Scott Brown's sermon titled 'First Love' examines the letter to the church of Ephesus from Revelation 2, highlighting its relevance to contemporary churches. The sermon begins by discussing the church's commendable qualities such as their hard work, patience, and sound doctrine, while also addressing their failure to maintain their 'first love' for Christ. Brown emphasizes the importance of preaching as a transformative tool designed to purify and change the church, not merely to comfort. He warns of the dangers of churches and individuals drifting away from their initial fervor and love for God, much like the Ephesians who became active yet spiritually cold. The sermon stresses the significance of self-examination and repentance as a means to return to the warmth of one's initial faith. Brown encourages listeners to understand the context of the seven letters in Revelation, which serve as early warning signs to stop drifting and return to obedience to God. He also discusses the challenges of maintaining faith in a pagan world and the necessity of relying on God's power rather than political freedoms.

Please find verse 1 in Revelation chapter 2 to this all-sufficient word of life for our church. You're familiar with Paul's letter to the Ephesians. We're going to be in the second letter to the Ephesians, which was written by John, verse one. To the angel of the church of Ephesus write, these things says he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands. I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil.

And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars. And you have persevered and have patience and have labored for my name's sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless I have this against you that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the first works, Or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lamp stand from its place unless you repent. But this you have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans which I also hate.

He who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for giving us these words to guide us to move our church in the direction that you have designed, that you've come in mercy and kindness to tell us the truth, that we would search our hearts. I pray that you would cause everyone here to search their hearts with accuracy and with honesty that we would be before you here today, before your word, to stand before it, to be judged and comforted, to be forgiven, to be helped, to be moved on in our sanctification Lord sanctify your church edify build up the body of Christ today by your word amen please be seated So this is a letter to a church.

Imagine if the Lord would write a letter to this church and I was reading that letter specifically to this church. What would he say? And in this text we have a letter. We have a letter to our church. We have a letter to our church at this moment in history, at this instant in your life.

And the Lord has very specific instructions for this church as it exists in pagan lands. This is a letter to a church that existed in a pagan land. And this text is before us at this moment in history and it is It's based on God's omniscient understanding of every heart, in every person, in every church. The eye of the Lord is on His church. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and His eyes see everything.

And we need to remember that these letters were written during a time of history when the Roman emperors were bent on destroying Christianity. The Roman emperors, the Caesars, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, they all waged their own war. All of them waged war against the true Church of Jesus Christ. And as we continue to work our way through the book of Revelation, we should always remind ourselves the context of the book, but also the primary thrust of this book is that we would see the majesty and the wisdom and the honor and the glory and the blessing of Jesus Christ and as we're in this passage we should understand it that we should have a hermeneutical approach to this text so that we understand it accurately and we should understand it according to the purpose of the book. The purpose of the book of Revelation is to reveal the glory of Jesus Christ.

And so in the outline that is in front of you, I plan to cover in this message the first three verses, and then I'm going to continue the final four verses in the afternoon session. We will speak of the church existing in a pagan world, dealing with verse one. We will speak of the commendation that the Lord Jesus Christ has for this church up to verse three. And then in the afternoon we're going to deal with the complaint that the Lord Jesus Christ has with the church and the corrective action. I hope you're able to bring yourself under all of these things And all of the things that we saw about the Lord Jesus Christ in the first chapter are displayed in this chapter in the way that Jesus treats his church.

One of the things that's very clear in scripture is that Jesus Christ designs to purify his church. He doesn't want to leave you alone. And this is the purpose of preaching in a church, is to change the church. Early Saturday mornings I'm reading a book with seven other men in our church. It's called Preaching and Preachers by Martin Lloyd-Jones.

And yesterday we read a chapter about the nature of preaching. And It's always helpful that the church understands the nature and the purpose of preaching and and Lloyd-Jones makes the point that God has given preaching to the church to change the church and It's meant to stimulate the church to grow. It's not a group discussion, it's not a debate among equals, it's the voice of the sovereign God speaking directly to his church. It's not about dialogue, it's about a message from heaven. And He speaks of the fact that the preaching in the church comes from an authoritative source, which is why the points of these sermons are the points of the text that's in front of us.

