Seven Churches 7: Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22)

Revelation 3:14-22

Like a lot of men, I am not keen on going to the doctor. One time, several years ago, I forced myself to go because I was suffering from regular blinding headaches. The reason I didn’t want to go was that I feared bad news.

The first thing the GP did was put me at ease. He was quickly able to assure me that I didn’t have a brain tumour. He said, ‘Almost everyone who comes to me with bad headaches assumes they have a tumour, but the vast majority don’t.’

If men don’t like seeing the doctor, I venture to suggest as a parallel that many churches would rather not receive a diagnosis of their spiritual health from Jesus. In the case of the church at Laodicea, they are in for a shock when Doctor Jesus gives his diagnosis of their condition and prescribes treatment in our reading. Unlike a lot of men who fear they have a serious condition when they are more or less fine, the opposite is true of them. They think they are fine, but they are perilously ill.

Let’s remind ourselves of Jesus’ diagnosis. It’s devastating:

¹⁵I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! ¹⁶So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth. ¹⁷You say, “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” But you do not realise that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.

We need to look separately at the problems of being lukewarm and being rich.

A lot of people misunderstand the criticism of lukewarmness. It is often said that to be hot is to be ‘on fire’, fiercely devoted to Jesus, and to be cold is to be hostile to him. Therefore in condemning lukewarmness, Jesus is saying either be totally for me or totally against me, both are preferable to being half-hearted. But why would Jesus want people to be against him? It makes no sense.

What does make sense is to put these images into the context of Laodicea itself. The nearby town of Hierapolis had hot springs which were used for healing and therapy. Nearby Colossae had cold water, which was used for cooling and refreshment. But Laodicea only had a lukewarm water supply, laden with minerals, which drinkers wanted to spit out.[1]

Applying this to the metaphor of hot, cold, and lukewarm water in our text, I think we are meant to understand that the Laodicean church’s so-called faith had no positive effect on anyone. They brought neither healing nor refreshment to those with whom they engaged. They were not a good news community. Nothing about them brought the transforming love of God in Christ into people’s lives for the better. Encountering them just left a bad taste in the mouth.

And as for their claim to be rich and self-sufficient, again this was something in which the Christians followed their city. Laodicea had been hit by earthquakes in AD 20 and again in AD 60. On the first occasion, they received imperial aid to rebuild. On the second occasion, they refused outside aid, saying they did not need it due to wealthy benefactors in the local farming community and a nearby centre of medicine.[2]

What does that sound like to you? Well, to me it sounds like pride. I don’t need any help thank you, I’ve got it all. In spiritual terms this is devastating to faith. In fact, it’s contrary to faith and kills faith. In the Gospel we are, as Jesus tells the Laodicean church, ‘wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked’. We need someone else. We need Jesus. We need the grace of God. And we need humility to ask for it. Pride stops us from receiving what God has for us.

And if they were full of themselves, full of pride, no wonder they were bad news for people they met. No wonder they left a bad taste.

It’s important for us to reflect humbly on where we are as a church in this respect. Are we a good news community? Is this a group of people where folk are being changed, bit by bit, so that they more beautifully reflect Jesus Christ to the world? Is this a society where the tired and weary find refreshment?

Alternatively, are we just a private club, maybe a bit harsh in tone, where rather than healing and refreshment people encounter judgmentalism and rejection? Which are we?

Because for any church that falls into the latter category, Jesus’ words, ‘I am about to spit you out of my mouth’ must be taken seriously. Did you realise that Jesus closes some churches? Not all – some churches that close have fought the good fight but run out of steam. But others, those like Laodicea, are ones that Jesus himself spits out of his mouth. He withdraws his blessing. He stops pouring out his Spirit. And these churches wither until they die.

These churches may be more familiar to you than you might think. How often have I heard people in some Methodist churches say, ‘I’m not interested in all that mission stuff, I just want this church to remain open to see me out and have my funeral.’ That is a statement of unutterable selfishness. It goes against the whole spirit of Jesus and his community. I think we can work out from today’s passage what Jesus does with a church like that.

Secondly, we need to reflect on Jesus’ prescription:

¹⁸I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so that you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so that you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so that you can see.

¹⁹Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. ²⁰Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

I wonder whether you have childhood memories of being made to take vile-tasting medicine. For me, there was one dreaded medicine bottle in a kitchen cupboard. It was one that my grandmother, who lived with us, was fond of reaching for as some kind of cure-all panacea.

Kaolin and morphine. Or ‘Kaolin-morph’, as she called it. These days I shudder at the thought that pharmacies sold over the counter a medicine containing morphine for unrestricted use with children. In those days, all I knew was that it had the most disgusting taste.

I want to suggest to you that here Jesus has no alternative but to prescribe some fairly unpalatable medicine to the Laodicean church. But nothing other than a drastic turnaround will bring them out of their spiritual death.

So – gold refined in the fire: a Christian life that is costly and sometimes means suffering.

White clothes to cover nakedness: I think this is about a willingness to go against the popular culture. For the Greeks, public nakedness was celebrated. You may recall that the athletes in the original Olympic games participated naked. Even our word ‘gymnast’ derives from the Greek word for naked.[3] They had to be willing where necessary to go against popular culture, rather than think they could continue to fit in and just tack belief in Jesus on top of that.

Salve on their eyes so they could see – they were so spiritually blind that they needed to see again what was truly important to God.

No wonder Jesus talks about rebuke, discipline (or, perhaps better, instruction) and repentance. When a church is dying spiritually the solution is almost never the introduction of new methods and techniques. All they do is put new clothes on a corpse. Much more likely is a solution that entails taking some difficult medicine to get back on the right track, or submission to spiritual surgery.

There are many churches that need to stop asking, what quick fix can we apply that will turn us around, and instead ask, what pain are we willing to endure in order to become more Christlike?

The great tragedy of the church at Laodicea is expressed in verse 20:

²⁰Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

That is not an evangelistic text. It is the description of a church that has shut Jesus out. And Jesus, who described himself to the previous church, Philadelphia, as one who could open doors, either cannot or will not open this door. He waits on the outside, where he has been exiled, until the Laodiceans welcome him back in.

We need to reflect on these matters from time to time. Have we just chosen the easy, comfortable life? Do we avoid the cost of discipleship by blending in with our wider culture? Have we lost sight of what is important to God?

