Christ's Complaint (Rev. 2:4)

Recap of Christ's Commendation to Ephesus

0:01 As I indicated in our study this morning, we will be continuing where we left off for the benefit of those who were not with us in the morning worship service. We began a consideration of our Lord's words to the church at Ephesus as found in Revelation chapter 2. So will you please turn again to that portion of God's holy word. And I shall read the first seven verses of Revelation chapter 2 once more.

1:02 Whence not bear evil men, and didst try them that call themselves apostles, and are not, and didst find them false? And thou hast patience, and didst bear for my name's sake, and hast not grown weary.

1:22 But I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love. Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first. Or else I come to thee, and will move thy candlestick out at its place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the work of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

1:52 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst. Of the paradise of God. In our study this morning, we addressed ourselves to three areas of the truth set forth in this portion of God's word.

2:19 First of all, we considered to whom this message came. And indicated that directly it came to the messenger, the angel. Possibly the pastoral overseer or overseers of this particular assembly. But very obviously, what is said to him directly is said also to that entire church.

2:44 And therefore, like all of the other epistles, which come to the various churches or individuals, they are God's word for God's people in all times, and in all places and circumstances. Then we considered something of who speaks these words. They obviously come from God. They obviously come to the church at Ephesus.

3:10 But we must never forget the one from whom they come. And he begins the message by reminding these people of the glory and majesty of his own person by saying, These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, that walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. And our Lord would have his people know in this passage, that he is not only the God of the world, but the God of the world. He is not only the transcendent, majestic, glorious, omnipotent Christ holding the stars in his hand, the leaders of his church, he himself, the head of his church, but he is the imminent Christ walking, actively ministering in the midst of his church, which according to the last verse of the previous chapter are symbolized, the churches are symbolized by the lampstands. And then we considered. His commendation as he begins to speak to these people out of perfect knowledge of what they are and what they were doing, having said, I know thy works, he first of all begins by a commendation of those things in their life and experience as a church, which his own grace has wrought in them, but which nonetheless he commands.

4:33 And this is one of the mysteries of grace. That there will be such things as rewards for believers. Though every believer is glad to acknowledge that in him that is in his flesh dwells no good thing, and that without Christ he can do nothing, and that he has absolutely nothing but what he has received, from the very beginning of the impartation of spiritual life to the accomplishment of anything that can be called a good work, yet nonetheless scripture teaches those very works which are the fruit of his life. And that is what we have to do.

5:06 And that is what we have to do. And that is what we have to do. And that is what we have to do. And that is what we have to do.

5:06 Grace will receive the reward of His grace. That's grace upon grace, is it not? And so the Lord who has wrought these virtues in this church underscores and commends them. And in so doing, He forever lets every church know what it is in their life and activity which is pleasing in His sight.

5:28 And we consider the four things for which He commends them. I will only mention them as we move on in our study. He says, first of all, of all, I know thy toil and thy patience. He commends them for their zeal in extending his kingdom. They labor to extend the kingdom of Christ, and for this he commends them. And then in the second place, he commends them for the fact that they were zealous to maintain the purity of his church. He said, you cannot bear evil men. You do not carry them along with you. Your church, she said, has not become the haunt and collecting place of every form of evil and wickedness.

6:11 You have exercised discipline and careful oversight over your members, and when people show themselves to be evil, either by positive involvement in moral evil or by refusal to fulfill their obligations of subjection to the headship of Christ in the midst of the local church, you have not borne them along with you. You have not cast them out of the church. You have not cast them out of the church. You have not cast them You have not cast them out of the church. You have not cast them out of the church. You have not carried them along as dead wood. You have been careful to exercise proper discipline upon them. And then in the third place, he commends them not only for their zeal to extend his kingdom to keep the purity of the church, but he commends them for their zeal to maintain purity of doctrine. He says, you have tried those that call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them false. Our

7:03 Lord delights in this. He says, you have tried those that call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them false. Our Lord delights in this. He says, you have tried those that call themselves the fact that the Ephesian church still remembered the words of the apostle as given to their elders in Acts chapter 20, when he said, after my departure, wolves shall come in and shall rise up right out of your midst and will seek to lead people astray. And when these false teachers put in their appearance, they did not join the cult of tolerance, nor did they hide behind a spiritual facade which said, well, we'll pray for them and we hope the Lord will help us. And when they did that, the Lord will deal with them. No, no, they had ecclesiastical heresy trials. And when they found them short of apostolic doctrine, they called them what they were, anti-Christian and liars. And our Lord says, I commend you for this. And then in the fourth place, he commends them

7:55 for their untiring perseverance against all forms of opposition. He says, and you did, you had patience or endurance. And endurance is only needed in the face of opposition and difficulty. And it's bare for my name's sake and has not grown weary. You seek to be that kind of a church described in this passage. Intense zeal in laboring for the extension of Christ's kingdom. It's natural to grow weary in well-doing. That's why the Lord says, don't grow weary in well-doing. It's as natural as breathing.

8:34 It's amazing how men can seem to just abound with energy in the pursuit of sinful goals. But let a man set his face in the direction of goals that are spiritual. And then there is not only opposition of the world and the devil, but his own flesh. As Paul says, when I would do good, evil is present with me. And indwelling sin is never more active than when you would do the thing that is most calculated to destroy evil.

9:04 Hey, it's power. And so it's natural to grow weary in this course of intense zeal to extend the kingdom of Christ. It's natural to grow weary in this course of zeal to maintain the purity of the church. You not only get the flack of the world without that looks in and says, what an unloving bunch.

9:27 Look at the way they are so careful to guard the lives of their people, and if they don't measure up to their standards. Why, they actually cast people out of their midst. They actually excommunicate people. What a terrible thing. And then you get the flack from the overly fastidious within the assembly, who, governing their thinking far more by human sentiment than by the words of Scripture, begin to oppose such action.

9:55 I say it's no easy thing to continue in such a course, and then a church that seeks to maintain doctrinal standards not only has a creed, but insists that that creed be loved and embraced and understood and preached and become the standard by which men are to be judged in terms of who you give the pulpit to, who you encourage to come into your membership and take places of leadership. My, it's difficult to maintain that course. Every kind of pressure to grow weary in that course, and yet our Lord caps his commendation by this tremendous word, in all of this you have not grown weary, and the key is, he says, you did it for my name's sake. You did it realizing that this course of action, in terms of your zeal to extend my kingdom, to maintain the purity of my church, to maintain the accuracy of doctrine, you did this. You did this. You did this.

