They led a young woman to the Lord,
Problem was, she had been involved in witchcraft
She dressed in black and had black eyeliners tattooed around her eyes.
She looked scary.
And you can guess what happened in the church.
The phone rings, one mother talks to another, pretty soon, this young girl used to be The Witch from Hansel and Gretel and she was going to devour all our kids.
Parents started taking their kids out of the youth group.
Now don't get me wrong.
This girl was just saved and still had a lot of cleaning up to do, but that poor youth pastor had a real problem.
The church had lost sight of its vision.
They seemed more concerned with themselves than the radical nature of the gospel.
You see, when we move the lampstand, we lose our ability to influence.
I think we get confused that moving the lampstand and shining it on something else proves that we indeed are radically different.
We know that God has called us to come out from among the world and be separate.
But not to merely curse the darkness.
It isn’t measured in the things we don’t do or things we are clever enough to condemn.
Our influence is directly related to how we shine the light on the provision of God.
And the size of the light is nothing compared to the God who gives it its influence.
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