Sure, there are times when churches decline because the wider culture has rejected the Christian Gospel. They struggle to get a hearing because of this. But at least they are trying to get a hearing.

Sadly, there are other churches that are uncomfortably like Laodicea, choosing the easy life and compromising with society. These churches face a hard choice, to know that the only way to spiritual life is the costly path of discipleship.

And maybe it’s the fact that the way of Jesus is a costly and at times painful route through life that puts us off and leads us to take the soft option. If that is the block, then let’s just take a step back and consider all Jesus has done for us. The universe was made through him. He left the glory of heaven for the poverty of the Incarnation. He was betrayed, falsely accused, tortured, and subjected to a cruel death. All this he did for us.

If he has done so much for us, what can we, his people, offer him in gratitude?

[1] Ian Paul, Revelation (TNTC), p113.

[2] Op. cit., p111.

[3] Op. cit., p116.

November 26, 2023 0

Seven Churches 6: Philadelphia (Revelation 3:7-13)

Revelation 3:7-13

One of the discussions Debbie and I have been having lately has centred around the fact that next March our daughter reaches the age of 21 and what we might do to mark that occasion.

It’s less of a milestone now, since 18 became the age of majority in the UK. (I think I’m right in saying it’s still 21 in the USA, though.) So our daughter will probably not recognise the old ditty,

I’ve got the key of the door, never been 21 before!

The traditional gift of a key or a key pendant when someone reached 21 signified them becoming an adult and now being responsible enough to have an actual key. Doors opened for them both literally and metaphorically.

In our passage, Jesus is the One who has the key to the door, spiritually:

These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. (Verse 7)

‘The key of David’ alludes to a messianic prophecy in Isaiah 22:22:

The one with the keys, the steward of the household, had authority both to allow and to prohibit admission to the house itself … As the successor to the Davidic kingdom, Jesus has authority to give access, not to the physical Jerusalem, but to the New Jerusalem and the presence of God.[1]

And Jesus explicitly says he has opened the door for the church at Philadelphia:

I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. (Verse 8a)

When we use the metaphor of a door being opened, it is often to mean that an opportunity has presented itself for us. It’s not unusual for Christians to read about the door Jesus has opened for the church at Philadelphia and think that Jesus has given them a particular opportunity. Indeed, I recall reading many years ago the book ‘God’s Smuggler To China’ and learning how this verse encouraged the author that there was an opening to smuggle Bibles into communist China. It’s a thrilling story.

But the original context here does not indicate that Jesus is presenting an opportunity to the Philadelphian church. Remember, he has the key of David, which opens up citizenship of the New Jerusalem and a place in the presence of God.

And that key of David opens the door to three blessings for the church at Philadelphia. There are no criticisms or rebukes of this church, unlike most of the others, just blessings of grace.

Blessing number one is affirmation:

⁸I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

Philadelphia is not a big, strong church. Their city is fragile, and so are they. The city had been devastated economically by the Emperor Domitian. Although they were loyal to the emperor, he had taken over half their vineyards to grow grain that would feed the Roman army. Philadelphia depended economically on their vineyards. This was a devastating blow.[2]

Jesus explicitly says he knows the church has ‘little strength.’ Perhaps they are a mixture of those who have weathered the economic storm and those who have been plunged into financial difficulty and poverty. They are not glamorous. But Jesus loves them. He is pleased with them.

Why? They have access to the presence of God through Jesus and in response to that they have engaged in good deeds out of gratitude, they have kept his word because he is trustworthy, and they have not denied him, despite strong social pressures.

A church doesn’t have to be big and trendy to be loved and cherished by Jesus. If we are small because we have been unfaithful, that is one thing. But if we are small, despite celebrating Jesus who opens the door to God’s presence by his death and resurrection, and if we respond to that in gratitude with our deeds, and faithfully keep God’s word even when it is costly, then you can be sure he is pleased with a congregation like that.

It’s not for us to worry about whether we have flashy programmes, big budgets, and eye-catching publicity. We only need to concern ourselves with whether we are doing good because Jesus has been good to us, and whether we are remaining faithful to his word, because we know he has the words of eternal life and it is therefore worth sticking with his ways, even when society doesn’t like them.

Blessing number two is vindication:

⁹I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars – I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.

The church in Philadelphia is under the cosh. At a guess, what has happened is something like this. Whoever first took the Gospel to that town probably followed the example of the Apostle Paul and shared the message first of all in the local synagogue. You may recall that Paul said that the Gospel is first to the Jew and then to the Gentile, and there are several examples of him pursuing this strategy in the Acts of the Apostles.

But what typically happened was that some responded positively and others with hostility. Some Jews would believe that Jesus was their Messiah, but others would react angrily. Maybe that is what has happened in Philadelphia. The church is suffering unjustly. What does Jesus say to them?

Effectively, his message is, leave this with me. I will sort it out. It’s a version of Paul’s counsel in Romans 12:19, where he quotes Deuteronomy 32:35,’Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.’ No fighting back. No violence in words, thoughts, attitudes, or actions. Leave it in his hands.

My last but one appointment was a mismatch. I certainly made some mistakes there, but from the beginning my gifts were not what several of the more vociferous church members wanted, and it became a painful experience. The trouble was, it was a lovely area to live in and the children had settled in happily to an excellent primary school. But we had to make the painful decision to leave.

When we did so, a friend who at the time was the URC minister of an ecumenical church in the circuit had words for me that I have never forgotten. He pointed me to the opening of Psalm 35:

Contend, Lord, with those who contend with me;
fight against those who fight against me. (Verse 1)

That’s what I needed to do. Ask God to sort it out. It was no use me getting worked up about it. If I tried to sort it out, then even my purest motives for justice would have been coloured by the emotions of my pain. Best to leave it to God.

It didn’t mean that things were fixed quickly. I know that, because a few months later I was asked back to conduct the funeral of a saintly church member. I was still subjected to nastiness.

But leave it to God. Hand it over. In time, he will sort it out. It is not for us to set the timetable for his justice.

Whenever we are picked on for our faith, let us ask God to contend with those who contend with us. He can do so with pure love. Even his wrath is an expression of his love.

Blessing number three is preservation:

¹⁰Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth.

