The Revelation 2:4-6 | Episode #1014

August 28, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

The Revelation 2:4-6

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years.

I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day,

especially today,

in Jesus name.

Nevertheless.

Nevertheless,

I have this against you.

You've left your first love. Now, I'm sorry I got to tell it. It's got to be told every time.

Am I right? I mean, the story's got to be told every time. You know,

the two trucks meet at the crossroads. Herrings Crossroads. Those of y' all who don't know where Heron's Crossroads is, my wife doesn't ever remember where that. What that is when I tell her, but Herrings crossroads is where 49 crosses 14.

Okay? And when you get there, you can go south to Macon county,

you can go east to Lee county, you can go west to Tallahassee, you can come north and be headed toward Dadeville. Going through camp, going through Realtown.

Am I right? Y' all know where Heron's Crossroads is? Where's. Two trucks met there late in the afternoon. But you could see it. Both of them old trucks. One of them was old truck by an older couple.

His favorite truck.

Bench seats.

Sat across the street was a. Was an old truck, but it's owned by a young guy. He couldn't afford anything better. It's just one of those guys. One of those trucks you can barely hold on to.

In the young. In the young guy's truck, his girlfriend sitting right up next to him, right?

I mean, they might well been sitting in the same seat. They were. They was.

I was possessing the same piece of leather right there together.

Older. Older couple across the road. She's sitting next to her door. He's sitting next to his door.

She says, look at that couple over there.

I remember when I was like. When we were like that.

The old fella said,

I didn't move.

Now, if God says that to you, if he says, I have the power of my revelation and I walk among the lampstands, which means I'm present in here,

right?

And he says, you left your first love now, he didn't say you lost your first love.

He said you wandered away from it. You've left it,

okay? He says you've left your first love.

That's a problem.

And look, you can get into doing God's work and doing God's will and doing. Doing the things that you need to do as a part of the church. And you can leave your first love,

okay? You can be a mature,

functioning,

vibrant Christian.

And yet in your walk with him, begin to lose the fire. And you're losing the fire not because you're doing the ministry. You're losing the fire because you've left your first love,

okay? The focus of your life has moved from Jesus and his will to just his will and not him,

okay?

And that's one of the great things about our churches. There's a lot of people that just love Jesus. There's a lot of love in Jesus going on, okay? But there's a danger in that.

There is always a danger. Remember, we've already said this church is a mature church, right?

They've shown all the signs of maturity.

But you can leave what's important.

You can pull away from what's real important,

and that's Christ,

okay? That's a relationship with him. You can stop praying. You can stop reading God's word. You can stop sharing God's word, right?

You can stop enjoying the fellowship that comes with worship.

The things that make you powerful when you first start,

when you don't know anything are the things that continue to make you powerful as you move on. And you know a lot of things,

you can know a lot not walk in power.

You can know a little.

Know very little and still live a powerful Christian life.

Why? Because you. You are walking in your first love.

And so if. If, If. If you're someone or you know someone who has spent a lot of time doing real believer stuff,

but they don't have.

They're. They seem to be losing that flame.

It's not because you know they're burning out. You can't burn out.

Don't you hear me? You cannot burn out because the source of your power is the Holy Spirit.

He don't.

He don't run out of power,

okay?

But if I'm not plugged into the source of the power,

well, my battery can run dead,

okay? If I'm not tight with God first,

then does it really matter what else I've. What else I'm doing?

Right?

So I need to remember that and remember there's a good chance of wandering off.

There's a real good chance of wandering off.

And we do that right? There's old hymn that says, prone to wander.

Lord, I feel it.

Prone to leave the God I love.

Now that, that. That prone to pull away from God is real.

It is.

And we don't. We. We. You need to understand that, that if you're beginning to feel that way, you. You gotta go back to the things you did at the start.

And that's what he says. He says, remember, therefore, from where you've fallen,

repent and do the first works.

Remember, they're not powerful works. What are they?

They're works of faith.

Do the first things you did,

go back to doing what you were doing.

You know, that's some basic discipleship.

Seems logical for Jesus to do some basic discipleship with the church, right?

Go back to what you did at the start.

Because that's where the power all started at.

He says, repent and do the first works. Or else I will come quick to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

Now. Don't you hear me?

That is one of the sweetest things he can say.

You know why?

Because he says, I'm going to retire you while you're on top.

Huh?

He said, man, y' all have done a lot. Y' all have grown. Y' all mature, y'. All. Y' all don't take anything. Y'. All. If somebody comes in with a bunch of mambo jambo, y' all don't have any of it.

Y' all tell them get.

Right?

I mean, that's what he said, right? No false doctrine going on,

okay? You doing it, all right? But you left your first love. You need to come back to your first love. If you don't come back to your first love, I'm taking you out.

Why?

I mean, nobody wants to see Brett Favre laying on the field half beat to death like he was for the Vikings.

Am I right?

