The sermon preached by the Rev. P. Bassett at the 1996 Annual General Meeting.

I have supported the work of the Trinitarian Bible Society as a minister of God for many years. It is a great honour, privilege, and joy to be here to bring the Word of the Living God.

If I may be personal, Westminster Chapel is a very precious spot to me. I was a member here for some seven years. Here I was married, thirty-eight years ago. I came in here as an officer in the Royal Air Force, unconverted, and the grace of God laid hold upon me just here nearly forty years ago. I knew nothing about God though I’d been brought up in the Established Church. I was far, far from the Lord. Excuse the personal references, but this is a hallowed spot to me. What was in the providence, that mysterious providence of God! The minister was not Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the man who was to become my pastor. The preacher that night was the Rev. Leslie Land, the minister then of Melbourne Hall, Leicester. As a result of the Rev. Land’s ministry, in my office the next day God saved me. But it was here that I heard the Gospel preached for the first time in my life. I have had the honour to preach here on several occasions, but I cannot stand here without being amazed that God in His amazing mercy ever saved me.

There is one thing I would want to bring to such a great occasion of tremendous encouragement, hearing of the expansion of the work and the circulation of God’s Word. I had this word laid upon my heart from the Lord, and I believe He will give me the grace to preach it and you the grace to apply it to your own lives. Would you kindly turn back to the portion of Scripture, Revelation 2 and particularly centring our thoughts upon the fourth verse, which was read at the beginning of this service?

The words are those of the Head of the church, the words of the Lord Himself, our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, addressed as we know to the church of God at Ephesus. ‘Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.’ ‘Thou hast left thy first love.’ The theme of this message from the Lord is leaving our first love. I hardly need to remind you, but I would do so, of the amazing love of God that was shed upon the church of God at Ephesus. We know, of course, the ministry of some three years of the great Apostle Paul. It is salutary to know that we can know the love of God, the redeeming love of God, the everlasting love of God; yet we can leave it. Praise God we cannot fall from grace; but we can wander from the Lord even when we are involved in His amazing service.

The love of Christ in the Epistle to the Ephesians

May I draw your attention to those references to the love of Christ found in the Epistle to the Ephesians, just by way of introduction? In the opening chapter, beginning in verse three, we read these wonderful words: ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love’, not just holy and blameless, but the source is the love of Almighty God.

In the third chapter we find that tremendous prayer of the great Apostle for the church of God at Ephesus, and in verse nineteen particularly: ‘And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God’. Paul speaks of the offices of the church in the fourth chapter. Notice these words in verses 15 and 16: ‘But speaking the truth’; if any Society stands for the truth it is the Trinitarian Bible Society. It must be ‘speaking the truth’, but that is not enough. We must be ‘speaking the truth in love’. God’s Word requires that we be constrained in all our work by the love of God. ‘But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself ...’. But that is not all; it is ‘the edifying of itself in love’.

Kindly look at the fifth chapter and the second verse, which is talking about the conduct of a Christian’s life, described as his walk: ‘And walk in love’—how should we do that?—’as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour’. Later he is speaking of the matter of marriage, so relevant when I think of how God brought my dear wife and me together here. Here we read in the fifth chapter and firstly in verse twenty-five: ‘Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it’.

Then in verse thirty-three he writes: ‘Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband’.

I believe that it is absolutely essential to read the concluding verse of the epistle. We often pass over it too quickly. ‘Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.’ I’m sure we can say ‘Amen’ to all that.

It seems incredible that later, towards the end of the first century (we believe during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian), this church in Ephesus to whom Paul stressed the need for love would be addressed by God as the church which had left its first love. John, the one who is called the Apostle of love, having written his authentic biography of Jesus under the inspiration of God and then his three epistles equally inspired, here at the end of his life as an old man exiled to the Isle of Patmos writes again under inspiration regarding the seven churches. It is the letter to the first of these churches at which we are looking.

Christ our First Love

We can never believe that we can just remain in the same constancy of love. As the hymn says, ‘Lord, it is my chief complaint, that my love is weak and faint.’ The Lord in Revelation 2.4 says ‘Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.’