But frankly, the preaching is meant to smash our pride, that it's meant to take up an argument with our sinfulness and to actually not to make us necessarily feel good, although the Word of God does have much comfort, but the Word of God is actually made to make us look foolish, to make our idolatry look foolish, to show us how silly we've been to rely on our idols, to show us how bankrupt we've become by trusting in this world and walking in the ways of the world. So Lloyd-Jones is saying preaching is meant to humble a man and I pray that the preaching of this text would humble our church and that it is really designed to bring men and women to a sense of their own bankruptcy in and of themselves before God and it's meant to do something. It's meant to change a church and it actually the preaching actually assumes that there's something wrong with everyone who's hearing it And I hope that's your position here today that you've come here with a humble heart ready to be rebuked by the by God and Frankly, you will be encouraged by God because the truth is is that whenever there's repentance there's times of refreshing What a blessing that is So what this means is that a preacher cannot be his own man.

He's an ambassador, he speaks the word of God, he's like a surgeon, he's there to confront, he's not here to make feel comfortable about yourself necessarily and his purpose is to put the church and the community of that church into a process of change and this letter here this before us is an example of that and really you know preachers are are commanded by God to do certain things that really aren't all that palatable to people and, you know, anyone who's preached and tried to preach the word understands it because preachers are under divine orders. Paul spoke of those divine orders in 2nd Timothy chapter 4 verse 2, that they are commanded by God to preach the Word, be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and teaching. And so the Lord Jesus Christ is doing that today with us in this church. His desire really is to strengthen this church. And so with this text that we are entering into, this is God's design.

We are going to be examining these letters for the next several weeks. There are seven letters and they will address our strengths. They will address the things that need to be fixed in our church. These are, in many people's lives, are early warning signs to turn people back to the Lord. And in case there's been slippage, is anyone drifting?

Institutions drift, churches drift, families drift, individuals drift. And these letters are designed to stop the drift and to turn back to the sweetness of obedience to God. So the Lord here in our church has brought us to the footsteps of the seven churches of Asia. These churches are representative of all churches. Jesus speaks to the church to strengthen her.

I don't believe that these seven churches are given to help us understand every period of history. The first century, of course, being illustrated by the Church of Ephesus, and the last century of church history illustrated by the church in Laodicea, there's no evidence anywhere in the Bible that that is the case. You have to go somewhere, you have to go outside the Bible to make that case. But again, We're trying to engage in an expositional study. We're trying to read the book of Revelation the way it is written.

Put your blinders on and read the words and understand them in their context and in the context of Scripture. And it's very important, I think, that we are a strong church, that we allow ourselves to be strengthened by God the prophet Jeremiah speaks of the danger of a weak church a weak church a fearful church a worldly church And Jeremiah speaks of the danger of refusing to be strengthened. And I hope that you do not refuse to be strengthened by the things that are here. He says, if you've run with the footmen and they have wearied you, how can you contend with horses? And if in the land of peace in which you trusted, they wearied you, then how will you do in the floodplain of the Jordan?

Jeremiah's point is that if you are weak you will be weak when you need to be strong and it's the Word of God that strengthens the church and brings her out of her weakness and in the afternoon what we'll cover is seven ways that a church makes herself strong, because we find the remedy in these verses that we'll be dealing with in the afternoon. So this is the thrust of the letters to the seven churches. But these letters are about drifting. I love to go out in the ocean and I'm very well aware of the currents that exist in the ocean. If you've ever gone out into the ocean and found yourself drifting and all of a sudden you realize you've drifted a long way down the beach.

This is what happens to churches. You Find yourself a distance away from where you started. And so this passage should all cause us all to ask, where did I start? And have I drifted? Well, this happened in the Ephesian church.

