Kevin Borrett starts a two part look at a ‘Revelation’ church:

As I write this letter from Gibraltar, separated from Spain by a short isthmus (a narrow strip of land with sea on either side, forming a link be-tween two larger are-as of land), I’m reminded about John, one of the original 12 disciples of Christ, who was exiled to an island called Patmos, off the coast of Turkey, who wrote a letter in 95AD to his home church in Ephesus.

He wrote words of Jesus he had received:
“2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have test-ed those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them false. 3 You have perse-vered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary. 4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. Revelation Chapter 2 verses 2-5

In verses 2-4 Jesus praises the church in three specific ways. Firstly, the church at Ephe-sus was a Working Church. It had active workers. He says v2, “I know your deeds and perseverance”. This was a church that had a lot of activities. They worked, they worked hard, and they kept on working.

Its good to work for God, but sometimes God wants us to not be so busy working; instead he wants us to be busy “being about him”, to be more like Mary, and not Martha, in the way we worship him. Often we tie our identity and our worth to what we do for a living, what job we hold down. Men, listen because I think we are guilty of this more than women!

Jesus then goes on to commend the church at Ephesus as being a Well-Taught Church. The church not only dealt with false teachers in the church, but it dealt with those of other religions around them every day. We are so blessed by Calix’ ministry, as well as that of others and our various weekly groups.

Thirdly, Jesus acknowledges the church at Ephesus was also a Weathered Church v3. They had been through a lot — been there, done that! They had faced trial after trial: problem after problem. Sometimes we get weary from the effect of trials and can want to give up. We can say, “Let someone else do it … I’m tired of serving in the church.” The lesson for us here is that they didn’t let wea-riness overcome them. Neither should we!

A Working Church, A Well taught Church, a Weathered Church. BUT then we get a change of tone and the Warning to the Church v4 …

Kevin
Elder
December 2020

(But we’ll look forward to Kevin’s thoughts on that in the second part of his letter from Gibraltar next month)