You have closed your bottles and I encourage you to turn there and to revelation and second chapter and as you turn I say we're looking forward to putting Salters into the pews in two weeks Lord willing also new hymnals. We're going to sing from the Trinity hymnal I'll have more to say about that hymnal in the weeks to come. But the Psalter is going to be a great addition to our worship. We'll also have new pewbobbles shortly thereafter if not that Lord's day. But we'll have the new King James and we'll be able to put in the bulletin what page number and just some things to make it easier for our visitors possibly to not bring their bottles and do not know their way around the scriptures and it'll be good to have the text from which preaching in front of you as well. But we're continuing this morning what we began a few weeks ago and that is our journey in establishing just who we are as a church. We're trying to establish and identity answering the question what is or who is Trinity Presbyterian church and in the first place first Lord's day together we examined individually the condition of our own souls. And we did that by looking at a portion of Christ's sermon on the Mount to a bewildered group of religious people. Then secondly we took Paul's charge much older, wiser, more experienced Paul. His charge to a much younger inexperienced timid Timothy and we charged the man the pulpit which charged the man who would be delivering the messages to the kind of preaching that we would expect by God's grace. Faithful exposition of the text with application to our lives every day kind of application again by the grace of God's spirit. And then in the third place we charged our leadership if you remember our elders and our vacant sat on the first pews and we challenged them particularly in the area of prayer and we know as a church that if we don't pray then things will not change. We cannot change none of us can change the heart of a man but God can and so we pray and will never be a praying church if our leadership does not set the example if they don't pray first. Now this morning we charged again ourselves but not so much individually there will be some of that and you'd have to in order to accomplish what we hope to accomplish but more our church, our local congregation and we're going to do that by in a real sense receiving a letter from the head of the church none other than Jesus Christ. He will charge us particularly in the area of love. The challenge will be that we tendle our love keep your finger there in Revelation 2 and flip back to Acts chapter 19 that's the fifth book of the New Testament Matthew Mark Luke John and then Acts chapter 19. The first thing that you turn up to share with you one of the prayer requests that I've had for our church. I've shared with a couple of you that there was obviously some fire that God had started some kind of excitement in the heard much of the history of the church in the last years and over the last month where God began to work within our congregation. One of the prayers I've had is that what we have now on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings and our fellowship on Wednesday night is the blowing of the spirits on that fire and as he blows if you've ever started a fire before you know what it is to get that little spark and then maybe a little bit of a rise of smoke and if you blow on it you hope to hear the crackling. There's been a love you join me in that prayer that on Sunday mornings as a congregation when we gather any time for worship that we hear the crackling of the fire that God has set in our midst and therefore we be a great church. And that's what we're going to look at this morning. Another really very great church long time ago, we're going to call it first place, the Syrian Church of Ephesus. But first church Ephesus was just a grand church absolutely splendid. In fact of the seven churches, Ephesus was the greatest. In Acts 19 we have a picture of just how remarkable this church really was. What kind of impact this church was having on its culture? Look at verse 9. We're actually beginning in verse 9. When some were hardened and did not believe but spoke evil of the way before the multitude he departed from them and withdrew the disciples. Revening daily in the school of Tyranus. And this continues for two years so that all his wealth in Asia heard the word of the Lord but Jews and Greeks. God worked unusual miracles by the hand of Paul. Here's what's going on. Paul has taken his disciples to the school of Tyranus and he is teaching there and he teaches there for two years. And the scriptures tell us that his teaching, his preaching had such an impact on the Christians in Ephesus that the Savior, you might say, the smell of his preaching went throughout all Asia so that every person living in Asia heard the word of the Lord. Now that's a miracle in itself. But that's the kind of miracles that were happening in Ephesus. Get down to verse 19. Also many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted up the value of them and it totaled 50,000 pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed. One evidence that the word is not falling on deaf ears is the response of God's people particularly those being saved by the word. It's the response of those people. I remember at Ole Miss when a guy across the hall from me, a ministry that can't, one of the campus ministries had come by and this guy had accepted Christ. We were freshmen. And I remember his first thing he did was he took all of his rock and roll albums and he went out behind Kim Cannon dorm and he burned them right there on the campus on the ground of that dorm. You might remember about 15 years ago a youth director in Arkansas taking his youth group and they went out on the church grounds and they burned all their albums, all of their books and things that they knew that they shouldn't have in their possession. That guy ate lunch with a guy this week who was telling me about how he had brought