Flipside Christian Church

Welcome.

I'll go ahead and add my welcomes

to those that have already been spoken
this morning.

Hey, I just want to take a minute and tell
everybody who's here this morning.

Good for you being in church,
making church a priority.

The Bible talks a lot about,
something called the first fruits.

It says it talks about the first fruits
of your time, your talent, your treasure.

And, everybody always talks about Monday
being the first day of the week.

Well, maybe the work week,
but the first day of the week is Sunday.

And good for you for, giving God
the first fruits of your time.

I'm confident
that he's going to honor that in ways

that we could have never imagined
this week.

As we go about doing, hopefully what
we're going to talk about today.

If we have not met before,
my name is Jeff.

I'm going to try
to adjust this wire real quick.

My name is Jeff.

I'm on staff here at flip Side.

I was thinking, as I prepared for this,
today, our time together.

Today, I was thinking about the fact
that I'm, This year marks

ten years of me being on staff at flip
side.

Crazy. Crazy.

Thank you. I wasn't looking
for applause, but thank you.

The other

the other
milestone that I'm celebrating this year.

Since I was considering milestones,

is my wife,
Jennifer, and I are going to be

celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary
this year.

Couple of months in September.

Yeah. It's crazy.

It's weird.

If you've been married
for any significant amount of time.

There's things about
when you got married that

if you're like me,
they seem like yesterday.

And then there's things about it
that seem like a lifetime ago.

Like an eternity ago.

And I was just sitting there reflecting

on, specifically that time of our wedding.

We got married in September,

and during our, we have a
we had a relatively short engagement.

It was long enough to plan a wedding.

And then we were we're we're married.

But during our engagement,
I had happened to me.

What I think happens to a lot of people,
especially guys.

There's a lot of speculation
about marriage

in general,
but your marriage in particular,

and with guys, it takes the form
a lot of of a lot of kind of doomsday

foreboding, like all the freedoms
you're going to lose once you get married.

Like when you get married, no more guitar.

Forget about that.
Or when you get married.

No more guys night out.

Forget about that. When you get married,
forget about that.

And I remember kind of,
you know, hearing this talk

thinking, oh my God,
I kind of braced myself for marriage.

It's really kind of unfortunate.

I kind of braced myself for marriage,
with all these freedoms

that I'd be losing because I got married.

And then once I got married
and got a few weeks,

a few months into it,
I thought I kind of like being married.

It's kind of cool.

Kind of a sweet gig. This marriage,

but something that nobody prepared me for.

Kids.

Some of you
I knew, some of you in this room.

I knew when I was engaged.

And I'm holding this against you
for not telling me about this.

Instead of marriage. Nobody.

Nobody warned me about kids.

At least. Maybe I didn't.

Maybe I wasn't listening.

I don't know, maybe the joy
of being married, like, overshadowed the.

I just
don't think anybody told me about it.

They never warned me about.

Once you have kids.

Dot, dot, dot, where do you have kids?

Dot dot dot
and then our first, daughter was born.

That in and of itself was a shock
because my dad's dad, my dad's,

my grandfather, one of four boys, my dad,
one of three boys, one of me two boys.

I know the numbers are dwindling, but
I just thought, I'm going to have sons.

I know there are daughters out there
and people have them.

I'm just not going to be one of them.

And then this little time,
she was so tiny.

You guys, this little girl's born.

And I remember literally holding her like,
you know, like, hold a delicate

piece of, you know,

pottery or whatever.

Holding her and telling Jen, what do I do?

I have no idea what to do.

But there was parenting, like it or not.

You're a parent.

And then I don't know what came over us.

Maybe we thought we'll have another one,
because the two will occupy each other's

time, and we'll get to somehow
go take a nap.

I don't know where we were.

I don't know what we were thinking,
but 16 months later, Ali came around

and I just remember thinking,
this parenting stuff is difficult.

I'm not trying to pin anything on Ali.

I mean, everybody knows it's my favorite
anyway, so.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. You guys.

The two of them are 16 months apart.

The two of them together.

Was just overwhelming.

I remember thinking to myself, they.

These don't stop.

They come at you all the time. They don't.

Have you ever tried to call a timeout
when you're parenting?

There are no timeouts.

Please. I just wanted to call a timeout.

Nope.

Parenting just came fast and furious.

The thing about that is,
there was two of everything.

If you have twins,
you know what I'm talking about.