This happened to real people who are living in Ephesus. And they drifted and it can happen here. All of us can see that in our own lives. There isn't a person in here who hasn't drifted in some way in some point in their life. And I count myself as one of them.

Here's another way to understand what the apostle is speaking of here. Have you ever had a heater that worked fine and it blew hot air and it just kept blowing hot air and all of a sudden you realize the blower is still blowing but the air is cool and it's just blowing cold air. It's working, the fans cranking, but it's no longer warm. The Ephesian church had lost the warmth. They had lost elements of their love for Jesus Christ.

And while they had tremendous activity and they did everything right, they weren't blowing warm air. They were cold. So that's what we find here. Now you'll see this outline in front of you. I'm gonna speak first of all of the fact of this church in its pagan world and ours, and then I want to speak about what was going really good at this church.

We can't discount what was going well. And then in the afternoon we'll deal with what wasn't going well. And we'll deal with how the Lord Jesus Christ speaks to this church to strengthen it. To bring this church back to where, from where she has drifted. And back to the warmth that she once knew.

So let's begin in verse 1. The church in a pagan city. To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write. So you have this angel of the Church of Ephesus, the word angel is often translated messenger, we've talked about this before, angels are messengers and the Church hears messages, this is a message from God through an angel And this makes it very clear that the Church of Jesus is under instruction from heaven, from a higher authority. And there is an earthly realm and there is a heavenly realm.

There is a voice from heaven and this is that voice addressing the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. These, I believe these letters are to all churches and if you look through these churches you'll see strengths and weaknesses. Of course, in Ephesus, they're a hardworking, doctrinally sound, pure church that hates what God hates, what they left their first love. In Smyrna, they were a persecuted church. There's no rebuke for this church.

And they were encouraged to stay faithful unto death. In Pergamum, this church would not explicitly deny Christ but they were worldly they were a tolerant church they were idolatrous they were immoral and Thyatira it was a loving church but they tolerated everything including false doctrine they did good works but they allowed the ways of the Gentiles to affect them. And they were dancing around with sexual sin and the things of the world. And Sardis, it was a dead church, asleep. And a small remnant was there.

They needed to strengthen the things that remained and to return. In Philadelphia you had a spiritually vibrant church. There was no rebuke from the Lord for that church. In Laodicea you had a lukewarm church, a rich church. They were more satisfied with their wealth than they were with the warmth of Christ.

They would rather have the wealth than the warmth. That's so dangerous, especially when the government is threatening your wealth. You might lose your warmth for your wealth in a time like that. It's so dangerous. It's very interesting.

Three of these churches receive only negative judgment. Two of the churches receive only positive judgment and the rest receive mixed judgment, both praise and condemnation. So each letter is meant to speak to all these churches. Let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. There's internal evidence that these letters were to and were to be read in all of the churches and I believe in all of the churches since that time.

This church in Ephesus is first in sequence. Why? Why is this the first church? Well, I don't believe there's any theological reason that this church was first in sequence, but it was just simply the closest church to the island of Patmos. And the Apostle John would take the letter, drop it in the mailbox figuratively in Patmos, and that letter would be taken next to Ephesus which was the closest church and then to Smyrna which is modern-day Izmir and then on around the mail route.

So these were churches in sequence in a mail route in Turkey. And this was a wealthy city, it was a highly populated city. By today's measure it would be the New York City of Asia it was and by the way if you've ever been there it's it's one of the most carefully excavated ancient cities it's beautiful it's a really remarkable to see what they've done to excavate the ancient city. The city that the Apostle John, the Apostle Paul, Apollos, and Timothy, those streets that they walked on. You can walk on those streets today.

The city was a pagan city. The government was pagan. It was a city marked by immorality. The economy was dependent upon the immorality. The temple of Diana was there, it was one of the seven wonders of the world.

