If you’ve been following the series thus far, you’ll know that we’ve already preached on this passage. So just ditto, amen, and go home. I don’t want to repeat myself. Well, we have preached on this passage, and if you want to know more about what the passage is saying do go and listen to that sermon. But we’re revisiting this passage, and we’re going to focus on our Lord’s exhortation to the church at Ephesus “to repent and to do the works you did at first.”  

I suggested then that what the first works were is explained within the text itself. I believe it refers to the works our Lord commends in the first place.  

“I know your works.” 

Revelation 2:2

Their heart motive in doing those works – “you did them for my name’s sake.” And the way they carried out that work, they had tested, that is they had put on trial those who said they were apostles but were not and found them to be false. That’s what Jesus is commending, and I think that’s what Jesus is commending to them again – to revisit this. And to revisit it for the simple reason that this was one of the ways in which a church demonstrated its loyalty and love for her Lord Jesus Christ. 

You notice that there was a problem in the church. There were these people who called themselves apostles. That was a very high and mighty claim. They were claiming to be leaders – super leaders. An apostle was not just the leader of a local church, he was the leader of the church more broadly. So these people were coming along and were wanting to be respected, followed, admired, financed in their ministry by the local church. And what did these people do? Well, they did not make assumptions, they did not hazard guesses, they did not listen to hearsay, but they followed an orderly process of investigation and trial. That’s the word that’s used there — they “tested” – put on trial these men. There was a defined judicial way for proceeding in dealing with either evil or error in the corporate life, that is in the body life of the church. And what we learn then from this letter to the Ephesians is this: that a church that knows and loves and honors Christ will strive to make him known. And in the process will keep a watchful eye on itself, on its inner life, on its own members, on oneself within the life of the church.  

Now this story of Ephesus, of course, doesn’t start in Revelation. The story starts in the book of Acts, and it starts with the Apostle Paul visiting Ephesus and staying there for about two years. Initially, there was some resistance. He initially went to the synagogue; he was teaching in the local synagogue. There were plots hatched by people there to get rid of Paul, to silence him, and Paul remained there for some time, some considerable time. He did not give in easily to these threats. We’re told that he spoke boldly for about three months. He was reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God, but eventually there was a negative reaction. Some who were stubborn, some who continued with unbelief, some speaking evil of Christians, speaking evil of the way, labeling them as Christians, as followers of the way, and so on. So Paul withdraws from that, and he goes to a different venue. And in that different venue he continues his work of preaching and teaching. And soon we read that “all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.” 

In fact, we read that there were extraordinary miracles performed by the hands of Paul. That the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled, that the word of the Lord continued to increase and to prevail mightily. But after a little while in the city generally, there were so many people becoming Christians that it began to have a felt impact on the population of the city. Particularly Ephesus was known for its profound reverence for Diana of the Ephesians, Diana the mother goddess of Asia. And off the back of Diana’s popularity as the goddess of that region, there were people whose business it was to make shrines for Diana. There are mentioned in the Biblical text, people who were silversmiths who were selling silver shrines, and what they discovered was the more people became Christians the more their bottom line wasn’t being achieved. They were losing money, and you know that once people start losing money or there’s some financial issue then this gets people riled up. And so these people, these silversmiths, were going around telling everybody in the city “They’re going to ruin us. These Christians are going to ruin us. So you don’t shop from them, don’t get anything from them.” So there was, there were Christians were socially ostracized. There they were, their businesses were being boycotted, people were not selling them goods and services, life was becoming hard and there is suggestion in the text that there was physical violence. So that’s the situation.  

The situation in Ephesus was that they were being ostracized, they were not getting, being able to buy stuff, people were not selling to them, there were threats of violence, and there had been examples of violence. Now what do you do, what do you do when that happens to your church? What’s our instinctive reaction when people are saying, as they were doing, they were saying bad things about Christians, they were they were speaking evil of the Christians. And we’re told now that there were these uprisings, the mob was marching through Ephesus, and they were targeting Christian businesses, and terrorizing Christian people. What do you do? What do you say to a church in that environment? Well, there’s all kinds of things you could say, but I’ll tell you what the Apostle Paul said. 

The Apostle Paul gathered the elders of that church together, and here’s what he told them. He gathered the elders of the church to himself, he reminded them of the focus of his ministry while he was with them. He said to them, this is what he said to them, “You remember what I did, I did it in public, I did it from house to house. I did it in private conversations. I did it from the pulpit. I did it wherever I could get an audience, this is what I did. I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable for you.” He goes on to say this, “I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole council of God.” “That,” says Paul, “is what I did. While they’re and terrorizing, and creating a mob to come against us, that’s what I continued to do.” Now he says, “Here’s the future of your ministry. Pay attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood.” 

