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Given at the Sovereign Grace Family Conference Newcastle NSW

Watch the Video File on Vimeo  This series was also given at North-West Bible Conference June long weekend 1995 at Tamworth NSW.

The Healthy Church Part 3 By Julian Bull

By the time these words which were read to us were given to John and written to the Church in Ephesus,
by that time the Church in Ephesus is probably by all accounts about 40 years old.
For churches these days that's not a great age, I think, of the Church.
Where I'm a minister it's 135 years old.
But for a New Testament Church that is an age, that's a significant age.
And you know strange things happen when you reach 40 or 45.
People do strange things. They hit that time of life.
Perhaps we hear, we've got friends, we've heard of relatively sane and balanced men
who do crazy things like go out and buy a Harley-Davidson motorcycle
or some other strange thing. Perhaps it's even more significant.
Perhaps it's a major change in their career.
Perhaps it's an upheaval which begins to affect their family and is detrimental.
Perhaps it's a real sense of the loss of meaning and hope for men who are not Christians.
All in all this is called by the world a midlife crisis.
What we read about in the letter to Ephesus in Revelation 2
is a church which by New Testament standards is in midlife.
And a church which is facing a crisis. It is a midlife crisis if you like.
Now the significant thing about these words is that until they're actually given to John
and then sent to Ephesus, Ephesus is probably unaware that they are in fact facing a crisis.
If you want more background to this then I would recommend William Hendrickson's
Little Commentary on Revelation.
And William Hendrickson sketches in the background of this church wonderfully
and he plots out a sort of chronology of the church.
And it's very interesting reading. I recommend it to you if you're interested.
But for us we want to see what God's diagnosis is for churches in midlife.
Because you see that's where our churches are.
That's where your church is and that's where my church is I think.
And that's probably where most of our churches are.
Most of the churches that are represented here today in midlife.
You know midlife can be a time for great upheaval.
Or it can be the time when things start to plateau.
When things start to level off.
When things start to level off before they descend.
It's these kind of things that God is wanting to address.
And it's this kind of diagnosis that God is giving of the situation in the church in Ephesus.
This explains the title that I've given to this message.
God's diagnosis for churches in midlife.
The idea is that we draw parallels, we make application
between what we read here, what this church faced and what our churches are facing.
And remembering not just to look at our church or churches
in terms of a sort of undefinable group of people.
I look at it in terms first of all of me.
Because I am a living stone. I am a living brick.
I am part of that church.
So looking for the application for me and through me
to the good of the church of which I'm a part.
Ephesus of course is a specific local church.
Even though this is a revelation that is being given to John
and it's being given in a very miraculous and strange and incredible way.
It is actually addressing real life historical situations.
And this is addressed to a specific church.
A specific local church.
A church whose history you can fill in as you go through the New Testament.
There's a lot said about the church in Ephesus.
And you could study it very profitably.
But it is a specific local church.
But, and this is the point,
it's a specific local church whose problems are typical of churches since.
And I think this is the whole point of these letters to the seven churches.
Not that we're to study them and say
well there was a church that had that problem
and there was a church that had this problem.
And there was a church that was really doing well.
But to see in those seven churches typified
all the kinds of problems and situations
which churches from there to this day will probably face.
That's how we're to use and that's how we're to read
these letters to the churches in Revelation.
As we read through or as we heard the passage read to us this morning,
you will notice that very obviously there was a commendation.
We need to note that it is in fact God who is speaking.
God is speaking to this church.
This is made clear in verses one and two
of this passage of Scripture in Revelation 2.
To the angel of the church in Ephesus.
To the angel of the church in Ephesus write this.
The one who holds the seven stars in his right hand.
The one who walks among the seven golden lampstands says this.
If you read back into chapter one of Revelation,
this one is identified.
The one who walks among the seven golden lampstands is identified.
It's none other than the risen Christ.
This is the one who is speaking.
He is speaking and what he does as he speaks
is he first of all gives a great commendation to this church.
A tremendous commendation.
You can see it there, it covers verses two and three
and also verse six.
Each of these verses is really Christ expressing
his pleasure and his happiness with this church.
He's commending it.
As he commends it, he cites what I've called six tremendous qualities.
Six tremendous qualities are cited.
