In any relationship – it’s easy to start all lovey-dovey and then as time goes on and responsibilities cut in and things wear thin – well, you know … you wake up one day and wonder – what happened to that first love? Well – that’s exactly the question Jesus wants us to ask ourselves.

Imagine for a moment, well you and I, we’re on a journey towards eternity. A step at a time. A day at a time. And at any point, any point on that journey it can come to an end. Hit by the proverbial bus; sudden heart attack or stroke. Whatever it is, as much as we carry on as though this life here on earth will go on forever, it won’t.

In fact, truth be known, our lives are incredibly fragile. Imagine those people holidaying on a beach in the Pacific one minute, swept away by a deadly tsunami the next. Who would have thought?

So along this journey we want to make sure that we are going to spend eternity in the right place. Eternity with God instead of eternity without God. So imagine that God Himself would have stopped by. I don’t know about you but amongst all the things that I would like to ask Him and talk to Him about, my biggest question would be this.

“Lord, am I on my way to an eternity with You or is there something in my life that’s putting all that at risk?”

Well this week on the program we’re going to have a listen to God Himself because it turns out He has shown up. He is prepared to tell us the things that are holding us back.

Sounds kind of weird but God made a specific point of listing those things in His Word, in the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation. The book we often steer clear of because it can be difficult to understand. With all these kind of weird pictures of eternity and judgement and heaven and hell and what God’s like and what’s going on in His presence.

But Gods listed the things that are going to hold us back from eternity. And I know the Book of Revelation can be difficult for us to get our minds around. Some people try and unpick it bit by bit and come up with some, frankly, whacky predictions.

The Book of Revelation is what’s called apocalyptic literature. It’s kind of a different literary genre. You know we have poems or we have newspaper articles or we have novels or we have technical papers. And because they’re all different we interpret them and we treat them differently.

Revelation is apocalyptic literature. It’s not something we have a direct equivalent to in our culture today. But back in the Hebrew culture, in the 1st century, they loved using imagery and picture language.

It’s a bit like an artist, an impressionist who’s painting things on a canvas, that when we look at the little bits of the painting, they don’t make too much sense on their own but when we stand back and we see the whole picture, it invokes something powerful in our hearts. That’s the Book of Revelation: a big picture about where this whole shooting match is headed and what’s going to happen.

Towards the beginning of that book there are seven letters to seven Churches. Jesus is speaking to some of the Churches, of the day, very specifically putting His finger on anything that’s going to hold them back from an eternity with Him.

So this week on the program we’re going to look at 5 of those letters, because they speak very much to you and me, here and now. They’re about our eternities so lets kick off today with what Jesus had to say to the Church in Ephesus. Have a listen; carefully see if He’s saying something to you right now. We begin in Revelation chapter 2, at verse 1:

To the angel of the Church in Ephesus write: These are the words of Him who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks among the seven golden lamp stands. I know your works, your toil and your patience endurance. I know that you cannot tolerate evil doers.

You have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them to be false. I also know that you’re enduring patiently in bearing up for the sake of My name and that you have not grown weary. But I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

Remember then from what you have fallen. Repent and do the works you did at first. If not I will come to you and remove your lamp stand from its place unless you repent. Yet this is to your credit, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans which I also hate.

Let anyone who has ears listen to what the Spirit is saying to the Churches. To everyone who conquers I will give permission to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God.

Now there’s an enormous amount packed into that short passage and the short time we have together today, I simply want to distil the essence of what Jesus is saying, not just to the Church in Ephesus but to anyone who has ears to listen. What He’s saying to you and me, today in fact.

See, here are these people in this place called Ephesus in the 1st Century – one of the most important cities in Asia Minor on the Aegean Sea in what is now known as the nation of Turkey. And Jesus is saying to them, ‘You know, I know the good things you’re doing. I can see the good works. I can see that you’re not tolerating evil doers. I can see that you’re not following false teachers and leaders and apostles.’

“I can see that you’re waiting patiently and enduring through the difficult times for my sake. All good stuff. All necessary things and I see all those things.” That’s what Jesus is saying BUT here’s the thing. “The thing is that you’ve lost your first love. You’ve abandoned it”.

So, on the one hand He’s praising them for their orthodox and by that I mean, they’re sticking to their faith. They’re sticking to the truth. They haven’t abandoned any of that. Problem is they’ve lost their first love. And then what happens the Church becomes sterile and cold and legalistic.