In other words when the Apostle Paul gathers these people together, and he’s giving them advice as to how to live in this tense environment of this city in which they’re living, where there’s hostility towards them precisely because they are Christian, these are his words: “Remember what I did, I preached to you the whole council of God, and now this is what I want you to do. I want you to take care of the church of God.” 

And what the Apostle tells them and what we learn from both what Paul says in Acts chapter 20 and here in Revelation chapter 2 is this: the church needs constantly to be reminded of the presence of Jesus in the church. The presence of Jesus in the church; that’s what we found in chapter 1, in chapter 2 of Revelation so far. We found in chapter 1 a description of Jesus exalted – Jesus in his divinity and in his humanity. His divinity is God the Lord Almighty, the Lord everlasting, the God who is, the Living One, and as the man Christ Jesus who died for us, and then rose again, and now lives in the power of an endless life. That’s how he’s been introduced to us. And he is the One who has the church in his hands. He possesses the church. It is his church. Jesus’ church. The object of his love. Well, that’s what we learned so far. 

But when Paul is talking to these Ephesian elders, what does he say to them? He says the church is the church of God – meaning God the Father, “who purchased it with his blood,” Paul says. So well-trained congregation like you, I know exactly what you’re thinking, right now I can read your minds. You’re thinking “How can Paul say that? God the Father purchased the church with his own blood? God the Father never became human, God the Father therefore could not die, and did not have any blood to shed.” That’s what you’re thinking and that was the right answer, of course, and you got it right first time. I could just see that look of clarity in your eyes.  

But in the book of Revelation chapter 1, what does it say about this? It says in Revelation chapter 1 that we have been freed from our sins by Jesus’ blood. By Jesus’ blood. Well, you see what we’re confronted with is something we find happening in the New Testament all over the place. We can talk about the grace of God when we talk about the grace of God the Father. We can also talk about the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. When we talk about the love of God, the love of God the Father, we can talk about the love of Christ and the love of the Spirit. Or when we talk about fellowship, we talk about the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, in the words of the grace. We talk about the fellowship of his Son – First Corinthians 1 – and we read that our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son. So what is it? Is it the Father, the Son, of the Spirit? Who’s doing what where? Well, we know of course that it was Jesus who shed his blood. But Jesus is God, and the Father and the Son are God. The persons of the Trinity don’t add up to three they add up to one because there’s only one Godness, one God, the only God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The works of the Trinity are undivided; therefore we can say about the church it’s the church of Jesus Christ We can say about the church that it’s a church of God the Father. And we can save the church that it’s the church of the Holy Spirit because Paul says to these leaders at Ephesus, “the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God.” 

Now what has the Holy Spirit done, what has the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit done for the church? God has delegated to the church specifically appointed people in order that it might be led. In the Westminster Confession of Faith, it says that there are four offices in the church: the pastor, the teacher, the elder, and the deacon. By the pastor and the teacher they mean teaching elders: one is a pastor of a church, one is a theologian in a seminary kind of environment. A pastor and a teacher. And elders there would be what we now call ruling elders, though now we just call them elders whether they’re teaching elders or ruling elders. And deacons, well, I’ll leave you to work that one out for yourself. The point is that these have been appointed by Jesus. For what reason? For the government of the church.  

So we’re given some guidelines about officers in First Timothy chapter 3. We were told that they’re to be good Christian people. Nothing more is expected of officers as Christian people than is expected of everybody else in the church. Technically all of us should be qualified to become an elder, a deacon, or a deaconess in the church because of the quality of our lives. The only distinguishing thing that’s made is in relation to the teaching elders that they should be apt to teach, but all of us to some degree should be apt to teach, we should all be able to articulate the faith at some level or other to one another. That’s a responsibility for the whole church. But it’s for some in particular.  

What is the primary purpose of elders and government in the church? What is the primary purpose? Well, it isn’t to have a budget; that’s not the primary purpose of the church. Here’s what Paul says to them in Acts 20: 

“After my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves, that is from the very leadership itself, will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away disciples after them.”  

