Before I moved here, I was asked to preach at my very first appointment … Anthony United Methodist Church in Anthony, FL. I was their pastor from 1994 to the year 2000. They were kind. They were patient. They had to suffer through a lot of boring … and honestly … terrible sermons and I made a lot of mistakes. The Number One fear that they had … one that we discussed at countless committee meetings, parking lot meetings, and church suppers … was the fact that they used to be a much bigger church … well, much bigger than they were by the time I became their pastor. In the 50s and 60s they had over a hundred regular attendees on Sunday morning. By the time I got there, they were struggling to get 20 people to come on Sunday morning. It was the same 10 or 12 people serving on all the committees and doing most of the work and we were constantly looking at the bottom-line and hoping and praying that we would survive another year. Sound familiar?
Twenty-two years had passed since the last time I preached from their pulpit and I just had to point something out to them. For all their fretting … for all their fears and worry … it was 22 years later and they were still there … the doors were still open … there were about 20 or so people there … and they were still looking at the bottom-line and wondering if they would still be there next year.
The question we’re going to be looking at today is this … what does our church look like through our eyes and how does this church look through the eyes of Jesus and we’re going to do that by looking at how Jesus saw the church in Philadelphia.
Throughout this series I have been preaching about Jesus’ seven letters to seven churches. To be Biblically and historically correct, there were no “churches” at all when Jesus wrote His letters … not in the way that we understand them. The word “church” is a mistranslation of the Greek word “ecclesia” … which means “the called ones.” What Jesus was writing to in all of these cities were communities or collections of believers who gathered because they were called by God.
As I have pointed out several times, Jesus starts out each of His letters by describing Himself. I had also pointed out that they came from John’s description of Jesus in Revelation 1:12-16: hair white as snow, eyes like flames of fire, his feet shining like burnished bronze, standing among the seven lampstands or churches of Asia Minor. To the Christian community at Ephesus, He describes Himself as the One who holds the seven stars in His right hand and walks among the seven lampstands (Revelation 2:1). To the community in Smyrna, He describes Himself as the Alpha and Omega … to the community in Pergamum, He is a two-edged sword … to the community in Thyatira He is the one who has eyes of fire … and to the community in Sardis, He is the one who holds the seven stars or angels in the palm of His right hand … but the description that He uses in His letter to the Christian community in Philadelphia is not found in John’s description in Revelation 1:12-16: “These are the words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens” (Revelation 3:7).
Jesus describes Himself as the One who has the “key of David.” In Isaiah 22, the Bible says that Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, was responsible for the “key of the House of David” (v. 22). Notice that the word “key” is singular. We’re not talking about a physical key that opened all the doors in David’s palace. I’m sure that there were many doors requiring many different keys in David’s kingdom just as I have a ring of “keys” for both of our churches and a set of “keys” for the parsonage. The word “key” is singular because it represents Eliakim’s “authority.” What he opened stayed open … if he said this will happen, it happened … and if he said something wouldn’t happen, that door was shut and the only one who could open it again was Eliakim. In other words, the king trusted him and he had the king’s authority to speak and to act on the king’s behalf or in the king’s absence.
Jesus has the “key of David” … only Jesus has the key that opens a whole lot more than the kingdom or House of David … which no longer existed at the time that He wrote this letter. Jesus has the key to what then? He has the key to Heaven … to the City of God! Again, the word “key” is singular. Jesus only needs the key to one door … the front door of Heaven. Once inside, there is no need for any other keys because there will be no need for locks. Locks are designed to keep people out. Locks and doors are designed to keep things safe. Safe from what? In Heaven there is no need to keep things safe. There is no need to protect things because God is there … our shield and our protection, amen? Unlike the Christians in the city of Philadelphia, once we’re inside the city of God, we are totally safe. Who is going to steal from us? Who can storm the walls of Heaven and take us away as slaves? Who would even dare to attack the City of God and take what is His, amen?
Jesus holds the key to Heaven because He is the Son of God. He speaks with the power and authority of God because He is the Son of God. What He says goes. If He wants something to happen … it happens. If He doesn’t want something to happen, not even the angels or the legions of Hell can force His hand. Like Eliakim, Jesus has God’s authority to speak and to act on God’s behalf.
