Series: “To the Angel of the Church at Tomoka:
Christ’s Message for His Church Today”
#1 “Rekindling the Old Flame”
Luke 15:17-20a and Revelation 2:1-7 (NIV)
Today we begin something you may never have experienced in a United Methodist Church – a sermon series from the Book of Revelation. Oh, occasionally you may have heard one sermon here or there based on a text from this final book of the Bible, but I don’t imagine you can remember a whole sermon series. I suppose that’s because, as a rule, we United Methodist pastors are not too comfortable dealing with the subject. To be honest, some may not be that familiar with the Book, or they are unsure what it means, or they don’t know how to begin to address such an odd book in a sermon on Sunday morning, or they don’t want to be associated with those arrogant preachers we see on TV who seem to focus on the Book of Revelation all the time and give the impression that God himself had whispered in his ear precisely what every weird symbol represents, and that if we are genuine believers, we will interpret the book exactly the same way they do.
For all these reasons, United Methodist pastors have shied away from this Book – and that’s too bad, because our culture is fascinated with the subject of the end times – just look at the popularity of the Left Behind series of novels some years ago! By our silence on the subject, we have left a void that the fundamentalist preachers have been all too eager to fill, with their own narrow literalistic interpretations. It’s high-time we in the mainline churches set aside our hesitancy, reclaim the Book of Revelation, and offer people a more thoughtful and reasoned approach to this very important Book of the Bible.
Why have so many pastors tended to ignore the Book of Revelation? I suppose because it is such a mysterious writing, presented in a literary style that is completely foreign to our modern way of thinking. It is packed with bizarre images and cryptic symbols, hellish visions and frightening prophecies. By its very nature, the Book is difficult to decipher, generating a wide variety of interpretations within the faith community, even sparking controversy and arguments, which have led to division and name-calling among Christians. To avoid such ranker, many United Methodist pastors have chosen to ignore Revelation all together.
But I believe Revelation is an important writing in our New Testament, and we need to try to understand at least the main thrust of the Book, even if we can never fully comprehend all the strange ways it tells the story. Far from just being a book of doom and gloom, Revelation actually presents the believer with a message of promise and hope and ultimate victory. The entire Book of Revelation can be summarized like this: “Evil may seem to have the upper hand, but the truth is that in the end, God is going to be victorious. So, take heart, because you are on the winning side!” It’s that simple. But interpreting the symbols of the Book is not.
In this sermon series, we are not going to try to wade through the peculiar visions found in most of the Book, that would take a full Bible Study – which we could do. Maybe we will. Instead, this morning and over the next seven weeks, we will be focusing our attention on chapters 2 and 3 – the most easily understood section of Revelation. These chapters are not that mysterious. In fact, their message is hard to miss.
In Chapter 1, from which our call to worship was taken this morning, we are given a description of the heavenly Christ in all his glory and splendor. In Chapters 2 and 3, the heavenly Christ tells John, the writer of this Book, to take down seven letters, addressed to each of the seven churches of Asia Minor (in what is now Turkey). While these were intended for particular congregations with specific problems, I believe that the lessons found there speak just as accurately to the church today.
By the way, as we read at the beginning of our service, the seven churches are described as golden lampstands. That may seem strange to our ears, but to the Jewish followers of Christ, they would have recognized the image immediately. The image is the golden seven-stemmed menorah that stood in the Temple in Jerusalem (the same menorah that is the center of the celebration of Hanukkah). Just like our altar candles and our perpetual light above the cross and communion table, the menorah represented the presence of God among God’s people. The oil for each of the golden lamps was supplied from one bowl of oil that kept all of the flames burning. In John’s vision, this is the meaning behind the vision of Christ walking among the lamps (churches). He is not only the source of the flame – through his Holy Spirit, he is also the provider of the life-sustaining oil! Now do you see how powerfully symbolic the image is???
Beginning with Chapter 2, the Risen Christ has a message to each of the “lampstands.” With each letter, Christ offers words of commendation, or criticism, or both – and promises rewards for faithfulness, as well as words of warning for unfaithfulness. It’s really the same for churches today – by what we at Tomoka do, we either please our Lord, or we displease Him. Christ is always making a judgment about our faithfulness to him. So, during the course of this series, we need to hear what Christ might be saying to our church – both His words of encouragement, as well as his warnings of censure. Or as Christ himself puts it, “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” So, let’s get started.