Let us begin by saying that Christ is our first love because He loved us first. The way that it is expressed here, inspired though it is, I think there’s a great danger that we may misunderstand what Christ is saying to us. ‘Thou hast left thy first love.’ Why is He our first love? Because He loved us first. ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 4.10). His Son is the One who would take the wrath of God upon Him and satisfy the justice of a Holy God.

But secondly, Christ is our first love because He is first of all. These wonderful words, found in the opening of 1 Corinthians 15.3-4, are again so relevant on such an occasion as this. Here Paul says: ‘For I delivered unto you first of all’—we miss those words often—’that which I also received’. We have nothing to circulate, we have nothing to preach, we have nothing to give a perishing world until we receive it from God. We are God’s errand boys, we pass on what is delivered unto us. ‘For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died· for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures …’. Be cause of this, we must love Christ first. Do you love Christ first?

Because of what He commands us, we must seek Christ first in the work of this Society. Whatever part we have to play in our Christian service—or can we really say in our Christian lives—do we seek Christ first? He is first, He is first to God, He must become first and remain first to us. ‘But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.’ So read those familiar words of our Lord in Matthew 6.33. If we seek Him first, this Society will go on until the Lord comes and will increase in power and in being honoured by a great and glorious God. In the Old Testament, you remember the words in Deuteronomy 4.29: ‘if ... thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart ...’.

Thirdly, Christ has commanded us to love Him with our all. Deuteronomy 6.5 says ‘And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might’. Remember how Christ in His own lifetime and ministry repeated that idea (e.g., Matthew 22.37)? This point that we are making is that God has commanded us to love Him with our all. In Mark 12.29-30 Jesus answered the scribes on a particular occasion, quoting the commandments: ‘The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength’. This is restated in verse thirty-three; this is the first commandment.

Fourthly, we should give ourselves to Christ before all others. In that remarkable passage in 2 Corinthians 8.5, Paul holds out the greatest giving in the New Testament. The Macedonian church were characterised by natural poverty and affliction, but they were the example par excellence. The apostle says a remarkable thing that is so relevant here about giving ourselves: he was talking about the giving of their money and then, of course, he lifts it to the giving of the Lord Jesus Christ. In 2 Corinthians 8.5, referring to their giving he said, ‘And this they did, not as we hoped,’—there’s a note of surprise—‘not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God’.

Leaving our First Love

We come then particularly to this amazing challenging word, humbling word, ‘thou hast left thy first love’. Let us see certain points that are challenging, possibly surprising. The first is this, we can actually leave Christ; note that it says ‘leave thy first love’, not ‘lose thy first love’, praise God. We believe in the perseverance of the saints. But we believe equally in the sovereignty of God and in the responsibility of man. We can actually leave Christ as our first love, even when He is speaking to us, when He is writing to us. We believe in the Scripture’s authority, we believe in its inerrancy, we believe in its infallibility; but it can be addressing us and we can hold it and at the same time we can have left our first love. In Revelation 2.1 do you notice, ‘These things saith he’ first of all ‘unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write’? He was writing to them, speaking to them and yet they had left their first love whilst Christ was addressing them. It seems unbelievable beyond human comprehension that God can write to us, that God can be speaking to us and at that very time we can be leaving our first love. But so reads the Word of God.

Secondly, we can actually leave Christ as our first love when He is holding us. Again in that first verse, ‘these things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand’. In the previous chapter and in the twentieth verse it is expounded what the stars are: ‘The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand ... The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches’. Those who were responsible for leading and ministry, even as Christ held them in His glorious right hand they had left their first love. ‘Awake, awake’: do we not say? How incredible, that even as He holds His servants in His right hand, His pierced right hand, even then His messengers, His church can leave their first love!

Thirdly, we can actually leave Christ as our first love when He is walking in the midst of His churches. We are supporters of this godly Society, and we come from local churches. But this is a word for us: it is possible to leave Christ as our first love even when He is walking in our midst! If that seems beyond belief, then notice again at the end of Revelation 2.1, ‘who walketh’: who walks, not who used to walk or shall walk, but who is walking here. Christ is present. We want His presence, but sometimes, surely the Lord is in this place and we did not know it. He walks in the midst, not in the periphery or in the circumference, but in the midst of our meetings, of our activities, of our committees and of the candlesticks as we’ve seen a moment ago in Revelation 1.20. These candlesticks are the churches; they are to be shining with the truth of God when other churches have ceased to do that.