And it's important that as we consider these,
we take stock of ourselves and of our church
and we see is Christ, could Christ commend these qualities in my church?
Look with me just for a little while at these six tremendous qualities
that form the backbone of Christ's commendation for this church.
First of all, in verse two, he says,
I know your deeds, your deeds.
And it's obvious that what he means is I know that your deeds are good.
I know that your deeds are commendable.
He's not at this particular juncture saying
or inferring that these deeds are evil.
He says, I know your deeds.
We could translate it another way.
It could be that he is saying, I know your work.
I know your work, church.
I know your action, church.
I know your activities.
I know your tasks.
This is not a group of people who have lulled themselves to sleep
and are doing nothing in the cause of Christ.
Not at all.
This is a church which is busy and active.
He says, I know your deeds.
I know your work.
What a tremendous thing.
What a tremendous thing to be part of a working church.
Not just working in the sense that the thing functions okay,
but working in the sense of it's actually busy about its father's business.
What a wonderful thing is your church, a working church.
That's not really any good to ask that question.
What we should ask is, are you a working Christian?
Are you a working Christian?
Are you of the same spirit of Jesus
when his mother found him in the temple and said,
don't you know I must be about my father's business?
I must be about my father's business.
I am compelled to be about my father's business.
In the same verse, and these words seem so similar in the English language
that we tend to gloss over them.
In the same verse, another quality,
he says, I know your deeds and your toil, your toil.
And we note the progression here.
It is a slightly different word to the word that is translated deeds.
It is a word that is translated in other places in the New Testament
by the word labor, labor.
Now if you have ever had a laboring job, you know what's involved in labor.
I know what's involved in labor because for many years I was a jackaroo.
And I soon learned that as a jackaroo what you did was
you did all the rotten jobs that none of the station hands wanted to do.
And that included digging out rabbit burrows.
And when I came to the first place I worked on,
the man told me what the rule was for digging out rabbit burrows.
The rule was if it got deeper than a long handled shovel,
you didn't have to dig anymore.
Now a long handled shovel is very deep.
And it involved labor, labor.
I remember an occasion when I got a job working on the north shore of Sydney
digging swimming pools with a jackhammer for rich people.
That involved labor.
Labor is more than work.
It is hard work, hard work.
And he said here is a church that labored, they toiled.
They were laboring.
This wasn't just what we call white collar work, spiritually speaking.
This was hard yakka.
This was having to roll up your sleeves and work hard laboring.
He commends them for it.
He doesn't say, listen this is unspiritual.
This is unspiritual.
This is not necessary.
He commends them for it.
He says this is a tremendous quality for a church to have.
In verses 2 and 3 he also commends them for their perseverance.
For their perseverance.
Actually this is cited twice.
Once in verse 2 and once in verse 3.
I think in the NIV version it is translated endured hardship.
Endured hardship.
Perseverance.
You see the progression, the deeds.
The deeds that move into labor and toil.
The toil which is persevering.
Then halfway through your toil there comes hardship.
Not just that the toil is hard.
But that there are things that are distracting you from your toil.
There are things that are interrupting your toil.
There are hardships that come but you endure them.
As a group of God's people, as a church you endure them.
You still go about your labor despite the hardships.
Enduring hardships.
Of course these are tremendous qualities.
Qualities that are only the product of the grace of God and the Spirit of God.
Enduring hardship.
How could I illustrate it?
I think the best way I could illustrate it is,
and I don't know whether it would mean much to you but it means a great deal to me.
The best way I could illustrate it is a memory I have from my younger days in Africa.
And I grew up in Africa at the tail end of British colonial rule in Africa.
And I was old enough to see the way some of the British colonial people treated the black men and women.
And there is a certain silent, patient suffering, especially of black women in Africa.
Which I think epitomizes what this verse is saying.
Enduring hardship.
Women whose whole life was hardship.
Women who knew nothing but hardship.
And yet were joyful.
Whose faces lit up.
Whose very bodies were filled with joy and expressed their joy.
Despite the hardship.
They endured hardship.
That was their life story.
That's a tremendous quality.
He continues.
The fourth quality that is cited.
I've called it discerning, discovering and rejecting false teachers.
But you notice how he commends them for it in verse 2?