This massive structure about a hundred thousand square feet. There's one pillar left today which is a parable for how God deals with idolatry. Yours, mine, and ours. He will take it down, you might as well get it down now. And in the temple courts were hundreds of temple prostitutes, criminals flooded into this city because if you if you did something despicable you could find refuge on the steps of the temple and they wouldn't arrest you you just had to get inside the temple grounds and it didn't matter what crime you committed you were safe.

So people people came to the city to get their hands on something they were called the Ephesian letters these were magic instruction books and they had schools of magic in the city. A lot of money was made off the magic and in fact when the Apostle preached there the economy got dinged and that was a real problem. Whenever you mess with the economy of immorality that economy is going to mess with you. That's the way it's always been. Tyrants ruled the city.

There were no laws to protect Christians. There was no First Amendment in Ephesus, the government was tyrannical. I wonder what it would be like if we lived in Ephesus today. I mean, transport yourself there. You know, what would you be like in the city of Ephesus in the state that it was there?

You know, what would we be doing under those conditions? Well, we don't live there, we live in America. And in America, we pray for our presidents, we honor our authorities, but in Ephesus, you were commanded to worship the emperor, not pray for him or honor him, but to worship him. And you know we think that the church cannot function unless the government is functioning right. That's not really true.

Most Christians are asking themselves how are they going to thrive under a corrupt government? How are we going to make our way through what seems to be a rising tyranny that wants to control every aspect of your life? What are you going to do? What am I going to do? And we have the idea in America, because we've experienced such freedom, that the church can only thrive if conservative politics rule the day.

Is that true? Well it wasn't true in Ephesus and it wasn't true in any of the other cities that this letter went to and it's really not true in most cities in the entire world And the church does thrive and can thrive under tyranny. The church does not need the First Amendment. The church does not need fair elections. There were no elections in Ephesus.

There was no First Amendment in Ephesus. So, you know, this is striking, you know, to all of us, you know, to be here today and to be talking about Ephesus and the church existing in such a pagan land. You know, just this weekend, I mean just over the last few hours, the largest technology companies, the richest people in the world have shut down or at least began to shut down the voices of conservatives. You know, Apple removed the parlor act, saying that it was inciting violence and it must demonstrate a robust content moderation. In other words, it must shut up.

Apple or Google did the same thing. Amazon, a parlor was thrown off of Amazon Cloud effective tonight, Sunday night. YouTube has been banning sites. Twitter has taken a similar path, even banning the President of the United States for life from getting on that platform. Facebook has banned the President until his term is over or until he becomes a good boy again somehow.

But it's hard to, let me just say this here. It's just hard for me to imagine how the words Apple and Google and Amazon and YouTube and Twitter and Facebook got into a sermon. But here they are. And I know that we're thinking about how to deal with this kind of words. But we have this idea that we can't thrive unless we can make our voices heard.

We think that we can't thrive unless we have fair elections. We think we can't thrive unless we have a First Amendment and government protections. And I just wanna ask you if you think that's really a valid proposition. It wasn't the proposition that the churches in Asia held because they didn't exist that way. So let's lighten up.

God is in control. He's sitting on the throne. His eyes are like a flame of fire. His feet are like bronze. In his mouth is a two-edged sword.

He slays his enemies. That's what he does. He's the king of kings and the lord of lords. He's the ruler of the kings of the earth. That's your God, so don't fear.

Well, and let's don't forget that The Apostle Paul walked the streets of Ephesus and so did John. So did our great heroes. They were fine, thank you. They had their eyes on heaven. And so should we.

So I I don't want our happiness or our conversation to be so dependent on the freedom the government gives us. That's not the big freedom we've been given, okay. It was for freedom that you were set free and it's not a political freedom. So let's take the counsel from David in Psalm 146 verse 3. Do not put your trust in princes nor in the son of man in whom there is no help.

Like don't think that electing conservatives is gonna change, is gonna heal America. I think we've learned that that's not true. His spirit departs, he returns to his earth. In that very day, his plans perish. Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth the sea and all that is in them, who keeps truth forever.