What is the church? It is the pillar, the pillar and the ground of the truth. You can go to different places of the world where you will see a pillar standing up, but it is a non-functional pillar, it is a pillar in name only. There are many churches that are pillars in name only: they do not hold up the infallible Word of God, they do not preach it. But we must live by it, we must live by the Lord of the Word, our first love, who is walking in our: midst.

Fourthly, we can actually leave our first love when we are doing Christ’s works. We are doing Christ’s works; in Revelation 2.2 Christ says, ‘I know thy works’. It is an encouragement that we can do works for the Lord’s sake; this the General Secretary and all the Society’s staff have been able to say, as they have this afternoon in the various reports. But dear people, Christ can say to you, ‘I know thy works; nevertheless, thou hast left thy first love’. Working for God should mean that we are walking with our first love and we adore Him; we love Him first. He should be first in our hearts, first in our ministry, and most of the time He is. But we can be involved in the work of God, we can be involved in work of Christ, and have left our first love, says the Lord Himself.

Fifthly, we can actually leave Christ as our first love when we are working hard and not giving up. We need to work hard but sometimes when we feel like giving up, our flesh does. But here I notice that we can actually leave Christ as our first love when we are working hard and not giving up. Notice in Revelation 2.2, ‘thy labour’: He distinguishes this or shows the quality of the work, the effort.Christianity is hard labour for a blessed Master. ‘I know thy works, and thy labour’: if you notice in the third verse ‘and for my name’s sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted’, this labour is for the Lord’s sake, for His name’s sake. From that I deduce that we can work very hard, we can labour, we can be the Lord’s labourers and not have given up, and yet have left our first love.

Sixthly, we can actually leave Christ as our first love when we are steadfast, when we are patient. This gives the idea of endurance—‘stickability’—and how we need that! How easy it is to look back, longing for retiring and giving up! But is there any retirement from this service of God? The nature of our work changes, but praise God we will surely worship Him and adore Him and serve Him to our latest breath. However, we see in Revelation 2.2-4, where it mentions ‘thy patience’, that thou ‘hast borne, and hast patience’, and yet that ‘thou hast left thy first love’.

Seventhly, we can actually leave Christ as our first love and have concern for evil workers and have dealt with them. We need to stand and contend for the faith, we need to deal with those who are bringing in corruptions, we can be concerned for the purity of God’s Word and the purity of His church (as of course we must be). We ourselves can be doing all those commendable things required of us in Scripture and yet at the same time we can have left our first love. Look at the second verse, ‘and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars’. Many today claim this for themselves; but Christ says, ‘nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love’.

Return to Your First Love

But let us see how we can be returning to our first love. We have seen what it is to be leaving our first love, but praise God our glorious Lord Jesus shows us, indeed commands us, to return to our first love.

Let us see then firstly that the Lord commands us to return to Him as our first love. In Revelation 2.5 He says ‘Remember’. That is the first command, ‘Remember’. ‘This do in remembrance of me’ (Luke 22.19): the thing that we remember least is Jesus’ blood, even sometimes when we come to the table. But we have to remember at the table: ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me’. We who preach the Gospel, we who preach the glorious death of the Lord Jesus Christ, are in danger of forgetting Him and the power of His precious blood. But this is why we come to the table: ‘this do in remembrance of me’. In Revelation He says ‘remember’; it is a command. ‘Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen’, this passage teaches us. I repeat something I said earlier: praise God that we cannot fall from grace; but we can apparently and definitely fall from our first love. Christ says, ‘remember therefore from whence thou art fallen’; that is what you must do right now. We will know no way back to our first love, until we remember and see from where we have fallen.

