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First Love (Ephesus) |
Revelation 2: 1-8
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© John Ewing Roberts |
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INTRODUCTION Last Sunday there were copies of a wonderful, fresh, contemporary translation of Revelation 1-3, the scripture portion we will be studying for the next few weeks. I hope you took it home and followed through on the suggestion that you read it aloud in one sitting. Revelation 1: 3 promises a blessing for reading the text out loud. If you did not get a copy of the translation and would like one, please raise your hand now and a deacon will bring you a copy. While the deacons are distributing the text, please take out the bulletin insert with the heading NOTES ON REVELATION 2-3. Each Sunday you will have a fresh insert to use to make notes on that Sunday's scripture passage. Today you would write by SCRIPTURE PASSAGE "Revelation 2: 1-8," by LETTER NUMBER "1," by LOCATION OF CHURCH, "Ephesus." Now that you've got the idea, please look in the text and listen in the message for the rest of the information listed in the insert categories. With a completed set of seven such inserts on the seven churches in Revelation 2-3, you will have a comprehensive grasp of a very important section of the Bible. EPHESUS Slides No. 1 - Arcadian Way leading to Theater It is so right to have pictures of Ephesus: right because the photographs help us to remember that the Bible is about real people in real places, not a book of made-up tales about imaginary people in fictional places; right because Revelation is a wonderful mixture of sights and sounds, visions and words. Notice how often in Revelation we encounter, "I saw" or "I heard." (A recent commentary goes to some pains to show how Revelation alternates between hearing and seeing.[1] ) According to excavators, Ephesus reached a population of 500,000 at its peak. First the British and then the Austrians, partially bankrolled by wealthy Baptists named Rockerfellers, excavated the ruins. Notice that the main road into this ancient port city is dominated by the theater, just as the main road from the south into the port city of Baltimore is overshadowed by the looming bulk of the Ravens' stadium. No. 2 - Map of western coast of Asia Minor showing locations of seven churches and Patmos Ephesus got the first of what we call the seven "letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor" because it was the greatest city of the region, an area along the Aegean Sea in the western part of what is now Turkey. Then it was called "Asia;" but to distinguish it from the great mainland of Asia which includes China, India, Korea, and parts of Russia, in modern times it is called "Asia Minor." No. 3 - Ephesus (aerial view) Ephesus in its prime was "the first and the greatest metropolis of Asia," "the market of Asia."[2] It looked east toward the orient, and west toward Greece and its culture. The great harbor eventually silted up; the sea is now six miles from Ephesus. There is a lesson here in ecology since the deforestation of the neighboring hills led to the silting up of the harbor. No. 4 - Arcadian Way Through its harbor and down this street came all sorts of people: Paul, the messenger who carried the scroll of Revelation, and many tourists, among them Mary Buzby, Jim and Margaret Alexander, Marylynn and John Roberts. Down this road came many exotic goods: "cloth and spices from Syria and Palestine, cedar of Lebanon, golden grain from Egypt and south Russia, shimmering marble from the Greek islands, copper from Cyprus, silver from Spain, tin from Britain, and slaves skilled at cookery or at making love."[3] No. 5 - Ephesus This view of Ephesus gives us an opportunity to see the city as it is -- thanks for Bill Butler's careful work and to a wonderful book with pictures of sites as they are today with overlays to show how they looked in biblical times.[4] No. 6 - Overlay of Ephesus This artist's rendering of how Ephesus looked in its golden days shows us the harbor at the foot of the Arcadian Way, Temple of the Egyptian deities, and the bath house-gymnasium complex. It is the theater that commands our attention. This is a Roman theater, similar to a Greek theater with its perfect acoustics, but a different place. The Greeks used their theaters for the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the comedies of Aristophanes and Menander. The Roman theaters staged plays too, but the orchestra was deep into a pit to accommodate spectacles such as contests between wild beasts and humans.[5] It was here that an angry mob took two of Paul's companions, Gaius and Aristarchus. Christian preaching had cut into the idolatry of the economy. Apparently sales of silver shrines of Artemis were down, and a silversmith named Demetrius whipped the people into a frenzy by telling them that not only was the silversmith business on the skids, but the temple of their great goddess might someday "count for nothing, and that she might even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship."