Comments from class members as to possibilities of why they had left their first love:

Joe Mahaffey makes the comment that “leaving their first love” may have been an indication that they had actually left the Lord. Maybe there was a Pharisaical attitude there, where they were keeping the “jots and the tittles,” but they had left their real love for the Lord and the recognition of what He had done for them.

Dennis Gruening pointed out Acts 20:35, where Paul warned the elders of the Ephesian church. Dennis was saying, “Amen….” He also mentioned that in loving the Lord, there must also be an evangelistic spirit if one is to be a follower of the Lord. Perhaps while they were being correct in the outward things that they did, they had lost the zeal—the desire—to share the Gospel with others.

Mark Wilkerson said, yes, that is possible, and, of course, we see this as something that, no doubt, every one of us fights against and deals with. We lose our exuberance; we lose the fire and fervor that we had when we first became Christians. We forget about the great sacrifice that was made for us and lose our enthusiasm about sharing that with other.

Marlin Akers points out that we don’t know the full history of these churches and we don’t know when they actually ceased being identified, when their lampstand was removed, not only the church in Ephesus, but the others that we are reading about in Revelation 2 and 3.

Now with some of these congregations, there is some thread of history that points out, like the church in Ephesus, where the church apparently continued on for a couple hundred years at least. We do know that in about the 6^th Century, in that area (which is now the country of Turkey) the spread of Islam took place. One thing we can certainly say is that in some cases those cities are not there at all. They are still under rubble and dirt, and there are certainly no congregations of the Lord’s people in any of those places. Their lampstands have been removed somewhere along the line. When did they become a “denomination”? Certainly all of these ideas are possible and good comments.

Condemnation and Warning (continued) (verses 4-5)

The Lord has an exhortation. He says that He “will come…quickly and remove your lampstand” unless they repent. We talked about the implication of the lampstand. It represented their “association”—their being a part of the Body of Christ. If the Lord removes the lampstand, then they are no more the Body of Christ. Apparently they did repent, because we know from both the Biblical record, as well as from church history, that there was a congregation of the Lord’s people there in the City of Ephesus clear up until about the 3^rd Century. So apparently they did repent. The Lord did not, at least immediately, remove their lampstand.

When the Lord says, “I will come to you quickly” [verse 5], His coming probably does not refer to the second coming, the Day of Judgment, but, rather, it refers to the preliminary visitation of God’s judgment upon disobedient people.

Exhortation and Promise (verse 7)

Verse 7introduces us to the first instance of the formula that is common to all seven Messages. The exhortation here that the Lord gives says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” That sounds very familiar.

That is a phrase that the Lord used a number of times during His earthly ministry. We can go back to the Gospel accounts and see in three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, each one of them reporting occasions when Jesus had this similar statement to make: “He who has an ear, let him hear.” This exhortation that the Lord gives here, and that He will give in each of the seven letters, reminds us that while each church receives a specific Message, the other churches are to heed the Message as it may well apply to them! We have mentioned this already, but it’s worth mentioning again. Yes, these were epistles. No they weren’t individual epistles that were sent out individually. They were a part of this entire book that we call “Revelation.” But, nevertheless, they were individual epistles to seven churches. These churches were real churches—they existed. What is described are real conditions—real circumstances—real situations. So, since this was written to the church in Ephesus, can we just ignore then what the Lord has said to them? No, not at all! Neither would have the churches at Smyrna, Laodicea, Philadelphia, Thyatira, Pergamos and Sardis ignored what was written to the church in Ephesus. As they would all read this epistle, they would have looked at each one of these letters and seen how it applied to them. That’s what we should do today as well!