10:55 Because you knew my name was at stake, not the name of your church, not the reputation of your church, but my name was at stake, and so you did all of this for my name's sake. And so our Lord commends them for these virtues which his own grace had wrought in them. And we close this morning with the observation that if you find a church like this, you'd say, what in the world? Could our Lord find as a source of concern or condemnation any church that could be commended, remember now, not out of flattery, not out of ignorance or merely being impressed by the press releases, the one who makes these commendations is the one who says, I know thy works. He knows them perfectly. And so what he commends are actual virtues that are actual. They are actually being realized in their midst.

The Seriousness of Christ's Complaint: 'Left Thy First Love'

11:58 And I say, if he whose eyes is a flame of fire can discern such virtues, how could that eye discern anything about which to complain? And yet having considered his commendation, we cannot go on in our study of the passage without confronting head on our Lord's complaint. And we find it in verse 4, and we'll begin to consider it tonight. But in spite of all this that I commend, I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love.

12:39 Nevertheless, in spite of all that I commend, the same eye that discerns the commendable discerns that which causes him to complain. Now, before we even. Try to understand what the complaint is, will you consider with me in the first place, the importance of understanding what our Lord's complaint is?

13:09 Why should we seek to grapple with this statement? Thou has left thy first love and not be content until we're reasonably sure that we understand what our Lord is saying. How much is it state in this matter? If a church has all those virtues, they're really.

13:27 Can't be too much at stake. Isn't this sort of spiritual nitpicking? I would suggest that the context of this passage will not allow that thought for a moment. Think how important this issue is when, first of all, it is so serious that no amount of knowledge, labor, zeal or steadfastness can cancel its offensiveness to our Lord.

13:56 With all these virtues fully before his eyes. They have no power to cancel out the offensiveness of this state, looking full in the face of all of the virtues, he says, in spite of these, I have somewhat against the, and that's a strong statement, it's made in tenderness, it's made in compassion, but it's a concept that has deep strength to it. I have this against you. Let me try to illustrate from the human experience.

14:28 Suppose you had a friend who was. Everything in the world that a friend could be to you, and you sought to reciprocate that friendship, kindness, consideration stood by you in your deep periods of trial, shared your joys as well as your sorrows. What would you think if this particular friend paid you a visit someday and recounting all of the things that made your friendship a precious experience? Nevertheless, at the end of all of that, looked you straight into the eye and said, but in.

15:00 In spite of all of this, there's something that's causing a breach in our relationship.

15:07 Well, you'd say, before he even described it, it must be a pretty serious thing. If all of the things that involve our intimate relationship in love and confidence do not overshadow this, do not cancel it, it must be a serious issue. And that's precisely the setting in which this complaint of our Lord comes to these people. It's so serious.

15:31 It's so serious. It's so serious. It's so serious. It's so serious.

15:31 It's such a serious issue that no amount of present knowledge or future knowledge, no amount of present labor or zeal or future labor or zeal can cancel its offensiveness to our Lord. Secondly, it is so serious that it's a condition of remaining a true church. Is a true church to remain a true church simply where there is present zeal to extend the kingdom of Christ? Is a true church to remain a true church simply where there is present zeal to extend the kingdom of Christ?

16:02 Is a true church to remain a true church simply where there is present zeal to extend the kingdom of Christ? Zeal to maintain the purity of the church? Zeal to maintain doctrinal accuracy? Not according to our Lord.

16:11 For having complained of this condition, he says, Unless you repent of this condition, I will come and move thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent. In other words, our Lord is saying, Unless this condition is corrected, Unless this condition is corrected, to be a true church with my living presence in the midst. I will continue to walk in the midst of the lampstands. I'm not writing off the church, but you'll no longer be one of the lampstands in whose midst I walk. That's what our Lord is saying. I'll move thy candlestick out of his place. I'll still walk in the midst of what is a candlestick, but I'll take yours out of its place. Now that's pretty serious, isn't it, if it's one of the conditions of remaining a true church? Third thing that shows us the importance of this matter and gives us reason to apply ourselves with spiritual and mental diligence to grasp what it is, is that it's nothing less than downright sin. You don't repent of arthritic joints. Wouldn't it be a tragedy if someone stood up and called upon everyone

17:30 with arthritic joints to repent of that condition? You'd say, well, that's cruel. Arthritic joints are simply one of the natural outworkings of the remains of sin, or in this life where sin still remains. There's no moral evil involved in arthritic joints physically, and I fear that many times God's people look upon this issue, whatever it is, the abandonment, the forsaking of first love, as sort of an inevitable spiritual weakness that sets into your joints, and there's nothing you can do about it, and certainly the Lord would never hold you accountable for it. I say that's contrary to the context. For having given his complaint, our Lord says, remember, repent, and do, and as though they didn't get the message, he caps it off with that same call, except thou repent. The only thing you repent of is sin. You don't repent of virtues. You don't repent of sin. You don't repent of your own sin. You don't repent of your own sin.

18:35 You don't repent of arthritic joints and nearsightedness or hardening of the eardrums, but you must repent of your sins. This is sin, and if Jesus came to save his people from their sin, and if the mark of a man who's in that narrow way which leads unto life is the pursuit of that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, then this is a serious issue. And then the fourth thing that shows us the importance of grace is that we must repent of our sins. We must repent of our sins. This is a serious issue. And then the fourth thing that shows us the importance of grappling with this issue is that overcoming in this area is a necessary part of perseverance.

19:15 He that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God. Every one of these seven letters, regardless of what sins have been underscored, ends with this promise, to him that overcometh. Overcomes what? Well, not overcomes in general, but overcomes with specific reference to the sin which is the dominant characteristic of that particular church.

19:43 And I introduced the message this morning by quoting Matthew 24, 13 and 14. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of the many shall wax cold, but he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved. No one believes more firmly than I in the preservation of every true saint of God. By that I mean that whenever the Lord begins a work of grace, he completes it.