If you have kids

that are real close in age,
you know it comes in like biblical waves.

There's two of everything.
There were two kids on the bottle.

There were two kids in diapers.

There were two car seats everywhere.

My parents,
they bought them two of every outfits.

Bottom two of everything. Toys, bottom
two of everything.

And I just remember thinking,
oh my gosh, I can't.

As rough as all that was,

the thing that really was
the most difficult thing

was when they would get sick together

because they have no sense
of personal space,

one would get sick
and I knew it would that afternoon.

The other would be sick

because they sneeze in each other's mouth
and wipe each other's nose on it.

I just remember thinking,
you guys separate now.

They have no sense of personal space.

That was the most difficult
when they would get sick together.

And I'll never forget
there was one winter that some sort of flu

ran through the ran through the house
or whatever, but they were both sick.

There was two of them.
So we had a man to man defense.

You know what I'm talking about.

You know, whichever parent is closest
to the one given the biggest problem that

that's that's my man
right there. Pick that pick that one up.

And so I had

Ali in my left arm
about 230 in the morning.

And I had Ali and she was screaming
in my face, you know what kids do.

They just
they don't have any have any couth.

They just scream right in your face.

She's screaming right in my face.

And I had the bottle here,

and I would feed her a little bit
and she would eat a little bit,

and then she just spit the bottle out
and scream in my face a little bit more.

And I remember thinking,

oh, I'm going to chuck this spot.

We lived in our old house in Fresno,
and they had the single pane windows,

and I thought, I'm
going to chuck this bottle.

Good thing I didn't chuck the

I'm going to chuck this bottle
through our kitchen window.

Like the last semblance of control
I had over a situation

that I had no control over.

I'm going to chuck this bottle
through that window,

and that the days before
rage rooms that'll make me feel good.

And so

I throw my arm back, full head of steam,
come forward.

But I extended my arm too far
and I hit the side of the refrigerator.

The bottle skids
across the top of the refrigerator, loses

momentum, lands on the counter, slides
across the countertop, hits

the lip of the sink, and gracefully lands
right side up in the sink

where it should have been
in the first place.

And I was like,
I can't even do that right?

Kids screaming in my face.

And I remember that

winter, that night really.

I can laugh about it now, but that night

really began about a two year
period, maybe two and a half to three year

period in my life where I was just there.

I would
you've heard the phrase phoning it in.

I was phoning it in, I was robotic,
I was just going through things.

I wasn't necessarily tired or

what the Bible calls weary,
although there were moments of that.

But that long period of time,

something was going on where I was just
you've heard the phrase losing it.

I was losing it.

I was losing the source.

The parenting thing was getting to me,

and I was just numb.

We've been in this series
where we're taking a look

at two letters that the apostle Paul
wrote to his protege, Timothy.

That's the series
we've been in for a while.

We actually just started
the second letter last week.

And Timothy is pastoring in a church.

Anybody remember where he was pastoring
the church?

Ephesus.

Timothy is pastoring
a church in a place called Ephesus.

So, if you know that area,
the church is back in that day,

we're not necessarily like we have
this church building.

Was anybody here
when flip side was at the high school?

Just remember that. Yeah.
A few of you were.

That's
when we first started coming to flip side.

And it would basically

it was a set up and a tear down
every week over called church in a box

set up and tear down
every week over at the high school.

Well,
the church is back in this first century.

We're like home churches.

And so when it says Timothy was pastoring
the church in Ephesus,

it was the group of Christian followers,
Jesus followers there in Ephesus

that were comprised of a bunch
of really smaller home churches.

That's where Timothy was, and that's
where these two letters find him from.

Paul.

So Carl's going to pick back up
next week in second Timothy.

But what I want to do this week
is kind of zoom out from where we've been,

get a broader picture
of what was going on with that church,

because when we take a take a look at it
in a general sense, we find out

that the Bible has a lot to say about this
church that Timothy was pastoring in.

And it has a lot to say to us

it's 2000 some odd years later.

The Bible has a lot to say to us
by looking at this church in Ephesus.

So that's where we're going to be today.

It actually goes
all the way back to the book of acts.

If you've heard of that,

if you've never read the book of acts,
and you think the book the Bible is

boring, read
the Book of Acts reads like an epic novel.

Once I started it,
I'm like, I cannot put this down.

But Paul
went on for mission missionary journeys,

and they're all chronicled
throughout the book of acts.

