Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church; April 13, 2024
Readings: Mark 9:33-41 (children’s talk); Revelation 1:9-16, 2:1-7; Apocalypse Revealed §§69, 82
Today we’re going to be talking about the different qualities that are part of the Lord’s church. These qualities are represented by seven different churches; and our first reading is from the part of the Word that introduces these seven churches. This is a description of a vision that was shown to the Lord’s servant John. This vision, by the way, is the reason why this room is oriented towards a copy of the Word that is surrounded by seven lampstands—or candlestands. We read from chapter one of Revelation: [vv. 9-16].
This is a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ in His glory as the God of Heaven and Earth. For obvious reasons, it’s a powerful and important picture. But today we aren’t focusing on this picture of the Lord: we’re focusing on the seven churches that are named here. The Lord tells John, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea” (v. 11). Specifically, today’s sermon is about the first of these churches—the church of Ephesus.
To many people, these seven names are just seven strange words. If you don’t know anything about them, then they go by in a blur. They’re the names of seven cities that are located in modern-day Turkey. These cities were centers of the early Christian church. But we’re not going to spend any time on the historical significance of these cities: our focus is on their spiritual significance.
The Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church says that these seven cities, or seven churches, symbolize all of the different states of mind and life that make up the Lord’s New Church. Another way of putting that is that the seven churches symbolize all of the different kinds of people who are able to be part of the New Church. Our next reading is from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book Apocalypse Revealed, which is an explanation of the internal sense of the book of Revelation. At the beginning of the explanation of chapter two of Revelation, Apocalypse Revealed says: [read §69]. There are other passages from Apocalypse Revealed which say that all of the people who are described by these seven churches are “called” to the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem (§§68, 153, cf. §88).
The bottom line is that if we’re trying to be part of the church that is symbolized by the New Jerusalem—that is, if we’re trying to be part of the Lord’s kingdom on earth, if we’re trying to be part of the spiritual communion that is His church—then we probably “belong” to one of these seven churches. So for the next seven or eight Sundays, we’re going to be looking at each of the seven churches in turn. In chapters two and three of the book of Revelation, the Lord dictates letters to each of the seven churches. Today we’re going to focus on the letter to the church of Ephesus; next week we’ll focus on the letter to Smyrna, and so on. And the children’s talks will be about stories that illustrate the mentality or the quality of the church that is the focus that day.
Going through all of the seven churches this way is useful for at least two reasons. First, odds are that all of us belong to one or more of these churches. And the Lord speaks directly to each of these churches. In the letters He dictates, He tells them what they’re doing well, and He also tells them what they need to keep working on. So if we can learn to recognize that we’re in a “Smyrna” state of life, or a “Sardis” state of life, then in the letters to Smyrna or to Sardis we can find reassurance and guidance from the Lord that speak to us where we are. Of course, our spiritual states change; just because we resonate with Ephesus at one point doesn’t mean that we’ll always resonate with Ephesus. But at any given time, each of us is probably somewhere in the spiritual constellation that these seven churches define.
The other reason that it’s useful to go over all of the spiritual states described by the seven churches is that all of them are different—yet all of them are part of the Lord’s New Church. All of the different kinds of people that we’ll talk about throughout this series are called to the Lord’s New Church. When someone else does life differently than we do, a normal human reaction is to wonder what on earth is wrong with them. This reaction can be especially strong when someone does religion differently than we do—especially if they say that they’re part of “our” religion… but there they are living and thinking differently than we do.
Of course it isn’t true that “anything goes” in the Lord’s church. Evil is a real thing, and the church should not countenance evil. But good is more varied than we might realize. The seven churches are different from one another. But those churches are represented by the seven lampstands (Rev. 1:20; AR §§10, 41, 43), and the Lord—the one God of heaven and earth—stands in the midst of them all.
As I said, our focus today is on Ephesus, the first of the seven churches. Without further ado, here is the Lord’s letter to Ephesus [read Rev. 2:1-7].
The Lord says to Ephesus, “I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil” (Rev. 2:2). That’s a big hint at the mentality that Ephesus symbolizes. People of the church of Ephesus are champions of the church. They champion the truths of the church. They labor for the church; they endure, they’re steadfast (v. 3). They know the difference between right and wrong, and want nothing to do with evil… and they’re a little bit hard-headed about it. They can’t bear evil. Because, as we’re told in Apocalypse Revealed, these are people who “regard doctrinal truths primarily, and not goods of life” (§73). In other words, the Ephesians are strong on the truth, they value the truth—and indeed they value truth more than goodness.