20:08 And the only reason it's ever completed is because he began it, and he began it not in time, but in eternity. And what God begins in eternity, issues in eternity. And you have all of that beautifully summarized in Romans 8. Whom he foreknew, that takes us back into eternity, into the eternal counsels of God when he set his love upon a people whom he foreknew.

20:32 That is... Whom he regarded with distinguishing purpose and grace, he predestinated way back then to be made like unto his Son.

20:42 There's the purpose in eternity that envisions out into eternity what we will be. And how do we get there? Whom he foreknew, then he also, he calls them, he justifies them, he glorifies them. And the eternity-spanning salvation of God comes to focus, upon the head and in the life and heart of everyone who is God's child.

21:08 Now, no one believes that more firmly than I. I don't know how to make my confession more clear than I've done in that minute and a half. But the same Bible that teaches that says that those who are chosen in eternity, effectually called in time and ultimately glorified, are a people who persevere in holiness and obedience even unto the end. And that perseverance is a necessary part of their salvation.

21:37 A certain part, yes, but a necessary part nonetheless. And so, in this particular passage, a vital part of perseverance is a resistance of this tendency to abandonment of our love and attachment to Christ and knowing what it is to have continual renewings of His grace bringing us back. Into the flush and fervor of that attachment to Christ-person that is called first love. You see, our Lord full well knew that the declensions of the heart in the realm of one's affection to Him would soon begin to express itself in a languishing in His work and then ultimately in a very relinquishing of His love. And so, our Lord, whose eyes are as a flame of fire, seeks to check this terrible state at its inception.

Defining 'First Love': What It Is Not

22:42 Now, so much then for the importance of understanding this complaint, what is the essence of our Lord's complaint? It's in these words you have left, or that word could be translated a bit more strongly, you have abandoned your first love. Boiling it all down, our Lord says, I commend you. Your heads are clear in my truth.

23:08 You've been able to discern false teaching. Your heads are clear in my truth. Your hands are busy in the work of my kingdom, proclaiming my message, disciplining the members of the assembly. Clear heads, busy hands.

23:26 But my eye discerns a defect of the heart. Not a cold heart. Our Lord does not say, Thou hast a name that thou art alive, but thou art dead. He says that to the church at Sardis.

23:38 Our Lord does not discern a state of coldness of heart, but what He discerns is that the thermometer of spiritual temperature has dropped just a few degrees, and this concerns Him, and He speaks to that issue. That's the essence of His complaint. Now let's seek to analyze it in some detail. What is first love?

24:03 What is it to abandon? What is it to abandon that love? May I start by saying what first love is not? Because I believe many have brought themselves into a two-fold state, or into two conditions, which are not healthy to the spiritual life.

24:20 Number one, they have misunderstood this matter of first love, and being sensitive saints who long to please their Lord, they've brought their consciences into unnecessary bondage. And the second thing some have done, because they've not understood this matter, is that they have, they've been content, they've been content with a condition that is not pleasing to the Lord, nor healthy to themselves. So let me begin by saying what this matter of first love is not. And I'm indebted to a book that I quoted from this morning by a Scottish preacher expounding these seven letters to the seven churches in about six or seven hundred pages of literature, in which he makes the observation that first love is not primarily that relatively animal-like passion that may often characterize a person's first days in the knowledge of Christ, his first days as a Christian. When, as it were, our response to the Lord and to His truth and to His people has very, very little of a clear, rational understanding of who He is and what He has called us to, when the dominant note of our relationship to Christ in love

25:46 is this excitement of the knowledge that our sins are forgiven, life has taken on an entirely different hue, the grass is greener, the sky is bluer, and though there may be problems in terms of opposition of friends and loved ones and people at work, there is that conscious glow of the reality of our new-found Savior. Then, with the coming of time, that love becomes less and less a passion and becomes more and more a deep-seated principle, and oft times such a person says, Well, I've just left my first love, and for the life of me I've prayed, I've cried to God, I've sought His face, and I just can't get it back. Do what I may. May I say, brethren and sisters, that our first love is not primarily that heated emotional passion of the days of our first consciousness of the Lord's forgiveness. Let me illustrate it from the human.

26:53 Some of us can remember when we first met the person who is now our lifetime companion. And, if it happened to be, whatever that is, I'll use the term, love at first sight, if it happened to be that kind of feverish infatuation that drew us to that individual, well, we can well remember how that the very thought of seeing that person would cause our breath to come quick, our heart to beat, and then when their eyes met ours, there was the flush of the cheek and perhaps even a little tingle down the spine, and you know what I'm talking, or maybe you don't, maybe you do, maybe you don't, I don't know. Maybe I'm telling too much here. Maybe this is too autobiographical. But surely this is the experience of many people. Just with sheer infatuation between that 13-year-old fella and that 12-year-old girl that he's got a crush on, there is that flush of the cheek, that tingle of the spine. Now, if that has developed into true, mature love in the biblical sense, where there is a mutual appreciation of each other in spite of all that you now know of each other, and a commitment to one another in that selfless affection that seeks the other's good even at personal cost, and if as the fruit of that relationship

28:18 there have been ever widening circles of responsibility, the whole, children, a life's work, does it mean that that couple has abandoned something that is essential to their ongoing relationship if they no longer get the tingle every time they look at one another between the living room and the dining room? Absolutely not. That would be absurd and an unrealistic view of life. Now, I hope that once in a while you still get a tingle, and that once in a while there is a flashback to the other.

28:55 But this would be a very unrealistic view of a developing relationship which needs more and more to be based not upon the heat of passion, but upon what? Commitment to principles. You see? So that where the initial stages of love may have been like the popping of firecrackers with a lot of white light and a lot of immediate heat, the ongoing relationship of love is like the glowing embers and coals there in that fireplace as we see them there in England where they burn coal in their fireplaces, and when that fire's really gotten going well there's just that bed of red coals giving out, not white heat that attracts the eye like a firecracker, but a steady, deep, continuous heat, an even heat that isn't disturbed by the opening or shutting of a door. And so, lest any conscience should be overly taxed by an unrealistic view of what this matter of first love is, let me state it is not that which I've tried to describe. Well then, if it isn't that, what is it? Well, may I suggest that it is, first of all, a love characterized by the word simplicity, secondly, a love characterized by the word intensity,

Defining 'First Love': Simplicity

30:23 and thirdly, a love characterized by the word sensitivity. And I want to come back again and again to the human analogy of the husband-wife relationship because certainly what our Lord says in this passage, He says, among other things, as the great bridegroom of His church, His own dear bride. First of all, first love which these people had abandoned was a love of simplicity. Now, what do I mean by that?

