Explore
New Testament cities such as Ephesus, Galatia, and Laodicea through Pastor
David Jang’s sermon. Reflect on Paul’s missionary work, the work of the Holy
Spirit, and the transformation of Christianity in Turkey from the Byzantine to
the Ottoman era, considering the gospel and first love that the church must
preserve today.
When
the walls of Constantinople fell on May 29, 1453, the moment signaled more than
the end of an empire. It marked a profound turning point as a land where New
Testament churches had once taken root and Byzantine Christianity had
flourished passed into a new political and religious order. Beginning with this
scene, Pastor David Jang’s sermon journeys backward through time, tracing the
footsteps of Paul’s mission and the imprint of the gospel on the cities of the
New Testament. Rather than merely revisiting the names of places now in ruins,
it asks how the gospel transformed urban life—and why the church must hold fast
to its first love.
Anatolia,
in what is now Turkey, was home to Ephesus and Galatia, Laodicea and Pergamum,
Pisidian Antioch and Troas, Colossae and Smyrna. These places were not merely a
backdrop. They were settings where Paul’s journeys unfolded, churches were
established, and faith confronted idolatry while grace challenged
self-assurance. To read about the cities of the New Testament, then, is not
simply to unfold an ancient map. It is to meditate on Scripture and examine
where our own faith is rooted today.
The
Gospel Entered the Very Heart of the City
Ephesus
was a major city of Asia Minor where commerce and religion were deeply
intertwined. The magnificent Temple of Artemis sustained the city’s reputation
and economy, while magic and sorcery held people captive through their fears
and desires. Paul spent about three years there proclaiming the gospel, and the
word he preached sent ripples not only through the sphere of worship but also
through people’s daily lives and livelihoods. The gospel collided with the
established order of idolatry because it challenged what the city believed in
and what sustained its way of life.
Acts
19 records a scene in which people who had heard the word gathered their books
of magic and burned them. This was more than an act of disposing of old
possessions. It was a sign of repentance: relinquishing the powers they had
trusted to sustain them and reorienting the center of their lives. The
gospel is not knowledge that merely adds another sentence to our thinking. It
is the power that changes what we rely on and turns our lives in a new
direction.
In
Galatia, questions of law and faith, circumcision and salvation became central
concerns for the church. Paul emphasized that people could not stand before God
on the strength of outward signs and traditions, and that salvation was a gift
of grace received through faith. This was not a path that imposed a new set of
religious regulations on the Gentiles. Rather, it led them to acknowledge that
no one could save themselves and to stand in the grace of God. The churches of
Galatia demonstrated that the gospel was good news reaching beyond the
boundaries of ethnicity and custom.
Pisidian
Antioch was a place where the door to mission among the Gentiles opened wider
during Paul and Barnabas’s first missionary journey. In Troas, a new path
opened toward Macedonia, and Paul left familiar territory to cross the sea. The
churches in Colossae and Laodicea exchanged letters to read, sharing with
neighboring communities the word that one church had received. The gospel
established churches in different cities, but it did not leave them as isolated
islands.
Where
the Spirit Dwelt, a Different Way of Life Took Root
The
missionary road from Troas led to Philippi. In this Roman colonial city, Paul
established the first church on the European continent, and at its beginning
stood Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. After hearing the word, Lydia was
baptized with her household and opened her home as a gathering place for the
community. The church began not with an imposing institution or a magnificent
building, but with the heart of one person who welcomed the gospel and a home
whose doors were opened to others.
The
hymns Paul and Silas sang at midnight while imprisoned offer another glimpse of
the faith that took root in Philippi. They did not wait until their suffering
had ended before they sang. They praised God in the very midst of it. Their
song transformed a prison ruled by fear and despair into a place of worship.
The work of the Holy Spirit illuminated in Pastor David Jang’s sermon is not a
momentary surge of emotion. It is the power that renews the human heart,
enabling people to turn toward God rather than be driven by their
circumstances.
The
Philippian church was taught to serve one another in humility and to become one
in love. In a culture that pursued personal honor and glory, caring for the
weak, sharing possessions, and building up the community represented a
distinctly unfamiliar way of life. The gospel did not send people out of the
city to hide in the mountains. It raised up people who remained in the midst of
urban life yet loved and served in ways different from before.