his own son to Christ. What a great experience that was shortly thereafter the young boy came down the stairs with boxes of things that he didn't even know his son had in his room and that was he was getting rid of all these things. That's a throwback you might say to emphasis and that's the church that was receiving this letter from Christ in Revelation chapter 2. So let's look back at Revelation 2 at our text verse 2. Jesus says, I know your works. The word there could also be translated deed that may be what your translation says the Greek word is copan. It's when we get our word copius. Copius means abundant. It means down to fall. It means plenty of ample. In other words, this church in emphasis was doing such an abundance of good works. They were so clinical in their good works that they were turning emphasis upside down. Because of their good deeds and all the activities in the church they were having a tremendous impact on their culture. Also in verse 2, because I know your deeds, I know your hard work. The word means labor. I know your labor. It means that your patience, your translation may say your perseverance really a better rendering of the words. Your perseverance, you know what perseverance is. Perseverance is the willingness to hang tough when times are hard. That's a compliment for a church. Does Trinity know anything about that? An ability to hang tough when times are hard. Here's a church that's being described as a gathering of believers who had what we might call stick to it in this. This was a church that knew that when times got hard, it was the rubbing that was going to bring out the shine. Wouldn't that be a great compliment for our church? It was a surgeon who said it was about perseverance that the snail reached the orc. If you think about that, it would be a delayed laughter there. But you need to know that perseverance was the mark of this church in emphasis which made it to me was the mark of a great church because they were willing to persevere. Again, what about Trinity church? We talked about that before just in our short weeks together. What did I say? What would they say? How would they describe our church? Not the perception as everything, the perception said a lot. What needed to be a Christian emphasis was the center of the worship of the goddess Diana. The goddess Diana was the goddess of law. She was the mother of creation. You can only imagine what went on in the worship of Diana. They call it temple prostitution. One writer described the morals in the temple of Diana as that of less than animals. That's what the Christians and Ephesus were up against. That's what they ran headlong into. They ran headlong into the silversmiths, the idle makers, and they had such an impact on the culture that they closed down the idle makers. The silversmiths so much so that there was a riot. The silversmiths were not selling many idols like they were. They rallied around the theme that Paul and the members of the church had shut down their business. What if we could ever do that? What if we'd ever desire to do something, shut down a pagan business in Montgomery? We could do that. Trinity church could do that. Look at, look back at our text of verse two. You cannot bear those who are evil. And then, down at verse six, little elaboration on that. He says, but this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolayans, which I also hate, Christ. The Nicolayans, this is a group of people who claim to be Christians, but they just had a little do compromises with Christianity. They allowed their members to engage in all kinds of sexual immorality. And they said, we're not really destroying Christianity. We're just improving upon Christianity. We are modernizing Christianity. The only thing is, I shouldn't have called it Christianity. It was anything but Christianity. But Jesus likes this church and Ephesus. And he's saying to them, you know, you don't put up with any of that stuff. You know, you don't tolerate any of that, those actions by the Nicolayans. And I'm all for you. You're a grand church. Wouldn't that be great? Get a letter from Jesus. And he says, dear Trinity Presbyterian church, you're doing fine. You're a great church. Let the lamp stand burned at Trinity. Wouldn't that, that would be a wonderful thing to receive from him. Also in verse two, he says, you've tested those who say they are apostles and are not and have found them liars. Obviously, the church of Ephesus has some kind of standard of truth. And they measure those who claim to be apostles by that standard. Men would come and say, I'm an apostle. And they would say, you are. Well, we'll have to examine you. And if you don't measure up to the standard, then we don't want you. If you don't hold a scripture, might be an example. If you don't hold a scripture, then we don't want you to serve in our midst. That's down familiar. A man comes to Presbyterian and says, I want to be a preacher in your denomination and they say, well, that's fine. You'll have to be examined according to our standards. Same thing is true for being an officer at Trinity Church. You say, I want to serve as an officer. I've been through the training. I've been nominated. And the session will say, well, that's fine. You need to be examined. You have to be examined according to the standard. That's the sort of thing that was going on in Ephesus. This was a very hard working church. They were full of copiousness. They were full of these good works and toil. Indeed, they didn't tolerate sin. They were dealing with people that were involved in sin. They were doctrinally sound. They were great church. They even did things, as Christ says in verse 3, for my name's sake. Did you hear that? All these great things, and they were doing it for the sake of Jesus Christ. For brethren, you know, as well as I do, that the church in Ephesus had one fatal flaw. They were a church where love died. Orthodoxy? You bet. Activities? All kinds of programs? Yes. Love? No. They were a church that had turned