What is this hour of trial that will test the inhabitants of the earth? I don’t think it can be a reference to the Last Judgment. That could hardly be construed as a test. It sounds more to me like a time of general suffering in the world, as opposed to the specific suffering for faith in Jesus that we considered in the last point. I suspect this is the suffering to which all people are vulnerable, from ill health to natural disasters to war and so on. Certainly God uses such times to test people and perhaps to see whether such times will lead people to call out to him.

Christians were not exempted from COVID. Christians are not being spared in Israel and Gaza, or in Ukraine. We are in the thick of these things just like everyone else. In what sense does God preserve his church, then?

Well, it’s not that we are miraculously protected from the suffering of the world. We do not get an escape route in the way that some Christians read Revelation and other New Testament texts to believe that we shall be ‘raptured’ to heaven before the so-called ‘Great Tribulation’ comes on the earth.

But God will always preserve his church. Remember that Jesus said the gates of Hades would not be able to withstand the church. Hades is the place of the dead. Death cannot destroy the church. We are resurrection people!

But neither will death destroy the church on earth. Many of the churches in Revelation disappeared years and centuries later. Places that became strongholds of the church in her early centuries, such as North Africa, are now deserts for Christianity. Yet even though the church may be crushed in some places, she blossoms and flowers elsewhere. In our day, the western church may be in trouble, but the church is growing in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and south-east Asia amongst other places.

To the world, the church of Jesus Christ is the jack-in-the-box that will not stay in the box. To our enemies, their efforts to destroy us are no better than a game of Whack-A-Mole. Hit us in one place, we pop up somewhere else. God will always preserve us. His church is central to his eternal purposes.

Whatever discouragements we face, let us never forget that.

In conclusion, Christ’s faithful church receives many blessings, even in times of trouble: affirmation, vindication, and preservation. How might we respond? Jesus says,

¹¹I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown.

Keep on keeping on. Continue to be faithful to Jesus’ word.

Simply said and sometimes less simple to put into practice, I know. But let us remember God’s grace and mercy to us in Christ. Let us remember the blessings he promises his faithful people that we have thought about today.

And let those things motivate us to depend on the Holy Spirit to hold on in faith and await Christ’s blessings.

[1] Ian Paul, Revelation (TNTC), p106.

[2] Op. cit., p105.

November 19, 2023 0

Seven Churches: 5, Sardis (Revelation 3:1-6)

Revelation 3:1-6

I’m sure you have noticed that whenever a major organisation is in the news because of a scandal, one of the first things they often want to do is protect their image. They call in public relations consultants who specialise in so-called ‘reputation management.’ The public image must be protected at all costs.

I think it was to the credit of McDonald’s UK boss on Thursday that when the BBC reported nothing had changed there since they had exposed a culture of sexual abuse and harassment of young workers, he didn’t pretend that everything was actually fine. He spoke instead of his determination to make the company a better and safer place to work. Of course, only time will show whether there is substance to what he says.

And with that in mind, let’s take a trip to this week’s church in Revelation, the church at Sardis. This time, Jesus is so troubled by them that his rebuke comes before his praise – the opposite way around from usual.

So the first thing we will consider is Jesus’ rebuke of Sardis.

I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. (Verse 1b)

‘You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.’ If ever a church was trying to maintain a good public image while everything was in truth rotting, it was Sardis.

But to help hear just how forceful Jesus’ words are here, it’s useful to know something about the history of the town itself. Listen to what Dr Ian Paul says about them:

Sardis lost out to Smyrna in competing to host an imperial temple, because of emphasizing its past splendour rather than the present reality. And though the capturing of the acropolis became a byword for an impossible task, it was in fact taken by force – not once, but twice! When Cyrus attacked the city in the sixth century, his forces noticed the use of a trapdoor under the unguarded walls, and while the occupants slept he entered to open the city gates. Three hundred years later, the Seleucid king Antiochus III the Great besieged the city, and apparently took it after reading of Cyrus’ victory. The inhabitants were once again asleep instead of on guard.[1]

The church at Sardis was just like the city itself. In having a reputation of being alive when they were dead they too were trading on past glories. They might not lose an imperial temple but rather a community that was the temple of the Holy Spirit, worshipping the One True God. They too were asleep and needed to wake up if they were not to suffer invasion from their spiritual enemy.

How easy it is for a church to trade on its past reputation, or to live in the past when the present doesn’t seem so appetising. I tell the story of a vociferous elderly lady in one past church who repeatedly reminded everyone of the time when the church had a hundred children in the Sunday School. It didn’t do much for the morale of those who were trying to lead the children they did have at the time, and nor did it help in finding out what God wanted to do there and then in that part of the church family’s life. The only way to do that involved sidelining and ignoring the nostalgia, and then praying, ‘Lord, this is the honest situation. Things are not good. What do you want to do here with children and young people?’

There are many churches which would like us to believe the hype that they are alive when in fact they are dead. They may be trading on past glories. They may be deluding themselves that because the people who worship there at present are happy, it must be a good place. They may not want to ask why some people have left. Show me a church that doesn’t say it’s a friendly church. But then ask people if they have ever encountered an unfriendly church. Many dying congregations expend a lot of time and energy on deluding themselves. They need to hear the rebuke of Jesus to Sardis for themselves.

And they need to hear what Jesus says they should do instead.

²Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. ³Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.

Get back to basics, says Jesus. What brought you to a living faith in the first place? Was it not repentance for your sins and trusting in the mercy and grace of God rather than your own good deeds? Why is it that we confess our sins in every Sunday service? Is it not because we always need to be in that habit of getting back to basics? None of us is beyond the need to confess our sins.

When I was in my church youth group, our favourite preacher in the circuit was an elderly Welsh Local Preacher. I worked out once that he had been born two years before the Welsh Revival at the beginning of the last century. He would have been a toddler during that revival, and he preached like he was still in the middle of the revival.

One Sunday he challenged us from the pulpit with these words: “Have you been converted? Because I’ve been converted many times.” And I think what he meant was that he regularly had to come back to Christ in repentance and be made new again.

If we spend our time telling the old stories, we should be thankful to God for what he did then. But if we live in the past without walking with Jesus today, it counts for nothing. We are asleep in the light and it won’t be us who closes the church, it will be Jesus.

The second of our two things to consider is Jesus’ praise of Sardis.

⁴Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. ⁵The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels.