Our first letter is addressed to the Church at Ephesus. Ephesus was a cosmopolitan city of about 250,000 inhabitants. It was a hub of commerce in the region, and a center of pagan worship. The church there had to resist many temptations that might have led them astray, including false teachers who were teaching heresy to the congregation. Christ complements the church at Ephesus for their faithfulness to the truth and for guarding the true doctrines of the Christian faith. (I would hope that the same could be said about the Church today – but sometimes I wonder…)
Now, to the first letter. Compared to the other six letters, the Ephesians got pretty high marks from Christ, and yet they had a problem that threatened to destroy their church. Verse 4: “I hold this against you (said Christ): You have forsaken the love you had at first.” Or, as the EasyEnglish Bible words it: “ You loved me very much when you first believed in me. You do not love me as much now.” Or, even more provocatively as the Message translation puts it: “You walked away from your first love – why? What’s going on with you, anyway?”
Now, this church in Ephesus was not a “new congregation – in fact, it had been in existence 50 years (longer than our congregation here at Tomoka!) – a long time in the short history of the early church. As you can imagine, by then most of those first converts who had established the church had died – there were very few old pillars of the congregation still around. John was sending this letter to a church made up of second and third generation Christians.
When Paul established this church on his second missionary journey, the believers had great enthusiasm for their new faith. They had experienced first-hand the life-transforming power of God’s love and grace in their lives, and they were passionate about their love for Christ and for one another. Love motivated all they did as a church.
But as time passed, the passion faded. (sound familiar?) By the time of this writing, it seems that the Ephesians were just going through the motions of “religion.” They were motivated by tradition, not by love. Perhaps the same could be said for many churches today – even our church? Oh, sure, the Ephesians were doing good things, but for the wrong reasons. They had lost their passion. They had forgotten what the faith was all about. They had abandoned the love they had at first.
This past July 8, Terri and I celebrated our 35th anniversary. Working on this text, it occurred to me that this same type of thing that happened at Ephesus can also easily happen in a marriage. When you first fall in love, you are swept off your feet – you experience a euphoric kind of joy that you can’t really describe. You feel like you are walking on air. Your relationship is full of courting and romance, flowers and gift-giving, hand-holding and embracing. After the wedding, the passion continues as you enjoy a new level of intimacy and become more and more comfortable with your mate. But time passes, life gets more busy – and more mundane: work and bills and chores – and children, leading to more work and bills and chores. Without ever meaning to, your marriage can take a back seat to other, “more important” things (or, so we think). Soon the passion fades, until one day you realize that you are only going through the motions of marriage. You begin to forget what motivated your relationship in the first place. Then, perhaps, one morning you wake up to the realization that you have fallen OUT of love – “you don’t love as you did at first” - which leads to all kinds of problems, and maybe even divorce.
This same kind of thing can happen in the spiritual life of an individual, or in the spiritual life of a congregation. When you first accept Christ, it is like falling in love – you are filled with exuberant joy! You have experienced the love of God in Christ first-hand, and you are eager to tell anyone who will listen about it. It’s not by accident that it’s been said that “no one is more obnoxious than a new Christian, or a person in love.”
When we first become believers, we enter into a honeymoon period with God, and we grow in our faith. We want to serve him. So, we get busy doing church jobs or serving on boards and committees. Inevitably, we get burned out. Our early passion for Christ fades, our religion becomes a formality and even a burden – we forget our “first love.” Before long, we have forgotten our passion for Christ – we argue over stupid trivial things, get our feelings hurt, stop attending worship, and become inactive or leave the church family altogether. This can happen to the best of churches – it can even happen here at Tomoka. It’s a sad thing to watch the passion die in an individual, or in a congregation.
Apparently, this had happened to the Church at Ephesus. That congregation was in trouble – so Christ gives them a “wake up call,” a warning that we all would be wise to heed.
So, what is the lesson we can learn from this first letter in Revelation? I believe it is this: We must constantly strive to renew our passion. (Or as we learned in our sermons on John Wesley’s three “General Rules” for the people called Methodist – the third rule? And what is the third rule? “Stay in love with God!”) A marriage is only healthy when the courtship never stops. And our spiritual lives can only be healthy when our courtship with Christ never stops.
Let me ask you a very personal question: How is your “Love” life? How healthy is your relationship with Jesus? Do you have an ongoing passion for Christ? Is your relationship with Christ as fresh today as it was the day you first asked him into your heart (assuming you have actually done that)? Or, have you “forsaken your first love?”
If your spiritual life is not what it once was, Christ himself gives us the steps necessary to restore it (all three steps are found in verse 5):
First, he says we are to REMEMBER – “Consider how far you have fallen.”