When Jesus was asked, “What’s the most important thing of all the Commandments in the Law of the Old Testament?”, He said this. Matthew chapter 22, verse 37 to 40. He said:

You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first Commandment and the second is just like it. You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two Commandments hang the Law and the Prophets.

There’s nothing more important than that. You know you can walk into many, many Churches around the world today. Places that maintain a sense of traditional or orthodox faith. Places that are focused on the truth of God’s word and yet they’ve forgotten their first love. They’ve grown cold.

And it’s not something that happens just in Churches, it happens in the hearts of men and women and children. We keep carrying on with things that we do to express our faith and little by little our first love drains out of it. And it ends up becoming an empty ritual.

And so here, Jesus is putting His finger on one of the most common things that happens to those who started off following with a heart overflowing with joy and love and delight and enthusiasm. And listen to His call. Revelation chapter 2, verse 5:

Remember then from what you have fallen. Repent and do the works you did at first.

And that’s His call to you and me today. Do you remember, do you remember what it was like right back there at the beginning? The joy and the delight you had in my love, Jesus is saying. It’s time to go back to that. It doesn’t matter how many other good works you’re doing. If you don’t have that, you have nothing.

My friend, following hard after Jesus isn’t about religious ritual and it isn’t about good works. It’s about our first love and nothing’s more important than loving God with all we are. And what flows out of that is we end up loving other people. That’s how it’s meant to work. The Apostle Paul put it like this in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 13:

And now these three things remain. Faith, hope and love but the greatest of these is love.

With all the information and ideas that get thrown at us these days, we have to filter it. Question is – what filter do we apply? For most of us, the filter goes something like this – what’s in it for me. But then – how does that filter go, when we’re trying to listen to God speak?

I recall as a child and a teenager growing up that my parents were most concerned with the company I kept. Of course, there comes a time when they no longer have much influence over that but I recall finding this interesting, the company I kept being somewhat annoying frankly, particularly as a teenager.

What business was it of theirs anyway? But once I became a parent I knew exactly what they were on about. The company we keep has a huge impact on the directions we take in life. The people around us influence us. If we get in with a good crowd, they’ll bring out our best. If we get in with the wrong crowd, well that can be disastrous.

Many a wonderful person’s life has been side tracked and even completely ruined because the people to whom they’ve given the right to influence them. Influence, it turns out, is a powerful thing. A good influence can lead us to develop into a strong and loving and creative person. A bad influence can lead some people to be nasty and mean and stunted.

A bad influence can lead to crime. A bad influence can seriously ruin a life. I wonder if we took stock of the people and the TV shows and the social attitudes. I wonder if we took a close hard look at the key influences in our lives, what we would see. It’s a thought isn’t it?

Over these last few weeks on the program we’ve been taking a serious, serious look at not just eternity but what it is that you and I do here and now, day by day, in the complete and utter ordinariness of our lives that influences how we’re going to spend the rest of eternity.

And for me it’s been a really sobering few weeks, an encouraging few weeks: a chance really to think through these things in my own life. Am I living the sort of life, really, that reflects that I have a faith in Jesus Christ?

If I was arrested in a foreign land and accused of being a Christian, would there in fact be enough evidence to sustain the charges? Because you know something, it’s the easiest thing in the world to start off giving our lives over to Jesus and thinking, ‘Yes, yes, I am on that journey to eternity with God’. But then, while we’re hurtling at a hundred miles an hour towards that eternity, to fall asleep at the wheel.

And this week we’re looking at what it means to fall asleep in the Book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament. Jesus Himself goes to seven Churches and points out the things that they’re doing that constitute falling asleep at the wheel on the road to eternity.

And today we’re going to look at the third and fourth of those Churches, Pergamum and Thyatira. Because it turns out that they’re guilty of the same thing. Have a listen with me to what Jesus says to the Church at Pergamum. Revelation chapter 2, verses 12 to 17:

And to the angel of the Church of Pergamum write: These are the words of Him who has a sharp two edged sword. I know where you are living, where satan’s throne is. Yet you are holding fast to my name and you are not denying your faith in me. Even in the days of Antipas, my witness, my faithful one who was killed among you where satan lives.

But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the people of Israel so that they would eat food sacrificed to idols and practice fornication.

So you also have some who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Repent then, if not I will come to you soon and make war against them with the sword of my mouth. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the Churches.