And towards the end, there,

around chapter 1920,
it talks about Paul traveling

by land down through
what's what is now modern day Turkey.

And he comes to the city of Ephesus.

And the city of Ephesus is comprised
mostly of what's called Gentiles,

basically non-Jewish people.

The Gentiles were not

they were they were polytheistic

with no multiple gods,
just to go see the god of the sky.

They were idol worshipers.

They had temples set up for idol worship.

They had people there who would
make these idols and they'd sell them.

It was a whole thing, a whole way of life.

And Paul literally walks in

and starts preaching the gospel, starts
talking to people about Jesus,

and he

gets this group, this following,
who start this church.

And so Paul
stays there for quite a bit of time.

There's a, close to a riot there,
because people who are selling stuff

aren't really hip to Paul's message,

because he's stealing their business
by preaching this one.

God and Jesus, his son, crucified.

They're not really digging it,
but Paul goes through the throes of what

it means to plant a church in a place
where nothing has been there before.

He's not riding anybody's
coattails, really.

He's starting from scratch, and so he
stays there for a certain amount of time,

and he starts this church and it actually
takes off, starts doing well.

In the midst

of all these struggles and challenges,
the church actually starts doing well.

And so Paul realizes, you know,
God has called me to this ministry.

I need to move on.

I need to carry out ministry
in other parts of the world.

But before he

leaves, he addresses
what's called the church elders.

And so that's where we're going to be.

If you brought your Bible with you,
we're going to be in acts chapter 20.

We're going to start at verse 28.

Paul is addressing before he leaves.

He's that he's talking to the group
of elders, and he's kind of telling them

what to brace themselves for.

Start picking up at verse 28.

He says, keep watch over yourselves
and all the flock

of which the Holy Spirit has made
you overseers.

Be shepherds of the church of God,
which he bought with his own blood.

I know that after I leave,
savage wolves will come in

among you, and will not spare the flock,
even from your own number.

Men will arise and distort the truth in
order to draw away disciples after them.

Be on your guard, so be on your guard.

He says.

Remember that for three years
I never stopped warning each of you

night and day with tears.

That's sort of a tough goodbye.

That's
kind of like more of a careful danger.

Be beware.

I'm out.

But one of the things we know about
the time we've spent looking

at our letters to Timothy is
this is exactly what happens.

This is the exact thing that happens.

Savage wolves will come in among you,
and we'll not spare the flock.

Even your own number will distort
the truth in order to draw disciples

away from them.

Paul's letters have been talking
about beware of false teaching.

Beware of false doctrine.

Beware of these people
who are going to come in

and are going to try to try
to distort the teachings of Jesus,

and they're going to come in
from among you, he says.

So it's interesting.

From the very get go,
we see that this church is already playing

a substantial part in the growth
of people's faith there in that area.

So sandwiched

between what we just read in acts
19 and chapter 19 and 20,

and the two letters to Timothy
that we had been spending some time in.

Sandwiched in between those two
is a letter to the Ephesian church.

It's a letter to the church in Ephesus.

It's not to Timothy,
it's not to some other elder there.

It's not, the church in Ephesus
actually had other pastors after Timothy.

But this is to the Ephesians.

The church in Ephesus.

So it's very important
that we take a look at this letter,

because that's what we're trying to do
here.

We're trying to live out church.

So this letter is divided

into two two parts, two halves.

It's chapters. There's
six chapters in all.

There's chapters one through three
where Paul gets very theological.

He talks about the spiritual things.

He talks about the grace
that we've been given.

He talks about our standing
in our calling with God.

And then he takes chapters four,
five, and six, and he goes,

then this is what it looks like.

This is how you walk this out.

This is how this all the stuff
that I'm about to tell you,

this is how it looks
as you're living it out.

So real quick this morning
I'm going to try to be brief.

I don't want to spend too much time here,

but I want to take a real quick, quick,
kind of like a whistle stop

tour of the book of Ephesians,
because it's going to help us

talk about what we're what
the rest of our time this morning.

So you don't need to turn there
if you want to.

You can.

But I'm just going to go real quick
through the some really kind of,

some meat of the letter to the Ephesians,

especially in the first three chapters.

This is home to some of the most
famous verses in all of Scripture, really

in chapter one, starting at verse 11,

it says, In Him we were also chosen,

having been predestined
according to the plan of him

who works out everything in conformity
with the purpose of his will, in order

that we who were first

to put our hope in Christ,
might be for the praise of his glory.