in their hot hearts for cold orthodoxy. The vows? They were so devout. Unyielding? Don't you know this letter came as a shock? Here they are with all of these great programs and doctrinal statements and dealing with the Nickeladeon and Jesus writes them this letter and he says you guys need to repent. That's a real blow for any church because nobody thinks they love Jesus more than the doctrinally sound. Nobody thinks they love Jesus more than the evangelical. Presbyterian church in America. It's a real blow when Jesus comes and he says you don't love me. It's a hard thing to swallow. There are two observations. If you want to turn to John 21, I'm going to quote most of it, but John 21, verse 15, is the last hours in Jesus' post-resurrected lungs, and really all the disciples are saying I'm not sure exactly who was sitting right there, but when he turns to Peter, and he asks Peter, do you love me? And Peter says, Lord, you know that I love you, and Jesus says, fade my sheep. And then there comes the second time in essence, he says, Peter, do you truly love me? And he says, Lord, you know I love you, and Jesus says, well, take care of my sheep. And then the third time, really at her Peter, he said, do you love me? And Peter said, Jesus, you know all things, and you know that I love you. And then Jesus says, fade my sheep. Two observations. You might write these down. The first is, ministry to the sheep grows out of a love for Christ. Ministry to the sheep grows out of a love for Christ. In other words, brethren, whatever it is you do for the sheep, it may be a lot. But whatever it is you do for the sheep, it doesn't matter if you don't love Jesus. It doesn't amount really to anything if you don't love Jesus. The second observation is you can't love Jesus when there's no ministry to the sheep. In other words, if there's nothing that's coming out of your life, that is ministry to this family right here. If there is nothing coming out of your life that can set says, I'm ministering to my church, to these sheep, and please don't go around and talk about how much you love Jesus. Because Christ says that if you love him, the inevitable result is ministry, church attendance, church involvement, love for Christians wanting to be with the brethren, reading the Word, praying all of that. Christ is saying, do you love me? We've even began our service this morning, Trinity Presbyterian Church of Montgomery, do you love me? The inevitable result is you'll fade the sheep. And a second time, do you love me? You better love me, Christ is saying, if you have any hope of ministering to the sheep. Which I think makes us back to our first week together, how much? How much did you love him? On a scale of 1 to 10, I think that's what we said, first week, 10 being the hottest, 1 being the coolest toward Christ. How much would you say that Trinity Presbyterian Church loves Jesus? And then you might ask yourself that, again, individually, it might say, once upon a time I had more love for Christ, you're right. I lost it. I hadn't been there in years. So there's three consequences to losing your love for Christ if you follow the outline there. The first one is as obvious as disappoints Christ. It breaks the heart of God. It breaks the grand heart of God when people fall out of love for His Son Jesus. Secondly, it disrupts the fellowship, because people who are cool toward God and their hearts are going to be cool toward other people. We talked about that when we were united with the men. It has to do with being made in the image of God. But the idea is that you can tell a lot about a person's relationship to God simply by looking at how they treat other people. I'll take it a step further. You can tell a great deal about the condition of someone's soul simply by looking at the way they treat other people. Because Jesus said, if you love me, you'll feed my sheep. If you don't love me, then you're not going to care about the sheep. It also destroys the effectiveness of the church. Look at verse 5 of our text. He says, remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent, and do the first works or else.
You may have said it to your mom or dad or someone, let me go or else. I'm leaving. Rather than if we turn in our hot hearts, we're told orthodoxy. If all we do is spend our days bickering or if we spend all our time gossiping about each other and forming opinions that are unwarranted and get on the phone and talk to this person over here and say, did you know, did you hear about it? And we're talking about our family. If we spend all of our time, again, bickering or complaining and murmuring about the way things used to be done and we never do it that way. If that characterizes our church, if we're grown inward and we can't see anybody but ourselves, then there is this big what else that just resides over our ministry. We might as well drape it over the steeple. Right over Trinity Church, it just says, or else because the thread is, if you don't remember and you don't repent and you don't repeat, Christ says, I'll come in and I will remove my lampstand from among you. I was in seminary, I preached the circuit most of the seminary students did. It's where you sign up and you can know that you're available and start leaking. They sign you to a church. The first time I ever did it, I never, never forget it was canned in Mississippi. And I was, I was nervous and I remember getting anything and it was so beautiful. It was so big. I took my camera and I took a picture of it. The place must have sat 300 beautiful choir lofts, huge pulpit, seven people. One of them was my friend Derek that I brought with me. And one was the pianist and she had to go to play at the Methodist church when she was thrown. But to make you wonder, you know, start a seminary 15 years ago, I've seen God write Ichabot on a lot of things. He'll do it to churches as well. You ever been to first friends, but you can't do it. It's gone. Completely disappeared all the face of the earth. That didn't happen