Active religious routine and hard work can easily replace a genuine love for Jesus Christ. True spiritual renewal begins by turning away from mere labour and returning to the deep wonder of receiving God's love.
The church in Ephesus was hardworking, persevering and pure, yet it had forsaken its first love. It was still working for Jesus but no longer worshipping Him. What we have walked away from, we can return to.
Key points
Ephesus was a church worth celebrating. Jesus applauds its hard work, perseverance and purity.
Forsaken means abandoned, not faded. It is the language of marital unfaithfulness. Where Jesus had been a delight, He became a duty.
It's so subtle it's celebrated. This word is aimed first at leaders. Our gifts keep working even when our hearts have left.
Pedigree won't protect us. Jesus asks only whether He still has our heart. Steven calls himself "exhibit A".
There's hope in forsaken. We can repent and return to being loved by Christ, treasuring Him and receiving the One who loved us first.
Key scriptures
Revelation 2:1–7: Jesus' letter to Ephesus
Jeremiah 2:12–13: heaven appalled at God being forsaken
Romans 11:29: gifts without repentance
Ephesians 3:14–19: Christ's vast love
Matthew 6:21: treasure and heart
Ephesians 2:3–7: made alive through His great love
1 John 4:10, 19: He loved us first
John 1:12: receiving Him
Romans 5:5: love poured in by the Spirit
Takeaways
Ask honestly whether your walk is marked by delight or duty, not gifting or service.
Repent: turn around rather than trying harder.
Receive Christ's love again at the cross, asking the Holy Spirit daily to pour it into your heart.
Jesus' letter to the church in Ephesus is a story of two halves. On the outside, Ephesus was everything a church should be: hardworking, persevering and pure. Yet Jesus holds one thing against them: they had forsaken the love they had at first. They were still working for Jesus, but they had stopped worshipping Him.
The hard word "forsaken" also holds great hope. What we have walked away from, we can return to. The way back is to repent, turn around, and receive again the love of the One who loved us first.
Key scriptures
Revelation 2:1–7: Jesus' letter to the church in Ephesus
Jeremiah 2:12–13: God calls the heavens to be appalled that His people have forsaken Him
Romans 11:29: our gifts are without repentance
Ephesians 3:14–19: Paul's prayer that we grasp the width, length, height and depth of Christ's love
Matthew 6:21: where your treasure is, there your heart will be also
Ephesians 2:3–7: made alive with Christ because of His great love
1 John 4:10, 19: we love because He first loved us
John 1:12: to all who receive Him, He gives the right to become children of God
Romans 5:5: God's love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
A church worth celebrating
Ephesus was the capital of Asia Minor, and its church was the most influential of its day, an icon people came to learn from. Jesus' words "I know your deeds" are a celebration, not a threat. He applauds three things:
Hard work: strenuous, exhausting labour for the kingdom
Perseverance: an inner fortitude that kept going in spite of persecution, without growing weary
Purity: they did not tolerate wicked people, and tested and exposed false apostles
Forsaken, not faded
"Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken the love you had at first." The word does not mean drifted, cooled or faded. It means to abandon, throw away or send away. Paul uses it of someone abandoning a spouse, and Jeremiah and Hosea use it for marital unfaithfulness.
Commentator Darrell Johnson describes first love: listening to her every word, rearranging the schedule, writing "I love you" on cardboard signs and tucking them under her windscreen wiper. Steven remembers phoning from a tickey box and letting it ring twice, just to say I love you. Ephesus surely had that kind of love at first.
God's response to being forsaken is strong. In Jeremiah 2 He calls the heavens to be appalled and shudder with great horror.
From delight to duty
Ephesus had not deconstructed their faith or stopped serving. They came to every prayer meeting and served faithfully.
"Where it had been a delight, now it was a duty."
Let Scripture land by asking honest questions:
Is He a delight, or just a duty?
Is it intimacy, or activity? Devotion, or just discipline?
Is it affection, or obligation? Passion, or performance?
Is it abiding, or achieving? Love, or labour?
So subtle it's celebrated
This word is not first aimed at people at the back on their phones. It is aimed at preachers, pastors, elders and leaders. You can stay in the pulpit, lead worship with real anointing, or hold prayer meetings at the office, and still have forsaken your first love, because our gifts are without repentance.
"We confuse fire with forsaken."
"We look at our hands and Jesus looks at our hearts."