And you also were included in Christ

when you heard the message of truth,
the gospel of your salvation,

when you believed you were marked in him
with a seal, the promised spirit.

So Paul's telling these people
who have never really gotten a grasp

of this idea of God, he says, you're
chosen, you're included, you're marked.

Here's your standing with God.

This very weighty
theological, spiritual things.

In chapter two, starting at verse eight,

he says, for it is by grace
you have been saved through faith.

And this is not from yourselves.

It is the gift of God, not by works,
so that no one can boast.

For we are God's handiwork,
created in Christ Jesus to do good works,

which God prepared in advance
for us to do.

That's what.

That's a really famous verse right there

that talks about saved by grace
through faith in Christ, not by works.

If you've ever done any, Bible study
on spiritual gifts,

you camp out a lot
right there in that part of Ephesians.

And then in chapter three,
starting at verse 20,

he says, Now to him who is able to do
immeasurably more than all

we ask or imagine, according to his power
that is at work within us.

To him be glory in the church

and in Christ Jesus throughout
all generations, forever and ever.

And the church said, Amen.

And so Paul's just unpacked some deep
theological truths, encouraging stuff,

telling them their stand,
their newfound standing with God.

And it's almost like he's reminding them

he's setting himself up
because he needs to do that

because of what he's about to talk about
in chapters 4 or 5 and six.

It's a it's
a kind of a setup that he goes through.

So starting in

chapter four, here's
where the sort of rubber meets the road.

Here's where we get down to brass tacks.

Chapter four, verse 25.

Therefore, because of all the stuff
I said in the first three

chapters, therefore each of you
must put off falsehood and speak

truthfully to your neighbor, for
we are all members of one body.

In your anger. Do not sin.

Do not let the sun go down

while you are angry,
and do not give the devil a foothold.

Anyone who has been stealing must steal
no longer, but must work.

Doing something useful

with their own hands, that they may have
something to share with those in need.

And then he says,

do not let any unwholesome talk
come out of your mouth,

but only what is helpful
for building others up

according to their needs,
that it may benefit those who listen.

So he stares off into this.

Here's how it looks practically.

He talks about anger, talks
about speech, talks

about lying, talks about stealing, talks
about building other people up.

And then
he goes into chapter five in verse three.

But among you there must
there must not even be a hint

of sexual immorality
or of any kind of impurity or greed,

because these are improper for God's
holy people.

So he's talking about sex.

He's talking about greed.

Still, in chapter five, he starts,
he uses the word there starting in verse

21, the word none of us like submit to one
another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands
as you do for the Lord.

Husbands, love your wives,
just as Christ loved the church

and gave himself up for her.

And then he kind of bleeds
over into chapter six, verse one.

He says, children,
obey your parents, for this is right.

Verse

four in chapter six, fathers,
do not exasperate your children.

Instead, bring them up in the training
and the instruction of the Lord.

And then we could spend a whole hour
talking about this next verse.

He talks, slaves, obey
your earthly masters with respect and fear

and sincerity of heart,
just as you would obey Christ.

Stuff that really gets twisted sideways
when you try it.

When you try to think about it
in terms of culture.

And then lastly, in chapter six,

starting in verse ten, Paul talks

about what's called spiritual warfare.

He says, finally, be strong in the Lord
and in his mighty power.

Put on the full armor of God so that
you can take your stand against the devil.

Schemes for a struggle
is not against flesh and blood,

but against the rulers,
against the authorities,

against the powers of this dark world,
and against the spiritual spirit,

spiritual forces of
evil in the heavenly realms.

So Paul gives very practical instructions.

At times it's really commands
that he's giving

for these people who are trying
to walk out this way of life.

Many of them, it's
a new way of doing things.

So you might be thinking at this point,
where are we going with this?

Why, why, why?

Look at this.

Why spend time on this?

Here's why.

Flipside I think we have more in common
with the church in Ephesus

than we'd care to admit.

I think we have more in common with
the church in Ephesus than we'd like to.

Then we'd like to see.

Because this is where

we find ourselves all the time.

There's this.

Here's what I heard in church on Sunday,

where it's 72, in fluorescent.

And here's the stuff

that life throws at me, that I am somehow
trying to marry these two together.

This is where we find ourselves.

