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A Call to Repentance
Lesson 3 - June 19, 2016
Focus Text: Revelation 2:12-20
Central Truth: God tolerates no competition to His lordship of our lives.
Objective: By the end of this lesson my students should be able to explain what is involved in repentance, and identify when this action is appropriate for Christians.
Lesson Outline:
- Compromise Rebuked (Revelation 2:12-15)
- Repentance Required (Revelation 2:16, 17)
- Worldliness Judged (Revelation 2:18-23)
Prayer – Lesson 2, The Essence of Faithfulness
Heavenly Father,
We pray that our teachers and students be challenged by this lesson on faithfulness and that their hearts will be refilled with a passionate love for You.
In Jesus' name we pray this. Amen.
How Lack of Worship Leads to Criticism and Division
In "Doctrinal Discussion" Don Englund writes:
A failure to properly worship our Lord in praise and in the wonder of being loved ourselves will inevitably lead to a loss of ability to properly love others. Critical attitudes lead to selective friendships rather than to indiscriminate, unconditional, Christlike love to others. Church schisms and divisions of self-centeredness follow, accompanied by a lifeless co-existence with the desperate needs of hopeless people in our communities. The spiritual light of the community — once strong — has flickered, faltered, and failed!
Source: Christ, the Triumphant Lord: Adult Teacher's Insights, page 13.
How Does God See Our Situation?
In "God's Word for Today" Steve Oliver writes:
God sees things differently, sometimes opposite, from the way we think. Smyrna was small, poor, and persecuted, yet God had nothing negative to say about her. The fact that God acknowledged that they were poor, yet told them that they were, in fact, far from poor, demonstrates that He rec-ognized both the reality in which we live and the reality which He alone sees. God is also realistic: He directly told them that they were going to suffer more. Why would He do this — might it not discourage them?
Source: Christ, the Triumphant Lord: Adult Teacher's Insights, page 11.
First Love
In "Word Focus" Darrell Grim writes:
Lange gives the meaning of first love as “that glowing, all-absorbing love to Jesus, as a personal Savior, which at the first constrained them to devoted service.” It is more than that early ecstasy that new Christians feel. John Wesley stated that the initial ecstasy of our conversion “subsides into a calm and peaceful love.” This happens even as Christ remains our first love. However, for the Ephesians that love had cooled until they were left with orthodoxy without the Spirit. As happens many times, their loss of the Spirit was followed by an emphasis on works.
Discussion: What caused the Laodicean Church to leave its first love?
Source: Christ, the Triumphant Lord: Adult Teacher's Insights, page 9.
Love Rewarded
Read Revelation 2:1-11
“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death” (v. 11).
As I hear news reports of the torture that Christians in other parts of the world are undergoing and enduring, my heart bleeds for them. I am moved to pray that God will be their constant companion through these times. I remember the three Hebrew Children and the ridicule and testing they were put through before finally being cast into the furnace. God could have delivered them by some miraculous act without them going through the furnace, but when they faced what seemed certain death, God was with them. Those who are today being persecuted, tortured and slain for their faith are finding their God with them in the midst and to the end of their trying.
Though none of us like to think about having to go through the things that our Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world are enduring, we need to remember that there are worse things coming if we do not remain steadfast in our dedication and service to our Lord. Our text verse tells us that if we overcome these things in this present life that we shall not be hurt of the second death. Revelation 20:14 tells us that the second death is the casting of death and hell into the lake of fire. (Larry DeOrnellis)
"When our ears hear, and our hearts respond, we come into a love relationship with God and that love is rewarded by not being hurt of the second death."
This devotional is the Saturday, June 11, 2016 entry of Opening the Word.