Cooled Love

Cooled Love - Restoring Our Affections for Christ Rev 2:1-8 Passion for Christ 4 From where you have fallen

Pursuit of Him Acts 19:8-9 8 And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. 9 But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. This group of believers were pursing intimacy with Christ. They sat under Paul and Timothy’s teaching soaking everything in. It was not a drudgery to be in the Lord’s presence but a delight. They willingly gave themselves to the Word of God that they might know Christ and walk in a manner pleasing to him. Their deep love and affection for their savior called them to sit at his feet and savor every morsel of his deep abiding affection for them. They loved him who steadfastly and unconditional loved them. Their affections were stirred to be with him and know the heights depths and riches of his love for them. When spending time with Jesus and his people is no longer a bright spot in your day but a blight on your day your love for his has cooled.

Proclamation of Him Acts 19:18-20 18 Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. 19 And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. 20 So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. They loved to tell of the one they loved. There was no fear of proclaiming Jesus, even in the midst of great suffering and intense persecution. The perfect love of and affection for their savior cast out all fear of evangelism. They could not help but speak of the one who loved them and gave his life for them. When you are silent about Him rather then speak of Him your love has grown cold.

Purpose of Him Acts 19:10,26 10 This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks. 26 And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. Their love for Jesus was so wonderful that they were compelled to let his name and glory be made known throughout the world. Fulfilling the Great commission was their purpose, because it was the purpose of the one who loved them and sent them to nations. They loved mission because they loved Jesus. Missions was birthed in their heart out of their affection for Jesus. When you want to be of the world rather than in the world, when you delight more in the world then despair over the sinfulness of the world, your love for Christ has cooled. The church is commended for it’s diligence in duty, it’s determination through hardship and it’s doctrinal soundness, but all of this religiosity was not motivated out of a love for Christ. Here the text is saying they served the Lord, survived persecution and stood doctrinally, but did it out of religious duty for Jesus rather than relational delight in Jesus. So there may seem to be all the patient endurance, dauntless courage (and doctrinal soundness) that there should be and yet, as a fair apple may have a worm at its core, so may it be with the Church when it looks best to the eyes of friends. (Spurgeon)

Perception of Christ 4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Gk Aphiemi apo from, hiemi to send so literally it means to send away, to

dismiss. It can also mean to leave, go way from one or abandon, or leave destitute. The sin that Christ charged this church with was their decay and declension in holy love and zeal: Thou hast left thy first love; not left and forsaken the object of it but lost the fervent degree of it that at first appeared. Here is how: (1.) The first affections of men towards Christ, and holiness, and heaven, are usually lively and warm. . . . (2.) These lively affections will abate and cool if great care is not taken, and diligence used, to preserve them in constant exercise. (3.) Christ is grieved and displeased with his people when he sees them grow remiss and cold towards him, and he will one way or other make them sensible that he does not take it well from them. (Henry) This was love declining—“You have left your first love.” “Is that serious?” asks one. It is the most serious evil of all, for the Church is the bride of Christ and for a bride to fail in love is to fail in all things! It is idle for the wife to say that she is obedient and so forth, if love for her husband has evaporated. Her wifely duty cannot be fulfilled—she has lost the very life and soul of the marriage state. So, my Brothers and Sisters, this is a most important matter, our love to Christ, because it touches the very heart of that communion with Him which is the crown and essence of our spiritual life. As a Church we must love Jesus or else we have lost our reason for existence! A Church has no reason for being a Church when she has no love within her heart, or when that love grows cold. . . . almost any disease may be hopefully endured except disease of the heart? But when our sickness is a disease of the heart, it is full of danger and it was so in this case—“You have left your first love.” It is a disease of the heart, a central, fatal disease, unless the Great Physician shall interpose to stay its progress and to deliver us from it. No peril can be greater than this! Lose love, lose all! Leave our first love, we have left strength, peace, joy and holiness! When I begin to leave off loving Christ, or love Him less than I did, I would like to find it out myself and, if I did so, there would soon be a cure for it. But for my Master to find it out, oh, it seems so hard, so sad a thing! That we should keep on growing cold, and cold, and cold and never care about it till the Beloved points it out to us! Why even the angel of the Church did not find it out—the minister did not know it! But He saw it who loves us so well that He delights in our love and pines when it begins to fail. To Him we are unutterably dear. He loved us up out of the Pit into His bosom. He loved us up from the dunghill among beggars to sit at His right hand upon His Throne—and it is sorrowful that He should have to complain of our cooling love while we are utterly indifferent to the matter! Does Jesus care more about our love than we do? He loves us better than we love ourselves! How good of Him to care one jot about our love! This is not a complaint of an enemy, but of a dear wounded Friend. I notice that Jesus found it out with great pain. I can hardly conceive a greater grief to Him as the Husband of His Church than to look her in the face and say, “You have left your first love.” What can she give Him but love? Will she deny Him this? A poor thing is the Church in herself—her Lord married her when she was a beggar—and if she does not give Him love, what has she to give Him? If she begins to be unfaithful in heart to Him, what is she worth? Why, an unloving wife is a foul fountain of discomfort and dishonor to her husband! O Beloved, shall it be so with you? Will you grieve Emmanuel? Will you wound your Well-Beloved? Church of God, will you grieve Him whose heart was pierced for your redemption? Brother, Sister, can you and I let Jesus find out that our love is departing, that we are ceasing to be zealous for His name? Can we wound Him so? Is not this to crucify the Lord afresh? Might He not hold up His hands, this morning, with fresh blood upon them, and say, “These are the wounds which I received in the house of my Friends. It was nothing that I died for them, but evil it is that, after having died for them, they have failed to give Me their hearts”? (Spurgeon) What is meant by leaving your first love? The flaming love that you had for Christ the day you were delivered from the kingdom of darkness; the burning heart that you had like those on the Road to Emmaus when the Scripture and the truth dawned on you and you saw the significance of His death and resurrection; the day when you realized that you had been delivered from the world; the day when you felt like Peter: “Lord, You know I love you” in John 21 – those early days of hot hearts, passionate labor. Devotion to Christ, being consumed with Him, with loving Him was becoming replaced by a kind of dutiful, doctrinal coldness. The heat of that first love was gone and they left it. For the church at Ephesus: the honeymoon is over. Love for Christ has cooled and this is very dangerous. The cooling of love for Christ is the forerunner of spiritual apathy. Apathy is the forerunner of love for something else. Love for something else means love not for Christ but for something else – and that means compromise with evil, and that means corruption, and that means death, and that means judgment. (Mc Arthur)