Acts 20:29-30

In other words, there’s always going to be the danger in the church of personalities, big personalities, attractive personalities, powerful figures, who are interested not in drawing men and women to Christ, but in drawing men and women to themselves, like a man called Demas that Paul mentions. Demas loves to have the preeminence. Demas loves to be first, and in loving to be first draws people after themselves, rather than after the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Greg Beale, who teaches at Westminster, has done excellent work in showing that Satan’s way of operating today is by disseminating false teaching. He doesn’t say this, so this is Liam, not Greg Beale. There’s a contrast between the way the devil operates today than how he operates when Jesus was here. Do you remember how he operated when Jesus was here? We read about a lot about the devil and demons when Jesus is here. And what are they doing? They are infesting people, indwelling people, they’re kind of taking over individuals, so we call demon possessed. What are they doing by doing that? Well, you were right. Satan is imitating the incarnation. He’s trying to imitate the incarnation by dominating a human being and getting a human being to do what he wants, and to act and to speak as him to other people. And he fails miserably. Jesus destroys that by just by dying and rising again from the dead. That’s all over. 

Today, Satan’s primary way of attacking the church of God is through false teaching in these last days. Here’s where Greg Beale points out that, in Titus for example, Paul urges Titus to appoint elders in every town specifically to be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and to rebuke those who contradict it. In other words, the whole purpose of elder in the church was needed in order to maintain the doctrinal purity of the covenant community, which is always either being influenced by or threatened from the infiltration of fifth columnists. And Beale goes on to say this, “That such an ecclesiastical authority structure ensured the Christian community that it was continuing in the truth and life of the kingdom.”  

So when we turn back to the image in Revelation 1 and 2 of the church as a lampstand, what’s it telling us? It’s telling us that the church is situated where it is, our church is situated where we are, with a view to holding high the lamp, the light that is God.  

“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” 

1 John 1:5

And we, by God’s grace, are people of the light. And Jesus is the Light of the world, and we are light in the Lord, and the light is the light of truth. It is the stunning purity of God. It is the truth of God, and the church’s business in the world is to be a lampstand holding high the truth of who God is and holding out to the nation the Word of Life. In other words, the only institution in the world that has any right to take to itself the description “a city set on a hill,” is no nation-state, no matter what that nation-state is. It is only the church of Jesus Christ to whom Jesus says, “You are like a city, a city on a hill. You, the church of God, holding up the light of God, and holding forth the Word of God to the nations. You’re a city set on a hill, shine like a light in the world.” Jesus says to his people,  

“Preach the word in season and out of season.” 

2 Timothy 4:2

But also guard the gospel. This is what the Bible says,  

“The time is coming when people will not endure sound doctrine but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.” 

2 Timothy 4:3

In other words, who’ll tell them just exactly what they want to hear and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. The mission of the church is a light bearing mission in a dark world, a world darkened by sin and error and by evil. And that light is the light of truth. Jesus is the truth, his word is truth, and the church is set for the defense and the confirmation of the gospel. Christ is present in the church, and there’s the rule of Christ in the church.  

I said that in Acts the first appointment of elders in chapter 14 was crucial to kind of act as interference from those who were carrying false doctrine. And no sooner are they appointed in chapter 14, that in chapter 15 we find them at the very first council of the church in Jerusalem there. And they’re gathered there because there is a plausible false teaching which had the potential of destroying the early Christian community and they set themselves to deal with that there. 

And here in these seven letters of Revelation, you’ll find repeated reference made to the way in which the churches implemented Jesus’ rule. Jesus commends them for doing it at Ephesus. He critiques them for neglecting it. He commands them to recover it. What is this? It’s what we call church discipline. It’s the third thing: the word, the sacrament, and the discipline of the church. Now let’s be very clear here: Christ alone by his Word and Spirit primarily, and then secondarily by the creeds and confessions of the church catholic, the church universal. Christ alone by his Word and Spirit has magisterial authority over the churches. That is, he’s the only one who gets to, gets your attention. He’s the only one who infallibly we follow and who infallibly we believe.  

All other teachers have ministerial authority, that is, it is under Christ we are given the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever we bind on earth is bound in heaven in a ministerial way. The elders, the teachers, the pastors are stewards, managers of the mysteries of God. Their business is to be found faithful. We, the flock of God, all of us together, we have received the form of sound words that have been handed down to us by from the apostles through the Scriptures down to our very day. 

The keys of the kingdom according to the Heidelberg Catechism are the preaching of the word of God and the discipline of the church. A church discipline is a spiritual authority which pastors and churches exercise to bring discipline to bear on those brothers and sisters who on account of error of doctrine or evil of life have despised the private pastoral overtures and the public warnings of the church. The key of discipline is essential to a church being a church, and it’s essential to the well-being of the church. It’s precisely because the Ephesians exercise discipline that they are commended by Christ, who has delegated the care of his church to his church, to his elders in particular. 