What is this about? Let’s hear from Ian Paul again:

It is striking that the contrast here is not between the (spiritually) dying and the living, but between the dying and the unpolluted; spiritual life involves purity of living, symbolized by the unsoiled garments. From Genesis onwards, walk[ing] with God signifies approval, friendship and obedience (Gen 5:22); the purity of the garments now is in anticipation of the life of the age to come (6:11, 7:9, 13). Although the high priests in the Old Testament wear linen, white is predominantly the colour of pagan worship, signifying purity, holiness and honour in Greek and Roman culture. Participation in the life of God and Jesus includes sharing in their qualities; just as God and the lamb are lauded as being worthy (4:11; 5:9), so those who remain faithful are the ones who have ‘lived a life worthy of [their] calling’ (Eph 4:1).[2]

So here is our number one priority in the church: to be people who walk with Jesus, who reject the pollution of the world for the purity of his ways. This is what pleases him. This is the true sign of life in the church.

Having a lively programme of events and meetings is not our priority: walking with Jesus is. Having high-quality music from a choir or a band is not our priority: walking with Jesus is. Being the hip and fashionable place to go where there are lots of young people is not our priority: walking with Jesus is. Being an institution that is a respected pillar of the local society is not our priority: walking with Jesus is.

If other blessings come, that’s great, but they are not what we seek. Our priority is walking with Jesus.

And the thing is, we already know what to do about this and we’ve heard it over and over for years. We know from the Gospels how Jesus wants us to live our lives. We also know he has given us the Holy Spirit so that we can put these things into practice. Let’s not deflect from this by saying, “But how do we do it?” because Jesus has already given us his instructions and given us the tools for the job.

I read a column on the Internet by an American New Testament scholar called Scot McKnight. Every Friday he hands over his column to a recently retired minister, a Baptist pastor by the name of Mike Glenn. This week, he was writing about the ways in which preachers look for sermon illustrations and how long it takes us. But he ended his column this way:

Since my retirement, I’ve had a little more time to think. As you would imagine, I’ve come up with a lot of theories with what’s wrong with the world. Here’s one of my theories. The world needs some good sermon illustrations. That is, we need more people whose lives prove the reality of the Risen Christ. Before people look at Jesus, they look at His followers. Do His followers show any difference in their lives? Do they show evidence of having been with Jesus? If the world sees something interesting, then they might want to learn more about Jesus. If they don’t find anything in the lives of His disciples, the world will conclude there’s nothing to Jesus either.

As I have often said, the world isn’t mad at the church because we’re different. They’re mad at us because we aren’t different enough.

Maybe the world needs a few more sermons. Maybe. What we really need, however, are more good sermon illustrations. People whose lives tell the gospel in unforgettable ways. People who love their neighbors. People who forgive after being horribly wronged. People who can live in hope when the world is filled with despair. Whenever we hear stories like these, they stick with us. We can’t forget them.

The world is always looking for a good story. We just can’t find enough of them. Maybe if we made it easier to find a few good stories – a few good sermon illustrations – the world would find it easier to find Jesus.

Do you see now how important it is that we all walk with Jesus. We shall fail. I do. We shall need to return to confession every week and be converted many times.

But there is nothing more vital in our lives and the life of the church. It comes above everything else we do.

So let’s make it our priority.

[1] Ian Paul, Revelation (TNTC). p99.

[2] Op. cit., p102.

November 12, 2023 0

Seven Churches: 4, Thyatira (Revelation 2:18-29)

Revelation 2:18-29

Let me ask you a question or three: is tolerance a good thing? And if you say yes, why is it good? And what are the extents and limits of tolerance?

It’s a live question in our society today. As many thinkers have pointed out, there are vastly different views in our culture about what it means to be human. But proponents of some views shout down those who hold other convictions.

So, for example, some people essentially believe that we are just minds trapped in physical bodies. (This is called ‘transhumanism.’) Others say that our biological sex is decisive for understanding who we are. But others say we should listen to Nature at large, or to our own intuitions and desires, or we just make our own choices to construct reality as we see fit.

Hence, you get the situation where even a lesbian professor at Sussex University, Kathleen Stock, was driven out of her post because she believed that biological sex was primary, but militant transgender activists wouldn’t tolerate an opinion that disagreed with theirs.

In other parts of public life in the UK, the majority opinion has a low tolerance for immigration, refugees, and asylum seekers. Our Prime Minister wants to ‘stop the boats’ and our Home Secretary wants to send people to Rwanda – despite both of them coming from immigrant families themselves.[1]

Tolerance, it seems, is rarely the two-way exchange it claims to be. It often ends up as a one-way street.

As we’ll see in a few minutes, tolerance of the wrong kind is a big issue at Thyatira.

But first, let’s look at what Jesus commends at Thyatira. Because there’s actually some pretty good stuff going on in the church there.

¹⁹I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.

If that were the sum total of a church’s profile that I saw when I was looking for a move of appointment, I would probably think yes, I’d love to be the minister of that church! And if you had moved to a new town and came across a church that could be described like that, perhaps you too would think that this was the kind of church where you would like to belong.

I mean, what’s not to like? This is not just a Sunday religious club. They are serious about their faith and putting it into practice. And I could connect a lot of Thyatira’s qualities to Midhurst. ‘Deeds … love … faith … service … perseverance … doing more’ – yes, I can think even after only two months with you of ways in which this church exemplifies these qualities.

I think of the way some members are getting involved in the Midhurst Community Forum, in order to make a difference for good in this town, and the possibility of an official partnership between the church and the forum.

I think of the way you showed care and concern for Debbie and me when you learned that we had had a difficult move here.

I think of how I learned at the Pastoral Committee of the quiet dedication of our Pastoral Visitors, who get on without fuss in regularly staying in touch with the people on their lists.

I think of the way Jeanette took the trouble to contact me specifically to tell mw how much she had loved being your minister. If you ever formed a church fan club, I think Jeanette might stand for election as the President!

In fact, risky as this may be to put on record after only such a short time with you, I want you to know how much Debbie and I look forward to driving over here to see you.

So yes, I know the age profile of the congregation has skewed older. I know the numbers are not what they used to be. But while we may need to draw some lessons from that, don’t let it hide the fact that a lot of good, commendable Christian things are going on here.

And provided we don’t overload the same few individuals, a good challenge for us would be to consider how, like Thyatira, we could be ‘doing more’ of the ‘deeds, love, faith, service, and perseverance.’ What are the opportunities for us to do that?