When a couple who is having marital troubles goes to a marriage counselor for advice, the counselor will often ask them to try to recall what it was like when they first fell in love – to remember the feelings they shared at the beginning of their relationship. Memory can be a powerful first step toward renewal of our passion.
That’s what happens in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son: Wasting his life in a “far country,” that disobedient son “remembers” his father’s love, and makes his way home. It’s the same point the writer, O’Henry, makes in one of his short stories. He tells of a boy who sat next to a sweet innocent girl in school, who he came to adore. Unfortunately, he chose a life of crime, becoming a pick-pocket. He was happy with his life, until one day when he happened to see the girl he had loved. O’Henry says, the young man hung his head and muttered, “God, how I hate myself.” You see, he remembered “the love he had at first.”
Memory brings awareness of just how far we have strayed. So, the first step to renewal of our passion is to recognize that something has gone terribly wrong. Something had gone tragically wrong with the Ephesians – and the Heavenly Christ challenged them to remember. If your passion for him isn’t what it once was, Christ is saying the same thing to you – “Consider how far you have fallen.” Remember.
The second step is to REPENT.
Once we discover that something has gone wrong with our relationship with Christ, we can have one of several possible self-defeating reactions:
1) We can decide that the dulling of our passion is inevitable. We conclude that it’s foolish to believe that passion can be sustained, so we just accept our lack of passion to be “normal.”
2) We may blame our waning zeal on the difficult circumstances of life that have come our way, rather than owning up to the fact that we have allowed our devotion for Christ to fade. Or,
3) We may try to find joy and passion in life by pursuing worldly sinful ways, and give up on God altogether.
But the Heavenly Christ gives us a fourth option: He says, “Repent” – admit that you are at fault, and feel remorse for it. That was the Prodigal Son’s reaction: “I will arise and go to my father, and say to him ‘I have sinned.’”
The hardest thing about repentance is the acceptance of personal responsibility for our failure. But that is what Christ says we must do if we are to reignite our faith. We have to Remember, and then, Repent.
Finally, Christ challenges us to DO something: He says, “Do the things you did at first.”
The sorrow of repentance is meant to drive us to two things:
1) First, to fling ourselves on the grace of God, asking for forgiveness and mercy; and
2) Second, to motivate us to take action in order to bring forth the fruits of repentance in our lives.
No one has truly repented if he or she doesn’t change. Harry Emerson Fosdick put it this way, “The great truth about Christianity is that no man need stay the way he is.” The Prodigal not only remembered and repented, he also “returned to his Father’s house.” There is something we must do. We must choose to change - with God’s help. That was Christ’s message to the church at Ephesus.
So, what is Christ saying to the Church at Tomoka? Individually, how is your passion for Christ? Have you gotten so busy, so accustomed to life as a Christian that your faith has become a dull lifeless shell of religion? Have you “forsaken the love you had at first?”
And what about our congregation here at Tomoka? Could this letter have, just as well, been addressed to our congregation?
In his book entitled, Autopsy of a Deceased Church, Thom Rainer echoes these harsh words of the risen Christ. He writes that many congregations today are in decline, primarily because of the low level of our passion for God. We here at Tomoka are doing better than most congregations, but we are facing the exact same challenge as faced the Ephesians. Have we, as a congregation, somehow lost the joy of our faith? Have we lost touch with the Love of God which motivated us in earlier days? Are we spiritually dry, stagnant – and dying?
If so, then we had better beware of the warning Christ gives: “If you do not repent, (he says) I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” In other words, unless we shape up, our congregation’s “lampstand” will no longer bear light to a dark world, and our church will eventually die. The flame of God’s Holy Spirit will flicker and go out.
But the good news is that this isn’t a prophecy, it is a warning. If we will tune our ears to hear Christ’s admonition; if we will remember our first love; if we repent of the lifelessness of our faith; and if we determine that we will change, THEN, Christ says our lampstand will continue to burn brightly, and we will be given “the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”
So, what will it be? Will we as individuals be passionate in our faith, or will we allow our faith to wither away? Are we as a congregation content just to go through the motions of religion and die as a church, or do we hunger for a more vital and dynamic relationship with Christ?
That is Christ’s message for us here at Tomoka United Methodist Church. Whether we will allow the lamp of our heart to grow cold - or take action that it might burn again with passion for God - is entirely up to you and me.
“Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” Amen. © 2025 by John B. Gill, III