30:53 Well, let me try to explain. Remember the setting of the church at Ephesus. According to Ephesians 2 and chapter 4 and things said in chapter 5, these people who had been enmeshed in all the hopelessness of the raw paganism of the then known Roman Empire, who were wholly given over to the worship of the goddess Diana, suddenly found with the coming of Christ's servants and the preaching of Christ's gospel, that what Diana could never, never do, take away that terrible oppression of a nagging conscience, take away that terrible hopelessness of pagan religion, take away the terrible bondage of sin, what Diana could not do in terms of the removal of guilt, the cancellation of hopelessness, the severance of bondage, Jesus Christ had done. God in His grace had done. And there was in the hearts of those brought out of the rawness of paganism into the glorious liberty of the gospel of Christ in some measure that tremendous consciousness, whatever this is all about, it centers in Jesus,

32:22 this Jesus whom Paul has preached to us, by virtue of whose death and resurrection we have found the answer to the problem of guilt, we have found the answer to the problem of hopelessness, for Paul says you were without hope and without God in the world. Now they had hope. They were bound by their sins, walking according to the course of this world. Now they had found liberty in Christ.

32:49 And so whatever they did or did not know, this was true. To me to live is Christ. And there was that simplicity of the recognition that He was the focal point, He was the fountainhead, from which all these blessings had flowed. But they had to begin to learn lessons of faith.

33:15 There were certain things they had to know about this salvation. So Paul wrote them a letter. And he took them at the very outset into those deep, mysterious and glorious doctrines of the divine sovereignty and grace. And if that's not a truth God wants us to know, I don't know why.

33:34 The Spirit of God moved Paul to write it to a bunch of babes in Christ in a pagan Roman city. If the great doctrines of grace are simply something for theologians to argue about in the ivory towers of theological schools, why did the Apostle send a letter into a center of raw paganism that has stamped on its very first paragraph, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him, in love having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto himself according to the good pleasure of his will. And then he goes on to string out in that great peon of Paul what praise, what we commonly call the significant and the distinguishing doctrines of grace. They had to learn this. If they were to be stable in their faith, there were facts about their salvation which they had to know.

34:49 Then he went on to tell them that he prayed that the Spirit would come as the Spirit of illumination, that they might know some other things. And then he moves on in the fourth and fifth and sixth chapters and tells them about their relationships, their lives, their lives, their hearts, their souls, and their hearts. And he goes on to say that the only things that they knew that they had to know were the servants to masters, masters to servants, husbands to wives, wives to husbands, children to parents, the people of God with the world, the flesh and the devil, how to take up the armor, how to fight. Well, they had to learn all of this.

35:21 They had to. This was necessary. But what happened? Somewhere along the line, in the absorption of this necessary knowledge, and I'm not downplaying knowledge, if anybody goes out of here tonight and says, well, that was a wonderful thing to know.

35:30 All God's concerned about is my heart. It's warm. We don't need to know a thing. You didn't get that from here.

35:35 No, no. This was necessary. But somewhere along the line, in the absorption of the knowledge, in the recognition of their duties, in the acceptance of their manifold responsibilities, they began to lose sight of the simplicity of all of this, in that it centers in and in the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the can be the fruits of righteousness, Philippians 1. But something happened, and in the course of the responsibilities legitimately laid upon them and legitimately embraced and implemented, there was a loss of this love of simplicity. Let me illustrate it from the wheel. You take that wheel off your kid's bike. Some of you kids have done this. You've seen a wheel taken

36:59 off your bike, and you see at the center is that hub, the axle that holds all the spokes together. And if you trace out a spoke from its center, no matter how far out you trace it, it's always connected with that hub and with the axle. Now, what happens if you pull that center part out where we used to call them the cones are? Pull that out. Well, all the spokes are still attached to the rim, but they've lost their proper relationship, and they just dangle like so much steel. That's what happened here. Somehow, in the outworking of the spokes of Christian responsibility and knowledge, the cone, the center, the axle went out of it, who is Christ himself. In him, all things consist or hold together, the apostle says in Colossians 1. We've seen

37:52 this, I've seen it, and had to counsel in situations where it's been most grievous, where this happened in a human relationship.

38:02 So let's go and look at the original Bible, and I'll explain it in a few moments. The Bible says that there was an increasing of the responsibility of the one that came with the one that came . The one that came, that means who? The one that came in the form of the one that came in the form of God.

38:29 Right? Right? Exactly! Amidst all these responsibilities to say, oh, that we could have the good old days when all we needed to do was sit on the bench and look gooey-eyed at one another.

38:41 And they resent the presence of children and the demands of making a living and keeping up the house. Well, that would be terrible, immature irresponsibility for a couple who found some kind of estrangement in their relationship to hanker back to the old days when they had no responsibilities attached to their affection but could selfishly indulge their affection with no concern for anyone but themselves. You know, no, God never brings a man and a woman together in the bonds and self-commitment of marriage that they might draw sternly. They circle around themselves and ingrow and have no concern but themselves.

39:21 We've seen this with a couple. We were talking about it driving over tonight. They're not members of our church here. But what a heartbreaking thing.

39:29 They've deliberately planned now, they've been married almost 15 years, not to have children. Deliberately planned not to have them this whole period. Deliberately keep themselves from involvement from anyone but themselves. And you look upon that thing and you say, that's a tragedy.

39:43 May I say it would be a tragedy for someone who's brought in. To a vital, saving relationship to Christ to say, well, this is just so wonderful and so blessed. I'm not going to worry about accepting responsibility. I'm not going to worry about the fruits of my union with Christ.

39:58 I'm not going to search for more knowledge. I'm not going to seek to be found useful in the cause of Christ's kingdom. I'm just going to have a sweet, lovely relationship with Christ. No, no.

