The Lord to Ephesus continues…

2:4 “Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.”

• Sound doctrine is great and Ephesus had this.  But, they failed having left their first love.  We must serve God with all we have (Matthew 22:36-38). Some congregations think that mostly right is right enough, but God does not say that (James 2:10).
• What a shame it is to fight the good fight of faith and forget why you are doing so!

• Remember… The work of a preacher of the Gospel is to bring about a remembrance (I Timothy 4:6).
• The church at Ephesus had to remember where they once were in the faith and go back to that, thus they were needful of repentance.
• The “or else” is clear.  If they did not repent the Lord would remove them from their place in His body the church.  They would be delivered unto Satan (I Timothy 1:20).

• Again, they are accredited for hating false doctrine.
• As we will see in the exhortation to Pergamos (2:15) the Nicolaitans were false teachers.  History dictates that the Nicolaitans LIKELY followed the doctrine of Gnosticism which is the doctrine of salvation by knowledge. Only knowledge of the truth (John 8:32) and action upon that knowledge gives salvation (James 2:24-26).  Gnosticism places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge. Gnostics were "people who knew", and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know. Gnosticism is a collective name for a large number of greatly-varying and pantheistic-idealistic [the view according to which God and the world are one] sects, which flourished for some time before the first century down to the fifth century, and which, while borrowing the phraseology and some of the tenets of the chief religions of the day, and especially of Christianity, held matter to be a deterioration of spirit, and the whole universe a depravation of the Deity, and taught the ultimate end of all being to be the overcoming of the grossness of matter and the return to the Parent-Spirit, which return they held to be facilitated by the appearance of some God-sent Savior still to come, who yet never has.

• The ending plea, as we will see throughout the instructions to the churches, is to listen and act upon what is being said.
• Overcoming the obstacles this world presents is the goal in finishing the course, while keeping the faith (II Timothy 4:6-8).
• The tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God is mentioned also in Revelation 22:2 and 22:14, in which we come to understand from those passages is the reward of eternal life.

• Smyrna was 40 miles north of Ephesus.  It was the second great city of Asia with a population in the days of John of around 200,000.  It was a sea coast city now called Izmir which is now a Turkish city that boasts populations of over 1,000,000.  Smyrna was an ancient city which was thought to be first inhabited by the Hittites.  Smyrna was known as a city that was a friend to Rome and was known for its emperor worship. Once a year it was required that every Roman citizen burn a pinch of incense on the altar and say, "Caesar is Lord". Those who did so received a certificate to show he had performed his religious duty. Those who refused to say this were persecuted and killed because they refused to acknowledge Caesar as "Lord of all".  Smyrna also had statues of the goddess Demeter (Ceres to the Romans, goddess of harvest, earth, marriage, and social order) and Poseidon (Neptune to the Romans) the god of the sea. These statues represented their domination of both land and sea.
• Polycarp was an elder at Smyrna. "Polycarp was arrested and ordered to say "Lord Caesar" and to offer incense to the image of Emperor Antoninus Pius (AD 138-161). Upon refusing to do so, Polycarp was then asked to swear by the fortune of the emperor, to deny Christ.  He was sentenced to death by burning because he would not comply with the wishes of the authorities. He is remembered for his offer to teach the Roman soldiers, and for saying, 'Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury; how then can I blaspheme my King and Savior?' About ten other Christians were martyred at the same time" (Jenkins, Ferrell, Studies in the Book of Revelation, p. 50).
• Again, we see that the angel or messenger of the church is addressed.
• Christ is identified as the first and the last.  While the attribute of being everlasting applies to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; we can see that Christ is the one identified because He alone was resurrected (Luke 24:1-8, I Corinthians 15:1-10, and Colossians 1:12-18).

• Christ says that he knows their works as he told the brethren in Ephesus.
• He knows their tribulation, of which Christians are sure to face.  However, there is comfort in the fact that Jesus overcame tribulation and we can too (John 16:33).  Tribulation will help us build our endurance and hope (Romans 5:1-5).
• Jesus says he knows their poverty and then tells them that they are rich.  Our lack of physical wealth means nothing spiritually.  Christ died so that we could become spiritually rich (II Corinthians 8:9).
• There was a group of individuals with misplaced knowledge and understanding of the scriptures.  While Jews in the flesh, these individuals were working against the true children of the Lord.  Being a Jew makes no one a child of God (Galatians 3:26-29 and Galatians 6:15-16).
• The reason that Jesus says these false individuals were of the synagogue of Satan is that they deny the Lord, yet proclaim to be His people.  Lying and rejection of the Lord are marks of those in the kingdom of darkness (Matthew 12:30 and John 8:44).

• There is nothing to fear when the Lord is on your side (Romans 8:28-31, II Timothy 1:7, and I John 4:18).
• Jesus points out that some of them would be cast into prison.  Prisons were not uncommon places for the faithful to be found (Acts 16:22-36, Acts 22:3-4; 26:10, and II Corinthians 6:1-6).
• The time period of ten days is used to show that this specific persecution will be short.
• The Lord exhorts them to be faithful not just for a short period of time, but until they die that they might have the crown of life given to those who overcome and remain faithful (I Peter 1:3-9).

2:11 “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.”

• A very similar statement is made likened unto what the Lord said in conclusion to the church at Ephesus (2:7).
• Instead of the approach Jesus used to Ephesus of promising the tree of life, here we find the same point made from another direction.  You will be saved from the second death (Revelation 20:6; 14; 21:8), when you are delivered into eternal life.  Knowing that there is a reward at the end of something helps us to keep pressing on.  Thus, both Ephesus and Smyrna are told the same thing, but in different ways.

1. All Scripture quotations are from the King James Version unless otherwise noted.
2. James Orr, John L. Nuelsen, Egar Mullins, Morris Evans, and Melvin Grove Kyle, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Hendrickson, 1929),
3. Brian A. Yeager, Textual Sermons on the Seven Churches of Asia Minor, (www.wordsoftruth.net; 2003).
4. Joseph H. Thayer, Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, (Reprint by Hendrickson, 2002, original copyright 1896).
5. Jenkins, Ferrell, Studies in the Book of Revelation, p. 50