GROUP FELLOWSHIP NOTES           AUTUMN 2005  SEPT 13/15

A LETTER FROM THE LORD

(1) TO EPHESUS:  A LETTER ABOUT LOVE: Rev 2.1-7

I. A PICTURE OF LIGHT: 2.1-2

The letter begins with a picture of the Church’s Light and a description of the Church’s Lord:

• The Church’s Light’: Both ‘stars’ and ‘candlesticks’ are symbols of the light-bearing church. Why was the picture of ‘light’ especially appropriate for a church in the city of Ephesus? (Listen to what your group leader tells you about ancient Ephesus)
• How is this picture so very appropriate and important for every church?
• (What scripture passages point to this?)
• What is the Church’s Light and what is the source of the Church’s’ light’?
• Ephesus prided itself on being ‘the light of Asia’, yet it was filled with darkness that confronted the Christians on all sides. What darkness confronts us in our culture?
• The Church’s Lord: 2. 1-2a How is He described? What verbs are used of Him?  What is the great and wonderful consolation of this picture? (see John 10.27-28)
• What is said about His knowledge?  What does this letter show He knows?

II. A PLEA FOR LOVE: 2.2-7

 The letter speaks of LABOUR and LOVE:

• What does Christ gladly acknowledge and praise about the Church’s life? (2-3, 6)
•   What does he have to say about:
• 
    its labour?
•   Its loyalty? (to what?) (2.2and 6)  *See Footnote
•   Its longsuffering?

How important is each of these?  Do we possess them in our service for Christ?

• What does Christ lament?
• Talk about this together:  What is meant by it?  Love for whom?  How does it manifest itself?  Why is the lack of this so great a failing?
•  
• 
  How easy is it to fall into this danger?
•  
• Why are we so poor at intimate relationships with the Lord and each other?
• How practically can we keep the warmth of our love for Christ alive?
• What urgent exhortation does Christ bring?
• (What two important ‘Rs’ does he urge?)
•  
• What will the consequences for the church be if they do not heed?  How serious is this?
• Why are the Church’s ‘love’ and its ’light’ so bound up together?
•  

III. A PROMISE OF LIFE: 2.7

The letter ends with a promise of ‘life’ to those who overcome the problem.

• ‘The tree of Life’ Where in the Bible is the origin of this picture of a ‘tree of life’?  And where else do we read of it? (See Genesis 2.9, 3.22-24, Rev 22.2,14.  In the former, access is forbidden; in the latter, access is free and unlimited.)
• What is this ‘Life’ promised to the faithful?
• Who ultimately do we discover is the source of the Church’s spiritual and eternal Life?
• What is Christ’s final plea in this and in all the other letters?
•    Why are these words so important?
•  

*Footnote

2.6  ‘the practices of the Nicolatians’

These are also mentioned in the Letter to Pergamum (2.14-15) and associated with the teaching of Balaam.  They seem to be heresies which compromised with the standards and values and practices (or lack of them) in the surrounding culture. The Nicolatians were not prepared to be different; they took on the flavour of the world.  The world changed them and not they the world.