Turkey, Day 6 - Restoring Love

Hello again, friends and family! Over the course of this trip we have traveled many miles across the countryside and beautiful terrain of Turkey and have made it to the coast. We are right on the Aegean Sea and today we spent our day in Ephesus talking about restoring love. This city is the largest footprint of a site that we have been to yet. If you recall, Ephesus was battling for power between Smyrna and Pergamum. And being a port city with a population of 250,000 people, Ephesus had a huge advantage. And as big as it was for us to explore, only 15% has been excavated. Ephesus was also the home of the Artemis Temple, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It is undoubtedly a city that had deep and wide biblical history. If you’ve been following along the previous days, many names we’ve already discussed have been through Ephesus. Luke and John were here. Epaphrus and Onesimus were here. Timothy was a pastor here. It was in this space that we discussed love.

We spent time considering the specifics of what being a port city meant for Ephesus. If places like Laodicea were the makers of these goods, Ephesus was the seller of these goods! This meant it was wealthy and had lots of people constantly in and out of their walls. The agora, or shopping, was huge here. The streets were always bustling with buyers and sellers from many different nations. And with that comes a dark undertone of slave trade and prostitution. Brothels were everywhere, and the best Roman culture had to offer in the form of love was lust. It was feeding people’s appetites. It was here that we see the Light of Jesus enter through the bold and faithful ministry of His servant, Paul.

Paul comes into this city around 53 AD and spends two years here! He begins to introduce a new way to love. You can read about Paul in Ephesus in Acts 19. Here tension arises (verses 21-41) around the influence he is making on this city and the conflict it is causing a silversmith named Demetrius who recognizes that the gospel is starting this process of dethroning their worship of Artemis. Verses 29 and 31 speak of a near-riotous event taking place in the theater, a theater that could seat 25,000. We stood in that theater! The theater where this took place! Talk about giving color to the text! And if you read on, Paul was eager to enter this chaos in an effort to bring clarity. And this is what the early church of Ephesus was doing. They were taking this same light and shining it into the darkest places of Ephesus. They were loving well and showing God’s grace throughout the city. When Paul writes his letter to the Ephesians, he commends them for their love saying, “for this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.” (Ephesians 1:15-16) He spent two years with these fellow believers and loved them.

We then fast forward to 90 AD when they receive the letter in Revelation. This early church received some amazing commendation from Jesus Christ in Revelation 2:2-3. They are patiently enduring, standing up against evil, and bearing up for His name sake. But they also receive a cutting criticism. Verse 4 says “they have abandoned their first love”. This is not referring to their love for The Lord; it’s speaking to the love they were taught at first which was a zealous love for their fellow brothers and their neighbors. They are challenged to (1) remember, (2) repent, and (3) do the works they did at first. To return to doing the work of loving their neighbor and loving the fellow saints. We imagined if this church had just grown complacent or comfortable and if this might be our story as well. Have we drifted from the things we did at first? Do we have a zeal for loving in the midst of darkness? Do we have a Paul-like willingness to enter those places to bring clarity and compassion? Standing for truth, firm in God’s grace, while loving one another is difficult. But this is our call.

As we continued throughout the region of Ephesus looking at more ruins, we ended in what remains of the Artemis Temple. This temple to Artemis was 430 ft long by 175 ft wide and 60 feet high! Try to picture that?! It had 127 columns! But what remains of this temple is one column. One. The lesson for us in this is that what the world has to offer will end in ruin. It does not last. There is no hope in the ‘gospel of the world’. But the gospel of Jesus brings life with an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading (1 Peter 3:4). We found great hope in this!

Now you may notice in photos that we made a few other amazing pit stops throughout the remainder of our day: The Ephesus Museum, an incredible Turkish rug shop where we saw the skill and beauty of these artisans, and The Aegean Sea! It was a great conclusion to our day and we are excited and expectant for one more BIG day tomorrow! Thank you all for journeying with us and praying for us. Keep praying for ears to hear and eyes to see!