Northstar Church Blacksburg

Last Week Pastor Jeff gave us background into the letter to the church of Ephesus. We see that at first the letter tells us the nine goods things about the church, but then shows they abandoned the love they had at first. One negative outweighs all the good because … love is central. You cannot claim to love God and not love His people, especially His church. And you cannot claim to love people if you do not love God. The solution to this problem is to change your mind and your heart thru repentance. Lastly the cross of Christ that provides us a path to paradise.

Last week, Matt shared with us the joyful declaration of biblical Christianity - “Jesus is God.” This week we dive into the letters to the seven church's specifically with the letter to the church of Ephesus. We see that it is Jesus and not the particular church that is Sovereign. There can be no room for pride but to endured hardships for the sake of Jesus Christ. This is seen by the followers of Ephesus as they have not grown weary in the face of hardships. There is a direct relationship between the letters to the churches to how we as Christians have endured with patience, and yet somewhere along the way, began to operate by a system - a list of do’s and don’t’s - rather than love of our lord and savior.

Because of its nature, it is so easy to misunderstand and misinterpret Revelation. Chapter one of Revelation serves to introduce some of the foundational themes and principles that we need to keep in mind as we go through the book of Revelation. What we forget is that Jesus is God and that we can think of God as being full of wrath and angry at us all the time, and Jesus is the one that actually loves us but that God is the gentleness and grace.

Jeff continues our series through Revelation, honing in on the beautiful Magnificence of Christ and his comfort through our trials.

Too often we get distracted - even by Jesus Himself, as we seek to control Him or get His attention. We get absorbed in our needs/problems. But Jesus was consistently turning His disciples’ attention away from themselves to the Father and to His mission. Jeff describes why why membership is biblically-based, spiritually encouraging, socially necessary, and mission-centered.