GEMS OLD & NEW (3)

Chapters two and three of Revelation spells out the Holy Spirit’s message to each of the seven churches. Bible Commentators and Interpreters have come up with various ideas of what these seven churches represent, I sure will not add to the confusion, but highlight some of the matters raised in these seven messages. The content is relevant and we can relate it to individuals as well as to groups of people in our day and age.
The charge against the church at Ephesus was that they had LEFT their first love. It is often poorly interpreted that they had lost their first love. The Ephesians had made a deliberate act of their will and walked away from their first love. In simple terms they had let other things take the place of their first love, The Lord Jesus Christ. In the busyness of life we can get caught up with OTHER THINGS, that is why Lent was created to cause us to reflect on our relationship with the Lord. For any of us that have let other things attract us, we need to REPENT and choose to make Jesus the first love in our life. We need to return to that place where we had decided to embrace other things, and re-affirm Christ’s Lordship over our lives, and choose daily to “seek first the Kingdom (rule) of God in our lives. Matt. 6:33. The Ephesians were commended for their hatred of the deeds of the Nicolaitians. Scholars tell us  that these people had embraced “cheap grace” teaching and were living ungodly lives. Others believe that the Nicolaitians  were promoting the rise  and rule of the clergy in the church,  ugly heresies that developed even in the first century.
Each of the messages conclude with the statement  “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.  The message to us is to sit quietly and reflect on our relationship with the Lord, and hear God’s voice calling us back to Him.