Unlike Eliakim, however, Jesus doesn’t just have the key of David … He IS the key of David. Through His prophet, Jeremiah, God promised the exiles that the day would come when “I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior” (Jeremiah 23:5-6). Because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, the door to Heaven is open and stays open for all who love Him and stay true to Him … like the persecuted Christians in the city of “Brotherly Love.” The “key of David” is a promise that the Christians in Philadelphia will one day live in the TRUE city of Brotherly Love … the City of God. “I know your works,” Jesus tells them. “Look, I have set before you a promise … a hope. I have opened the door that no one could open … the door of Heaven … and that door stands open, ready to receive you into the eternal city of God where no one will ever persecute you again. Though you are suffering now, you will one day have peace with me forever.”
“Authority” is just another word for “power.” The one who holds the key has the “authority” … the “power” … to open doors and keep them open and the power to shut doors and keep them closed. Eliakim had the “power” or authority of King David … which, in human terms at that time, was a lot of power. But Jesus has the “power” or authority of God … a power beyond what anyone … beyond any king, beyond any emperor, beyond any president, oligarchy, or dictator … on this earth will ever possess. Jesus has the power to open the gates of Heaven … He has the key to God’s house … which is good news to the community of Christians in Philadelphia. “Look,” says Jesus, “I know your works. I know that you have but little power. I know what you have done with what little power you have and you’ve done a lot. In the face of deadly opposition, you have kept my word and have not denied my name.”
The One who is pointing out that the Christian community in Philadelphia has “little power” is the One who is the “key of David” … who has the power to open the gates of Heaven and who speaks with the power and authority of God and He is calling them to trust and rely on that power.
What if I told you that you had to walk from here to Raleigh in an hour? You couldn’t do it, could you? How about I let you use a car? Any car? You still couldn’t do it, could you? What if I told you to hop into my F-18 Hornet jet? We’d be there in less than half an hour. Now that’s power, amen? The One who opened what no one could open … the gates of Heaven … is the One who has given the Christians in Philadelphia the power to persevere up to this point … and the One who is writing this letter to them wants them to remember that He will keep giving them the power that they will need to persevere until their struggles are over and they are safely with Him in the City of Heavenly Love.
In fact, Jesus lets them know that their suffering will end even before they get to Heaven and those who made them suffer will be made to come and bow down before them. “I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but are lying – I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you” (Revelation 3:9). Because the Christians in Philadelphia have kept Jesus’ word … because they have kept His name … they will see the fruit of their faith … their persecutors will bow down before their feet. They may not have the power to force their persecutors to stop but Jesus, who loves them, who has the power to open the gates of Heaven, not only has the power to make their oppressors stop abusing them but also has the power to make them bow down before them in supplication and ask for forgiveness.
Imagine your worst nightmare of a bully … someone who beats you up every time that they see you … someone who comes to your home and destroys it … someone who tells terrible lies and spreads horrible stories about you all over town … and everyone believes them. In fact, it gets so bad that the bully accuses you of crimes that you didn’t commit and the police come and haul you away to jail. Nobody stands up for you. Nobody calls out the bully. Nobody even tries to stop the bully. You persevere through it because you have no choice. If you move, the bully follows you. If you fight back the bully just gets mad and beats you up even more or goes and gets more bullies to help him.
And then one day, the bully comes looking for a job at the only factory or business in town – yours! How humble they are … hat in hand, singing your praises, asking for mercy and forgiveness as they beg you for a job. How would that moment feel? Well, magnify that by about a thousand times and you might get a twinge of how the Christians in Philadelphia felt when Jesus promised them that their oppressors, their persecutors, their tormentors would one day bow down at their feet.
With the hope that Jesus gives them would come the strength to hold on, to persevere until that day happens, amen? The whole Bible … but the Psalms in particular … are filled with that hope … the hope that the Lord sees what’s happening to those whom He loves and that one day … either in this life or the next … He will vindicate us for our suffering. John reminds us of that fact at the very start of this book: “To Him who loves us and freed us from our sins by His blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving His God and Father … Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see Him, even those who pierced him; and on His account all the tribes of the earth will wail” (Revelation 1:5-7).
