Cherish Christ Above Habits: Lessons from Revelation

but, ultimately, I decided to go a different direction to it. But I did wanna just point out that we should take great comfort in the fact that Jesus knows everything here. He says, I know this. All the letters, he's like, I know your situation. I know where you're at. There's a lot of comfort that we can drive from that, that Jesus knows, that he he knows and he understands. And so this is something that is is beneficial. It is he knows our church better than any one of us knows it. [00:49:51] (28 seconds)  #JesusKnows

Because a church is not made up of buildings and and, you know, structures. It's of people. And only Jesus can know the people so well and know all of us so well. We can know ourselves, even that's limited. We can know those around us, a very close proximity, even that's limited, but we can't know everybody. Jesus knows ourselves better than we do. He knows everyone. So when we see here, Jesus says, I know. We can find great comfort in it. There's gonna be some conviction in that too, but we can find great comfort in that. [00:50:20] (32 seconds)  #ChurchIsPeople

But then if he's like, you know, every Friday, I'm bringing you flowers. And so every Friday, he brings her flowers. And then he gets to the point where he comes in, throws them on the counter, walks away. And then throws them on the counter, walks away. Doesn't even say hi to her. Doesn't say flowers move. Is she as moved by this? No. Because it's become a habit, and there's no love behind it anymore. I wonder how many things that we've allowed that in our own life that we've allowed habits, we've allowed things and good patterns, and that's good, [00:59:57] (33 seconds)  #NoEmptyRituals

let me put it to you this way. The church rarely falls because it's crushed by persecution like Smyrna. More often, it fails because it's slowly seduced by compromise by Pergamum or Thyatira. And that's why we have to constantly examine our heart's affections like Jesus told the church at Ephesus to do. This is why it's so important to look at these churches in these letters. You see these letters of the church of Revelation two, they remind us that Jesus knows his church. He he knows our love. He knows our suffering. He knows our faithfulness. And he also sees our weakness and our compromises and our wandering hearts. [01:30:23] (36 seconds)  #GuardAgainstCompromise

But as impressive as it was walking amongst those ruins, something is missing there. 2,000 ago, this was center of Christianity. The gospel is preached there. The church gathered there. Believers worship Jesus there. But today, there is no thriving Christian community in Ephesus. The church that once once existed there is gone. Just gone. And the sobering thing is this, it didn't disappear overnight. Churches rarely collapse in a moment. More often, it's like a light that slowly grows dim. So this is why Jesus' words here in Revelation two are really important to us. [00:45:35] (48 seconds)  #ChurchesFadeSlowly

And what is it? He says here in the text, he said, verse four, that you have abandoned the love that you had at first. They had left their first love. They were continuing to do the things that their parents told them to do, but they weren't doing it out of love anymore. You see, they were cherishing the habit, but not Christ. And what Christ is saying here, he's saying, you've left the love. Yeah. It's good that you're doing these things. That's awesome. That's great. But you've left the love of why you're even doing this. [00:56:48] (36 seconds)  #LeftOurFirstLove

and do that, but I think the self designation of Jesus here is really helpful. What does he say? The words I'm in verse eight. The words of the first and the last who died and came to life. He says it about himself. These are the words of the one who's the first and last who died and came to life. Do you see how that is helpful to the church of Smyrna who were saying we're gonna be we're gonna be persecuted or we're gonna be killed? He said, I died and I came to life. He's like, so, yeah, they might be able to take your life, but I am the god of the resurrection. K? So you can you can deal with this. Right? [01:08:43] (34 seconds)  #ResurrectionHope

You see, this is why when we talk about at our church here, the mission division of our church is love God, love people, serve the world. The order is so important. So important. Because if if we put serve the world first and love God last, then we don't know how to serve the world correctly. But when we will have love God first, that informs how we love other people, which then informs how we serve the world. So the order is so important here, and that's the order that they were messing up here. [01:29:13] (32 seconds)  #LoveGodFirst