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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

A Call to Revival

Dee Casper

Building a House for My Wife

Why Adventism Matters

When You Lose Your First Love

Sweet Jesus, thank you for this privilege to pray, to be able to come into your presence.

And I just ask that you would bless us 1 more time today, Lord, with a message that is relevant, that is pertinent to the needs in this room.

And I just pray for an extra special measure of your wisdom and your discernment as I tell the story of your faithfulness on my behalf.

So this afternoon's message again is entitled, When You Lose your first love.

What I'd like to do is just kind of give a reality check.

When we say yes to Jesus and embark upon the Christian journey, there's a warfare that we're engaging in.

We live on a battlefield and it's not always easy.

And there can be times when we make these decisions for Christ that Satan comes against us in ways that we weren't expecting.

He kind of lays us out on the mat and it just it slows us down.

It can even cripple us and it's hard to know what to do and how to move forward.

We can have these moments of difficulty in times when our experience gets dry, and in those moments we can be tempted to make compromises, to spend less time with God, and to sacrifice our beliefs for acceptance or relief.

We can find ourselves maybe watering down our experience, not standing so firmly because we just want to break, right?

We're tired of getting beat up, we're tired of being persecuted, tired of going through difficulty, and we don't want to keep fighting this fight anymore.

Satan, I believe that Satan, if he cannot get you, I talked about this earlier this morning, that if he can't deceive you, he'll discourage you.

I believe that 1 of his favorite tools is to press you and to wear you out slowly.

Some of us think that he's just 1 of these quick jab boxers.

He's willing to wear you down, and when this happens, we can end up making concessions if we're not careful.

So, I'd like to just cover some brief examples of church history, and then kind of move into my story, because I'm going to tell it differently, this message, than I normally do, just because of the significance of being in Loma Linda.

So in Revelation chapter 2, beginning in verse 1, we as Seventh-day Adventists take the belief of interpreting end-time prophecy through the lens of historicism.

We believe that things are unfolding in a historical sense, not everything's in the future or everything was in the past.

And in Revelation chapter 2, in the 7 churches, each 1 of these churches is representing a generation, not a specific generation, but a time period throughout church history, from the first century church, Revelation 2 verse 1, all the way until the current-day church, Revelation chapter 3, and in the Church of Laodicea.

So in Revelation chapter 2 beginning of verse 1, listen to this, "...to the angel of the church of Ephesus write, These sayings says he who holds the 7 stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the 7 golden lampstands." And then he says, "...I know your..." What?

"...I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil, and that you've tested those who say that they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars, and you have persevered and have patience and have labored for my namesake and have not become weary.

Verse 4, nevertheless I have this against you that you've left your first love.

Verse 5, remember therefore from where you have fallen and do what?

Repent and do the first works or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place again unless you repent.

Wait a minute, but I thought that they have works, because he saw their works, but then he says go back and do the first works.

In Galatians, we're told that it's a faith that works by love, right?

This is the kind of the premise that God is looking for in our experience, but the first century church went through a great deal of persecution and difficulty, and somehow along the way, they lost their first love.

And so it went from a faith that works by love to just work.

And that can happen inside of the faith movements, yeah?

We can shift from this faith that works by love to just work, still doing stuff, but our hearts aren't in it in the same way.

It's not that love for Jesus that fuels the work, it's just I probably ought to, right?

The English Study Bible comments on verse 4 in this way.

It says that love is the first thing to slip when 1 turns away from God.

That literally, your love for God can diminish while you're still doing things for God.

It's no longer a faith that works by love.

But this you have, you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate, and he who hasn't near, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, to him who overcomes, I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

So this church starts out at the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, but as time goes on and persecution heats up, there are some big choices that have to be made on how they're going to weather this.

Paul warned the elders at the Church of Ephesus, of all places, that savage wolves would come in among them after his departure in Acts 20 and 29.

Paul dies in the AD 60s, right, in the mid 60s.

And so when we lose our first love, we first need to recognize the fact that We do not have the same love and fire that we had at the beginning of our experience.

We have to come face to face with that reality and acknowledge that.

And the solution given is for us to sincerely repent for this disconnect and return to our first works, to pursue that first love once again.

We're told, I believe it's in the steps of Christ, but it's in a place where Ellen White talks about how if you find yourself, you're kind of wearied in your experience, go back to where you left him.

Go back to the things that you did when you did have that love for him.

But go to Revelation chapter 3 to the last church.

And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, these things says the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.

I know your works, that you were neither cold nor hot, and I could wish that you were cold or hot.

A very similar situation, lovelessness, but just this tepid experience, right?

That fire, that zeal isn't there anymore.

So then, because you're lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth.

This type of experience makes him nauseous.

Because you say that I'm rich, have become wealthy, and that I have need of nothing.

And you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

You do not recognize your true condition.

I counsel you therefore to buy from me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich, and white garments that you may be clothed, and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and that you anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see." The big problem here is that we don't actually see that we have a problem.

We're blind and so God in his great love for us has to rebuke us and open our eyes to the issue at hand.

It's not because he doesn't like you that he's rebuking you, it's because he loves you and wants you to be revived that he has to deal with this.

He has to open our eyes to our true condition.

But thankfully he offers us a solution, a three-fold solution.

Gold tried in the fire, a faith that works by love.

White garments, Christ's spotless robe of righteousness, and thirdly, ISAV, spiritual discernment to recognize our true condition and to see ourselves truly.

So this particular church that he's speaking to, they got problems, right?

They've fallen asleep at the wheel to some degree.

They lost the purpose for why they're there and they're just kind of here, right?

In the same way that it's no longer a faith that works by love, it's just work.

There's religious stuff happening but they're not who he intended for them to be.

The zeal has watered down And it's to this very people that he does this next thing in Revelation chapter 3, verse 20.

People whose experience makes him nauseous, but he still loves them, right?

I love you and that's why I'm having to be honest with you, but your experience troubles me.

And it's to these people that in Revelation 3 in verse 20, it says, "...Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

And if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with me." Jesus seems to still feel that there's something of value inside of the home that he does not have access to.

Something about this person's experience that's troubling to him, there's still something of enough value that he's standing at the door waiting.

And we covered this back during restoration, but in the original language, this is actually in the continuative, which means that he has been knocking, he is knocking now, and has no intention of not knocking tomorrow.

Well, why would someone stand and knock on a door that persistently unless there was something inside of value to them?

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Series

A Call to Revival

When You Lose Your First Love

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Disappointment, Depression, and Deliverance Part 1

44m

Keys to Unanswered Prayer

1h 17m

Personal Testimony: From Islam To Adventism

1h 19m

The Necessary Experience

1h 18m

Faith in Action

Making Sense of Suffering

54m

Plenary

When God Calls You

42m

Look Up and Live

The Healer and Restorer

41m

Broken to Breakthrough

1h 6m

Rethinking Mental Health In Evangelism

54m

Alan & Nicole Parker: Love Me, Love Me Not

I Love Me, I Love Me Not, Part 2: Discovering Your Worth in God’s Eyes

1h

Preparing for the Latter Rain: The Judgment Hour Message

Prepare To Meet Your God

1h 15m

A Strange Request

1h 2m

Sound Doctrine