Or like David said in Psalm 119 it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man or like Isaiah said stop regarding man whose Nostrils is breath for what account is he? So And you can see the ruins of the temple of Diana of Artemis in Ephesus and you can stand in the apothecary where the riot took place in Acts chapter 19 But you know that the Church of Jesus Christ continues to thrive and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. You know that for sure. It's very interesting. I'm really looking forward to getting to the point where, to getting to the harlot at the end of Revelation.

You know, while Artemis is in ruins, the beast actually turns against the harlot and kills are just like Jezebel was killed that's what these people are going to kill each other they're doing that now they're aborting their next generation and we're not doing that so the gospel came to Ephesus here It's recorded in Acts 18 and 19. They turned away from their idols. They burned their magic books. 50, 000 pieces of silver. I forget how much that's worth in today's dollars and cryptocurrency, but it's worth a lot of money.

And he visited this church and then he visited two years later he was he spent more time in Ephesus than any other church as far as we know and he experienced trials and tribulations in first Corinthians 15 he says I fought with beasts in Ephesus. A year after he left he met with the Ephesian elders on the beach of Miletus. You can read about that in Acts chapter 20. It's a beautiful story. A decade later, Paul would write the letter to the Ephesians.

Priscilla and Aquila were there. Timothy was there. Paul came later and taught in the school of Tyrannus, but they began to drift. They had some of the best teachers in the ancient church, Paul, Apollos, John, Timothy, it was amazing who was in that church and still they drifted. Sometime, maybe in the second or third century it's hard to know.

I've asked people who live there when the church began to fade, they're not sure. But really was a very very well well-taught church. So these things says he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands. And again we encounter this again, we'll encounter it in almost all the letters because we have this matter of the seven stars and the seven golden lampstands and the angels. We're going to get a PhD in angelology in the book of Revelation.

There's over 60 references to angels in Revelation. All of them refer to angelic beings, not pastors. There are many theologians think that these were pastors of churches. It's possible that they are because the word angel means messenger. But here's what's really plain.

Here's what we know. Jesus walks among the lampstands of the churches. Jesus is always walking. He's walking with his church and he's holding the messengers of his church whether they're angels or pastors in his right hand. And then he he praises this church beginning in verse 2 if you have your eyes on your bibles Please look at verse 2 now I'm going to take verses verse 2 and 3 and verse 6 because they all kind of hang together they form what was good about this church they describe the things that please God in the church you know what Christ praises what he holds up as exemplary you will find that in these letters and we find these things here in this letter that he commends.

He commends, I mean generally, their faithfulness and their high activity. But it says here that he knows. He starts out saying, I know, I know. And he knows everything about everybody in his churches. Remember, he's the one who has eyes like a flame of fire.

And he's also the one who has the white hair and like white like wool. In other words, he's really old. He is the oldest, wisest being in the universe. He knows everything and he knows everything that everybody is struggling with in this church. He knows your tears.

He knows your fears. He understands the trials you're in the midst of. He sees every element of your secret sins. He knows what you do every moment of the day. He knows your hypocrisies.

He knows what your pride looks like in your life. You know, maybe some of you have been looking at pornography this week. The Lord Jesus saw that. There were three witnesses, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. They witnessed it all.

And the Lord Jesus Christ looks at his church. You know, if you flirted with someone this week, he saw that. Don't think that that escaped. Maybe your husband or your wife didn't see it. That doesn't really matter.

The Lord sees it. He says, I know, I know. And he says here, I well let me just pause here for a minute. Secrecy in our own minds allows sin to survive, but light kills the sin. And it's always good to have light shine on our sin, because then we can turn from it, and run from it, and repent.

He says, I know your works, number one. Number two, your labor, number three, your patience. Notice these things are in Triads, work, toil, endurance, and then next, not able to tolerate, tested, and found. He presents these in threes for some reason. But the kind of service that the Lord desires is commended here.