This is where the Ephesian church

found themselves,
and this is where we find ourselves.

It's so funny.

Whenever I, whenever I talk to like,
like friends and even mild acquaintances

who have not put their faith
in Christ yet.

Inevitably,
the majority of these conversations

get to a point where they say,

this actually used to happen when I was
in, youth ministry all the time.

We had a group of seniors come through
and they were read.

I mean, there were there were thinkers
and they were always asking questions.

And we would talk through these,
these Bible things.

And it was so interesting.

We would inevitably,
on so many of these occasions,

get to a point where they would go,

you don't even need to be a Christian
to know that's true.

You don't even need to be a Christ
follower to know that's how life is.

You don't even need to say
you're a Jesus follower to know

that's the struggle.

That's where the Ephesian church

finds themselves,
and that's where we find ourselves.

There's the good I know I need to do.

There's the good, I know there's the
there's the things God has told me

about me and about him and about us.

And then there's this.

A lot of times, this crazy environment
that I've got to go out

and somehow apply this stuff to.

That's where the church in Ephesus was,

and that's where we find ourselves
so many times.

And that's why
what we're talking about here

today is so important
for us to get Ahold of.

You guys,

anybody either graduate from college or
high school or you just moved up a grade.

Anybody in here?

Wow. Got a lot of.

What about job reviews?

Anybody ever get a review at their job?

Sometimes a merit increase
or a raise is dependent on it.

Remember, in school,
you get a report card.

If you're like me, they would come in
like a half manila envelope.

And there was like this really
suspenseful time where you'd be like,

oh, I was talking to my daughter Sydney
the other day.

It's all online now.

There's no suspense anymore.

It's like trying to hang up.

Remember, in the old days
you could really slam a phone down

when you're you can't do that anymore.

Like the report cards in the old age,
they'd come.

And a lot of times you would
your parents would have to sign them

and send it back
so that they knew that they got sent home.

And somebody significant saw them.

I remember getting that report
card going, oh,

there was a letter C on there a lot,
and sometimes it had a minus a plus.

After it.

Report cards.

So your job review
you know you get you go in.

It's time for a merit increase.

There's time for a raise.

And they're like how'd you do.

Let's see how you did get a report card.

What did you get?

Well, how'd you end up this semester?

Wouldn't it be nice

to know how the church in Ephesus did

all we've talked about? Paul, man.

He wrote three letters to that area
set up this year.

Wouldn't it be nice to know how they did,
to kind of go back and go.

How did all flesh out for you, Ephesians?

Where do you end up with this stuff?

One of the things I love

about the Bible.

Is we get a report card on the church
in Ephesus.

We get a report card,
we get to know how they did,

and we need to know how they did

because we're more like them
than we care to admit.

We need to know because life has a way
of making us better.

Life has a way of making us resentful.

Life has a way of piling up regrets.

We lose sight of purpose.

So we need to know.

Someone once told me, it's a very wise
man who can learn from the mistakes

of others instead of making all,
making him all his own.

I learned this, you know,
they say, especially with guys.

They say your frontal lobe develops
some time in your early 20s.

I don't know if it is that my frontal lobe
developed or what, but me

during my teenage years
was me making all my own mistakes.

There were people in my life
that were like, sometimes literally

screaming at me, stop or go.

And I'm like, no, I'm going to go ahead
and make all my own mistakes.

And they're like, they're going.
I did like three years ago.

I did what you're doing.

Stop doing that. And I'd be like,
no, I'm good.

And then somehow around my early 20s,
I'm like,

God has put these guys in my life
that are like ten years older than me.

Perhaps I should start listening to them
and learning from their mistakes

instead of making all my own.

We need to know how the

church in Ephesus did.

So God gives the report card

in the last book of your Bibles
in the Book of Revelation.

It's so interesting.

He gives a report card
for some other churches,

but we just don't have the background
that we have with the church in Ephesus.

There's some other churches that
get report cards there in the first part

of the book of Revelation, but in chapter

two, starting at verse one,

some of your Bibles may say to the church

in Ephesus.

I said, starting in verse

one, starting in verse two,
this is Jesus talking.

Jesus is giving the report card.

That's one of the reasons
this is so valuable.

It's like gold.

My ears are like, please tell me

he's talking to John the Apostle.

John. John is the only one left.

All the other apostles,
all the other apostles have been martyred.