Secondly, repent. I met your General Secretary in the car park of a church and we were talking there about the things of God. He knows as well as I do that in 1974 there were believers in this church; and the pastor at that time (who is now in America) called upon these Christians to repent. The basic meaning of the word ‘repent’ is a change of mind towards God, a change of mind towards ourselves and sin, an abhorrence of sin, a turning back to God. Repentance is not once and for all. The danger in evangelical circles is to think of it only as the entry into salvation: ‘repent and believe the Gospel’. I remember sometime ago reading one of the theses of the ninety-five theses of Martin Luther. One of the first theses is that repentance is the whole of the Christian life. There will be no revival, there will be no reformation again, until there is this remembrance of ‘from whence thou are fallen’ and repentance. Repent, and praise God that when He commands a thing He gives the power to believe it. He does not repent for us, but He gives the power to repent. We need to repent that we have left our first love.

Firstly, remember; secondly, repent; and thirdly, do. ‘Do’ He says here; ‘do the first works’, to regain our love for our first love. This is something we want to go home and work over: do I love Him as much as I ever loved Him? Have we increased in love; have I increased since God on 12th August 1956 laid hold upon me here with my rebellious heart and broke it by His mighty power?

But go back. I remember a minister once trying to repair a marriage. He did not succeed and was driving the couple home as they had no vehicle. He heard the wife say to her husband, ‘That’s where you proposed to me’. The minister stopped the car. He put them out and told them to go back there, to where they had known their first love. Do you need to go back and do the first works of love, do again the first works of faith? We are justified by faith, praise God. But ‘the just’ shall live by faith’; it is the life of faith, from here to eternity, whether we die or the Lord comes again, whichever is first.

Do you not need to pray, do not we need in this Society and in our churches not only to be renewed in our first love but to have our Lord increase our faith until it is a faith in these days that would move mountains of opposition? You can talk about Islam as being far away but it is actually only about 100 miles north of here. The city in which I live is the biggest Hindu city in the world outside of India. The closest school in the area of my current ministry is 98% Muslim; we are in the minority of 2%. In the affluent 1960s I ministered in the commuter belt of Surrey. It was hard, very hard even then. But these cities will be totally pagan unless there is a mighty visitation upon the preaching and the circulation and the believing and the living out of the Word of God.

Do the first works of love, do the first works of faith, do the first works of obedience to the Word of God. You believe the Word of God; praise God. It is authoritative, it is inerrant, it is infallible; but do we live it, do we obey it, do we bring everything in practice to the touchstone of truth in our personal life, our family life, our church life? Do we really, or is it just a piece of paper? And are we living Bibles or are we living liabilities? Where did you leave your first love? Where did you leave the Lord Jesus Christ as your first love? The questions I put to you as we draw towards a close are the questions that I have put to my own heart. They do not need any exposition but they require an answer to God. Did you leave Him in the place of prayer? Did you leave Him in the place of witness to the Word of God? Did you leave Him in the place of obedience to the Word of God? Did you leave Him for something else? You older people, has some innocent hobby, some recreation, some retirement plans, or home come between you and your first love? Did you leave Him for something else? Did you leave Him for a wife, a husband, a child, a grandchild? Has another person stolen your heart away from Christ? We husbands have been required to love our wives even as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her, but we do not worship our wives, we do not live for them; they may be soon taken from us.

We must put Christ afresh, first in our hearts. I leave you with Christ’s fearful warning to us: if we do not repent and do the first works, even if we hate the evil workers increasing around us, we will be faced with the sudden removal of the candlestick of the church. Notice this in verse five, ‘Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly [suddenly], and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent’. We must hear what the Spirit is saying to our churches in verse seven: ‘He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches’.

Finally He sets before us the promise and the provision of Christ. To whom is the promise spoken? It is spoken to him that overcometh. In verse seven He says, ‘He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give ...’. ‘This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith’ (1 John 5.4). God makes us overcomers through the power of His Word, through the power of His Spirit, through the power of our first love, the Lord Jesus Christ. The nature of the promise is ‘I will give ...’; the result of the promise is ‘... to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God’.

If I had my time, I would take you back to the second chapter of the book of Genesis, the book of beginnings, to the ninth verse. As the hymn states, ‘Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land’. What we need is to feast afresh upon Christ, the tree in the paradise of God, and He will refresh us and encourage us. Then we will go away and say, ‘thank God we went’. May we go out from here different from what we came in! May God bless His Holy Word and encourage us in this vital work in this momentous hour in the history of the church! Amen.

The Rev. Paul Bassett is minister of Melbourne Hall, Leicester.

This sermon was edited for publication.