[6] For two hours the mob in the theater cried out, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" Paul wanted to go in among the crowd of 24,000 angry Ephesians, but his friends would not let him. Eventually the town clerk calmed them down, suggested legal action rather than violence, and dismissed the assembly. Gaius, Aristarchus, Paul and the rest of the Christians doubtless thanked God, breathed a sigh of relief, and went home. James L. Blevins at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has written that there is possibly a link between this theater and the Book of Revelation. Like other scholars he suggests that the author of Revelation surely had ties to Ephesus, the destination of his first "letter," a place just 62 miles from Patmos where the author of Revelation was in prison. Blevins noticed the dominance of the number seven in Revelation - seven golden lampstands, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven tableaux, seven bowls of wrath, seven judgments, seven great promises - in short, seven groups of seven. He also noticed that reconstructions of the theater had seven windows. Did the author envision Revelation as a drama with seven acts, each with seven scenes, as it might have been presented in the theater at Ephesus with its seven windows? Blevins' book argues the case and offers a script from the text of Revelation. He has produced this drama in the seminary chapel and hopes some day to stage it in Ephesus.[7] No. 7 - Domitian Temple, one of three temples devoted to the cult of the Roman emperor Domitian was the unspeakably cruel emperor whose persecution of Christians is the larger setting for the book of Revelation. This is the first temple in Ephesus to be consecrated to a Roman Emperor. There was a colossal statue of Domitian. All that remains is the forearm; from its size, almost six feet long, we can imagine the enormity of the statue.[8] The Ephesians may or may not have thought Domitian was a god, but they knew for sure that to build this temple would prompt the emperor to give them privileges. When Domitian was assassinated, the Ephesians promptly rededicated the temple to his father, Vespasian, "so as not to have to give up the rights which they had acquired."[9] No. 8 - Library Although this particular library was built not long after Revelation was written, it reminds us that Ephesus was a center of learning. Students of Greek thought associate the area of the eastern Aegean Sea around Ephesus with great pre-Socratic philosophers, e.g., Heraclitus, Thales, and with the historian Herodotus. If you think of all the New Testament books written to or from Ephesus or by persons connected in tradition with Ephesus, you can see why some scholars connect Ephesus with as much as two-thirds of the New Testament.[10] No. 9 - Brothel The position of this brothel on one of the city's main streets underscores what the Christians of Ephesus had to deal with. These second generation believers confronted sacred prostitutes at the Temple of Artemis, "regular" prostitutes here, idols, the rough life of a port city, and sophisticated philosophy, what Clovis Chappell calls paganism, "strong, seasoned, and respectable."[11] No. 10 - Street of the Curetes with relief of Hermes Yes, Hermes or Mercury was the messenger of the gods but as such, he was also the god of commerce, a favorite deity in a time where trade and the riches it brought took first place in most lives. No. 11 - Patmos The author of Revelation remembered Ephesus from the island of his imprisonment, Patmos, where tradition says he occupied a cave about half way to the top of the mountain. Marylynn and I have visited the cave where a kindly old Orthodox monk pointed to a crack in the ceiling of the cave, "where God spoke to give John his revelation," and to a sloping area on the wall on the cave. He assured us that John stood here and used this natural "desk" to record the revelation. When Marylynn pointed to an indentation in the cave wall and whispered facetiously to me that it must have been John's soap dish, the monk overheard and assured us that John had created the notch in the cave wall by putting his hand there frequently to pull himself up after kneeling to pray! No. 12 - Diana (Artemis) of the Ephesians What the author of Revelation must have remembered vividly on Patmos about Ephesus was the greatest building there, the Temple of Diana (to the Romans or Artemis to the Greeks). This temple was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The Diana worshipped here was not the chaste goddess of the hunt and moon abstracted by artists from classical Greek mythology. Probably the most popular Hellenic deity, Diana had an enigmatic and multifaceted personality. In Ephesus her fertility characteristics are striking. Her cult statues produced by silversmiths for the tourist trade (Acts 19: 35ff.) represent her entire chest covered bizarrely with two dozens breasts, described by the Anchor Bible Dictionary as "a multi-mammary grotesque." We see the darker side of her personality when she is connected with Hecate, a goddess of witchcraft. In Homer's Iliad Artemis is called "a lion to women" because she kills women in childbirth. In Aeschylus' tragedy Agamemnon she calls for the human sacrifice of the virgin Iphigenia. In Sparta in her rites boys were whipped until they bled.