Let’s not forget that the kind of church which receives praise from Jesus is one in which the prevailing attitude is, ‘What can we give?’ rather than “What do I get out of this for myself?”

Then secondly, let’s look at what Jesus criticises at Thyatira. Here’s where the question of tolerance in a bad way will come in. What we have is cultural compromise by some Christians that is tolerated by the church.

You might say this is a variation on a theme from the previous church, Pergamum. In that city, there was cultural compromise in that some members, like in Thyatira, were eating food sacrificed to idols and committing sexual immorality (verses 15, 20). The difference at Thyatira is that the church was actively tolerating it (verse 20).

Why am I describing these sins of eating food sacrificed to idols and committing sexual immorality as cultural compromise? Thyatira had a number of professional guilds for the different trades and occupations that were followed there, and these guilds were the basis for social recognition and progress. It was particularly known for coppersmiths (which may explain why Jesus introduces himself as having ‘feet like burnished bronze’, verse 18). Each of the guilds had a patron god. At social events held by the guilds there would be a meal, and beforehand the food to be served would have been dedicated to that god. Post-meal entertainment was usually provided by prostitutes.[2]

So if a Christian tradesman went to his guild meeting and wanted to get on in the society, he probably associated with the false god by accepting the food, and then broke Christian sexual standards with a prostitute.

You might think that the church would condemn such behaviour, but evidently not. If we think that the church in the early centuries was just filled with zealous, passionate Christians who were willing to give up everything for Christ, we are mistaken. There was cultural compromise going on regularly, as one new book amply illustrates.

This, then, is the wrong kind of toleration. It’s good and fine to tolerate people who are different from us and show them kindness and love, but what was going on here was a toleration of outright sin.

Do we do that? Sometimes we do. It may be that a church member has committed an egregious sin, but pressure is placed on the minister not to engage in our disciplinary procedures, because the friendship of church members with this person over-rides the concern for the holiness of the church.

I know that all too well from when I began ministry as a probationer thirty-one years ago and had to deal with a long and painful child protection situation, when Safeguarding had not fully come in. Some church members cared more that I was raising queries against members of the church family than they did that I spent eighteen months living under threats of violence from them.

Or another common example is this. A church is so concerned to make ends meet that it will allow regular bookings from organisations whose practices are in conflict with Christian belief. For me, it’s a really delicate issue when a church is approached by a yoga teacher. For yoga is originally not just a set of exercises but an act of Hindu devotion, and therefore not to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. If the meditation aspect is left out and all that is being taught is an exercise regime, I am less worried, but I find too many churches will brush this all under the carpet (or should that be the yoga mat?) because when push comes to shove, balancing the books matters more than costly devotion to Christ.

Could it be that today, as in the days of Thyatira, that Jesus is also calling some churches to repent? Could it be also that he has given some churches time to change their ways and they have refused, leaving Jesus himself to cause their decline and death?

The Anglican New Testament scholar Steve Walton warns that

Compromise is not about choosing to worship other gods instead of Jesus; it’s trying to include other gods along with our worship of Jesus.[3]

What are the stages of compromise? Walton says we go through four stages[4]: attraction to the other ‘god’, rationalisation that it’s OK to do so, indulgence in practices contrary to Christ, and finally a re-definition of our faith. If we recognise that process going on in our personal lives or our church, we need to turn back to Christ.

In conclusion, what does Jesus ask of his church? In Thyatira’s case, he says,

hold on to what you have until I come (verse 25)

and

do[es] my will to the end (verse 26).

In other words, keep on with all the good things the church is known for, and weed out the cultural compromise.

Let us not judge our success in the faith on whether we are a big and growing congregation or not. Instead, let us judge it in the way Jesus does: are we doing things that bring joy to his heart, and are we faithfully keeping ourselves away from the idols of our day with a single heart for Christ alone?

[1] I am indebted to Steve Walton for this approach to introducing the passage.

[2] Again, I’m following Steve Walton here. See his slides.

[3] Walton, slides, slide 11.

[4] Walton, slides 12-15.

November 5, 2023 0

Seven Churches 3: Pergamum (Revelation 2:12-17)

Revelation 2:12-17

You may have spotted that I’m one of those ministers who only wears a clerical collar for formal occasions or when it’s absolutely necessary, such as when I visit someone who doesn’t know me and I need to be identified as a minister.

One of my Anglican friends noted this attitude of mine and said to me, “Dave, you’re not so much low church, you’re more like subterranean!”

Others, more particularly older and more traditional church members, have questioned me on this and claimed that the dog collar is like some magical Open Sesame that gains ministers entry into places others can’t go. The usual claim is that it allows us to get into hospital wards outside visiting hours.

I have to disappoint these people and tell them that I have no more right to go into a hospital ward out of hours than anybody else, unless I’m a member of the hospital chaplaincy team. And then what would gain me access is not the dog collar but a hospital lanyard.

If I’m feeling particularly mischievous in the conversation, what I then retort is that since Methodist doctrine says that ministers hold no priesthood that is different from the priesthood all believers have, then maybe all Christians should wear the collar!

Why am I telling you this? Because what Jesus writes to the church at Pergamum is all about being identifiably Christian. If we ask what Jesus praises them for, it’s being identifiably Christian. If we ask where he calls them out, it’s for when they hide their Christian identity.

Firstly, then, let’s listen to the praise Jesus heaps on the church at Pergamum:

¹³I know where you live – where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city – where Satan lives.

They wore their Christian uniform, so to speak, and were clearly identifiable as followers of Jesus. They knew it would put them in the firing line in a place ‘where Satan has his throne’. Whatever that phrase means precisely, we can be sure that Pergamum was a tough place to identify as a Christian, because hostility, opposition, and even violence would come their way. Yet they still did it. And it even cost one church member his life.

This wasn’t unusual at the time Revelation was written. We are fairly sure it was written around the time that Domitian was the Roman Emperor (that’s AD 81-96, fact fans). A cruel and ruthless ruler, he only tolerated religions other than the Roman emperor cult if they could be assimilated into that Roman culture. If they stood out, it seems persecution was the consequence.

Indeed, the Book of Revelation is not so much cryptic prophecies of future end-time events as a document to give hope to persecuted Christians. Throughout the centuries and around the world, the persecuted church has taken great comfort from it.

Today, we hear inspiring and shocking stories from around the world about what it means for many Christians to ‘wear their uniform’, to be publicly identifiable as disciples of Jesus.