And John is exiled on
this island called Patmos.

And Jesus comes to him and says, John,
there's some stuff

I want you to write down
in. You're in exile here.

So you got all the time in the world.

So grab a pen and write down
what I'm about to tell you.

Jesus says to the church

in Ephesus, right, here we go.

Great time.

These are the words of him
who holds the seven stars

in his right hand and walks
among the seven golden lampstands.

If you've ever

read the book of revelation, it's
really big on symbolism and and imagery.

But suffice it to say,
Jesus talking about himself, he's

the one with the seven
stars in his right hand.

And he says,

I know your deeds,
your hard work, your perseverance.

I know that you cannot tolerate
wicked people, that you have tested

those who claim to be apostles or not
and have found them false.

You have persevered

and have endured hardships for my name
and have not grown weary.

Yeah. Hey,

that's a pretty good report card.

All the stuff that they've been that
they were talked to about.

This is what you want from your kids,
right?

All that stuff that I talk to you about,
do those things and they get it.

Hey, he's like, good job, says Jesus.

That's I mean,

hey, if you have one a day from anybody,
that's what you want to know from, right?

He says, good job, Ephesians.

Good job doing that.

Didn't tolerate wickedness.

All the stuff that Paul talked about with,
false teachers and sound doctrine,

you nailed it.

You nailed it.

You got an A on the final guided people.

But that's not where it ends.

Jesus continues.

In verse four

he says, but I hold this against you.

You have forsaken the love.

You had it.

First, consider how far you have fallen.

Repent and do the things you did at first.

If you do not repent,

I will come to you
and remove your lampstand from its place.

So, like I said,

one of the best things about this
report card is it comes from Jesus Himself

and he says in somewhere along the way

you lost what he calls your first love.

Somewhere along
all of the command, keeping

and the deed doing and the hard work
you lost your first love.

All the instructions,

all the carrying out of the things
that they were talked about.

You lost your motivation for life.

You lost it.

And there's a really important truth

that we need to understand here
this morning,

because when we understand it,
it can save us from things like quitting.

It can save us from things
like hopelessness.

It gives us new perspective on old things.

That's a really good
to have a new perspective on old things.

It makes difficult situations
less difficult.

If we get Ahold of this,
because the fix for the Ephesian church

is the same fix for us,

and it comes in a very short

verse by the same apostle
that Jesus told to write this down.

His name was John,

first John.

There's four letters from John.

It's in the first one,
first John, chapter four, verse 19.

He says,
we love because he first loved us.

Proper
motivation has everything to do with love.

If you've heard anybody ever say
they've lost the love,

that's what they're talking about.

That's what they're talking about.

Returning to our first love
has everything to do with the fact

that the idea of first didn't
start with us in the first place.

This whole idea of first.

It wasn't our doing.

We had nothing to do with it.

If God has everything to do with God,
if God hadn't made the first move,

none of the things we try to do with him,
none of the things

the Ephesian church was trying to do,
none of this,

this marrying between these two things,
none of it would be possible.

And none of it would
have even been relevant.

So here's where I want to camp out.

This is what I want to hit on hard
and look back

at the remainder of our time
here this morning.

When you accept that God loved you first,

it changes the motivation
for everything you do.

When we latch on
to the fact that God loved us first,

it changes our motivation
for everything that we do.

It makes it possible

to do the things that Paul was telling
the Ephesian church to do.

It makes it possible to do
the things that Paul

was writing to Timothy about.

Jesus says, return to your first love,

return to the thing,
and let the motivation be the thing

that called you to faith
in the first place.

There's three things that Jesus talked
about there.

In that last part of revelation. He says,

first thing he says is repent.

Recognize it, ask for forgiveness,
confess it, and then turn and go

the opposite direction.

The Bible says it's not God's judgment.

It's not God's justice.

Those things are there, but those aren't
the thing that calls us to repentance.

The thing that calls us to repentance
is his kindness.

It's his love.

It's the fact that he took the first step
and loved us first.

The second thing the Bible tells us do,

or that Jesus tells
the Ephesian church to do, is return.

Go back to the basics.

Whether you've been following
Jesus for decades,

or whether you're here this morning
and you're just considering this idea

of what it means to be a Christian,
to put your faith in Jesus,

this idea of the basics.

This will fuel
this will fuel your walk with God.

The things

that are elemental,
the fact that God loved me first

while I was still a sinner.

