Ash Wednesday, 2025
Text: Revelation 2:1-7
Title: Remember Your First Love
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Dear Church,
These are the words of Him who holds the seven stars in His right hand. The seven stars that are the angels of the seven churches. Your angels. The angels who guard and protect you. The angels who worship with you. The angels who bear my messages to you.
These are the words of Him who walks among the seven golden lampstands. That’s you. The Church. The Church is a seven: perfect, complete, and holy. The Church is golden, precious, valuable. The Church is a lampstand, the place from which my light shines out into a dark and dying world. That’s you.
And I stand in your midst.
It may not look like it sometimes. It may not feel like it sometimes.
It may seem as though you are alone, and I have abandoned you. But I am here.
I gave this revelation to my servant John so that you would be able to see behind the curtain, to know the unseen realities of the spiritual realm, so that you would have hope and comfort in the midst of trying times.
I gave this revelation to John not just to show the future, but also the present. This revelation is for you, too, so that you are aware of what is happening in heaven and on earth right now.
My message to the Church of Ephesus and to you is this: Repent and return to your first love.
Do you remember what it’s like to be in love?
Do you remember what it’s like when love is new?
Do you remember your first crush?
Do you remember your first date?
Do you remember your first real kiss?
Do you remember your first dance with your spouse at your wedding?
Do you remember the first time you held your child?
Do you remember what it’s like to be in love? To cherish every moment with your beloved and long for them every second you’re apart?
Do you remember when there was nothing you wouldn’t do, no cost that was too much to bear for their happiness?
Do you remember a time when you felt that way about me?
Do you remember the wonder you felt when you first realized that I had died for you?
Do you remember the joy you experienced when you heard of my resurrection?
Do you remember your enthusiasm for sharing this Good News with everyone around you?
Do you remember getting lost in your Bible, reading without an eye on the clock, drawn deeper and deeper into the great stories of salvation?
Do you remember turning to me in prayer without hesitation, knowing and trusting that I was listening and ready to help?
Do you remember the first time you tasted my body and blood at my holy altar?
Do you remember the goosebumps and the tears that you experienced singing hymns to me?
What happened? Why don’t you feel that way anymore? Who or what has taken my place?
Repent. Return. Come back to me, your first love.
If you don’t, you will be removed from my presence. It can happen.
But if you endure, if you conquer, you will eat of the tree of life in the Paradise of God. You will live forever in the bliss of my presence.
Because you are my first love.
You are the reason why I left paradise to come to this ruined planet.
I knew that without my intervention you would be lost forever.
I knew that saving you would cost Me My life.
But I love you. And so I came.
You will taste of the fruit of the tree of life because I drank the bitter cup of God’s wrath for you.
You will live forever because I died for you.
My cross is your tree of life, and here at this altar you will taste its fruit in my body and blood given and shed for you.
Strengthened by these gifts, you will be prepared for paradise.
Dear Church,
Remember my love for you. And remember the love you once had for me.
Love, Jesus.
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