It is service that works hard. It's service in the church that sticks to it when you want to give up. And this is the kind of service that pleases the Lord. And there are certain kinds of churches that are characterized by these things. They're orthodox in their doctrine, they're hard-working churches, they toil to exhaustion, they don't give up.

And there are churches that are not characterized by these things. There are Christians who are not characterized by these things. They go with the flow. Church life is not that big of a deal to them. They can fit in when they can.

These are churches that don't warn about sin. These are churches that tolerate worldliness. These are churches where they never confront the laziness of the church or the worldliness of the church. And they engage in what a friend of mine calls an unguarded acceptance of the culture. An unguarded acceptance of the culture.

So there are churches that have these qualities and there are churches that don't and there are Christians that have them and Christians that don't. Now let's talk about the diligence these three things that characterize their diligence your works your labor your patience So these were not just hearers of the Word, they were doers of the Word, and they were vigorous, and they labored. The idea here, the Word really, It's a picture of laboring to exhaustion and frankly this church, you know, learned from the Apostle Paul, he did the same thing. He labored to exhaustion Everywhere he went and this church took on that quality and it was it was a blessing to them. The Apostle Paul poured his life out as a drink offering he says and these this church was kind of like that.

This was a moral church, it was a pure church, and they were devoted to this purity, and you cannot bear those who are evil. In other words, they were a discerning church. They couldn't put up with evil in the church. It was, they were intolerant toward evil, running rampant in the church. And when a brother or a sister was running with evil, there would be some resistance in that church.

You just couldn't do whatever you wanted to do in that church. That's actually a mark of a true church. They were careful as well. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not and have found them liars. They detected false doctrine but they were careful about it.

They tested. They took the time to test it. They believed in church discipline. They tested. But when you test, it means you have to be careful.

You have to take your time and understand what's really happening. You don't just, you know, just throwing discipline, you know, across the whole world. You know, discipline is one of the things that's fallen out in churches. In many places, it either never or rarely takes place. Well, here, they tested them and they were found to be liars.

You know Paul warned them about this in Acts 20. He said men from among you will arise and they will tear your people apart. And they patiently held fast to their faith. That's in verse 3. And you have persevered and have patience and have labored.

There's another triad. Persevered, patience, and labored for my namesake and have not become weary." And so they stayed close to the truth of God and they weren't pulled away by the drift of culture. You know just recently Ligonier did a survey, state of theology. Here's what they found, these people call them evangelicals, 60% say religious belief is a matter of personal opinion, not objective truth. 46% believe that people are good by nature, by you run into that all the time when you evangelize everybody, it's just so good.

40% 42% say that God accepts worship of all religions, including Christianity and Judaism and Islam. 42%. 42% of the people who go to churches, that's what they think. It's remarkable. 30% say that Jesus was a great teacher but not God.

In other words, they just reject the deity of Christ. That's thirty percent. Twenty-two percent think that gender identity is a matter of personal choice. They probably need to check the 300 trillion cells in their body. Every single one of them is coded either male or female.

26% believe that God did not choose his children before the foundation of the world. They just don't believe that. Now either they didn't read Ephesians 1 or maybe they just don't believe Ephesians 1. It's one of those two. Well, this church didn't give up on the doctrine they were sound in doctrine they weren't drifting in their doctrine so you can have you can have a church that's not drifting in its doctrine but it's drifting in its love and it's drifting in its warmth.

You can have that. Now let's jump forward to verse 6. They hated the right things, verse 6, but this you have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans which I also hate. So they hated and it was good. Okay that's a little bit odd you know to this culture because you're not supposed to hate anything.

You are supposed to hate hate speech but you this church hated what Christ hated and he they hated they hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans they hated what they did now we don't know really for sure what the Nicolaitans were all about Some say that Nicolaitans is a word that is derived from two words, nika'o and laos, you know, power, and the people power over the people. In other words, they were dominating people. One of the church fathers there and asked says that they they were just antinomians. They preached cheap grace. Most people believe that they taught some degree of participation in the idolatrous culture of Ephesus that the things of the culture were culture were permissible to the church.

