There are three things to emphasize as we look at and unpack this letter, the allegiance to our King often means we cannot acquiesce to our culture, knowing our faith helps us hold fast to the truth and refute error when we encounter it and responding with repentance is always important for those who follow Jesus.
What does a good church look like? A lot of opinions abound, but none are greater than His. To listen carefully to what Jesus says here in these verses is to hear about a church that is a good, praiseworthy church. Of course, the reasons seem to be unfortunately lost on many American churches. So, it would no doubt be helpful to see from this passage what makes for a good church.
The next 7 messages from Revelation will cover the 7 churches individually. Up first is the Church of Ephesus. They received compliments and had 3 good things going for them; they worked hard, refused to give up and didn’t tolerate false teachers, but Ephesus also received a criticism related to rekindling their love for one another, and Ephesus received a caution, namely repent!
None of us come neutral to anything we read. Neutrality is a myth. This is especially so with the Book of Revelation. All of us have thoughts about this text! One of the things these early introductory verses help us see is that this book has much to say about Jesus (primarily) and much to say about who we are and will be as His followers (secondarily). The details around these two realities will be the focus of this Sunday’s message.
These 3 opening verses set the stage for our understanding of this book as a whole. The points will appear as questions that I hope will help us understand in a general (but Biblical) sense what in the world Revelation actually is. 1. What is an apocalypse? 2. Who’s the author? 3. Who’s the audience? and 4. Is this authoritative? The answers to these questions provided by the passage will help us see ultimately that this is a message for everyday (not just the future) from King Jesus to His church, absolutely including us.