He says, you put to test, you put to test, those who call themselves apostles.
And they're not.
And you found them to be false.
What a tremendous quality.
You see, perhaps this is such a wonderful part of the church in Ephesus because of Acts 20.
Because of Paul gathering together the Ephesian elders on the beach at Miletus in Acts 20.
And looking those elders, the elders, right in the eye.
He says to them, you know after my departure, savage wolves will come in.
Evil men will arise from among your own selves.
Could he really mean from the eldership of Ephesus?
Yes he could.
And perhaps it is that they've never forgotten those words of Paul on the beach at Miletus.
And so this is a tremendous quality that they have preserved and they've cultivated.
They've made up their mind, they're not going to be caught like this.
They take those words seriously.
And they find, they discover, they expose and they reject false teachers.
You know, in other parts of the New Testament, this word that is translated here to test
can also be translated to trap, to trap, to tempt, to trap, to test.
To discern, to discover, and to reject false teachers and their teaching.
What a tremendous quality.
What a good immune system such a church has.
He says it's a good quality.
In verse 3, the fifth quality is mentioned, endurance for Christ's sake.
That's the way that it's translated in this version I'm using, which is the New American.
You have endured for my sake.
And the word used here for endurance is translated in other places as the word,
as a simple word to carry, to carry.
As you may hear a report of a particular sporting team
and a particularly prominent and significant player in that team,
he doesn't perform to expectations.
Afterwards it's reported that he was carrying an injury.
He was bearing. He was bearing with.
He was carrying it, but he was going on despite, despite the fact that he had it.
He was bearing with something.
And this is the word that is used here.
He's saying, yes, the church at Ephesus, you bore with many things.
You carried many disadvantages.
You carried, you put up with many hindrances.
You endured, you perhaps carried injuries that were received in the spiritual warfare,
but you endured, you bore with those things for Christ's sake.
What a tremendous quality for a church.
What a tremendous quality when a church is not, not senseless
or not knocked off its feet or not, not, not silly or not broken to pieces
so that it disbands in the face of discouraging and disheartening
and yet strange providences of God.
What a tremendous quality.
And he's commending the church at Ephesus for this.
And then the sixth one.
Well, it's right there in, in verse three as well.
He says, you have not grown weary.
You have not grown weary.
You have, you have, you have gone on stamina, stamina, the long haul,
not a church which went up in a blaze of glory and was fine for a little time
and then disintegrated and now you look and there's no church.
No, he says, unwearied service, stamina if you like,
a second wind in the service of God, a second wind going on.
And I used to look as a jackaroo.
I used to, I used to get out of my, my, my, my cot in the morning
and my hands would be blistered and my muscles would be aching
and I'd look at these guys.
They'd be bouncing around.
They couldn't get in the, in the truck quick enough
and go and dig out a few more rabbits.
I thought, this is just absolutely moronic.
But they, but, but they just didn't mean a thing.
They could put in a hard day's labor and they didn't grow weary.
I was waiting for them to grow weary.
Never happened.
They didn't grow weary and we must not grow weary.
And here are these commendations then, six tremendous qualities.
Now let us put ourselves alongside these qualities.
Not anybody else in my church, not using them to measure somebody else
or to confirm little attitude problems that I may have in my heart
towards somebody else, but putting myself now saying my deeds,
my labor, my perseverance, my, my knowledge and my discernment
about the teaching I'm receiving, enduring and unwearying service for Christ.
Consider this.
Apply it to ourselves.
Have you given up?
Have you grown weary?
Have you thrown in the towel?
Do you feel like it this morning?
Do you feel like it?
Consider Christ.
He's commending this church.
Surely this is what any group of God's people want more than anything.
They want the commendation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We don't want the world's commendation.
We don't necessarily want to be so significant on the wider evangelical scene,
but we want the commendation of the Lord Jesus.
Well, here are six qualities to be cultivated.
Now what is the point of this, though?
You see, the point of this is that if you were to come to the church at Ephesus
and you were to be asked to assess it
and you were to look at these qualities,
these six tremendous things that have been cited,
you would come to the conclusion this is a tremendously healthy church.
This church is good.
There is nothing wrong with this church.
Look at these qualities.
This is a tremendously active and busy and diligent church.
Why?
They serve.
They work.