The church had been given the Gospel to guard the Gospel, and from the earliest days the great luminaries of the church in church councils exercised this ministerial authority regarding every controversy that came along. Even if they lived under the cross, that is under persecution, when the powers that be were against them, that was their priority defend the gospel. When the council met in Nicaea to drop the Nicene Creed, these people were being persecuted for the name of the gospel. But persecution and difficulty and trial and hardship are to be expected throughout the church age. The duty of the church no matter whether it’s having a pleasing time, or a hard time is to defend the cause of the gospel. Because in doing that what are they doing? They’re upholding Christ. They’re making him high, they’re making, raising him high. What Christ has said as the king and Lord of his church is of the primary importance to the people of God. And even when they had sympathetic rulers, sympathetic emperors, they distinguished very clearly between the spiritual government of the church, of the spiritual officers of the church on the one hand, and the government of the state on the other.  

Church discipline is an appendix to the preaching of the Word and the sacraments. It’s kind of just driving it home, making it real. And when it’s ultimately exercised in its final form, the worst thing we can do which is censure somebody publicly or excommunicate them, that is, bar them from the Lord’s Table, that can only be done in a solemn assembly of the whole church meeting together as a congregation.  

We do not, we do not judge the world. Here’s the subject of discipline: the subject of discipline are those who are our brothers and sisters in the church. The Apostle Paul says,  

“God will judge those who are outside the church.” 

1 Corinthians 5:13

That’s not our business, it is not our business in here as it were, to range through society and what society is doing the people in society, target this or that one for our criticism or our assault. That is not our job. Period. My job towards those people, no matter how bad they are, is to preach the gospel to them. They need Christ. Every one of them needs Christ. They may be the lowest form of life you can imagine. but they need Christ. And that’s the job of the church is to get Christ to those people, to preach the Gospel to those people. 

We discipline ourselves in order the Gospel might go up. The cause of discipline, the cause of discipline is either a wicked manner of life, think of an abuser, think of somebody who’s a proponent of abortion or euthanasia. Somebody is doing that as a member of our church, we need to bring them and discipline them. That goes against the laws of Christ. Somebody who’s a racist or has bigoted behavior, somebody who’s always tweeting all kinds of lies and stuff on their on their Twitter account and stirring up strife, church discipline requires thorough investigation. Do you see what it says about these people in Ephesus?  

“You have tested those who call themselves apostles.” 

Revelation 2:2

No knee-jerk reaction to the slimmest whiff of scandal. No jumping to conclusions, no assumption of guilt before it’s proven, but rather investigation. Questioning private as well as public work before the public admonition is given. Church discipline is the hardest and kindest thing that we can do sometimes. The hardest because it breaks our heart to do it, and if we enjoy doing it, we need to examine our hearts and repent, but it breaks our heart to do it, but sometimes it’s the kindest thing because it leads to repentance and life. Well, Jesus warned that many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. And if you want to know what the greatest apocalyptic, eschatological, latter day trial is – it is that throughout this age until Jesus returns the church of Jesus Christ will have to cope with error, with error and evil. And the answer is what Jesus says to Ephesus: “Go and do the first works. If you love me, keep my commandments. Shepherd the flock of God. Hold forth the word of God. Don’t be a hireling that abandons the flock, but struggle against error and evil and keep the faith.” That’s a tall order, isn’t it? Tall order and it’s something we’re all involved in.  

See, I think one of the things that Paul’s experience and what John is saying here or what the Lord Jesus is saying through John to us is that you really cannot assume, you cannot assume that because somebody is ordained, or because they preach in the pulpit of Tenth Presbyterian Church, that they are preaching the whole council of God. 

Here’s one of the dangers: one of these days I’m going to get old, it’s going to that’s, what’s obviously going to be a long time away, but when it comes one of the features of getting old apparently I’ve been told, is that you get a bit soft and you want everybody to love you because you want you know, you’re like that apparently when you’re old. You like to be loved, and the danger, and I’ve seen this happen over and over and over again, is that men get flabby. I’m not talking physically here, they get flabby in their thinking, squishy in their thinking, no longer clear, and you they lose the gospel in its clarity and in its power. And if you see me becoming squishy, make sure you stop me. Just slap me, do whatever you have to do. Talk to the elders, and they’ll do it for you. I’m being serious though, I’m being serious. 

Paul commends the Bereans because listening to the Apostle Paul, they didn’t just take it. They went back to their Bibles, and they searched the Scriptures to see whether what the Apostle Paul said was true. That’s how important the truth is for the well-being and health of the church. 

And in this period of national crisis, the church needs to be the church of God which he purchased with his blood.