Here’s one I found through an email from Christian Solidarity Worldwide:

[In August], hundreds of people stormed a Christian colony in Jaranwala city near Faisalabad in Pakistan. Up to 25 churches and chapels and hundreds of homes were ransacked and set on fire.

Why? Two local Christian residents, Rocky Masih and Raja Masih, had been accused of blasphemy. Mobs, stirred up by reports that the men had desecrated religious scriptures, attacked the colony, demanding to execute the two men themselves.

Rocky and Raja were subsequently arrested and charged with insulting Islam and defiling the name of the Prophet Mohammed. Other Christians in the area have fled in fear of their lives.

This is what happens in many places around the world when you publicly identify as a Christian. Lies, false charges, violence, and the risk of death.

But what does that all mean for us, in a country where it is much safer to be a Christian, even if it is less well received than it once was?

I think there are a couple of applications.

One is that we need to take seriously what happens to other members of the Christian family around the world. We need to use our freedoms to support them and campaign for them. I strongly recommend that we look into the work of organisations like Christian Solidarity Worldwide, whom I just quoted, or Open Doors, who do similar work. Who else is going to speak up for suffering Christians if not the rest of the church? These organisations can provide us with material for prayer, for lobbying Parliament, and so on.

The other application I would draw is this. If our situation is easier, then why do we allow relatively trivial opposition to close our mouths from speaking up for Christ? I know we want to avoid the stereotype of Christians being judgmental, but the mockery or opposition we would face is nothing in comparison to what our sisters and brothers in Pakistan, Nigeria, India, Iran, North Korea, China, and so many other countries face.

Surely we could find a bit more courage to nail our colours to the mast?

Secondly, why does Jesus call the church at Pergamum to repent?

You may know one of my favourite sermon stories. It concerns a question set in a training examination for police recruits:

‘You are on the beat and you see two dogs fighting. The dogs knock a baby out of its pram, causing a car to swerve off the road, smashing into a grocer’s shop. A pedestrian is severely injured, but during the confusion a woman’s bag is snatched, a crowd of onlookers chase after the thief and, in the huge build-up of traffic, the ambulance is blocked from the victim of the crash.

‘State, in order of priority, your course of action.’

One recruit wrote, ‘Take off uniform and mingle with crowd.’[1]

I think that’s rather like the issue Jesus had with Pergamum:

¹⁴Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: there are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. ¹⁵Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. ¹⁶Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

Effectively, the Christians at Pergamum had taken off their uniform and mingled with the crowd. How? Note the reference to eating food sacrificed to idols and committing sexual immorality. It sounds very much like some of them were joining in with the practices of the local pagan religious cult.

The management guru Peter Drucker once famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” and this rather sounds like the local culture had eaten the Christians for breakfast. After all, surely it doesn’t harm to mingle with the local crowd if the alternative is sticking out like a sore thumb as a Christian and getting in trouble as a result?

But the problem here is that in letting themselves be absorbed by the surrounding culture they ended up imbibing a lifestyle that denied the Gospel. So no wonder Jesus calls them to repentance.

Could it be that we face the same challenge? Sadly, there is plenty of evidence of both individual Christians and the church corporately taking off uniform and mingling with today’s crowd. We do it when we baptise the world’s ethics and try to convince ourselves they are consistent with the Gospel.

We take off our uniform when we succumb to the politics of ‘might is right.’

We mingle with the crowd when we adopt a celebrity cult in the church, just as the world does.

We do it when we worship the god of individual choice, or the idol of consumerism. And you don’t even have to buy anything to worship consumerism: you can just treat church as a consumer choice, that exists solely to meet your needs and tastes.

Yes, we are every bit in as much danger as the Pergamum church of letting the culture eat us up and losing our Christian distinctiveness.

And when we do this, we are saying we are ashamed of the Gospel, and of he One who went to the Cross for us. That’s serious.

We might do well to reflect on whether there are any ways in which we have bent the shape of our faith to fit what’s popular in our society, rather than calling our society to change shape in conformity to Christ.

Each one of us needs to examine ourselves from time to time to consider whether we have compromised our faith to fit the wider culture.

In conclusion, we have a choice and each choice will lead to a different response from Jesus.

If we choose to take off our uniform and mingle with the crowd, rendering ourselves indistinguishable from the wider world, then Jesus has a solemn response. He says,

¹⁶Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

In other words, he will speak against us. Is that what he has done when scandals have been exposed in the church that is exposed in the world?

But there is good news from Jesus if we take the more difficult route of staying in our distinctive Christian uniform in the world:

¹⁷Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.

The ‘hidden manna’ surely means he will sustain us in difficult, wilderness times in our lives. The ‘white stone’ is what a not guilty verdict was returned on in the local courts and indicates Christ’s acceptance of us. The secret name likely signifies his intimate knowledge and love for us.[2] These are ways in which Jesus strengthens us when times are tough.

So there we have it. We are faced with a tough choice, whether to identify publicly as Christians at a potential cost or to go underground and be indistinct from the rest of the world.

But the easy road is confronted by the opposition of Jesus, and the tough road takes us into the blessing of Jesus.

Which will we choose?

[1] Adapted from Murray Watts, Bats In The Belfry, p137 #232.

[2] See Ian Paul, Revelation (Tyndale New Testament Commentary), p90.

October 22, 2023 0

Seven Churches 2: Smyrna (Revelation 2:8-11)

Revelation 2:8-11

I was on sabbatical earlier this year, and when people asked what I was going to do with my time, some were surprised by one of the things I had chosen.

I had decided to revisit one of my favourite places, the Lee Abbey community in north Devon, to take a course on ‘Dealing with disappointment.’

“Why would you want to do that?” people asked me. “Don’t you want to do something more uplifting on a sabbatical?”

So I explained that I was coming to the end of thirteen years in a circuit appointment where not all my dreams had been fulfilled. I was in the latter stages of my ministry generally and as I look back I don’t see all the hopes I had for my calling at the outset fulfilled, either. I needed to process these things healthily.

Moreover, I said, disappointment is a regular pastoral theme when people talk with me. So few are living Plan A for their lives. More often it’s Plan B, Plan C, or Plan D. It’s important to have a grip of this theme.