Pedigree won't protect us
Jesus warns that if they don't repent, He will remove their lampstand. Ephesus had an extraordinary pedigree: planted by Paul, who invested two years there, then led by Timothy and, by tradition, John. Apollos preached there and, by tradition, Mary lived there. Yet Jesus doesn't care about our history, heritage or heroes. All He wants to know is: do I still have your heart? No church, including 3Ci, can assume it is exempt.
Steven shared openly that he is "exhibit A", recognising a heart so filled with duty it had run out of delight.
There's hope in forsaken
When something is lost, like Steven's cycling headphones, you don't know where to start looking. But forsaken is different.
"Something forsaken means that what you've walked away from, you can return to."
Jesus' call is to repent and do the things they did at first. Like a set of Lego instructions, He shows us how to build it back together.
Do the things you did at first
Return to the wonder of being loved by Christ
Not the wonder of loving Christ, but of being loved by Him. Paul prays that we would grasp a love so vast it surpasses knowledge, like standing under a waterfall. This is entry-level Christianity.
"Those eyes are blazing with love for you."
Return to treasuring Christ above all else
We were by nature deserving of wrath, but because of His great love, God made us alive with Christ and seated us with Him, to lavish on us the riches of His grace and kindness. The gospel is never something we've moved past.
Return to the One who loved you first
"We love because he first loved us." We don't give our lives to Jesus; we receive Him. The cross leaves no room to add or achieve anything. Repentance is a 180-degree turn, and what Ephesus did at first was receive the love of Jesus.
Receive His love again
Francis Chan was rejected and beaten by his father, and asked how anyone with that picture of a father could receive the Father's love. On our own, we can't. But Romans 5:5 promises that God pours His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, getting past our defences, shame and past. It is His kindness that leads us to repentance.
Takeaways
Honestly ask whether your walk with Jesus is marked by delight or duty.
Don't measure your heart by your gifting, influence or service.
Repent: turn around rather than trying harder.
Spend time simply receiving Christ's love, looking again at the cross.
Ask the Holy Spirit daily to pour God's love into your heart.
Reflect and discuss
Which of the "delight or duty" questions stood out most for you, and why?
Why do you think forsaking our first love can look like fire from the outside?
What did your first love for Jesus look like? What has changed since then?
How is receiving God's love different from trying to love Him more?
What defences or shame might be keeping you from receiving the Father's love?
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Good morning. The one morning I need my hands. All right, if you have your Bible with you, I'd love for you to turn to Revelation. We're going to be in chapter 2. If you've got your Bible with you, it's right at the very end. If you hit the maps, you've gone too far.
Let's head a little bit back, Revelation chapter 2, and I'm going to read through the first seven verses as we jump in together. It says in verse 1 of Revelation 2, "To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name's sake, and have not grown weary."
"Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favour: you hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate." And there's the call: "Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches."
So Rory spent the last two weeks setting the sort of baseline, the context for these letters written to the seven churches in Revelation. And with that table set, we are now going to begin with the very first. We're going to take a look at what Jesus had to say to the church in Ephesus. And this morning, very simply, I just want to do a line by line, essentially a Bible study, working through it, and trust that the Holy Spirit would allow the Word of God to do surgery on our hearts and on our lives.
So we're going to stay right there. I'm going to jump into the first three verses, which says, "To the angel of the church in Ephesus, these are the words of him who holds the seven stars", there's one of the sevens, "in his right hand, and walks among the seven golden lampstands." And look at what he says. He says, "I know your deeds", and that can be a little bit scary, but actually it's a celebration. The language there is a rejoicing, a delight in it: "your hard work, your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not. You found them false. You've persevered and you've endured hardships for my name's sake, and you've not grown weary."
It's kind of a story of two halves. And in the first half, you've got to look at this and you've got to think to yourself, what a church, right? It really is. It is a significant church. This is, I suppose, they could have called themselves 3CE: Capital City Church Ephesus, because Ephesus was the capital of Asia Minor, and it was actually considered one of the key cities in that whole province.
And Ephesus, the church in that city, was considered the most influential. It was actually an icon when it came to church. This was a church that people would go to. You know, you've heard of 3CE, and you're in the city, so you pop in there on a Sunday. Plus, people in ministry would go there to try and figure out, like, what's the secret sauce? How is it that while we're floundering around in the shallows, God is doing something in your midst?
Maybe they would do building tours, and pastors would come in the evening to try and figure out what the secret sauce is. They were buzzing. They had members active in every facet of serving and service. They probably had a serving team that was bigger than most of the other churches in Ephesus.