Prescription from Christ 5

Commands Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.

Remember At first, nothing diverted you from your Lord. He was your life, your love, your joy. Now you look for recreation somewhere else and other charms and other beauties win your heart. Are you not ashamed of this? Once you were never wearied with hearing of Him and serving Him. Never were you overdone with Christ and His Gospel—many sermons, many Prayer Meetings, many Bible readings—and yet none too many! Now sermons are long, services are dull and you must have your jaded appetite excited with novelties. How is this? Once you were never displeased with Jesus, whatever He did with you. If you had been sick, or poor, or dying, you would still have loved and blessed His name for all things. He remembers this fondness and regrets its departure. He says to you, today, “I remember you, the kindness of your youth, the love of your espousals, when you went after Me in the wilderness.” You would have gone after your Lord anywhere in those days—across the sea, or through the fire you would have pursued Him— nothing would have been too hot or too heavy for you then! Is it so now? Remember! Remember from where you are fallen. Remember the vows, the tears, the communing, the happy raptures of those days! Remember and compare them with your present state. Remember and consider that when you were in your first love, that love was none too warm. Even then, when you did live to Him and for Him and with Him, you were none too holy, none too consecrated, none too zealous (Spurgeon)

Repent Gk Metanoeo from meta meaning change of condition and Noeo to perceive it means “to change one‘s mind and purposes,” and, along with that, “to change one‘s conduct or demeanor.” (Barnes) It is a present active imperative implying an urgent appeal for instant change of attitude and conduct before it is too late (Robertson) It does not indicate mere regret, such as may be caused by the consequence of our actions. That regret may be the beginning of good, but of itself it is not repentance. Repentance is a change in the mind. It implies a true sense of sin and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ. It is the turning of the inner being from sin to God. (Culross)

Restore Be restored to a passion persistent and purposeful pursuit of Him (Zech 1:3) They might seem at Ephesus to have ground for saying, "We have never ceased working from the very beginning," and in a sense they had not. But their works were not the same as at first; in a measure the love was out of them, the love that not merely made them vital, but gave them beauty in the Lord's sight. The summons to do the first works is, therefore, a summons to begin, as it were, over again, throwing love into every deed. (Culross). The first works can only come of the first love! There must be in every declining Christian a practical repentance. Do not be satisfied with regrets and resolves. Do the first works—do not strain after the first emotions—but do the first works. No renewal is so valuable as the practical cleansing of our way. If the life is made right, it will prove that the love is so. In doing the first works, you will prove that you have come back to your first love. The prescription is complete because the doing of the first works is meant to include the feeling of the first feelings, the sighing of the first sighs, the enjoying of the first joys—these are all supposed to accompany returning obedience and activity. (Spurgeon)

Caution If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. the church gave light in Ephesus; and that what he would do in regard to that place would be like removing a lamp, and leaving a place in darkness. The expression is equivalent to saying that the church there would cease to exist (Barnes) Sins are the snuffs that dim our candlestick and threaten the removal of it. (Trapp) if you lose your first love, may soon lose your joy, your peace, your usefulness! You who are now so bright, may grow dull. You who are now so useful, may become useless. You were once an instructor of the foolish and a teacher of babes—but if the Lord is withdrawn, you will instruct nobody, you will be in the dark yourself (Spurgeon)

Promise of Christ 7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.' In contrast to the Fall which took place in the Paradise of God, we have man eating of the Tree of Life and so living forever! If we, through Grace, overcome the common tendency to decline in love, then shall we be confirmed and settled in the favor of the Lord. The reward of love is to eat the Fruit of Life. Marvelous things are locked up in the cases of which Love holds the key. Sin set the angel with a flaming sword between us and the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden—but Love has quenched that sword and now the angel beckons us to come into the innermost secrets of Paradise. We shall know as we are known when we love as we are loved. We shall live the life of God when we are wholly taken up with the love of God. The love of Jesus answered by our love to Jesus makes the sweetest music the heart can know! No joy on earth is equal to the bliss of being all taken up with love to Christ.(Spurgeon) You may still come to church, you might still work, still give, still believe, still sing, and you still hold to the truth, but I know you don’t love Me like you did - the supreme motive. What about you? Can you take it or leave it coming to church, take it or leave it reading the Scripture? You believe the right things. Are they as precious to you as they once were when you came bursting out of darkness into light, when you were delivered from sin and death and hell? Or have you grown cold. (Mac Arthur)