They are active.
God is commending them.
And you see, this church, judged by these criteria alone,
she seems orthodox.
She seems acceptable to Christ.
She's active.
She's busy.
What a surprise then when you come to verse 4.
What a surprise when having heard these six qualities
are so wonderfully spelled out and commended.
What a surprise when most of us would say,
yes, she's healthy.
What a surprise when you come to verse 4
and verse 5 and you read these words,
but, but, and this is the Lord Jesus speaking,
I have this against you that you have left your first love.
Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen
and repent and do the deeds you did at first
or else I'm coming to you.
I will remove your lampstand out of its place
unless you repent.
In verse 4 and 5, Christ censures this church.
He follows up the commendation with a censure.
And the censure is this.
The criticism, if you like, is this.
He says, I have this against you.
You have left your first love.
You have left your first love.
Well, perhaps someone in the church at Ephesus
would like to say to the Lord Jesus,
yes, but look at what we're doing.
Look at what we're doing.
You've just commended us for all these things.
But he says, I have this against you.
You have left your first love.
You know in other places in the New Testament
how this word left is translated or forsaken is translated?
On one occasion it is translated as abandoned,
left behind, given up.
Three times it is translated as divorced, divorced.
And what the Lord Jesus is saying
as he censuring this church,
he says you have left your first love.
You have left your love for Christ.
You have left off loving me as you used to love me.
This is the point of his censure.
Someone says, is it really serious?
Is it really that serious if we are busy
as long as we are doing these many things?
Is this really so serious?
Couldn't it really be that all of my activity
can sort of make up for any actual lack or diminishing
in the spontaneous and genuine
and dynamic personal love I have for Jesus?
Couldn't it be that the work I'm doing
is a substitute for a really genuine
and well-nurtured personal walk with the Lord Jesus?
God's verdict is no, absolutely not.
This is really serious.
How serious?
Jesus says they have fallen.
Jesus says they must repent.
The Lord Jesus says that to the church at Ephesus
this is so serious it is life-threatening.
He says if you don't get this fixed up,
I'm going to come to you
and I'm going to remove the lampstand out of its place.
I'm going to unchurch your church.
This is very serious, very serious.
Now you can see the common thread
that is running through the six qualities that have been cited.
There is a common thread.
These are all things which have to do with activity.
These are all things that have to do with busyness.
These are all things that are visible.
These are all things really which are emphasizing
what they're actually doing in terms of their busyness
in the service of the Lord.
But yet he says they have left their first love
and apparently they can't see it.
Apparently they can't see it.
They're pouring their energies into these things.
Perhaps they're really thinking
that busyness in the Christian life
is and can be a substitute
for nurturing your personal walk with God,
that your busyness can really excuse
if there is a lack,
if you are not cultivating your own garden,
if you're not nurturing your own relationship
with the Lord Jesus,
if you're not growing in grace personally,
you can actually excuse all that by saying,
yes, but look, God, I'm a busy man.
I'm a busy woman.
No, he says, yes, you're doing those things
and I commend you for it,
but you have left your first love.
What does this amount to?
What does this really mean in practical terms?
What is God actually saying?
What it amounts to is this,
that really the only one final motive
acceptable to God for our service
is our love for Him.
Our love for Him.
That is the motive.
That must be the motive for our service for Him.
Just as we've been hearing in the messages on Exodus,
expressing our thanksgiving,
obedience,
giving expression to our love for God.
This is exactly the same principle.
I have tried to demonstrate it grammatically,
diagrammatically.
You might be looking at your notes
and wondering what on earth is that strange little sketch
up the side of, at the side.
I have tried to demonstrate it grammatically
and I probably haven't done a very good job,
but if you can see this,
I'll try and explain what that diagram is about
because it may help us.
If you look in your outline,
you'll see this diagram is actually up the side of your page.
If you look at it with me,
at the beginning,
we have all these little lines coming from different directions
and that is meant to represent
God calling the church at Ephesus together.
The arrow that is coming down from above,
this is God, if you like,
growing that church, planting that church,
bringing that church at Ephesus into being.
People being saved by the sovereign grace of God,
by God intervening in their lives,
knitting them together into a church.
Immediately after that, you'll see there is just one straight line
which soon becomes two parallel lines.