[12] The novelist Lawrence Durrell in a splendid travel book, The Greek Islands, shared what he learned about Artemis from comparative mythology. "She was the toughest and most merciless of the goddesses....any defection, even accidental, was punished immediately. When consulted about a plague she had caused to descend upon Attica, she announced that it would only end if and when all the girl children of the capital were dedicated to her; thus a huge procession of children wound its way up the Acropolis to her shrine in order to preserve Athens from the pestilence. This is only one example of her harshness; she was a goddess who never hesitated to order floggings or fill a bridal chamber full of snakes..." She was vindictive and unpredictable. She is supposed "to have been very keen on Orion, but one day the luckless man happened by accident to touch her, while they were both hunting...It jangled her nerves and set her on edge so that she summoned a great scorpion up from the earth which stung him viciously on the heel. And he a fellow-hunter with whom she had been on close terms of mutual admiration and, some said, even of love. [13] No. 13 - Reconstruction of Temple of Artemis Designed in the 540's B. C. and completed a century later, the temple stood on a platform the size of two football fields. It had 120 columns, sixty feet high, thirty-six of them gilded and inlaid. Sacred prostitutes were attached to the temple. Criminals came there seeking the right of asylum.[14] No. 14 - Column from Temple of Artemis What was once one of the seven wonders of the world with a veritable forest of columns is now a water-logged area. All that remains is a solitary column with a stork's nest on top, a kind of ironically humorous twist at a temple once sacred to a fertility goddess. Above it Justinian built a church in the 6th century, deliberately designed to be 30 feet longer than the once great temple of Diana.[15] CHRIST FOR EPHESUS The characteristics of the Christ who addresses the Ephesians are impressive. We find them in Revelation 2: 1. He holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven gold lampstands. This means that Christ holds us in his strong hand. This means that Christ holds his church, not our church. He holds not only our church, but the whole church.[16] CHRIST'S COMMENDATION Christ commends the church in verses 2-3. "I know your works," a thought to give us pause. He knows our private words, deeds and thoughts even better than if he were a special prosecutor spending over $40 million to investigate an individual. God and Father of Jesus the Christ knows our works. Job asked, "Will it be well with you when he searches you out? Or can you deceive him, as one deceives a man?" Paul wrote, "...the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God...we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what we have done in the body."[17] Christ knows their works and still commends them! Would he say that of our church? Would he say that of you and me? He knows our works; he knows how often we pray, how often we read our Bible, what we give and whether we give cheerfully and generously or whether we calculate and rationalize to the last penny, how often we worship, how often we witness, how often we engage in Kingdom service. Christ knew their works and still commended them for enduring patiently, for bearing up, for not growing weary, for hating the Nicolaitans (verse 6), who apparently were teachers of some false doctrine. By the way, their patient endurance was not grim patience which accepts things with resignation, but the courageous gallantry which takes hardship and loss and turns them into grace and glory,[18] the strong good humor, for example, with which Gladys Reeder is facing six more weeks of wearing a thirty pound metal "halo" to brace her broken neck, an inspiring example to us all. CHRIST'S CONDEMNATION Christ condemns the Ephesians in verse 4 because they have abandoned their first love. They have lost the radiance of their first experience of loving Jesus as Lord and Savior. First love! There should be a continuing radiance and rapture to first love. This week I came across a middle school yearbook picture of a certain Marylynn Field, and I remembered my first and continuing love. The British poet Robert Browning wrote of the wise thrush who "sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture!"