This is a very popular theme in modern church history is that churches want to please the culture and accommodate with culture rather than to create a new community of obedient saints contrary to the culture. Often that really forms the great divide in evangelicalism. What do you think about culture? Do you like it? Do you like that culture or do you like the culture of the Bible?

And churches are dividing over that issue, particularly on the fault line of the woke movement in the church. So well I'll just say it as plainly as we as I can we need to recover the biblical doctrine of hate Because our lives are always shaped not just by what we love but by what we hate. You know David in Psalm 101 verses 3 and 4 said, I hate the work of those who fall away. It will not cling to me. The perverse heart shall depart from me.

I will not know wickedness." He said in Psalm 139 verses 21 and 22, do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate you? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with a perfect hatred. I count them my enemies." I think it was about 15 years ago I wrote an article called Why I Hate the Beatles. Well this is why I hate the Beatles.

It's right here. It's Psalm 5 verses 4 and 6. For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand in your sight. You hate the workers of all iniquity.

You shall destroy those who speak falsehood. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful men." In Psalm 119 verse 104 David says, therefore I hate every false way. Proverbs 8.1 says, the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. The perverse mouth, I hate. So we need to recover the biblical doctrine of hatred.

Well they did in Ephesus, they hated the things that Jesus hated and that was a good thing. Now there's a lot to say about this matter of hating. You know we're not like God's as much, so much. God can love and hate simultaneously. Human beings in their flesh have a hard time with that.

So we are not God and we have to understand that we're also under many commands, divine commands to love. So these are all good things. All of these things are good things. But then in verse 4 he says, nevertheless I have this against you that you have left your first love. And the key idea here is do you love me?

Have you drifted? You know, is your heater blowing cold air? It's still blowing, it's still working, it's still holding to sound doctrine, it's still doing the stuff, but the love is gone. Do you remember that movie, Fiddler on the Roof? You can kind of Liken love for the Lord the way that love can and the loss of it and drifting in a marriage.

But there's this there's this great scene where Tevye asks his wife Golda, do you love me? And she says, do I love you? For 25 years I've washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked your cow. After 25 years, why talk about love right now? And so they go back and forth and then Tevye says but my father and mother said that we'd learned to love each other you know and I'm asking you Golda do you love me?

And she says I'm your wife. He says I know but do you love me? And she says, do I love him? For 25 years, I've lived with him, fought with him, starved with him. 25 years my bed is his if that's not love what is.

And then he says do you love me? And she says I suppose I do. Well you know So the heat can go out of a marriage and the heat can go out of your love for the Lord and that's what this whole thing is about and It's so important that we take stock of who we are in our hearts Nobody knows whether you love the Lord your motor can still be cranking out cold air. You can be doing everything. You can do that with your wife, you can do that with your husband, you can do that with the Lord.

And I just want us to take inventory of our hearts. Do you love Him? Have you drifted? Has it grown cold? That's the question and it's it's one of the most important questions.

Jesus does not accuse this church of outright apostasy. They had the doctrine, they had the duties, and they did it they did them well. But they kind of got to the place where they'd rather call a spade a spade and debate theology and serve the church than to nourish their love for the Lord. That's what happened. Has that happened here?

So what should they do? What should they do? What are they going to do? And the Lord carefully explains in detail what they should do. And we will handle that in the afternoon session.

The Lord is so kind to give them wonderful ways to recover their first love and I pray that you can all come and hear what the Lord tells them to do about their drifting love. Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the historical realities that speak to us, the spiritual truth that we need. We thank you that you have perfect understanding of all of your children living in the pagan lands and How they ought to fix their minds and what they ought to do with their lives in the midst of these lands That you put us in until you return and so Lord I pray that you would come and bless our church with renewed love.

Lord, I think most of us know that it isn't the doctrine, and it isn't the activity that we need more than anything. We have that. But to love you, let it grow here in all of our hearts. Please Lord. Amen.