To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna and I will give a white stone and on that white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.

Now Pergamum was by far the most impressive city in Asia. About ten miles in from the Aegean Sea in what we now know as Turkey. It was kind of the centre of things. Remarkable and spectacular buildings and whilst the early Christians lived there, it was the centre of worship for four of the most important pagan cults of the day.

It was, for instance, the centre in Asia for the Imperial Cult. A temple was built there to worship the Roman emperor Augustus in 29 BC. And so this letter to the Church in Pergamum begins by acknowledging how hard it is to live as Christians in this place.

And Jesus commends those Christians about how they’ve stuck with it, through thick and thin, through persecution and through martyrdom.

I know where you’re living. Where satan’s throne is. Yet you are holding fast in my name and you do not deny your faith in me. Even in the days of Antipas, my witness, my faithful one who was killed among you where satan lives.

This is true in so many places around the world. Not necessarily just in places where there’s overt persecution. In many affluent cities and places where, one the one hand, people are apparently free to worship whoever or whatever they choose. There can be a lot of pressure for those who claim to be Christians.

Scorn, ridicule, ‘those fundamentalists, those simpletons’. And it’s that subtle form of persecution that brings compromises. And it’s the compromises that Jesus is taking the Church of Pergamum to task over. Verse 14 of chapter 2:

But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the people of Israel so that they would eat food sacrificed to idols and practice fornication.

See it doesn’t matter who we are or where we live, there are social pressures that come as society, as a whole, as the culture shifts to different ways of thinking. Those ways of thinking are almost always held out as being more enlightened and more progressive than the old ways of thinking.

You and I, we’re immersed in the culture in which we live. If you go to China then luck is very important. Lucky numbers, the number 8 in particular. In parts of Africa witchcraft is simply part of the social order. Or you go to India and the Hindu class system is part of everyone’s thinking.

Or you come to where I live and just recently an art gallery hung some so called art of a nude 13 year old and complained when the police tried to close them down. And these things eat away and eat away. Srong messages of acceptable sexual behaviour fill our screens especially in the shows our kids watch.

And it goes on and on and on and eventually we kind of roll over and we give in to the culture. We make compromises and that’s what Jesus is saying here to the Church at Pergamum and that’s what He’s saying to you and me, here and now.

There are not many things that God tells us not to do. In fact they’re only the things that are destructive and hurtful and painful. Don’t murder. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t be envious. Don’t sleep around. You know they’re pretty obvious, right?

And see the same thing is going on here. Not just in Pergamum but in Thyatira. You can read it for yourself in Revelation chapter 2, verse 18 to 29. God’s message is clear:

Repent and if you don’t I will come soon and make war against you with the sword of my mouth. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying.

My friend, it is so easy to rationalise the sin of the world away as being progressive thinking and to become part of it: the easiest thing in the world. But God wants to make it clear to us today, that’s not what He is saying and on that day when we stand before Him to give an account, let me ask you, whose opinion do you think is going to matter?

Have you ever had a lukewarm cup of tea of coffee? Disgusting isn’t it? Hot’s great. Cold’s OK. But like warm – you want to spit it out. So – when our love for God, when our faith in Him – when those things grow … lukewarm? What does He want to do with that?

I love a good cup of tea. You know, hot and strong, a bit of milk and one sugar. There is nothing as refreshing to me as a hot cup of tea. And so often, while I’m preparing these radio programs up in my study at home, I’ll head downstairs and make a cup of tea and take it back to the study with me.

But here’s the thing, I can become so engrossed in preparing the programs and doing the research and jotting down the things I want to share, that half the time I completely forget about my tea. It’s a boy thing I think, they say men can only do one thing at a time.

Anyhow, I look at this half empty cup of tea sometimes and I’m tempted to drink it but I have to tell you, whilst I love hot tea and I don’t mind a glass of iced tea like they drink a lot in America, the one thing I cannot stand is lukewarm tea. It is absolutely disgusting.

And every time I get suckered into taking a mouthful of lukewarm tea I regret it. You either want to spit it out or if you swallow it, it gives you a sick feeling inside. So hot’s good, cold well, you know that’s okay too but lukewarm is absolutely disgusting.

Over these last few weeks we’ve been spending some time talking about, well, dying. Well not so much dying but what happens after we die. If I died tonight would I be ready for eternity? If you died tonight would you be ready for eternity? Or have we fallen asleep at the wheel?