And then these are the three things that he applauds them for. The first one is your hard work. And that's a very weighty statement. It's quite a round of applause for them. It means a strenuous, exhausting labour. They were pushing hard. They were counting for the kingdom. I think they might have had a mission statement that said something like, "We defy comfort and convenience."
Secondly, their perseverance. Now this one is a little bit more... Where's perseverance? There it is. Perseverance. They were not growing weary. Perseverance is this inner fortitude, a longevity, a determination in spite of the persecution, in spite of what everyone was saying outside, in spite of, you know, whatever hashtag was undermining the work of God. They continued. They persevered. They were not growing weary.
And then lastly, they didn't tolerate wicked people. This was a church defined by purity of heart and hands and home. There were no scandals like we have today in the church of Ephesus. No pastors with shady pasts. There was hard work. There was perseverance. There was purity of life, faith and conduct. This was exhibit A of what a church should have been in the ancient Near East.
Which brings us to this verse: "Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken the love you had at first." This is one of the most frightening sentences Jesus can speak to a church, because of this word, and I have dug deep into this word. I really was hoping that this word wouldn't really be what he is saying. You know, he was just hypothetically... "I hold this against you. You have forsaken me."
So I went digging because I thought, you know, maybe it's just metaphorical. But this word to forsake means to abandon, to throw away, to send away. "Yeah, thanks Jesus. We've got it from here. I mean, have you seen our building?" Paul uses this word to describe someone who leaves or abandons their spouse. It's a word with such considerable force that Jeremiah and Hosea use it in the context of marital unfaithfulness.
See, I was really hoping he would say, "I hold this against you. You've lost the love you had at first", or "you've forgotten", or "you've drifted", or "you've cooled", or "you've faded". But he doesn't say faded. He says forsaken. It is such an offensive word. Essentially what had happened was it's not that they weren't working for Jesus anymore. They just weren't worshipping Jesus anymore.
Darrell Johnson, who's got an incredible commentary on the book of Revelation, he tells of his first love. He says things like he listened to every word she had to say. Remember those days? Yeah, the rugby was on in the other room, but you were sitting there listening to her every word.
I remember, I'm old, right? So we started dating in the 1900s, and back then they had this technology we lovingly referred to as a tickey box. But I was also from the Bluff, and I would find 20 cents in the couch, and I'd use it, and I'd put it in, and then I'd just phone and let the phone ring twice. 012345 double five. It would ring twice, and the family knew that that was me phoning just to say I love you. Because if she answered, if someone answered, I lost 20 cents and I couldn't phone again.
He said, "We listened to every word", and I don't know if you know this, but women sort of journey together face to face. Men journey together shoulder to shoulder. So if you ever look at, like, a very effeminate coffee shop, you'll see all the aunties are facing each other, gazing in one another's eyes. If you go to a bar, the boys are shoulder to shoulder. They're watching rugby. So for a man to say, "I listened to her every word", there's a turning of a heart. There's a pursuing. There's a loving.
He says he had no trouble adjusting the schedule, you know, to make time for her. Money was no object. Can I get an amen? I mean, how many teddy bears do you have to buy? But you buy them again, and it doesn't make sense that she loves flowers, but you buy them again, and they die again.
He said, "I used to write letters, and on the outside of the envelope I used to write, 'Mr Mailman, please handle with care. I love the woman you are carrying this letter to.'" I mean, that is pure cheese, but he didn't care. He was in love. It is like, yeah, I know. He couldn't care who saw that, because that paled in comparison to something else that he did.
He used to go to, I suppose, like a CNA or PNA and used to buy these big pieces of cardboard and a big fat marker pen, and he'd write, "I love you." And another one, "You are my one and only." And then he'd go to her car at the office and put it behind the windscreen wiper on the car. First love.
Ephesus surely had something of that initially. But at the time of writing, "Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken the love you had at first." You know what God thinks about forsaking? This is in Jeremiah 2. It says, "Be appalled at this, you heavens, and shudder with great horror," declares the Lord. "Be appalled, shudder with great horror. My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me."
That's the opinion that God has on those who have forsaken him. He looks at it, he says, "Be appalled." I don't know who he's talking to. Maybe he's called the entire host of heaven and the council of the heavenlies, and maybe it's every star in the sky, and he says, "Be appalled at this, you heavens. Shudder with great horror at a people who would forsake me."