Romans chapter five

verse eight says,
God demonstrates his love toward us,

that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.

I put, I didn't become a Christian
until I was 27 years old,

put my faith in Jesus in August of 1997.

And this was the thing

that drew me to that, to that moment.

It was not all the ridiculous

garbage mistakes that I have made.

Those were there.

But this idea that God loved me last year,
five years ago

when I was doing that stuff
and had no first put God for what?

That even leave me alone?

God still love me.

That idea, that is what drew me to him.

And that is the basic first love that

that Jesus is telling Paul,
or that Jesus is telling John about.

Can you

imagine what this would look like
if we got a hold of this in our lives?

Can you imagine what applying this like?

Tomorrow you walk into work,
you still got the same desk.

You still got the same chair.

There's a window there.

There's still that
same jerk. Two cubicles over.

But we recognize both.

First, the fact that God loved us.

First the God.

The fact that God took the first step.

It changes our perspective on things.

It changes that motivation.

When the girls were little

and I was losing it, what I was not,
I wasn't losing my mind.

There were moments
where I thought that was happening,

but I wasn't losing my mind.
I was losing my motivation.

I was losing this idea of first love.

I was just phoning it in. Robotic

Jesus tells

the church in Ephesus,
you all have become robotic.

Go back to your first love.

Yeah, you got an eye on all that stuff.

But man, one of the things
about those types,

those types of environments is
they're not very appealing.

They're not very welcoming.

None of us want to go, yeah,
that's what I want to sign up for.

That's what I want to get involved in.

This could change.

We get this, get Ahold of this
and apply it to our lives.

It could change everything.

When we were out for my mom's
82nd birthday

the other day, and,
we're at this restaurant,

my daughters were there, and I said,
girls, there was there was a conversation

going on a few tables over,
and I said, girls, please do me a favor.

Please do not let me turn it.

I've come to the realization
that I'm getting older.

I've just embraced it. I've accepted
it. It's happening.

Just can't stop it. Embrace it.

I said, girls, please don't let me turn
into a bitter old man from your world.

I can't stand it when I said,

girls, please
don't let me turn into a bitter old man.

This is the type of thing that keeps
that type of stuff from happening.

Remember your first love

because God shows up every day
and he says, I chose you first.

Let that fuel your walk with God.

If you haven't put your faith in Christ
yet here today, let that fuel you towards

accepting Jesus as your personal Savior.

The last thing

Jesus says to the Ephesian church
he says return, says repent, return.

And the last thing he says is, remember.

So we're going to do that here.

If you did not get a communion cup,
I'm going to invite

the worship team to come up as
we go through this time of remembrance.

If you not did not get a, a cup
with the elements,

go ahead and raise your hand
and somebody will bring one to you.

The Bible tells us that,

on the night
before he was given up to be crucified,

Jesus had supper with his disciples
one last time.

And it was at that meal
that he took the bread,

and he broke it,
and he passed it around to them.

He lifted it up to heaven.

He gave thanks,
and he passed it around to them.

He said, take this bread and eat it.

And each time
you do it, do it in remembrance of me.

So this morning we do that.

The Bible says in a similar way,
Jesus took the cup

and he lifted it up to heaven.

He blessed it and he gave thanks,
and he passed it to all his disciples.

And he said, take this cup,

all of you disciples
here, take this cup and drink from it.

This is a symbol of my blood.

It's going to be a new
and an everlasting covenant,

symbol of my blood
that will be shed for that

for everybody here,
so that sins may be forgiven.

And he said, do this in memory of me.

And so we do that this morning.

Let's pray.

Church, you

God, thank you so much for today.

Thank you for your word.

Thank you that it that it just gives us
such great instruction

for how to how to walk things out,

how to how to put this into
into application, into our lives.

God, you've called us to be some places
this week where we already know.

We already know what's in store.
We already are.

Maybe we've even written stuff down
and and, on a schedule of some sort.

But, God, there's also places

where, we're going to find ourselves
that we we did not plan.

We had no idea
it was going to be a thing in our lives.

There was no playbook for it.

So, God, in those moments,

I pray that we

will let the fact
that you took the first step towards us,

you made the first move,
that you first loved us

and therefore we can have love
be the motivation behind everything we do,

whether it's easy or whether it's hard.

Jesus, help us to do just that to you.

Help us to love you more.

And it's in your name we pray. Amen.