5 Smooth Stones
and were being commended for doing so by their Lord makes the words that much more meaningful. It also emphasizes to me the a tt ention that the Lord Jesus gives to His church, that He would address something so important as a warning before it would occur and as a commendation after it had occurred. However, the connection Jesus made to His own prophecy in Ma tt hew should also now be apparent. He connected the false ministry with the e ff ect it would have on the love people carried with them. In Revelation, Jesus again connects the in fl uence of false ministers and the love of the people. Ephesus was not a disobedient church in the sense that they had fallen into deep deception or wrong doctrine. What was wrong was in their application of the life of disciples of Christ. He said they had “persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name's sake and have not become weary.” They were busy doing the things they had been instructed to pursue. Yet, like many who are busy doing good, it is possible to be busy doing the work and forget the reason for the work. Luke 10:41-42: "And Jesus answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her." Our relationship with the Lord is the good part that Martha had missed and it is also the part from which the church in Ephesus had been drawn. Most likely this did not happen all at once and, like so many things that need a tt ention daily, it was lost in the emergency of the situation presented by the self-promoting ministers. There is a lesson here for all of us to learn, that in the course of guarding the things which are precious to us that we may lose sight of the reason we have those precious things in the fi rst place. Our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ is our reason for the e ff ort we expend. By seeing the connectivity through time between the warning given by Paul and the commendation given by Jesus, it is encour aging that the Lord truly was watching over the church in Ephesus personally, and, by association, He is watching over the church today just as carefully and lovingly. Today we have just as much reason to beware that we do not leave our fi rst love or let our love grow cold. Just as the apostle Paul used his example as a true apostle as an example of a true servant leader we have other warnings in scripture about false apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers. One thing that stands out to me through these warnings in scripture is that in each case the warning is being given by someone operating in the exact ministry that is being warned about.
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