Now, the one straight line is simply representing
the early history of the church at Ephesus
where they were fully overcome with the love of God.
They were filled with love for Jesus Christ.
They were serving and loving.
And then this line becomes two.
And this is because I want to represent that the top line
is representing their activities for Christ,
their service for Christ in Ephesus.
The bottom line is representing their love for Christ.
And what you'll notice about the diagram,
and this is what is being told us in Revelation 2,
is that their activities for Christ go on in an unbroken line.
They actually go on beyond the point of the bottom line
which represents their love for Christ.
The love for Christ peters out.
Gradually the bottom line peters out.
And you get to a point where the top line is still in place,
the activities are still going on,
but they're not going on with a bottom line.
Now if you wanted to fill in the diagram,
what you would do is put little arrows pointing upward
from the bottom line to the top line.
This would show that the activity in the early stages
of this church's life was always coming out of a love for Christ
because they were enthused and overcome by the love for Christ.
And they were doing things because they love Christ.
They've gotten to the point now where they're doing things
because they have to be done.
That's why they're doing them.
Apply that to your situation in your church
and your service for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Is it that the work is working you?
You know that can happen in the church.
The work works you.
If you don't do it, who will do it?
If I don't go to the prayer meeting tonight,
who's going to go to the prayer meeting?
Because I know precious few people are going to go to the prayer meeting,
and if I don't go, there's going to be one more empty seat.
If I don't do this, if I don't do that,
if I don't do the other thing, who will do it?
And we can come to a position where the work is working us,
where that sense of spontaneous and wonderful thanksgiving
of the love of Christ, what God has done in Christ for us,
impacting upon our hearts
and giving birth to our service for the Lord Jesus,
where that's not the situation anymore.
And God is saying, really, the only motive that is acceptable to me
for all this busyness and this activity and this service
is that it comes out of love for me.
But here is Ephesus.
It's still doing all these things,
but it's not loving Christ the way it did.
And you'll notice that the top line of the diagram ends in a cross,
and that is what is going to happen to that church
if this situation is not rectified.
God is going to intervene a second time,
and He's going to bring the church to nothing.
That's how serious this is.
But perhaps we still labor with this concept in our minds,
but look, I haven't got time.
There's too many other things to do.
I've got to be busy. I've got to do all this.
You have to love the Lord Jesus Christ.
Love the Lord Jesus Christ.
Of course, implicit in all this is a biblical definition of love.
Love is not just a feeling, but on the other activity.
And implicit in all this is the true nature of Christianity.
Christianity is not just works.
Christianity is not just doing Christian things.
First and foremost, it is loving the Lord my God
with all my heart, soul, mind and strength
because of the grace of God that has been wrought in my heart
through the redemptive work of Christ being applied to me.
All of this simply brings us to practical conclusions.
And the practical conclusion is this.
In this little letter to the church at Ephesus,
two common errors are being dealt with
and two crucial questions are being asked,
being asked of every one of us.
The two common errors, we've spoken about the first one,
very common idea that my active involvement in Christian activities
can actually be a legitimate substitute for my love for Christ.
I can actually, if you like, substitute for.
My busyness can actually substitute for a failure to nurture my soul
and to walk with God and to grow personally
and to feed upon Him and His Word.
A very common idea.
Perhaps your church is like the church back home in Newtown.
It's not so much like this, but it used to be very much like this.
We used to say there was a kind of a syndrome in the church
which was, we called it like the Magnificent Seven.
And no matter what, no matter what venture or task the church embarked on,
it seemed to be the same people who volunteered.
The same people.
They were the busiest people and they just kept getting busier.
And you know the enormously discouraging thing was
the rest of the church allowed them to do it.
Can you believe it?
The rest of the church who knew these people were busy
allowed them to get even more busy rather than volunteer themselves.
And in those minds, and I was one of those people, in our minds,
often this idea would come.
I know I'm neglecting this, I know I'm neglecting that,
and I know I'm neglecting significant things, but I'm doing this.
Love for Christ.
This is the fountain. This is the bedrock.
This is the foundation on which the superstructure of any activity must be built.
Otherwise the thing will come crashing down.
So that is a common error.
But you know there's another error which is addressed,
which is the other side of the coin.
The other error addressed is this.