Which brings us to that early church at Smyrna. Already facing afflictions, poverty, and slander (verse 9), Jesus tells them that suffering, imprisonment, persecution, and even death are just around the corner (verse 10). It’s not exactly the good life. So much for the old lie that said, ‘When I became a Christian, all my problems disappeared.’

Yet in these four short verses Jesus gives them a way to understand what they are going through that will fortify them for the difficult times and give them hope for the long term.

But what has all this got to do with us? We know about our Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world who suffer greatly for their faith. We often give thanks in our prayers that we have the freedom to worship.

I would not agree with those who say that Christians are now persecuted in this country, but I would say that it is becoming more difficult and there is increasing hostility in the public square to us. We should be prepared for days when Christianity will be costly even here.

And even if that doesn’t come our way, we shall all for sure face disappointments and injustices in life, so it’s best we prepare for facing them with faith rather than an attitude that expects everything to go right.

There are two things in what Jesus says to the church at Smyrna that help us. They are encapsulated in the way Jesus introduces himself, and they are implicit in his pastoral words to them.

How does he introduce himself?

These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. (Verse 8b)

Death and resurrection are the two themes that help us. How so?

Firstly, let’s consider death – and specifically here, I mean the death of Christ. He is the First and the Last, the agent of creation and also the One who will reign for ever and ever. And yet he died.

Whenever Christians think about injustice and suffering, the best place to start is at the Cross. Our faith is centred on the Cross. And what is the Cross if not the most unjust act in history? The eternal sinless Son of God is stitched up by both Jew and Gentile and condemned to an agonising death.

We might say that the death of Jesus was an unique event in history, and in the sense that if made possible the reconciliation of the world to God, that is true. But we might still draw a couple of lessons for ourselves.

One is that in a battle soldiers put themselves in harm’s way in order to conquer the enemy. That is what Jesus did with sin and the power of evil. We may not suffer for the sins of the world, but we do find ourselves in a spiritual battle. It is therefore not surprising if the enemy seeks to inflict damage and pain on us. It is the risk we take as soldiers of Christ.

Another is that our calling as disciples is to be imitators of Christ. I know we do that very imperfectly – well, I do, for sure – but it does mean that we are liable to be treated in a similar way to the way the world treated Jesus. Remember that he said,

If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. (John 15:18)

So while we are not to go out and look for suffering, nor are we meant to be stupidly provocative (as I fear some Christians are), we should not be surprised when we are treated badly. In a time when more and more groups are trying to exclude Christians from the public square because they say we are hateful and dangerous, it’s par for the course. No wonder Jesus tells the Christians at Smyrna to expect suffering.

The trouble is, we have been led to think differently by living in a country where for many centuries Christianity was a major player in shaping the culture, where it has even been in partnership with the State – so-called Christendom.

But throughout history and throughout the world, this is not normal. It is more common to be reviled for following Jesus than praised. Remember: our faith is centred on the Cross.

Secondly, let’s consider resurrection – and again, we starting with the Resurrection of Jesus.

Not only does Jesus remind the church at Smyrna that he died, he also reminds them that he ‘came to life again.’

Now you might say that the Resurrection is an unique event in history, too. You would be right at present, but by the end of history as we know it you will be wrong. Jesus promises here,

The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death. (Verse 11b)

We look forward to the resurrection of the dead. The Resurrection of Christ is the first-fruits of the harvest of resurrection to come. If we follow Christ, then ‘The second death’, that is, eternal judgment, is nothing to fear, for by the grace of God we are put right with him by faith and he remembers our sins no more.

And we do see some mini-resurrections in this life. We see answers to prayer. Injustices are put right. People are healed. Those in need are provided for. Folk who have fallen out are reconciled. Wrongdoers make restitution to those they harmed. Forgiveness is given and received.

When we pray about a situation that is wrong, we do not always know whether our prayers are going to be answered in the affirmative in this life. But that should not stop us praying. If we don’t pray, then very little will happen. If we do pray, though, then there is more of a chance of seeing some divine resurrection.

So let us continue to pray and act for the sick, the bereaved, the suffering, and those facing injustice. We never know what God might do.

To speak personally, I can only think of two times when I can say for certain that God answered my prayer for someone to be healed. However, that neither stops nor discourages me from continuing to pray for the sick. Who knows when number three will come along?

Or maybe you are upset that certain close friends and relatives have never committed their lives to Christ. If so, then I remind you about D L Moody, the famous evangelist, who prayed daily for a hundred of his friends to come to know Christ. Amazingly, by the time of his death, ninety-six of them had done so.

But what about the other four? They were converted at Moody’s funeral.

Conclusion

How do we hold all this together? We do so in a framework that Christian thinkers call ‘The now and the not yet of God’s kingdom.’ Since the coming of Jesus, we are living in two overlapping eras. The first is the era of sin, and thus we continue to see injustice and suffering. This is our first category of death.

The second is the era of the kingdom of God, which Jesus inaugurated when he came. Thus we also continue to see people and things being made new in response to prayer. This is our second category of resurrection.

We haven’t simply passed from the era of death to the era of resurrection. The two are co-existing, overlapping until Christ appears again to judge the living and the dead. Thus we must expect that sometimes we shall face suffering, and on other times we shall experience restoration, and we won’t always know in advance which will be our lot.

But whichever happens, God is still in charge of our lives. Jesus is reigning at the Father’s right hand, even though not everybody acknowledges his rule.

Here is a story I like to tell that I think illustrates what I am trying to say. Some decades ago, there was a massacre of British Christian missionaries in a far-off land, although some survived the attack.

A memorial service was held back in the UK. At it, the preacher said, “I believe that all of the missionaries were delivered by God. Those who survived were delivered from suffering, and those who were murdered were delivered through suffering.”

For we worship

him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again.

October 15, 2023 0

Seven Churches 1: Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7)

Revelation 2:1-7

There’s probably someone in your life whose opinion of you is important to you. This is somebody whom you long to please. It may be a spouse, a parent, a boss, or some other significant figure in your life. I tell a story in my book about how I longed for my parents to be pleased with my school reports, and how I misunderstood their unconditional acceptance of me.

For Christians, and for churches, the One whose opinion of us we cherish is Jesus. And when we come to the so-called ‘Letters to the seven churches’ in Revelation, we get to hear what Jesus thinks of the churches to whom Revelation is addressed.

They are not really seven letters. The whole of Revelation is an elaborate letter, and these are seven royal pronouncements about the churches.