But goodness is the soul of the church. So the Lord says to Ephesus, “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (Rev. 2:4). The church’s first love is love. Here’s one last reading from Apocalypse Revealed, which says: [read §82].
Ephesus puts the truth first. And the truth really matters. Whether the church teaches truth or falsity has a much bigger impact on human happiness than most people realize. Ephesus gets that. But Ephesus gets that so well that it loses sight of what really matters—which is love. The two great commandments are to love the Lord with all our hearts, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:29-31). All of the truths of the Word hang on those commandments (Matt. 22:37-40).
The irony is that people who put love to the Lord and to the neighbor above all other things actually understand the truth better than people who put the truth first. The reading said, “to the extent that a person is engaged in good endeavors in his life, to the same extent he is really in possession of doctrinal truths, but not the reverse” (AR §82). This is because the goods of life “open the inner recesses of the mind” (ibid.). When we do what the Lord says to do, He flows into us, and His presence illuminates us. Heavenly love puts truth into order: it shows us which ideas must lead and which must follow. If we don’t have that illumination from the Lord, our understanding of the truth is stuck at a lower level.
But to be fair, it is “the goods of life” that open the mind. And the goods of life aren’t simply good deeds that we do from time to time. They aren’t compassionate feelings either. The good of life is charity in action. It’s spiritual love that we receive from the Lord and give to the world around us through our actions. And we can’t receive that spiritual love from the Lord unless we go to Him and ask Him to deliver us from evil. And we can’t do those things unless we know who the Lord is, and how He teaches us to live. So again, the truth really does matter. Ephesus is not a terrible starting place for someone who wants to be part of the church. We do need to learn to value the truth. But truth is not the point.
Truths are like tools. If you’re building a house it’s important to have tools—but holding a hammer is not the point, and telling the other guy that he’s holding his hammer wrong is certainly not the point. What matters is the good thing that we’re trying to build. If we keep our eye on that, the tools remain important, and they’re still in our hands—but they’re not front and center. Truth is the servant of what is good.
The Lord says that the Ephesians “have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars” (Rev. 2:2). In the spiritual sense of the Word, “apostles” means truths and “liars” means falsities (AR §79). The Ephesians are good at weeding falsities out of the church, which is work that needs to be done. The Lord also says that the Ephesians “hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans” (v. 6). The deeds of the Nicolaitans are merit-seeking works (AR §86). Merit-seeking works are good deeds that we do in order to collect spiritual “gold stars,” or show everyone how good we are. The Ephesians understand that this isn’t real goodness: real goodness comes from the Lord, and is received by a humble heart. The Ephesians get it… but they’re preoccupied by how well they get it, and they undervalue the part where they live the truth. So the Lord tells them, “Repent, and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place” (v. 5). The “first works” are the works of charity—spiritual love in action.
The passage from Mark that I read to the children illustrates the Ephesus mentality in a couple of ways. The Lord’s disciples argued about which of them would be first (9: 34, 35). In the spiritual sense of the Word, the twelve disciples stand for all of the goods and truths of the church (see AR §§79.2, 174). Arguing about which good and true thing is better and truer than all the rest is a very Ephesus thing do.
And when John told that man who was casting out demons in Jesus’s name to stop doing that, because He didn’t follow Jesus the way the twelve did, that was also a very Ephesus thing to do (Mark 9:38). The Ephesus mentality leads us to the conviction that what we see is the truth, and that anyone who doesn’t see what we see therefore does not see the truth. In other words, the Ephesians are quick to say that someone who thinks differently than they do is wrong. The tricky thing is that there’s a decent chance that the Ephesians will be sort of right about that. The Ephesians value the truth; they pay attention to the truth. And that’s to their credit.
But the Lord told John, “Do not forbid him…. For he who is not against us is on our side” (Mark 9:39, 40). People who try to do good works in the Lord’s name—even if they get some things wrong—are on our side. The Ephesian mentality is good at creating divisions. And some divisions—or separations—need to be. But on the whole the Lord is much more interested in gathering than in dividing. He says, “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:16).
And He set that little child in the midst of His disciples, and told them “Whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives Me” (Mark 9:36). Little children are pictures of innocence, and innocence is the soul of charity. It’s at the heart of everything that matters most to the Lord. Whoever seeks these qualities from the Lord finds the Lord. Whether their sight of Him is clear or blurry matters far less than the presence of His love in them.
Amen.