Apostles Church

SCRIPTURE:  Revelation 2:1-7

As I begin this message from God's Word, I want to begin by asking you a very penetrating, pastoral question:

What is most missing from your life? In other words, what about your life seems most empty, most forgotten, most unfulfilled, perhaps most wounded?  We all of us have such a void in our lives, don't we?

From time to time and to various degrees, we feel the unsettling pain of this vacancy.
Our normal responses to this lingering pain, of course, are either to distract ourselves from what's missing or to try to fill the void with something.  But we can never quite seem to run away from the emptiness nor does anything quite seem able to fill it.
Thankfully, today's Scripture will reveal to us what is actually missing in our lives.  And even better, God's Word will show us how to fill our emptiness with it. Today's Scripture comes from the last Book of the Bible, the Revelation of St. John.

Characteristic of these seven letters to these seven churches, the Lord Jesus begins with a knowing affirmation, praising them for their doctrinal purity and persevering ministry in the face of heretics and hardships both inside and outside of the church.  But sadly and tragically, their doctrinal purity and persevering ministry are not enough to fully please the Lord. Something crucial is missing among them ...

Jesus' condemnation is clear:  All of the Ephesian Church's doctrinal purity and persevering ministry can be done - and has been done - apart from Love (that is, apart form the Holy Spirit of God).   In essence, then, the Ephesian Church knew how to hate what they should hate, but they had forgotten to love Whom/whom they should love.
Jesus affirmed from the Holy Scriptures that our first love is for God.  As God is and must be first and most in our lives, this should not surprise us.  God and God alone is worthy to be our first love.    God in His divine grace and mercy is also the first to show and share with us this very love.   And it is imperative that we understand the very nature, the very essence of the Love of God.  While Love is a divine perfection or attribute fully shared by each Person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit Himself is this very shared Love of God.

As loving God is the most important, so failing to love God is also the most tragic.   This explains why this letter to the Ephesian Church is sent first to them and preserved in this priority of order in God's Word.  Jesus' first letter of gracious promise and serious warning stands as a reminder to them and to us of the unsurpassable centrality of loving God.

We were made to be lovers, as God Himself is a Lover.  In creating us, God opens wide His Love, which He eternally enjoys as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  But tragically, in our sin, we spurn and turn away from God's Love.  

What then is stronger than our sin to overcome it? Who then is mightier than us to save us from ourselves?

This is the Gospel, the Good News of our salvation in Christ!   Grace, God's Grace is stronger than our sin to overcome it!  And so it is Jesus, the Lord and Giver of Grace, Who is "mighty to save" us, as the contemporary chorus, "Might to Save," we sang today so well says.

How, then, we find the Love of God that we have lost?  How do we receive back this Love that we have thrown away?  How do we enter into this Love that we left behind?

The first command we must trust and obey is to "remember." I believe the whole Story of God's Word can be summed up by the trinity of virtues:  faith, hope, and love.  By God's Grace, we are called to remember in faith (past), to anticipate in hope (future), and to participate in love (present).

So again, we begin hearing and heeding the Lord Jesus' call to remember in faith.  We are to remember the height from which we have fallen (v. 5).  We are to remember that we have been raised with Christ into the very Love of God, as His Holy Spirit unites us to Him and to one another in His Church.  This is the crucial accomplishment of Christ's atonement; that is, to make us "at-one" with Him and with one another (and even with ourselves).  

By remembering this Gospel in faith, we are moved to anticipate in hope a renewed and perfected experience of Christ and His Church.  And this hope moves us to "repent," to turn away from our lost-ness in the loveless-ness of sin in order to be found again by the gracious Love of Jesus.  

And what hope are we to hear in faith?

We are to hear Jesus' Promise that as we overcome the sin of our non-love with the grace of God's Love, we will experience the privilege of His eternal life ("to eat of the tree of life"), beginning in us and among us even now!

So then, third and finally, as we participate in the Love of Jesus, we will again "do the good works we did at first" (v. 5).  And this first-ness of our good works is a returning to them as sourced in and motivated by the Love of God.  

The truth of Jesus' first letter to the Ephesian Church reminds us that where there is no Love of God, - no love for God and one another - there is no true salvation but only religious futility.  Thus, Jesus has warned the Ephesian Church - just as surely has He warns us - that He will not remain where there is no authentic love for God and for one another.  Jesus opposes and judges such an apostate church, removing His Light from such a darkened lampstand.  

How, then, do we, as Apostles Church, avoid such catastrophic judgment from Christ, receiving instead the promise of His Grace to remain in the eternal life of His Love?
How do we unceasingly participate in God's Love?

We safely and securely abide in the communion of Christ's Love by abiding in the communion of unceasing prayer.  It is simply impossible to genuinely commune together with God in prayer and not love Him and one another.   And so it is in and through our commitment to communion in prayer that God in His Grace makes us into lovers of Himself and one another.  Which is why the Holy Spirit has led our church to commit together to communion for "40 Days of Prayer," beginning this week on Ash Wednesday.  

Will you commit with us to such communion in prayer, such communion in the Love of God?

Daily, we will commune together, as we pray individually and/or with our families and friends.  And weekly, we will gather in our Community Groups and Home Prayer Groups for an extended time of focused prayer together. And as we pray together, we will remember in faith, anticipate in hope, and participate in love.  

You know, the people of New York City should be able to say of us, "Oh, how they pray!" Which, of course, is another way of saying, "Oh, how they love!"  The Apostle Paul commands us to "pray continually" (1 Thessalonians 5:17), naming this unceasing prayer as "praying in the Holy Spirit" (Ephesians 6:18).  As the Holy Spirit is the very Love of God, our praying in Him is our ceaseless communion in God's Love.

"Prayer is the first and indispensable discipline of [love] ... [Prayer] is the expression of the Holy Spirit within us." - Henri Nouwen, Compassion

Unfortunately, most of us have replaced "unceasing prayer" with "unceasing activity," which makes urgent and important our need for the "40 Days of Prayer" this Lenten Season.  As Dr. Herbert London exhorted those who attended this past week's Socrates in the City, "There's too many distractions."

Thankfully, the communion of  "unceasing prayer" overcomes the fragmented compartmentalization of our spiritual lives that inevitably comes from "unceasing activity."  By ordering our lives through continual prayer throughout the day, we avoid the dangerous pitfall of marginalizing our communion in the Love of God.

Just imagine what your life would look like if you experienced this kind of unceasing communion of love with God and with others around you ... Just imagine what our church would look like if we together experienced this kind of ongoing communion in prayer ...  Just imagine the Gospel renewal with which our city will be blessed through such prayer, such love ...

Do you now realize that whatever came to your mind that is most missing in your life will be found only in and through the intensity of such prayer communion in love?