Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

The letter to the Church of Ephesus Exploring Revelation
Apr 27th, 2020
Exploring RevelationArt Sadlier
Categories: Commentary;Prophecy;Book Study

It would be helpful if you would open your Bible to Revelation Chapter Two and keep it before you as we study this letter.

The letter begins: "UNTO THE ANGEL OF THE CHURCH".

Remember we said that the word ''ANGEL" means "one who is sent to deliver or teach a message." The pastor is the one called of God to bring and teach God's Word to the church. God is a God of order, there is order in the church. We are to respect God's order and follow it. That in no way means that the message of Revelation cannot be read and studied and understood by all believers. In fact all are exhorted to read and obey the Book. (Rev. 1:3)

Over and above all the study we might do on our own, we need to sit under the teaching and preaching of God's messenger, the Pastor. That is God's purpose for every believer.

"THE CHURCH OF EPHESUS "

Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, was the cradle of Christianity. By the second century there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of churches there.

Today, in modern Turkey there are 60 million people, less than 1% of them are Christians, most of them are nominal Christians, leaving only a handful of true believers. Why Is That? If you notice as you read these letters,a re-ocurring theme is: "The warning of the removal of the candlestick," de-commissioning of a church for failure to obey the Lord. That is exactly what happened to the churches to whom these letters were written. We can look around and see the same process taking place, in varying stages in present day churches.

We need to remember that this warning is no idle threat by our Lord!

EPHESUS was the capital, and the largest city of Asia Minor. It was a great Seaport, and it was a very immoral city. They worshipped the pagan goddess Diana. Their worship involved 1000 temple prostitutes. Understand that this gospel is not hindered by the sinfulness of the people to whom it is given. Nor is the believer unable to live victoriously for God in even the most wicked environment, though he must keep himself unspotted from the world.

The apostle, Paul, established the church and pastored it for three years. Timothy followed Paul as pastor and John followed and pastored the church for some years. It was a large, well taught, spiritually strong church.

VERSE TWO:

"I KNOW," our Lord's message came out of His knowledge of the church. Our Lord knows ALL about each church. Remember verse one, "who walketh up and down in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks".

Christ is constantly evaluating each church. He is there in a special way each time the church meets - do not fail to be in each church meeting, the Lord is there, and He expects you to honor Him with your presence, and why not? It must be a priority in our lives.

Each church is loved by Him, each Church is precious to Him. He is constantly present to lead and bless each church, to teach and to purify. But, He is especially present to evaluate each church.

What does Christ find as He evaluates this Ephesian church? "I KNOW THY WORKS! This was a working church, a zealous church. In order to better understand this church, and to see what kind of people they were pause, and read Acts 19:18-20.

They had forsaken their old lives, they had sold out to reaching the lost, no effort in the Lord's Service was too much.

"AND THY LABOR", Labor = Toil, Strenuous, Exhausting Effort. The Lord is saying, "I know you have labored to the point of exhaustion".

At that point of their experience, I know what their answer would have been, "Lord, we serve you because we love you", "Lord, what we do in Your service is not labor, it is the joy and delight of our lives." "Lord, we will not only labor for you, we will gladly die for you!" Does that describe your heart attitude today? Can you look back on days gone by when that was your experience?

'I KNOW THAT THOU CANST NOT BEAR THEM THAT ARE EVIL", they confronted evil when it dared to raise its head in their midst. They would not compromise with sin. As the Lord looked at, and evaluated this church, how pleased He must have been with what He saw.

"THOU HAST TRIED THEM THAT SAY THEY ARE APOSTLES AND ARE NOT, AND HAST FOUND THEM LIARS." False movements and false teachers were dead meat when they came to Ephesus. No seeker-friendly perversion of what Christ intended the church to be would be tolerated.

They knew what they believed and why they believed it! All kinds of false teachers came their way. Pause to read Acts 20;29-31.

VERSE THREE. "And has borne, and hast patience, and for My name's sake hast labored, and hast not fainted." They were what a Model Church ought to be! How we need to measure ourselves, and our church up against the Ephesian Church.

One of the constant factors in the life of the church of Jesus Christ is change. It might be a good and profitable exercise to take some serious Quiet Time to reflect on our lives, and ask the Spirit of God to show us the changes that may have come into our lives, good changes and bad changes.

The Church of Ephesus underwent a change! Next week we will look at that change.

Created In Him
Apr 27th, 2020
Morning MeditationF.B.Meyer
Categories: Meditation;Inspirational;Book Study

CREATE is one of the great words of the Bible. It is its peculiar possession. Other religious books have their cosmogonies, and attempt to explain how all things came to be. The process of production is traced as far back as possible; but they dare not speak this wonderful word. It is left to the Bible to inscribe the name of God on all things visible and invisible, and append to it the word create. "In the beginning God." "In the beginning God created."

IT IS, HOWEVER, NOT WITH THE MATERIAL BUT WITH THE SPIRITUAL CREATION THAT WE HAVE TO DEAL (Ephesians 2:10)
When we first knelt at the Cross of the Lord Jesus, we were made new creatures. "If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things are passed away, behold they are become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

But there was an older creation than that. If we read aright the apostle's thought, he takes us back, beyond the limits of our mortal life, to the eternal past, and reveals to us the workings of God's thought before even the earth or the world was made. We were created in Christ Jesus, in the purpose and intention of God, before an angel sped through the newly-created ether, or a seraph raised his first sonnet of adoration. Our creation at the Cross was the realization in our experience of an eternal thought of God.

Let us ponder deeply the Divine purpose in thus creating us in Christ. It was unto good works. The apostle was eager to put these in their legitimate and proper place. There was apparently a tendency among the converts whom he addressed to associate their salvation with their works, or, at the least, to get credit for their faith. He therefore reaffirms our entire indebtedness to grace, and says that even our faith is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God; "not of works, that no man should glory." We are not to work up to the new life, but from it. The good works we do before regeneration are not even reckoned to our account. The apostle calls them dead works. They are the automatic convulsive movements of a corpse. The only works that please God, and are accepted through the mediation of Christ, are those which emanate from that new life which He imparts in regeneration by the Holy Ghost. We are created unto good works. "He gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a people for his own possession, zealous of good works." Cain's gift of fruit may be both fair and fragrant; but it is rejected because it is an attempt to purchase God's favour, instead of being the outcome and flower of his faith. It is very blessed to know that our good works have been prepared for us to walk in. Walking implies a path, whether through the cornfield, or over the stretch of moorland, or beside the sea; and we may think, therefore, of our life-course as a path which starts from the Cross, where we entered on our real life, and ends, as Christian's did, at the gate of the Golden City.