40:11 The Lord isn't talking about that. But oh, how beautiful it is when you go into a home. Where there is this great structure of the fruits of that love relationship. You see the children.

40:24 You see the furniture. You see the responsibilities that are entailed in the keeping and management of the home. You see the husband useful in his place of work, in business or ministry, whatever it is. Involved in the concerns of others in the church and in the community and in his neighborhood.

40:41 You see a mother involved with the lives of others. And yet in the midst of it. When you see that they have. Maintained that simplicity of their commitment to love one to another.

40:55 It's the most beautiful thing next to that relationship seen in the life of a believer. What a precious thing to meet a seasoned saint in his 60s or 70s. With a head that is full of much knowledge of God and his truth. With a life that is filled.

41:20 With useful activity in many circles of influence in the kingdom of Christ. And yet who in the midst of all of this carries with him that glow of the simplicity of his first love. Who easily and naturally speaks of Jesus. Who easily and naturally ascribes to Jesus all the glory and the praise for any good that is coming.

41:51 Who easily and naturally ascribes to Jesus the source as the source of any truth that he knows.

42:05 That's what first love is. It's that love of simplicity. Where in the growing involvements and responsibilities of the Christian life. This is not lost but maintained.

Defining 'First Love': Intensity

42:21 Now there won't perhaps be as much. passion and white hot heat and flashing light in that relationship, it may be more and more the deep glow, but it will be there. Secondly, it's not only a love of simplicity, but it's a love of intensity. And this is what our Lord detected, you see, that there was on that thermometer which measured the intensity of their love a dropping of a couple of degrees.

42:53 And listen, may God underscore this in our hearts and minds. No grace implanted in the heart of a believer has a self-sustaining power. The same God who implants grace must himself nurture and sustain that grace. Without me, he can do nothing. Now this is true of love to Christ. And so in the plush, of their newfound faith and in the glory of their newfound deliverance, they could say in the words of the beloved in the Song of Solomon, when I found him whom my soul loveth, I held him and I would not let him go. That love of intensity, that kind of love that produced in them and produces in everyone who knows it in any measure, that something of a burning desire. That desire to know the mind and heart of its object of love. That desire to speak of

44:07 the object of its love out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. That desire to spend and be spent for the object of one's love. That desire to be in the presence of the object of one's love. That's the love of intensity. And perhaps some of us can remember when we knew that. When there was that desire. That desire to know his mind and his heart as found in the scriptures. We knew precious little. Oh how ignorant we were. Still ignorant now. But oh how triply ignorant we were then.

44:44 But that insatiable thirst that was in our hearts with this book. Why? Because we knew that the mind and heart of our beloved was unfolded in its pages. We didn't know much theology and that's not to our credit. We didn't know much doctrine. We didn't know much doctrine and that's not to our credit. But one thing we knew. Christ has become all to me. And that love of intensity expressed itself in this desire to know his mind and his heart. Some of us can remember and we're ashamed of it perhaps. When we lost all our appetite for the newspaper. I can remember well one of the clearest evidences that the Lord had saved me. To me. I'm not saying it's got to be true of you. But it was to me. Is

45:34 I couldn't have cared less about reading the sport page in the paper. I was a terrible sports fanatic in the strictest sense of the word. Back when the Dodgers used to be at Ebbets Field and in Brooklyn. I knew the average of every one of those fellows. Duke Snyder.

45:50 Eddie Stanky. Carl Fiorello. Right down the line. I could tell you their averages. How many hits they caught each day and how many they didn't. And when they'd lose a close game I'd inwardly weep and sometimes even outwardly. Oh I was an addict. And I shall never forget in that 18th year of my life when the Lord was pleased to save me and reveal his son to me. How that I actually couldn't have cared less. What happened on the sport page. And the reason was not that somebody had said if you're a Christian don't read a newspaper. No. No one told me that. But I had found him whom I so loved. And holding him I did not want to let him go. And I knew he was found in the pages of this blessed book. That love of intensity. That desire to speak of him. That desire to spend and be spent for him. To be in his

46:46 blessed presence. Now as I grow in grace and in knowledge shouldn't my love grow proportionate to my knowledge. What do you think of a friend who the more you know of him the less you love him. That tells me something bad about your friend. You ever hear people say boy he's all right from the distance but don't get up close to him. he's all right from a pulpit, don't go into his home. Have you heard that?

47:17 What kind of a friend is it whom you can only love from a distance?

47:25 He's a friend unworthy of intimate acquaintance. Dear ones, do you see what this says of our Lord? If the more we've learned of him in his truth, and that's the only place you learn of Christ. I'm not talking about any knowledge of Christ that's divorced from this book.

47:40 I'm not talking about some mystical kind of knowledge where you're just floating up on some kind of a religious high and you get some nice, oozy feelings about Jesus. I have no sympathy with that kind of unscriptural thinking whatsoever. The only way you grow in the knowledge of Christ is growing in the knowledge of what this book reveals of him, of his person and his work and his glory. But now my question is this.

48:05 If with all the increase of knowledge, and you know a lot more than you did back when you were converted, don't you? You know a lot more about Christ. You know a lot more about his truth. But if it hasn't meant an intensification of your love for his person,

48:23 do you see what a terrible commentary this is? What have you discovered about him in this increased knowledge that's made you love him less?

48:31 You say, Pastor, the thought is unthinkable. Yes, it should be. And that's why I say this loss of first love is a terrible thing because it reflects the very language that God speaks to Israel, the parallel passage in Genesis, Jeremiah, he says, what unrighteousness have you found in me? That passage is introduced with the words, remember the day of your espousals.

48:53 God says, I remember what your attitude to me was when I brought you out of the land of Egypt and I was married to you. What's happened since then that as you've walked with me these years and come to know me, that you've turned your back upon me and hewn out broken cisterns that can hold no water? Oh, may it touch our hearts to think that our Lord would say to us, as you've grown in knowledge, what have you seen in me that's made you love me less?

Defining 'First Love': Sensitivity

49:19 With less intensity? With less simplicity? And then in the third place, first love is not only a love of simplicity, a love of intensity, but it's a love of sensitivity. Now there's a sinful kind of sensitivity.