In
Ephesus, too, transformation extended beyond religious rituals. Those who
abandoned idols and magic learned to live holy lives in the Spirit, forming a
community that pursued love and peace rather than material desires. Symbols
such as the cross, the fish, the lamb, and the vine became the language of a
new faith. In time, Christian themes also found expression in sacred paintings,
mosaics, and church architecture. Yet before changes in art and architecture, a
more fundamental transformation needed to take place in human hearts and
relationships.
A
Church That Loses Its First Love Grows Poor amid Prosperity
A
city where the gospel had once been proclaimed with power was not guaranteed to
preserve its faith automatically. In the book of Revelation, the church in
Ephesus was recognized for its labor and perseverance, yet rebuked for having
lost its first love. This was a warning that people can continue doing the
right things while forgetting why they began—and that a church can maintain its
outward form even as love disappears from its center.
The
church in Laodicea, a city enriched by commerce and finance, was rebuked for
its lukewarm faith. Having many possessions did not guarantee fullness of soul.
The self-assurance that it lacked nothing only prevented it from seeing its own
spiritual condition. Ephesus’s loss of first love and Laodicea’s lukewarmness
may appear to be different problems, but both reveal a condition in which the
gospel has been displaced from the center of life.
In
Pergamum, some believers remained faithful despite an environment steeped in
emperor worship and idolatry. Yet moral corruption and false teaching were
finding their way into the community. By contrast, the church in Smyrna
received encouragement to remain faithful amid persecution and suffering. One
church had fallen asleep in prosperity; another remained awake through
tribulation. The depth of faith could not be measured by a city’s prosperity or
the comfort of daily life.
These
words were not recorded simply so that we could judge the failures of ancient
churches. They are a mirror in which churches and believers today can examine
their inner lives. They ask whether the love we knew when we first heard the
gospel has hardened into a habit sustained only by obligation; whether
prosperity has fostered indifference rather than gratitude; and whether
compromises within are creating deeper fractures than threats from
outside. Cities may fall into ruin, but the call to recover our first
love will not.
Even
after an Empire’s Walls Fall, the Gospel’s Questions Remain
From
the late eleventh century onward, Anatolia’s history underwent a momentous
transition. After the Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantine army at the Battle of
Manzikert in 1071, Byzantium gradually lost its eastern territories. The
Crusades began with the aim of restoring Christian power, but the Fourth
Crusade’s capture and sack of Constantinople in 1204 instead dealt a
devastating blow to the empire. Even when the capital was recovered in 1261,
Byzantine economic and military strength had already been severely depleted.
From
the late thirteenth century, the Ottoman Turks expanded their power in western
Anatolia, while Byzantine territory dwindled to Constantinople and a few small
surrounding areas. Finally, in 1453, Mehmed II’s army used massive cannons to
breach the city’s walls, bringing the Byzantine Empire to an end. The
conversion of Hagia Sophia from a cathedral into a mosque became a symbol of
the shift in Anatolia’s religious center.
Under
the Ottoman Empire’s millet system, Christian communities retained limited
autonomy but gradually moved further from the center of society. Over the
course of many years, the land where Paul had once proclaimed the gospel and
the early church had grown became a predominantly Islamic region. This history
shows that the church’s outward size and political strength cannot preserve
faith forever. Empires and buildings may appear formidable, but when people who
love and obey the word disappear, the very center of faith can also be shaken.
Pastor
David Jang considers the cities of the New Testament alongside the history of
Christianity in Turkey not out of nostalgia for past glory. His purpose is to
bring the repentance of Ephesus, the hymns of Philippi, the perseverance of
Smyrna, and the warning of Laodicea into the faith we live today. The gospel is
not preserved merely because it was once present in a particular city. In every
generation, it becomes a living reality in the present when someone hears the
word anew, relinquishes misplaced trust, and chooses the path of love and
obedience.
The
stone columns of Ephesus, the ruins of Laodicea, and the walls of
Constantinople bear witness to a long history. Yet the deepest questions these
stones pose to us today are not about the past. What stands at the center of my
life now, and what kind of culture is the community to which I belong creating?
Are we merely contemplating the traces of cities through which the gospel once
passed? Or are we choosing our first love anew, here and now, becoming a new
city where the gospel may dwell?
www.davidjang.org
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