Are we living under a delusion that we’re good to go for an eternity with God when all along the life we’re living clearly demonstrates to all that we’re not. And this week, in particular, we’ve been taking a look at what Jesus had to say to seven Churches, Revelations chapter 2 and 3, about their journey towards eternity.

Seems that most of them were doing some things right but in almost every case Jesus had something to say to them. You’ve forgotten your first love. You’re chasing after false teaching. That’s what we’ve been looking at over this week.

And as we come to the end of our 4 weeks today, looking at whether or not you and I are ready for eternity, I simply cannot think of a better place to finish up than with the last letter from Jesus to the Churches. This is the seventh Church; it’s the Church at Laodicea. Have a listen to what Jesus has to say to them and in fact, to you and me sitting here as we are early in the 21st century.
Revelation chapter 3, beginning at verse 15:

I know your works; you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were either hot or cold. So because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, I need nothing’, you don’t realise that you’re wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.

Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest therefore and repent. Listen, I am standing at the door knocking, if you hear my voice open the door. I will come in with you and eat with you and you with me. To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on the throne. Just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on His throne.

Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the Churches.

And see, here is the thing that you and I are prone to do as well. The Church is Laodicea had a special problem. Their self confidence in their worldly wealth had blinded them to the fact that spiritually, in Gods eyes, they were wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.

How easy is it to let that happen? After all it’s the physical things that we can see around us that have the most impact on our lives. They’re here right? Under our noses, right in front of our eyes and it doesn’t have to be some great mass of wealth. Just a bit of success is all we need for our pride to latch onto it.

But Laodicea lay at the intersection of two great trade routes and it became the wealthiest city around. And it wasn’t just known for it’s wealth but it was also known as the centre of medical studies as well. Classy joint this place Laodicea. You can see why they fell into this trap of pride in their physical circumstances.

But that’s not so much what God’s interested in. Remember the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, blessed are those who recognise their own spiritual poverty. The kingdom of heaven belongs to them. And in this letter to this Church Jesus is calling them back. To open up their eyes to His wealth, an eternal wealth, a wealth that really is worth it. He says:

Therefore I counsel you, come and buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen and salve to anoint your eyes so that you can see.

I reprove and discipline those who I love. Be earnest therefore and repent.

And there couldn’t be a clearer message for those of us today who’ve become so caught up in the ways of this world. So focused on what we can get out of life, here and now, that we’ve lost sight of our deep spiritual poverty and need. Now look at this beautiful picture that comes next:

Listen, I’m standing at the door knocking, if you hear my voice open the door. I will come into you and eat with you and you will eat with me.

There is of course a famous painting of Jesus standing at the door knocking and interestingly it shows the door doesn’t have a handle on the outside. This picture of Jesus knocking at the door of my heart and your heart, why is He knocking? So that He can come in and eat with us and fellowship with us and have a relationship with us.

My friend, Jesus came, not to condemn us but to save us: to save us from ourselves; to save us from the destruction that we would impose on our lives by living life without Him; to save us from an eternity, an eternity without Him.

He stands at the door and knocks right now, this very minute and I know there are countless people listening today, perhaps you’re one of them, who deep in their hearts are nervous. Nervous when they ask themselves that question, if I die tonight would I be ready for eternity?

If that’s you and if you want to be absolutely certain then please pray this prayer with me.

Father God,
I’ll be honest with you. I’m just not certain of my eternity at all. I’d like to think that I’ll spend it with you but I’m not certain. So here and now, Lord Jesus, I fling open the door of my heart. I open it wide and I ask you to come in. I know you won’t find things in order. I know that you’ll find a mess here and a disaster there that need cleaning up.

But I’ve tried to clean them up myself and I can’t and so I invite you to sit down with me and eat with me and fellowship with me. Understand I won’t be a perfect host but I invite you anyway. 

Please come into my heart and what I want Lord Jesus as we fellowship together over the rest of a life time is for fruit to grow in my life: for things to change; for my life, my face, my words, my countenance to shine your light and your glory into this world.

God,
I ask you all these things the only way I know how. Through Jesus in His name. Amen.

My friend, if you’ve been wandering out in the cold wilderness deluding yourself that wealth that you have on this earth is where it’s at; if you wonder whether this Jesus would ever have you back; if your life is tired and broken and empty and you can’t imagine He’d ever want you back, then listen to me. Absolutely, absolutely He wants you back.