Sermon: "Ephesus: Falling in Love All Over Again" by Randy Roberts 
Part 3: Letters from the Edge of Eternity

Prayer: Joelle Reuer

Pastoral Welcome: Timothy Gillespie

Children’s Feature: Jackie Bishop

Scripture Reading: Revelation 2:1–5, TNIV - Terri Lee Foster

INTRODUCTION TO THE SERMON

I suppose every local church wants to be a healthy congregation.  We would like to believe, teach and preach biblically sound doctrine; to worship God in ways that echo the adoration of our hearts; to serve our community so as to meet our community’s needs; and to be a church with the ability to care for the basic needs of its members.  Would you like to attend a church like that?  To you, would that be a healthy church?

Be careful how you answer.  Such things could be said of the church we study today.  It was a church located in the busy, important port city of Ephesus.  It had been founded by Paul and his colleagues, had at one time had John the apostle as its bishop, had received an epistle in its name and, no doubt, had other reasons for which to recognize it.  It was a truly outstanding church.

It also had the distinction of being the first church to receive John’s letter entitled “Revelation.”  Ephesus, in fact, is the first of the seven churches which receive messages from Jesus.

Each of the messages to each of the churches creates interest.  I am drawn to each for different reasons.  This message to the church at Ephesus, however, is one of the most arresting of the seven.  Why?  Because this church is such a good church, such a healthy church, a church with so much going for it.  And yet, it is a church which causes Jesus – after he has listed the church’s gifts – to say, “Yet…”  In other words, “Despite all the good, there is one thing I have to point out to you.”  And it is what he points out to that church that ought to cause us to listen very, very carefully.  It’s a message that is timeless in its importance.

Join us as we study the message to the church in Ephesus.

Yours for a loving church.

Randy Roberts
Senior Pastor


MEDITATIONS

Farewell to those who want an entirely pure and purified church.  This is plainly wanting no church at all. – Martin Luther

More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from the church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all the doubts in the world. – William Barclay

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