I don't want to move on just yet, because it gets even more sobering when you sit and you scratch around on what is going on here. You see, when he said they'd forsaken me, both in Jeremiah and in Revelation, they hadn't deconstructed their faith. They hadn't stopped serving. They were still going to church, still leading a life group. They came to every prayer meeting. They were bringing prophetic words. They even went to the 5 a.m. men's group. The problem is, where it had been a delight, now it was a duty.
Now we've got to allow Scripture to land on our hearts by asking, what is it to you? Who is he to you? Is he a delight, or is today just simply duty? Is it a relationship, or are you just taking up this responsibility? Intimacy. Does that describe your relationship with Jesus, or activity? Devotion, or is it just a discipline? It's what you do at 5 a.m. every single morning.
Is it affection, or has it become obligation? You loved having people in your home, but now you're obliged because you're on the life group leaders group. Is it a passion, or performance? You know when to raise your hands, when to fake wiping away a tear, when to say amen. Is his presence communion to you or just routine? Is it about his presence, or is it about programmes? Is it abiding, or is it achieving? Is it love, or has it become labour?
Here's the most sobering thing: that there's a picture that you have in your mind, there's a picture I have in my mind, and I think there's a picture that saints have in their minds throughout history that I want to change, so that you fully grasp what he is saying when he says, "I hold this against you: you have forsaken the love you had at first." This is the picture that we have in our heads. It looks something like this.
See, we think he is saying, "I know your deeds, and I hold this against you. You have forsaken the love you had at first." That's what we think he's saying. You know, you okes at the back of the bus. I know you're on Facebook while I preach. I hold this against you. He's not saying that. This is what he's saying. He is saying, preacher, pastor, elder, leader, you've lost your first love.
You see, the most sobering thing is, you can stand as a preacher, thousands of people, thousands more online, but you've forsaken your Heavenly Father. You don't have to forsake the pulpit. And it is so subtle, it's actually celebrated. I remember a pastor many, many years ago who had gotten divorced. He led a very big, very influential church.
And I remember just weeks after the divorce made news, having a braai with some of the leaders from that church. And they said this. They said, "You know, what's incredible is just the fire on that man when he preaches now." You see, we confuse fire with forsaken. Because we're still in the pulpit. We're still preaching. We're still filling that office. We're still influencing.
But a preacher, a pastor, a leader, a life group leader, a minister, someone with influence can forsake the love they had at first while staying in the pulpit. Worship leaders, you can forsake the love of God, the love you have for the Father, and still worship with unbelievable anointing. So we go, well, fortunately, it's none of the people on stage today because that was beautiful. No, the Bible says that our gifts are without repentance.
Businessmen and women, you can forsake the love you had at first while still having prayer meetings at the office, still having those scriptures up on the wall, still seeing salvations. It is such a subtle thing. We look at our hands and Jesus looks at our hearts. "Yet I hold this against you. You have forsaken the love you had at first."
He then goes on to say, "Consider how far you've fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand." I was overjoyed when I read this because I thought, yeah, at least God's not going to do that to 3Ci. I mean, I don't know if you know this, but we are actually quite a big deal. So I don't think you'd ever threaten to do that to us, you know?
But he could do it tomorrow. You see, we've got quite a pedigree. We've got many people here. I don't know if you've noticed this, but we actually have an overflow that's overflowing. Hello, hashtag me. I mean, let's talk pedigree. Not our pedigree. Let's talk pedigree of the church in Ephesus.
Ephesus was planted by Paul. I mean, I don't know if there's anyone on this team that's written that much of the Bible. Planted by Paul, baby. And it was such a significant church, he realised in the spirit that God's hand is on this in a disproportionate way. So you know what he did? He went back there and he spent two years establishing that church, pouring all of his theology and insight and his gifts into that church.
For two years, he didn't do that anywhere else. Some churches, he was only there for two Sundays. Two years, week after week, Monday through Sunday, putting into the foundation. I mean, that is pedigree. In the early second century, Christian writers referred to this church and they say it is a great example of Christian faith, life and witness. It was considered the most influential of the seven churches that we're looking at.
And yet it's the same church that he says, "If you do not..." See, we can't assume, because we're hashtag 3Ci, that he won't say the same about us if we've lost our first love. So planted by Paul, Paul hands over to Timothy. Church tradition says Timothy handed over to John, the very John that God revealed himself to in Revelation. Talk about pedigree.