today. Churches just keep on meeting. I know there are situations where churches die out. Even came to say something about Canvas where the railroad had gone straight through to them and didn't do that anymore. The town died. But that's not what we're talking about. The town died. It's when a church loses their love for Christ and it comes in. It doesn't matter how large the church is. He takes out his lambs and the church, they just keep on meeting. All of these activities, all of these programs, there's just no Jesus. You can see it happen all the time. I remember thinking later about Canvas. You know what? What about churches that die? Surely God has used them in the past. The consequences of losing your love for Christ. It breaks the heart of God. It disrupts the fellowship. Ultimately, it destroys the church. And what Christ does, in essence, he comes in. It's like he'd come through the doors of the church and look around. That beautiful building. Wonderful ministry in the past, Trinity. But it's really shame because I can't use you anymore. It ought to send shivers down our spine to think that he would ever, ever have reason to do that. And we want to make sure that he doesn't. You know what the punch line of the sermon is. I'm sure it's obvious to you. We have so much in this church. There's so much to offer. By the way, when I say that, does that strike a court of pride? I hope not. Be humble and realize that God has blessed you so much. We have so much. We have such a wonderful children's ministry. There's so much to offer the youth and to offer our singles and married couples and elderly and everything. I would think almost everything we do. We did first class. If I were visiting, I wouldn't look any further. I'm serious. And I say that as a newcomer as well. It's a great church. It's wonderful. But Satan is walking down the streets of Montgomery like a roaring line seeking to devour whom he may. He would like nothing more than to take your eyes off of the personality of Jesus and make this a place where people would call Sony hearts, gather once a week for worship. If we ever do that, if we ever become like that. If there's ever a reason for a person who just comes, they just come on Sunday morning and that's all they ever do and they come because their spouse makes them or their mom or dad make them come and they come because it helps their business or they come to find out the latest scoop or they make, they do it for political reasons within or without the church. That's step one. You've lost your first law if that's true for you. The honeymoon is over. The frightening thing is that the seating steps are very predictable. And very quickly, I want to give you these last three ways to get out of that because there may be someone here this morning. There needs the three steps out of this. Three steps to recovery. And I want you to leave with hope because this is a very hopeful passage. And the first thing we're called to do is remember. Spiritual defection usually begins when you forget. You forget from how far you've fallen as this passage says. You need to remember all of this exercise for all of us. Remember what Christ has done for you. Remember how He pulls you out of the pit. He's got you. He replaced you out of darkness. He puts you into light. Remember where you were. Remember where you were when you were unsafe. Remember how far he stood to bring you up. Remember all those answered prayers. Remember the tears for joy in your life. Remember how the time that you ran to him because you knew you could run to him in time of need. If you're wandering today and you're visiting possibly in our church, you need to come home. I'm going to talk about the church and say, you need to come home. Spiritual Christ would like nothing more than to reveal Himself to you like He did in the past. He's waiting on you. His arms are buzzing. He says, come home. The Father wants you home. And He says, the understanding here is you keep remembering. Keep on remembering. Continually remember. And that's the idea of the second step. The same thing as the continual thing. It's repent. The shepherd is telling you to hate your sin. Turn away from your sin. Died of your sin. We need to learn to wake up every morning and wash our faces with our tears. We need not be like the sailors on the boat who in the storm threw off their goods, but then wished for them again in the column. If that's the case, we need to repent of our repentance. We need to realize the repentance means I changed my whole heart, my life, my mind, everything about me. And that's what Jesus does is when He holds up the church at Ephesus as an example to us. If you don't repent, if you don't get back to your first love, I'll take my last stand and I'll move on. I'll put in another church, use them. And the last step is to repeat, which is really self-explanatory. It's not like the sailors who threw it off and then wished for them again. And we'll talk about repentance. He's saying, repeat the copious. Repeat all those good works. Repeat sitting under the creasing of God's word every week. Repeat, repeat being in the word yourself individually. Repeat your prayer life. Repeat tithing. We need to have people who are tired, who are obedient, tired, they're in Christ, who want to sit under preaching and pray and read the word and sing God's praises, do it over and over and over and over and over again, repeating it. But that's the word to us this morning. Remember, repent and repeat, or else, or else as we pray together. Our Father, the truth is we can run but we cannot hide from you. And we pray that your word is a search light and it finds us out, it hunts us down and convicts us of our sin. An amazing thing about the word, we know Father, at the same time, it applies balm to our wounds, a staff that will heal us and heal our broken hearts. And our hearts right now go out to any individuals in earshot and a sanctuary on the radio who listen, they're far from you and they need to come home.