49:36 I think I used the grotesque illustration back a year or two ago that some people are like ten sore toes all swollen to about six inches in circumference. Now you can imagine a poor person whose ten toes, every one of them, was all swollen up like that and everywhere they went and anything that touched them or they touched, oh, would they let out a beller and a holler. Well, there's that kind of sensitivity and that's a terrible thing. I know some of you are wrestling with this problem.

50:06 That's a good sign that you're wrestling with it. You're not just calling it your personality. But when I say that first love is a love of sensitivity, I don't mean that kind of sinful touchiness, but I mean a love of sensitivity. I mean a love of sensitivity in this sense that whatever grieves and offends the object of my love grieves and offends me.

50:30 Can you imagine what it was like when that letter of the apostle first came to that church at Ephesus? Can you try to put yourself back in an assembly there at Ephesus when one of the elders stood on a Lord's Day morning and said, Beloved brethren, we have a letter from the apostle and in it, in our worship this morning, we shall give ourselves to the careful reading of this letter that comes from this one commissioned by Christ with peculiar authority to instruct us. And then he began to read. And as he laid out those tremendous statements of the doctrines of grace and these people reflected upon their condition in paganism and perhaps some of them for the first time realized the Lord not only saved us by power, but he saved us, by purpose, that he saved us by power for I were living witnesses of that. Here we are, the chains of paganism broken. Then they found out they were saved by purpose. That God planned it way back in eternity.

51:35 And then he goes on to enlarge upon that great statement of the church and that these Gentiles who were always on the outside of the wall were now brought into the church on the exact same footing as the Jews and their hearts are thrilled as the letters read. And then the apostle comes to the practical part and he says, taking a specimen portion, Ephesians 4.30, Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you're sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

52:16 And with a heart that was burning in the sense of, indebtedness to the God of grace and perhaps with cheeks that were stained with tears of sheer joy at this discovery that they were not only saved by power but by purpose. When they hear those words, let all bitterness. That dear brother with his tear-stained cheeks remembers that just the week before he'd had words with his fellow believer in the assembly and he says in his heart, Lord, I'm not going to let him go home until I go to him and, as soon as the final Amen is pronounced, he goes to his brother and he puts his arm around him and says, Oh, my brother, did you hear the Apostle's words this morning? I've had bitterness.

52:59 Won't you forgive me? Oh, in the light of this great salvation, this salvation of power rooted in eternal purpose, bringing us into such tremendous privilege, all because Jesus loved me and gave himself. How can I have any attitude contrary to love to you? Brother, forgive me.

53:19 And there was that tenderness. Maybe some wives were sitting there who also had been caught up in the glory of this statement of salvation in the first three chapters. And then when the Apostle came to his words, Wives, be subject to your husbands and everything as the church is subject to Christ. Some dear sister sat there and says, Oh, Lord Jesus, I've not been rightly representing you.

53:44 You've told me that my relationship to my husband is to be a picture of the church's relationship to you. Why, Lord, you've won me to a place of glad and unreserved submission to your rule of love. And I've not given that to my husband. Lord, forgive me.

54:01 And even while the epistles being read, if they didn't sit in separate sides as they do in some oriental settings, maybe she even reached over and took her husband's hand and said, dear, I've got some things to talk to you about after church is over today. And as he went on to say, husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church. There's another brother, and he's smitten. You see, as the word came to them, couched in the setting of their great redemptive privileges, there was that love of sensitivity.

54:33 Now, may I say, by way of application, some of you can remember when you had that kind of love. Can you remember that when you just missed a day alone with God, your heart was pained? When you missed a day or had a day in which you had no time to be alone with God, is what I meant to say. Do you remember when it pained you?

54:56 Can you remember? There was that twinge. Not because someone said, every Christian must have devotions once a day. No, no, I'm not talking about that.

55:05 But because in that love of simplicity and intensity, there was that longing to know his mind. There was that longing to commune with him. And when that longing was frustrated, either by circumstances or by the first indication of coolness, the discovery of that smote your heart. Remember?

55:26 Can you remember? When there was that love of sensitivity? Do you remember when, if you spoke that unkind word to the husband or wife, there was immediate confession and restitution, things made right heavenward, manward? Can you remember?

55:43 Can you remember when you came to the gathering of God's people and if you didn't receive a conscious sense of the presence of God, you were pained and grieved? Can you remember? Where's that now? Where's that sensitivity?

56:01 See, I'm not talking about the animal passion and glow of the first love. No, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about that sensitivity which, rather than decline, ought to increase. With each new sight of the glory of Christ, there should be an equal increase of desire to please him.

56:21 Do you remember? I shall never forget. You'll never forget one of the most vivid illustrations of this, and though it's happened a good 12 years ago now, it's as vivid in my mind as though it were yesterday. When I was engaged in the itinerant ministry, much of that ministry was out in the Midwest, and there was a boy who started coming to the meetings of a certain church where I was preaching for two weeks who either congenitally or in terms of an injury was somewhat limited in his mental faculties.

56:52 He was rational to the extent that he could listen to the word. He was rational to the extent that he was not fit for an institution, but he certainly was subnormal in his mental capacities.

57:09 And through a number of circumstances, this boy found himself in the meetings. And I was dealing with sin and grace and the basic elementary issues of the gospel, and one night the boy met me at the end of the service and wanted to talk with me. And he came from, obviously, a very poor, family. He was ill-kept.

57:26 I remember he was actually smelly, but he was interested in the gospel. And he talked about wanting to know Jesus and the rest, and I said to him, I said, Bill, before Christ will ever become precious, you've got to see how much you need him. Now I want you to do something. I want you to go home tonight, and I want you to pray.

57:43 Oh, God, show me what a sinner I am. Now, Bill, do you understand that? I want you to pray. And he repeated it back to me.

57:49 I tried to deal with him as simply as I would with a little child. Well, he went home. Next night I came to meet with the pastor to pray, at seven o'clock, and when I opened his study door, there was this boy in on his knees, in tears, crying out to God for mercy, pleading with the Lord to save him. And afterwards, as the pastor gave me the details, what happened, he had gone home, and he had asked the Lord to show him his sin, and God gave him such a sight of his sin, he couldn't wait for the service that night to come back and hear about Christ.