[19] Another illustration of the radiance of holding fast to the first love: Friday during ESOL registration Marylynn and I meet a new student on the steps into Fellowship Hall. With a radiant smile he introduced himself, "My name is John; I am a Christian." Not, "My name is John; I am from China." Not "My name is John; I want to learn better English." Not "My name is John; I go to Towson University." But, "My name is John; I am a Christian." Here was a man who had not lost his first love; here was a man who would not need to sing, the second stanza of our last hymn "Where is the blessedness I knew When first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul refreshing view Of Jesus and His Word?" [20] There was blessing and soul refreshment on his face, "My name is John; I am a Christian." CHRIST'S CHALLENGE In verse 5 Christ challenges the Ephesians to remember from what they have fallen, and repent. He calls on them to redo their initial works, or he will remove their lampstand (not three, but four "r's" - remember, repent, redo or be removed). Do you believe repentance is possible? Do you believe if a man or woman wants to change, God can change them? The great Baptist preacher of the mid 20th century, Harry Emerson Fosdick, the man who wrote God of Grace and God of Glory, said that the great truth of Christianity is that we do not need to stay as we are.[21] CHRIST'S EXHORTATION The Christ of Revelation does not leave the penitent sinner in despair over sin. There is more than contrition and a broken heart. David wrote, "a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise."[22] The Christ of Revelation offers this word of encouragement in verse 7, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." The Spirit still has something to say! God is not finished yet with any of us! "The Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his word."[23] CHRIST'S PROMISE There is a wonderful promise in the second half of verse 7, "To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God." It doesn't get any better than that! What was forbidden to Adam, what Adam lost, what we lose whenever we ourselves disobey is given when we remember, repent, and redo what we did at first when we had the radiance of our first love. Remember, repent, redo, be radiant, and then eat of the tree of life which is the paradise of God. Jesus said, "I am come that you may have life and have it more abundantly."[24] And here is that life in the paradise of God, that immediate presence and glory of God which Jesus promised the dying and penitent thief. "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise."[25] OUR CHURCH Ephesus had a great heritage - Paul, Apollos, Priscilla and Aquila all nurtured this church. There are strong traditions that John the beloved disciple, charged by Jesus at the foot of the cross to care for his mother Mary, brought her to Ephesus where they each lived to the end of their days. Another less strong tradition places Luke's grave here. Now Woodbrook can take some pride of heritage, claiming in its membership over the years presidents of national Baptist bodies and one of the two most famous Southern Baptist women, Miss Annie Armstrong, but we can't come close to Ephesus -Paul, Apollos, Priscilla, Aquila, John, Mary and Luke! A remarkable church, said the winsome but tough old southern evangelist Vance Havner. But no matter how rich a heritage Ephesus enjoyed, it still needed the Spirit to infuse new life.[26] True of Ephesus, true of Woodbrook. One place where I hear a message to Woodbrook from Revelation is in the area of our giving. I like what that Vance Havner wrote about first love and giving: There is a reckless enthusiasm about first love. It is not cold and calculating. A young lover buys his sweetheart a gift he cannot afford. When you were a young Christian you could not do too much for the Lord. Like the poor widow at the treasury, you wanted to put in everything. Mary of Bethany did not count the cost of the high-priced perfume. Only Judas grumbled about it. He would, for there was no love in his heart. There are church Scrooges who are always afraid they will overdo it, who never give a dollar without wanting to sing, `When we asunder part it gives us inward pain.' They complain that they cannot figure out their tithe. If it was coming their way, they'd figure it out! I am glad my mother didn't say, "I can't afford to sit up all night with this sick child. It might endanger my health!" I'm glad my Lord did not say, "I cannot afford to go to the cross." True love and first love are not stingy and when your heart is filled with it, nobody will have to beg you to serve God.[27] [28] Revelation 1: 20 |