But we are going to look at these seven royal pronouncements about the churches in the coming weeks. We are going to see what Jesus thought of those churches and use that as a way of considering what he might think of us.

The pronouncements are very similar in their style. They start by describing Jesus, using some of the material about him in Revelation chapter 1. They end with a call to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches, and a blessing for the obedient. In between, we usually find both praise and criticism (although sometimes it’s only one and not the other).

If we’re going to concentrate on what Jesus thinks of each church, most of these sermons will focus in on the praise and the criticism. And that’s largely what we’ll do today with the congregation at Ephesus.

Firstly, what’s good about the congregation at Ephesus?

Jesus lists seven good things about them, which for simplicity I’m going to summarise as three: hard work, right living, and right belief.

Hard work can be seen in the way Jesus says,

²I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. …

³You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

Hard-working people who keep going in the face of difficulty and even opposition are often the backbones of many churches. We know those people who will always take on something that needs doing, however busy they already are. Many of our churches stand or fall on the old maxim, ‘If you want a job done, ask a busy person.’ It’s been said that many churches are like a football match: twenty-two thousand people in the crowd desperately in need of exercise watching twenty-two people on the pitch desperately in need of a rest. What we do without our ‘twenty-two people desperately in need of a rest’? Churches would close without them.

And we know people who keep on loyally serving the church, even when other people are making snide remarks about them.

Right living appears when Jesus says,

I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people (verse 2b) …

⁶But you have this in your favour: you hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

Some churches are very lax in what they accept in terms of the lifestyle of their members. They won’t hear anything against their friends. Woe betide someone who comes in – be they a minister or another church member – and says that something is wrong: then look to see how the church reacts.

It happened to a friend of mine who began as a probationer minister at the same time as me. He discovered two Boys’ Brigade leaders conducting a sexually immoral relationship and when he said he wouldn’t sign the form to re-appoint them, a group of church members threatened to march on the manse and smash the windows in.

But at least the congregation at Ephesus knew how to oppose evil. Good for them.

Right belief features at the end of verse 2:

you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. (verse 2c)

It’s utterly important to follow right belief. Christianity is a religion based on truth. We need to know the truth about God. It’s simply no good just to say, “I like to believe in God this way,” if ‘this way’ is unrelated to what we learn about God in Holy Scripture. We cannot follow our fancies and what pleases us.

That’s why it dismayed me when I once heard a committed member of a congregation say, “I like having all the different preachers each week, so that I can hear all different opinions about God.” Friends, the job of the preacher is to preach biblical truth. Any deviation from that is unacceptable. It leads us astray spiritually.

So when the congregation at Ephesus opposes these false apostles who have ridden into town with their unique teaching, I say good for them. They are doing something vital. I wish it happened more in Methodist churches. We set our standards too low at times.

There is plenty of reason, then, to commend the church at Ephesus. Indeed, they are doing things that we could do more of. Hard work, even in the face of opposition; a commitment to right living; a desire to stay faithful to the truth of the Gospel. How I would love to see more of these things in our churches today, rather than places where ten per cent of the members do ninety per cent of the work, and where anything goes morally or doctrinally.

But did you also get a sense of a harshness of tone when you heard about what was good at Ephesus? That’s where we come to the second thing we need to look at: what’s bad about the congregation at Ephesus?

That can be summed up in verses 4 and 5:

⁴Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken the love you had at first. ⁵Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

‘You have forsaken the love you had at first.’ Other translations say, ‘You have lost your first love.’

Jesus doesn’t say what love they have forsaken. Is it love for God or love for neighbour? Well, since Jesus holds loving God and loving our neighbour together as the two greatest commandments, it’s probably both. If we truly love God, we also love our neighbour.

If the Ephesians have lost love of God and of neighbour, then no wonder all their good qualities still sounded rather harsh. Loving God and loving our neighbour, all in response to God’s love for us in Christ, is the foundation of Christian living. The Ephesians have got rid of the foundations and although they don’t realise it, their Christian faith is collapsing.

It is out of love for God that we work hard for the church. It is out of love for our neighbour that we long for right living. It is out of love for God that we want to believe the right things about him (and worship him appropriately as a result).

But sometimes we get so caught up in the busyness of working hard for the church, of defending holy living, and advocating the truth about God, that we forget to nurture the relationship of love. We forget our first love. When we see Christianity as all about being busy and forget that it is a relationship of love, we begin to chip away at the foundations of our faith, and we risk it collapsing one day.

It is urgent for every Christian to nourish a relationship of love with our God, and let the ways in which he is calling us to love our neighbours flow out of that. We cannot just come to church on Sunday and let that be the sum total of our engagement with God. Would a marriage survive if a couple only ever spoke to each other once a week? Why then do we think we can do that with our faith in God?

I decided when I came here that the regular pattern of prayer and Bible reading I had been following each day for many years had become rather stale. I have started combing around for other ways of maintaining my devotional life. But if I end up with nothing then my spiritual life will wither away. I need to give attention to this. So, I believe, does every Christian.

Jesus talks about removing the lampstand if we let go of our first love. According to Revelation chapter 1, the lampstand represents the church. What he is saying is that the church dies when we don’t prioritise our first love of loving God and loving our neighbour.

I believe that the Holy Spirit is warning many churches and Christians today that we get so obsessed with the mechanics of church life that we forget the very source of life, our relationship of love with God in Christ that then inspires us to love our neighbours.

And therefore when we do neglect our first love, the church dies. We ponder why traditional churches are declining and closing in our society, and while a fair amount of that is due to us living in a society that has rejected the Christian faith and embraced beliefs and lifestyles that are hostile to Christianity, it is also true that some of the decline is down to us. We have forsaken our first love.

So you will find that I regularly emphasise the need to read our Bibles prayerfully every day to grow our relationship with Christ. It is not an optional extra for keen Christians: it is essential for every Christian.

If you want to know more, then I can soon talk with you about different ways of reading and experiencing the Bible prayerfully. It may involve Bible reading notes, it may involve using some ancient practices of the church to meditate on Scripture. But whatever it is, let’s do it.

If we want to

eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God (verse 7)

that is, participate in God’s new creation, then we need to make developing our relationship with our God our first priority. If we are serious about building our faith and building for the kingdom of God, this is where we start.

October 8, 2023 0

Tag: The Seven Churches of Revelation