We want to see Tom Brady carrying the chauffeur around, right? Nobody wants to see him laying on his back half dead.

Well, God don't want that for you. If you're a mature Christian, let me tell you something. Keep. Keep doing what you're supposed to do so you can keep going.

Because mature Christians, I. I really believe this. If you've done a whole lot for the kingdom of God and you've honored him a whole lot, you need to keep working.

Few. The minute you retire and decide you're going to be retired from God, it. Well, he'll just retire you on Out a big hook and. And you go, well, why would he do that?

Because you on top. Why let you go to the bottom.

You on top.

Keep going.

That's a great message.

That is a great message.

But this you have.

And he says this,

that's very important. And I'm going to spend a little time on this.

But this you have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

All right, now you need to know where Nicolasia is.

Okay?

Does anybody know where Nicolas is?

Well, because Nicolas, not a place,

okay?

If you look up Nicolaita, Nicolaitans,

this place called, this place that he says, the deeds of the Nicolaitans,

they're not in Africa,

they're not in Asia, they're not in India,

they're not in Europe. They're not in the Middle East. There's no place called that ever in history. History.

So you're going, well, who are they?

Well, the only way to figure it out is to. He must be using a phrase or a word that is an understanding put together.

And sure enough,

if you'll look at it,

that's what it is.

Niko means to rule over and lay it in, or leotan or lay. A shun is the word for God's people, the church, the body.

Okay?

So he says that you hate the work of the Nicolasian Nicolaitans. Nicolaitans,

okay? Which means you hate this idea of a ruling clergy.

And by the way,

he says, I also hate.

Now it's interesting, and it'd be real interesting if it was only just there,

but he gonna say it twice in these two chapters.

He's gonna mention them again.

And you know what he's gonna say after he. He mentions them?

He's going to say, I hate them.

I hate that practice.

All right?

Now that's important because we have a tendency as a church to want people to be the spiritual leaders and do all the spiritual stuff and go up on the mountain and meet with God and come back and tell us how things are going, right?

We know it all the way back to Genesis, right? And all the way back, Genesis and Exodus.

You go, meet with God, come tell us what he said,

right?

And so what happens is the. The leaders, the ones who are called by God, they go, well,

especially the younger they are. I'm going up there. I'm gonna go, well, I'll go find out,

right? And there's nothing wrong with that. It's a desire to.

To lead and to be. Be who you're called to be. And then when you Come back.

Who's the only one heard from God?

You.

So who they gonna put in charge of everything?

You.

And they gonna put you up on that pedestal and act like you're perfect and you don't have any sin, you don't have any problems. You are the hand of God at work in our physical lives.

And that's not biblical.

Shepherding is not driving,

it's leading.

The leaders of the church have to be the ones who've proven themselves to be able to be mature, to have understanding of God's word, understanding that they've attained themselves.

Not just something they've said. I, I, I. Twice in my life I've been in a position where I was dealing with somebody and in, in, in, in the world. In the world, in, in some aspect of the world.

And, and they found out that I was a pastor and,

and they were some kind of leader in the church they were in. One of them was a non denominational church and the other one was Baptist church. And they've come to me after we've spent some time talking, every time we interacted together and they've come to me and said,

I've got a real problem in my church.

And I go, you know,

there's all kinds of mess that can go on. So, I mean, you ain't no telling what they say. But I don't. And this is how both of them have said it.

I don't know what to do about it.

And I go, well, what is it?

And they go, my pastor is preaching his sermons from a book.

And I go, well, what are you talking about? You know, we probably get out. I mean, you get an understanding from somebody. You know, there's a lot of good stuff out there.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Pastor, I got the book out there. I'm looking down, he's reading it word for word.

There's only one person in the Bible takes somebody else's stuff and uses it,

huh?

Yeah, the devil.

Maturity requires that you have chewed the cud. Y' all know what chewing the cud is?

Yeah, that you've chewed it yourself and you've walked through it a little bit.

Like I said. Now that can come very young.

A lot of young, great leaders in scripture, David and John, I mean, you can go through them, right? A lot of great older leaders in church, Moses, and you can go through those.

Okay?

But the one thing they got to do is they got to be them. They got to be their own self that God's got made them into a leader and having an organizational structure in which there's no church,

has no say in things is a problem. And especially a problem for somebody who's not spiritual.

That's how you get into a whole bunch of messes.

And he says,

the practice of the Nicolaitans I can't stand. And that that means all these, you know, all these.

I'm telling you,

human organizations never function.

Human bureaucracies never function at the level of the quality of the people that are in them.

I've dealt with many bureaucracies in my life.

All the people in the bureaucracy I like,

I can go to a bureaucracy,

a people, all of them.

Product, C minus work every time.

Every time.

You know why?

Because God doesn't work in organizations. God works in kingdoms and in people.

And he's only got one kingdom, and that's his kingdom.

He's only got one people, and that's his people.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep.

You, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.