You know, activity is really a bit suspect, spiritually speaking.
Too much activity in a church is unspiritual.
What we really need to do is just get on our own with the Bible
under a tree somewhere and just love Jesus.
Just me and Jesus.
Don't interrupt me, don't trouble me, don't burden me with these things.
Don't ask me to do anything in the church.
I'm too busy with my Bible and my loving Jesus.
That's a common idea.
It's a very wrong idea.
It's a wrong idea because Christ commends this church for their activity.
He commends it.
He says this is fantastic.
This is not unspiritual.
You say this is beginning to set an enormously high ideal for the church.
You mean Christ really expects us to be busy, to be active,
to be involved in serving him in the Church of Jesus Christ,
to at the same time keep up our love for him in a personal sense,
at the same time nurture our personal walk with him?
That is exactly what he is saying.
It's not an either-or situation.
It's not that some people in the church can give themselves simply to this,
meditating and enjoying and doing so-called spiritual things,
or another section of the church can do the so-called hack work.
It's not an either-or situation.
So you see he addresses these two common errors.
But this leads to two crucial questions,
two crucial questions which God is asking each one of us
because we need to apply this more specifically.
Question one is this.
What am I actually doing in my church?
Am I in fact actually doing anything?
What am I doing?
Am I labouring?
Do I know anything of toil and labour?
What am I doing?
Not what is so-and-so doing,
but what am I doing for my Lord?
Remember how David put it,
what shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits to me?
He goes on and talks about lifting up the cup of salvation
and then he says I will pay my vows,
may it be in the presence of the great congregation, he says.
What am I doing in the church that I belong to?
Am I a passenger?
Am I so busy?
Am I so busy that I'm neglecting my relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ?
The second question is this.
Why am I doing it?
Why am I doing it?
What a question this is.
People can be doing things in churches for very strange reasons, you know.
Preachers can be preaching for very strange reasons.
And as history has told us,
preachers can be preaching sometimes for very ungodly reasons.
And Christians in churches can be doing things for very strange reasons,
not always honourable reasons.
People can be doing things in churches because they're ambitious,
because they want to get to the top.
They can be doing things out of pride.
People can be doing things in churches because of insecurity.
I have to be liked.
I have to be accepted.
I need to be liked.
If I do this, the people will like me.
The people will accept me if I do this.
And I so much need to be accepted.
Oh yes, we can do things for very strange reasons.
And this is the question.
Why am I doing it?
Am I doing it out of love for my Saviour?
Because my Saviour has done so much for me.
So much for me.
So many marvellous and wonderful blessings have been heaped upon me.
What does John say?
Of Him we have all received grace upon grace.
And they tell us what that really means is grace on top of grace.
Grace on top of grace.
Topped up to the point of overflowing.
Piled high.
Grace on top of grace.
And oh yes, I would joyfully invest my whole life
in expressing my thanks and wonder at this love
by serving my Saviour in His Church.
Why am I doing it?
In England people are very particular about their gardens.
And sometimes they have gardens which are quite ornate
and often have ornaments in their gardens.
And sometimes those ornaments are actually little mobiles.
They actually work.
Sometimes people divert streams through their gardens.
And sometimes they have these ornaments being worked by a stream
or being worked by the wind.
If you look at that little ornament, whether it's a man with a scythe,
a little man with a scythe who's scything,
whether it's a little water mill,
whether it's something else,
as you look at them and you look at them and you see
how they are going 19 to the dozen.
The little man's arms and legs are moving so quickly.
But as you look you realise why he's doing it.
He's doing it because he's being acted upon by the stream or the wind.
There isn't actually anything that is arising from within himself.
Take that away and he's a dead little man.
Stop pushing him and he won't do anything.
If the force is not pushing him, he won't work his little scythe.
And I say again it's possible in the Church of Jesus Christ
that the work ends up working us.
And this is not good.
This is not what God wants for us.
This is a very high ideal.
But it is the ideal we must aspire to in our churches.
That we will have a group of born-again believers
in robust spiritual health,
busy about our Lord's business,
busy for the right reason,
busy out of overflowing love for Christ,
understanding what he has done
and expending themselves for his glory and service.
And I would suggest that as we heard last night,
this indeed is the good life.
This indeed is the best life.