58:15 He had to come, and he came early, and he said to the preacher, Look, I see I'm lost and undone. Can you tell me how to get saved? And the preacher opened up the word and set Christ before him, and Bill gave every evidence, every evidence of savingly embracing the Lord. Well, then a couple of nights later, I came to pray with the preacher, and here was Bill, in on his knees, this time praying, Oh, God forgive me.

58:36 Oh, how miserably I've sinned. I wondered, Oh, boy, what's he done? What's he done? Well, you'll laugh at this, but I hope you'll never forget it.

58:44 He said, Well, I'll tell you what happened. He said, My dad had gone out and spread manure all over the front yard. And he said, Then later on, he discovered it was too early to do that. He said, And I had to rake it up.

58:54 And he said, I got so mad at having to do that dirty job, I threw the rake down. But he said, Oh, what a terrible sin. And here he was, coming to the service early, broken over the terrible sin of losing his temper and throwing down a rake, because he had to rake off a bunch of manure from the front yard.

59:16 The love of sensitivity. Sensitivity. He hadn't lost the capacity to blush and to grieve over his sin. May I ask again not to unduly trust or to double any sensitive conscience, but I trust to accurately apply the sword of the Spirit to the conscience of every believer.

59:39 Do you know that love of sensitivity which you once knew? Or have you lost the capacity to grieve over your sins? Heart sins, mouth sins, thought sins, ear sins? Now you answer, not verbally, but you answer as in the presence of Him who says, I know thy works.

60:09 I know thy works. Does He see that sensitivity? Or is it gone? Is it gone?

60:18 That's first love. That love of simplicity. That love of intensity. That love of sensitivity.

Symptoms of Lost First Love: In Relation to Christ

60:26 And whenever it's forsaken, and I'll close tonight by just trying to give an overview of the effects of this from a different perspective. The same way a dog is a dog. A doctor many times who would be hard put to describe the certain disease as to its essence can describe its symptoms. When this love of simplicity, intensity, and sensitivity is waning, the evidences will be, first of all, with reference to Christ Himself, He will be less glorious to the eyes of the heart and less precious to the affections of the heart.

61:06 As Octavius Winslow has soed, so eloquently said in this excellent book, Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul, when the believer has but few dealings with Christ, his blood seldom traveled to, his fullness little lived upon, his love and glory scarcely mentioned, the symptoms of declension from first love in the soul are very obvious. Perhaps nothing forms a more certain criterion of the state of the soul than this. We would be willing to test a man's religion both as to its nature and its growth by his reply to this question, What think ye of Christ? Does his blood daily moisten the root of thy profession? Is his righteousness that which exalts thee out of and above thyself, and daily gives thee free and near access to God? Is the sweetness of his love, much in thy heart, and the fragrance of his name, much upon thy lips?

62:14 Are thy corruptions daily carried to his blood, thy trials carried to his heart? In a word, is Jesus the substance of thy life, the source of thy sanctification, the spring and fountainhead of thy joys, the theme of thy song, and the glorious object on which thine eye is ever resting? The mark towards which thou art ever pressing? Be not offended, reader, if we remark that a professing man may talk well of Christ and may do homage to his name and build up his cause and promote his kingdom, and yet rest short of having Christ in his heart, the hope of glory. When we have lost our first love, Christ will not be as glorious to the eyes of the heart. He will be less precious. There will be little feeding upon him, little spontaneous natural speaking of him alone with God or in the company of his people.

63:23 Jesus said, He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life in him. What did he mean? He said, The mark of a man possessed of eternal life is that he feeds upon me. I am his life, not in a mystical way, but feeding upon the Christ, the Christ of Christian theology.

63:44 Feeding upon him is the great covenant head of his people. Feeding upon him is our surety and substitute for sin. Feeding upon him is our great advocate at the right hand of the Father. Feeding upon him is our sympathetic high priest.

63:59 Feeding upon him as the limitless, boundless ocean of all spiritual treasure out of whom we may draw for every need. I will not be able to do that. I will not be able to do that. I would ask you tonight, What think ye of Christ?

64:15 What place does he have in all your activity and all your knowledge? Do you feed upon him? When we've left that love of simplicity, that love of intensity and sensitivity, it will show up with reference to Christ himself. Secondly, it will show up with reference to the means of grace.

Symptoms of Lost First Love: In Relation to Means of Grace

64:36 Those activities which God has constituted as a way of conveying grace into our lives. Public and private, of grace when we've left our first love we find it difficult to pray the 84th psalm honestly remember what the psalmist said my heart and my flesh long for the courts of god and as the psalmist out in a place of banishment saw the sparrows building nests in the temple the place of god's dwelling he says oh how i covet those sparrows they can be in the house of god while i'm out here in a place of banishment and when a person's walking in his first love oh how he longs to be in the courts of god not a building this is not his house this is an old beer hall with a new face on it his house is his people his church is his gathered assembly and And one of the marks of a person living in the flush and in the deepening grace of his first love is there is this longing for the courts of God. And one of the sure signs of the loss of first love will show up in this area, an indifference to the gathering with God's people, finding convenient excuses not to be with them, and then thinking that whenever the preacher mentions it,

66:05 it's just because he is statistically concerned. No, no. Or, though we may be present in the public assembly, finding less and less enjoyment and blessing in the midst of the means of grace. This is true of our private means of grace, less frequenting of the place of prayer, less seeking of the face of God.

66:29 Prayer becomes something to be done. Perhaps in all of these things, holding to the outside and the shell of the truth, but losing the enjoyment, the enjoyment of that same truth. Listen to Mr. Winslow again.

66:43 The loss of spiritual enjoyment, not of spiritual perception of the loveliness and harmony of the truth, shall be the symptom that betrays the true condition of the soul. The mind shall lose none of its light, but the heart much of its fervor. The truths of revelation, especially the doctrines of grace, shall occupy the same prominent position as to their value and beauty, and yet the influence of those, those truths be scarcely felt. The word of God shall be assented to, but as the instrument of sanctification, of abasement, of nourishment, the believer may be an almost utter stranger.

67:21 Yea, he must necessarily be so, when this process of secret declension is going forward in his soul. I ask you tonight, my friend, have you lost your first love? Does it show up in this area, truths that once thrilled you, now can be confessed with no glow? There's the test, there's the test.

