SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/17/2015
10:22 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
More Introduction and The Correspondent, The Church
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation 2:1
Message of the
verse: The church of Ephesus as
related to the book of Revelation is famous for one verse: “’But I have this against you, that you have
left your first love (Rev. 2:4).” Now I
have mentioned about my spiritual goal for this year is to love the Lord more
and more as I believe that my love for the Lord has been waning, thus this
section will be a good study for me.
When we think of the word “Christian” we find out that it
is much different than when we first run into that word in Ac 11:26 “and when
he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. And for an entire year they met
with the church and taught considerable numbers; and the disciples were first
called Christians in Antioch.” The
question what does it mean to be a true Christian? There are many things written in the
Scriptures that speak of what it means to be a Christian, but the main one is
what our Lord told a man when he asked Him what was the greatest commandment
and His reply was “to love the Lord with all of your heart, soul, and
strength. Now as we look at this
commandment and the following one which is “and love your neighbor as yourself,”
I see a picture of the cross, loving God is the vertical part, and loving your
neighbor is the horizontal part. But
there is more to these two commandments and that is that all of the other
commandments flow from these two, including the Ten Commandments, and out of
them flow all of the other commandments given in the Law. Now we are not ready to look in particular at
verse four in today’s SD, but I do want to talk about loving the Lord. As a believer I sometimes think about when
Christ first called me in January of 1974, and the difference that that calling
made in my life, how fresh my love was for the Lord who had saved me. I certainly did not know the things then that
I know about the Bible, but there was such a refreshing joy in my heart and
soul that was never present there before He saved me. That is what it means not to forget your
first love.
John MacArthur writes in his introductory portion of his
commentary on the church at Ephesus the following: “While love of the Lord Jesus Christ will
always be present in true Christians, it can fluctuate in its intensity. Christians will not always love Jesus Christ with all their heart,
soul, mind, and strength, and to fail to do so is sin. There is no better illustration in Scripture of
the seriousness of allowing love for Christ to wane than this letter to the
church at Ephesus.
“The seven churches addressed in chapters 2 and 3 were
actual existing churches when John wrote.
But while not precisely duplicated, they also represent the types of
churches that are generally present through the entire church age. Five of the
seven churches (Smyrna and Philadelphia being the exceptions) were rebuked for
tolerating sin in their midst, not an uncommon occurrence in churches
since. The problems in those five churches ranged in severity
from waning love at Ephesus to total apostasy at Laodicea. Further, any church in any age could have a mixture
of the sins that plagued these five churches.
“Though
Christ may have addressed the Ephesian church first because it was first on the
postal route, it was also the most prominent church of the seven. It was the mother church out of whose ministry
the other six were founded (cf. Acts 19:10) and gave its name to the inspired
letter of Ephesians penned four decades earlier by the apostle Paul. The contents of this first letter form the pattern for the other
six. It contains seven features: the correspondent, the church, the city, the
commendation, the concern, the command, and the counsel.” These following seven features are what we
will be looking at as we study these seven churches over the next days and we
will begin with the correspondent in today’s SD.
The Correspondent (Revelation 2:1c): “The One who holds the seven
stars in His right hand, the
One who walks among the seven golden lampstands.”
It is quite obvious that the author of this is none other
than the Lord Jesus Christ, and as I mentioned in earlier SD’s He often uses
images from the vision in chapter one to describe Himself, images that are
exactly needed for those in that particular church. Now we mentioned when we studied the vision
of the glorified Christ that the seven stars were the messengers of the seven
churches, mentioning that these were probably not angels, but Pastors or
Elders. The seven golden lampstands were
actually the seven churches bringing light to a dark world. MacArthur writes “In fact, Christ indentifies
Himself to each of the first five churches by using phrases from that vision
(cf. 2:8 with 1:18; 2:12 with 1:16; 2:18 with 1:14-15; 3:1 with 1:18). That reinforces the truth that He is the
author of the letters; they are His direct word, through the apostle John, to
those local congregations and to churches like them in years beyond.” As we look again for a moment at “the seven
stars” that Christ holds in His right hand we can see from this statement that
Christ is in complete control of the churches.
The Church (Revelation 2:1a):
“the church in Ephesus.” Now there is
much that is written in the NT about this church. There were many “famous” people who lead this
church including Paul, Priscilla, Aquila, Apollos, Timothy, and even John. The story begins in the 18th
chapter of Acts verses 18-19 and then continues in verses 24-26, however the
apostle Paul’s main visit to them is seen in the 19th and 20th
chapter of the book of Acts Let us look
at Acts 19:1-7 “1 It happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed
through the upper country and came to Ephesus, and found some disciples. 2 He
said to them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?"
And they said to him, "No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy
Spirit." 3 And he said, "Into what then were you baptized?" And
they said, "Into John’s baptism." 4 Paul said, "John baptized
with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was
coming after him, that is, in Jesus." 5 When they heard this, they were
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 And when Paul had laid his hands upon
them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and
prophesying. 7 There were in all about twelve men.” Paul spent three years with the people
teaching them and then when he was on his way to Jerusalem where he would be
put into prison he stopped and spoke to the people there and the emotions of
that visit were very high, as there was much weeping when he told them that he
would not see them again. He also warned
them about what would eventually happen to this church. This happened about forty years before this
letter we are studying would come to them, so we can be assured that this
church for lengthy time had a wonderful ministry.
Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians to them, and this
letter was actually a circuit letter that was suppose to go to the them and
also to the surrounding churches around the, a letter in which we find much
about how a true Bible believing church is to operate.
In a quote written earlier in this SD John MacArthur
stated that Ephesus was the mother church of all the seven churches that are
found in Revelation 2-3.
There is a very interesting story in the book of Acts
about what happened in Ephesus as the believers began to grow. The believers decided to get rid of all of
their idols and their other things that had to do with the false “religion” and
so they burned them in a fire and it is said that their worth was fifty
thousand pieces of silver, worth 50,000 days of work. A wonderful story of how the Word of God affected
them. However because of these types of
things the people who made idols were upset because their business was not
doing well because of these Christians. You
can read about this in Acts 19:23-41.
Spiritual meaning
form my life today: I think that it
is wonderful how the Lord used our Pastor to talk about loving the Lord, and
then He continues to bring this to my attention in the verses that I am
studying in this wonderful book of Revelation.
My Steps of Faith for Today: To love the Lord with all my mind, soul, and
strength, to remember my first love, and to also remember the great love Christ
has for me.
Memory verses for the
week: 2 Peter 1:5-8.
5 Now for this very reason
also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in
your moral excellence, knowledge, 6 and
in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in
your perseverance, godliness, 7 and in
your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. 8 For
if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither
useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Jesus” Matthew 27:46.
Today’s Bible question: “What
is another name for the Sea of Gallilee?
Answer in our next SD.
1/17/2015 12:01 PM
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