At the time of writing this, Ephesus had become the hub of the Christian movement. It had gone from... Jerusalem was like last year, Antioch was getting a little bit old. Now it is Ephesus. They had life group leaders like Onesimus, preachers like Apollos. And if you were the mother of Jesus, what church would you go to? You know, church tradition says that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was in Ephesus.
See, Jesus doesn't care about our history, our heritage. He doesn't even care about the heroes in our midst. All he wants to know is, do I still have your heart? I said to the staff this week, I said, I'm the least qualified, because the more I look at this, the more I realise how little of my heart he actually still has.
Because I know how to pastor. I know how to preach. I know when to raise my hands and sing a hallelujah. But do I know that if he has lost my heart, he's calling me back, and if I don't respond, it comes with verse 5? I'll come and remove the lampstand.
But as weighty and as terrifying as that word forsaken is, it's actually a beautiful word. Because there's hope in forsaken. You don't see it at first. But I was actually hoping it would say something like, "You've lost your first love." The problem with losing something is you don't even know where to begin to try and find it.
You know, whenever I prep to preach, one of the things I love to do is I arrive here like 5 in the morning. I go for a ride, a couple of hours. I come back, so just sort of detox, and then I shower and get into the office. And one of the times that I did that, I have these headphones that I ride with, you know, these ones where the sound works through the bone of your skull. They're really nice, but I lost them.
And they are gone. They're in the ether somewhere. It's like, where do you even begin? You go and you look at lost property. You go, you speak to the staff. No one's seen them. Yeah, maybe one of you took them. What do I do? Do I start over there?
Yeah, this is when you lose... you leave a Bible here at 3Ci and you go to lost property and it's not there. Like, where do you look? But something forsaken means that what you've walked away from, you can return to. And this is what he sets before us. As heavy as that statement is, "You've forsaken me", it's the greatest invite for us to return.
He says, "Repent, do the things you did at first." And then out of this, "Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches." And this is my favourite little word here. Not just in this, but because this word in Greek is pronounced Lego. So he says, "Whoever has ears, let them hear. I will show you how to build this back together. This thing that you've broken, that's thrown apart."
You know, when you were a laaitie, you open up and on page one, it says, okay, you need one long grey piece, one row by six. So, how do we piece this back together? So he begins by saying, "Repent. Do the things you did at first."
And so I'm like, Lord, because listen, I'm exhibit A here. I'm exhibit A. I recognise that my heart has become so filled with duty that it has completely run out of delight. And I've been on my knees for the last two weeks saying, Lord, show me how. What do I do? And when he showed me the Lego, he said, okay, I'll show you.
So, "Do the things you did at first." And so I'm like, okay, well, what did I do at first? He said, no, not you, Ephesus. I'm like, ah, okay. So I went to the book of Ephesians, chapter 3. And if you're taking notes, I call this: return firstly to the wonder of being loved by Christ. Return to the wonder of being loved by Christ. Not the wonder of loving Christ, but the wonder of being loved by Christ.
Take a look at this. So Paul says, "For this reason I kneel before the Father", at the very beginning here. And then he says, this is what I'm praying for. "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power", I love that word, power, "together with all the Lord's holy people."
So he's saying, actually, I'm praying that you return to ground zero. This is what all, where all and who all the Christians are supposed to be living like and looking like. And this is entry-level Christianity that he's actually saying. But he says, I pray that you might have power "to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ."
Those four, remember, when he went through the Gospels, he explained how each, it seems like each writer had a different understanding of grace and of Jesus, this one with these eyes blazing with fire. He says, but I pray that you have power to grasp that. So the imagery here, the best way I can describe it is, I don't know if you've ever tried to stand under a waterfall.
We had the privilege once of swimming under a waterfall, and I'll never do that again. Yeah, you sort of swim under there. You think it's going to be like a sprinkler like you have in your garden. This thing nearly drowned me. It pushed me down to the bottom. I hit rock bottom. It felt like 4 metres down below and then swept me up.
And he says, I pray that you have power to grasp this love that God wants to pour out on you, "and to know this love that surpasses knowledge". How do you know something that's unknowable? Well, it's the fact that the love of Jesus is something that you will never get to the end of. And he invites us into that "so that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God".
I think Paul's just at the point where, I don't quite know how to explain everything of his love just being forced into you. Is it that? That's where we're supposed to start, along with all the Lord's holy people. Return to the wonder of being loved by Christ. Look again at the cross. Look into those blazing eyes. Those eyes are blazing with love for you.
