Love is a matter of priority. Jesus said in Matthew 22:37, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” That didn’t mean leave zero heart, soul and mind for your wife, for your husband, for your children, for your calling, for your ministry…, obviously…, Jesus was saying before anything else, the priority is to love the Lord your God. Jesus said ALL, meaning priority.

When the object of your love slips in priority then it ceases to being the object of your love. All of creation, all of human life was originally about this love relationship with God Most High. Adam didn’t have cable TV, a job, hobbies, problems, bills and taxes. His entire existence was to walk with the Lord everyday. And get this, even with the giving of his wife, when Eve came into Adam’s life, that was not to distract from Adam’s relationship with God but to enhance it…

And I’m going to go hard for just a moment…, this life, this fallen pattern of existence that we know today stacks up distraction after distraction after distraction from what is primary and priority. Here’s an abrasive example…, I love hero movies. Superman, Ironman, Rocky, Nacho Libre, HA! And, I know, (these are the eyes I have been given and maybe this is just me and that’s ok, I won’t push this on anyone else), but I know, as we relate to the hero of the story, the protagonist of the movie, and as I cheer on the champion, ultimately, even that awesome movie is a distraction from the King of champions… That’s how strategically significant the subtlety of Satan is in this realm…

For the church in Ephesus their distractions were ministry, righteousness and works. All good things. All great things. But love is all about priority. Think of it this way. Love is revealed in the original works of man. Adam did nothing except for what the Lord introduced him to and led him to each day. Naming the animals…, God’s idea. Taking a walk in the cool of the day, God’s idea. Adam just rose, went to the Lord, followed Him daily and then rested. That is still, that remains the absolute highest form of life for any man or woman and God wants that for us! Think of it, the perfect man, the perfect world, the perfect day… And that is God’s desire for you and for me…

How? What brings that about? Love the Lord your God with ALL… There will be more than plenty remaining for everybody and everything else in your life when your priorities are perfect. And this is the nevertheless that Jesus had for these superb faithful saints of Ephesus.

Revelation Chapter 2 Verse 5

· Notice the pattern. Remember, repent, do (I’ve missed this step in years past) and return. Consider, the directive from Jesus is not to repent. The directive from Jesus is to love. To get back to or maybe start for the first time walking in the primary commandment and singular purpose for every human life. To know the Lord your God and to love Him with your all. Repentance and this pattern is the pathway back to the directive, which is to love.

· Love includes an element of the heart and an element of the hands. You’ve heard that love is not an emotion but rather an action, a resolve, a decision, and that is entirely true. That involves physical action and spiritual, heart of hearts, involvement. Love cannot be fully or truly expressed without the heart being given over to love AND the reality of actions, works, something in the physical of service towards the object of that love. If one is missing then love is incomplete.

· 1 John 3:18 says, “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” In deed…, the reality of outward works, outward perceivable and receivable deeds…, and in truth, the spiritual, heart of hearts involvement. Precisely what Jesus gives us here in this pattern of remember, repent, do and return…

· A remembrance is not like a forgotten memory. This word means to be contemplative. It’s a word that I have no chance of pronouncing in the Greek and it means to harbor in the mind and there is even an implication of punishment to this word. Why? What’s that mean? It implies personal accountability. Remember what it is that has distracted, disillusioned, decayed, what has caused you to be more like meager men and less like the image of God in which you were created…, and rather than give excuse, deflection, defense or justifying your own sin, see your sin for just that…, YOUR sin… and allow yourself to be corrected by the Holy Spirit…

· 2 Corinthians 7:10 says, “For Godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted….” Folks want the salvation part of the situation…, the job, the relationship, the problem, the conflict…, but want no part of the personal sorrow…, but that’s how it works. Taking yourself into account, by yourself, to deal with yourself and to grow in maturity, wisdom…, and this is the truth part of love as John says let us love in deed AND in truth!

· Once you’ve done that, dealt with yourself apart from anyone else’s role in the issue, dealt with your own selfishness, sinfulness…, now the door is open to repentance. You cannot agree with God when He is telling you there is a problem unless you see the problem yourself! You ever heard the saying, “you can’t fix someone that sees no problem in their behavior?” Same thing. Remember, that step of the pattern is much more difficult and entirely more of a process than repentance. Repentance is a moment in time, remembrance is a process… People think it’s tough to repent, nope. The tough part is the accountability involved in remembering…

· Then Jesus says, “do the first works.” Repentance without works is a sure sign that there was no remembrance. Let me say it differently, more clearly. If someone says they are sorry for what they’ve done, they ask for forgiveness, and yet there is not overt action of everything possible that they can think of doing to make things right, that means they haven’t taken personal accountability, they still blame you and others, and that is not true repentance. In other words, that is not true love… Love in deed and in truth….

· So, there is an action, an activity, everything possible that can be done until the hurt is done, involved in repentance and love. And one of the hardest things to do is to love and forgive someone that says they are sorry and yet you know they are not, because there is so much left undone in making things right…, but that is exactly what God calls and enables us to do through His example and comfort… But it’s still hard…

· Then Jesus gives an opposite promise that was given by Paul in 2 Corinthians… Paul says follow the pattern and it will lead to salvation… Jesus says don’t go this route and that candlestick, which in context is the ministry, the church, the light-stand to the world but in metaphor is the marriage, the relationship, the sweetness, the bond, the purity of it all, will be gone…

Revelation Chapter 2 Verse 6

· Now, who were the Nicolaitans? To understand we need to break down the word. “Nicos” literally means “conquest” and “laity” literally means “the people of the church.” And so, the Nicolaitans were those, (and still are those), that come on the scene and they lord spiritual authority over the people. “Oh you want to come to God? Gotta be through me.” But what did Paul say? 2 Corinthians 1:24, “Not that we have dominion over you,” or, via another translation, “We do not seek to have dominion over you, be we are fellow workers for your joy; for by faith, you stand.”

· Jesus said in Matthew 20:25-26, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant.” The church should not attempt or step into some sort of role to run the lives of the people and you certainly don’t get to God through me or any spiritual leader, through any saint, angel or mother of God. You have direct access to God.

· Jesus uses a massive word here twice in His letter to the church in Ephesus… He says he hates this type of pious behavior because it is a massive distraction that causes people to put their faith in people and not in God…

Revelation Chapter 2 Verse 7

· Who says this? Jesus or the Spirit? Trick question, They speak with one voice because They are One.

· The personal application as well as the eternal motivation is given here by Jesus. There were two trees in the Garden of Eden. The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Once they sinned and ate from the tree that they weren’t supposed to eat from, the Tree of Life from that point on was off limits, in fact…, the entire garden became off limits because this tree was the center of it.

· Genesis 3:22-24, “Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.”

· The Tree of Life, its fruit, is that which gives eternal life. So, it was off limits once sin was in the bloodstream. As man would eat of it and essentially be doomed to hell. Stuck in a sinful state which would drive us eternally to be apart from God. God would not have it that way. So, check this out, the Tree of Life, eternal lifeforce Himself, stepped into His own creation to deal with sin… One could say that Jesus is the Tree of Life as we read in John 3:16, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life… He actually revealed this in John 15:1, “I am the vine and My Father the gardener.”

· We don’t hear or see of the Tree of Life again until Revelation 22:2 and 14, “In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” “Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city.”

· What did the Ephesians lack? Love. Their greatest need, our greatest need…their primary point of deficiency, our primary point of deficiency…the first church to be addressed by Jesus and frankly the first-place issue…a prioritized fervent love for, a life built around a real (in truth and in deed) relationship with our God. We haven’t lost it, we’ve left it…, and the meaning and purpose of life is to get back to it…