67:50 Light has not gone from the mind, but heat and warmth from the heart. And listen, you know why the Lord is so concerned about this? Listen. He has so made man, and so operates upon man, that if you separate the light of truth from the heat of truth, one or the other will ultimately and soon die.

68:13 When men come along and say, all that's important is the heart and warmth and glow, doctrine is not important. Mark it, it isn't long before the glow is all gone, because inward experience can only be maintained by right doctrine. Others say, well, we're not too concerned about the heart, but we'll maintain the truth. Ah, listen, the truth you cease to love, it's not long before you cease to defend it and cling to it.

68:43 And our Lord saw the declension in the heart, though it hadn't yet touched the head. He says, you're still straight in your head, you're trying those false apostles, you call them liars, you cut them off, you mark them, you warn your people about them. Mark me, he says, if you don't deal with this declension in your affections, it won't be long before you relinquish the truth in the mind, and when you do that, you're no longer a lampstand. The church is the pillar and ground of the truth, and when the truth goes, it's a synagogue of Satan, no matter what name it may bear, no matter what edifice may be supported by its operations.

Symptoms of Lost First Love: In Relation to God's People and the World

69:23 This is why I'm so concerned, dear ones. I am not in any way as a pastor concerned that we have come to the place where three months from now we're about to become liberals. I see no signs of it. But oh, if we've dropped a few degrees in our affection to Christ, that's the first step, see?

69:48 And our Lord knows that. That's why He corrects it at the beginning, lest it follow out its natural course. When we've lost our first love, it will show up, not only with reference to Christ Himself, but with reference to the means of grace, prayer, the Word. Thirdly, it will show up with reference to the people of God.

70:07 According to 1 John 3, 14, Hereby do we know that we've passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren, the presence of divine life, and the soul expresses itself in divine affection to all in whom that life resides. If we love those in whom God dwells, He says that's an evidence God dwells in us. Now, if the presence or absence of love to the brethren is an evidence of the presence or absence of love to God, then the degree of my love to Christ will be seen in the degree of my love to the brethren. And so whenever there's a loss of first love to Christ, it will show up with reference to His people. Faults that once were swallowed up in that love that covers a multitude of sins suddenly begin to grow like mountains. Not because the people are getting more carnal, but because we are. You see, when our hearts are suffused with love to Christ, then we have that love to His people which covers the multitude of faults.

71:16 But let our hearts become estranged from Christ, and they become estranged from His people, and we begin to find fault with them. We begin to be censorious of them. We begin to think how difficult they're getting, when in reality the problem is within our own hearts. And then last of all, it will show itself with reference to the world.

71:44 When our hearts burn with fervent love to Christ, then that world, the sinful world system, appears evil in our eyes, because Jesus has told us, in attaching us to Himself by His grace, He said, Your relationship to the world is precisely My relationship to the world. If it hates Me, you know that it will hate you. If it listens to Me, it will listen to you. Our Lord set up this very clear antithesis between Himself and the world.

72:13 And oh, it's amazing when someone's walking in the flush of his first love, how clearly he sees that. He says with real intelligence, Is this vile world a friend of grace to help me unto God? And the answers are ringing no. When he's declined in his love to Christ, the world's goals and standards and patterns are a little less simple, a little less abominable, a little less wicked, a little more tolerable.

72:41 And the words of James find him, Whoever would be a friend of the world makes himself the enemy of God. On the other hand, when we think of the world as the mass of lost humanity in the flush of our new love to Christ, we would give our blood if we could win that world. And there is that spontaneous, many times, oh, how unwise, in aggression, that kind of witness that just runs roughshod over people, that fails to take into account they have certain rights as creatures in the image of God even though they're lost creatures. And I look back and I wonder sometimes that people didn't just punch me right in the snout in the way I witnessed.

73:24 Ah, the dear ones, if I could just capture something of that concern which kept me from thinking of people in any other light other than the fact everybody I see is on his way to heaven or on his way to hell, and I've got the message that makes the difference. I couldn't go anywhere without thinking in those hard, fast categories. I confess with shame it's one of the aspects of my first love that I've lost and it seems I've never been able to regain. Is it true of you?

Call to Repentance and Restoration

74:01 How do you look upon that world? I have somewhat against thee. Thou hast left thy first love. Has the Lord discovered this to you tonight?

74:12 May I remind you if he has, he discovers it not as an angry judge but as a tender lover of his people. And he discovers it that he might by his grace restore us. And God willing in our next study we shall look to the commandments of our Lord and give direction as to how this condition must be faced and dealt with. But I'm so glad that even though I'm not expounding them, the Holy Spirit is not dependent upon my exposition.

74:41 You go home tonight with the arrows of God fast in your hearts and you fall before your Lord and say, Lord Jesus, your words reach me tonight. The pastor wasn't just talking. Lord, you were talking. Lord, what do I do?

74:55 And you get on your knees and you read that passage. Remember from whence thou had fallen and repent and do the first. The Lord can interpret those words to you. He can apply them with power.

75:05 Long before we get, the Lord willing, two weeks from today to the directions our Lord gives to those in whom he's discovered this declension and decay, you can sit here as a glowing testimony of the reality of God's grace not only to find us out but to meet us. Not only to open up the wound but to heal us. I urge you to seek him. I urge you to seek him.

75:30 But if you're going to excuse and rationalize and you're going to try to evade those eyes as a flame of fire, my friend, you're in dangerous ground. Dangerous, dangerous ground. For it's to him that overcome it that the privilege of eating of the tree of life will be given. May the Lord make us by his grace a people to whom not only these words of commendation will come in these various areas but who will be able to say nevertheless though I did find you lacking in first love I no longer find you in that state. There's no church left at Ephesus. Not a trace of a church. Nothing but darkness in that area today.

76:32 Remember my report from the recent trip to Great Britain? The word that kept coming to me if the light of day that is in you be darkness, how great is the darkness. My friend, don't be irresponsibly indifferent to unborn generations. If the Lord has discovered this loss of first love, deal with it.

76:55 Lest someone come through this area of West Essex 30, 40 years from now looking in vain for a lamp stand in the midst of which Jesus walks.