Secondly, return to treasuring Christ above all else. Specifically using treasuring, because the Bible says where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And Ephesians 2 says, we were "by nature deserving of wrath". So just so you know, this includes all of us. "But because of his great love for us..."
So if you're here today and you're thinking you're coming to church to get bored, know what he does with wrath is he replaces it with love. "Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions." Transgressions is just a basket term for everything you've done wrong, everything you've said, everything you've seen, everyone you've touched. "It is by grace you have been saved."
And then look at this. Look at verse 6. "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us." So he's done all that. He's dealt with your sin and your wrath. He's dealt with that cold, hard heart so that as a son and daughter of the Most High, he might lavish you with all the riches of his grace and kindness.
So he can love on you so that you can encounter and experience all that Christ is. Who is this God? Do you treasure him? Or do you look at the gospel as, you know, I mean, we've done that. Don't really pay attention on Easter weekend, you know. We've gotten past that. No, no, no. Return to the wonder of being loved by Christ. Return to the incredible, unsearchable treasure that Christ is.
And thirdly, but most importantly, return to your first love. Or as I like to say, to the one who loved you first. Take a look at this. So this is John, the same one who wrote the Gospels, the same one who wrote Revelation. "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." "We love because he first loved us."
Now it's important that this lands, because if you don't get this, you don't get anything. I don't know if you were here when we did the series on Colossians. There's a little bit of a cheeky moment when I asked, hands up here, all of those who gave their lives to Jesus like 30 years ago, and 20 years. And then I asked, is there anyone who gave their lives to Jesus this year? And someone put up their hands.
I said, that's beautiful, but it's not biblical, because we don't give our lives to Jesus. The Bible says that we receive Christ. And this same John, in John 1, says, "To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." And what I was going after on that Sunday morning was this, that what Jesus has done on the cross leaves no room for you to add a thing, no requirement for you to achieve anything. The only thing you get to do in this participation is to receive it.
And John is saying exactly the same here when it comes to losing your first love. "This is love: not that we loved God." It's not about me loving, "but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice". "We love because he first loved us." If you in any form or fashion recognise in your heart a wandering away from the love of God and loving him, that's the invitation today. Would you receive his love again?
See, it said, "Repent and do the things you did at first." Repent is this picture of turning around. It's a 180-degree turn. And then the doing the things you did at first, what did they do first? They received the love of Jesus. And that's what he calls us to. He says, just repent, just turn and receive my love.
I'm going to ask the band to come up. I'm just going to create a moment to respond. I was reminded of Francis Chan this morning. We had the privilege of enjoying his ministry not too long ago. Francis Chan, when he was born, his mom died. So because she died giving birth to him, his father hated him, gave him up for adoption because Francis had killed his wife, effectively.
But being a Chinese family, it brought so much shame on the family that one of the aunts went and got him back from the adoption agency and sent him off to be with his grandmother far, far away so that no one would have to actually endure the shame. When the grandmother got so old that she was irritated with having a teenager in the house, she sent him back to his father. And his father hated him so much, there was a moment where he talks about his dad tying him to a tree and just whipping him with branches out of sheer anger at this young man.
And then he asks this question. He says, how in your mind would you take that man and that understanding of a father to the point where he's able to receive the love of his Heavenly Father? He says, you can't. And then he pointed to Romans 5:5. That says, "Hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit."
See, that is the nature of God. If you turn, he pours his love into our heart. He gets beyond all those defences. He gets beyond all that shame. He gets beyond your past and everything that you've been up to. And he just pours and pours and pours.
And that has been the cry of my heart this week. I'm like, Lord Jesus, I know I have forsaken you. And I know I can't fabricate this, but I also know the promise that the Holy Spirit will pour his love into my heart. And so we're just going to let the musicians play. I'm just going to create a small moment for you to respond.
If you in any form or fashion feel that this is a word that has landed on your heart, I want to ask you, would you repent and would you turn? Because there's no guarantee that we'd be given another chance. It might be him saying, okay, I'm going to remove this lampstand.
So Heavenly Father, I don't know if I've done the weight of this word much justice, but I know that your Holy Spirit is at work in the midst of this word. Thank you that it is your kindness that leads us to repentance. It's not your beating us, like Francis Chan's dad, tied to a tree, but because your Son was nailed to a tree, we get to have your Holy Spirit pour your love into our hearts.
And so, Father, today, as best as we know how, we just simply want to respond and we want to receive. I don't know what it's meant to feel like or look like, but I do know that you call us to turn, to respond so we can receive. As best as we know how, we want to do that.