Jesus commends them for their “patient endurance” which came from keeping His word … and we know what His word is, amen? The Bible, right? How many times did Jesus encourage His followers to patiently endure the trials that were coming because their trials and suffering would not last forever … because their pain and sacrifice would be recognized and rewarded … as Jesus is now recognizing the patient endurance of the Christians in Philadelphia who did not deny His name even though they were required to go to a pagan alter with a pinch of incense and deny Jesus by declaring “Curios Kaiser” … “Caesar is Lord” … and because they didn’t give in to the pressure of being persecuted and deny their love and loyalty to their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. They were able to patiently endure because they knew that Jesus was … and is … a far more powerful “Kaiser” or “Lord” than any caesar could ever hope to be. Not one caesar could open the door of Heaven, amen? What one caesar opened, another caesar could close … or, as we’re seeing today … what one president opens another can close and vice versa, amen? But what Jesus opens, NO ONE can close … and what Jesus closes, NO ONE can open … and this is who the Christians in Philadelphia but their trust and faith in. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life,” says Jesus, “but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them” (John 3:36).
And speaking of God’s wrath …
The Christian community’s reward for their patient endurance, says Jesus is that He will keep them from the “hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth” (Revelation 3:10). What wrath is He going to spare them from? Oh, my friends, join us for our new Bible study that will begin in about a month to find out … or read the rest of Revelation for yourself. What a tremendous promise, let me tell you, because this testing that Jesus is talking about … the “tribulation” that is coming …is something that I hope and pray none of us will have to go through, trust me. If you think that the world is insane and out-of-control now, this is nothing compared to what the world is going to go through when the Tribulation comes, my friends … trust me.
Of course, a lot has been said and discussed about what Jesus means when He says that He’s coming soon (Revelation 3:11). It’s been 2,000 years since He spoke these words to the Christian community in Philadelphia, so what gives? I think it suggests that when Jesus comes, He will appear suddenly … “coming with the clouds” (Revelation 1:7). It’s a pretty effective image. One minute the sky is all blue … and then … if you’re not paying attention … the sky is filled with clouds. One minute we’re just going about our day and the next, we look up and there He. Like the weather, things can change … sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly … without us even noticing … and then when we do notice, it’s too late … which is why He warns the Christians in Philadelphia to “hold fast to what you have, so that no one may seize your crown” (Revelation 3:11).
What is their crown? What is their victory? Their crown, their victory is that they have kept Jesus’ word with patient endurance and have not denied His name … have not given up hope or given in to the pressures of the culture around them. “For this hope we were saved,” says the Apostle Paul. “But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” (Romans 8:24-25). That sounds exactly like what the Christians in Philadelphia have been doing, amen?
Jesus is encouraging them to hold on, to not get discouraged, to keep clinging to the hope that has gotten them this far … and if they keep doing that, they will not be sorry. “If you conquer,” He tells them, “I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God [and] you will never go out of it” (Revelation 3:12).
Remember what started the persecution of Christians? In 83 AD, Rabbis issued a decree declaring that it was blasphemy to pray in Jesus’ name and the Christians were kicked out of the synagogues. As long as Christians were seen as a sect of Judaism and allowed to worship in the synagogues, they enjoyed the same protection as the Jews under Roman law. When the Christians were kicked out of the synagogues and effectively kicked out of Judaism, they were considered to be a “new religion” by the Romans and new religions were illegal under Roman law … thus opening the door to persecution for Christian communities like Ephesus or Smyrna or Pergamum or Philadelphia.
Listen closely to what Jesus is promising these persecuted Christians. Even though they have been banned from worshipping in the local synagogue and from the Temple in Jerusalem, even though they are being persecuted by Jews and Romans and pagans alike … they will be welcomed into the Temple of God and they will be greeted and treated as fine, upstanding “pillars” or members of the community of God in Heaven and they will never be banned from God’s Temple like they were from the synagogues and Temple and Jewish community here on earth because Jesus is the key of David who assured their membership in the congregation of Heaven with His sacrifice on the cross … an honor that is guaranteed to them … and to us … so long as they keep Jesus’ word and hold fast to their “crown” … which is their faith in Him.
Jesus also promised the Christian community in Philadelphia to write on them “the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem that comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name” if they hold true to their faith.
What is the significance of bearing someone’s name, hum? Now, I’m not up on all the history of this area, but I’m willing to bet that there are some families around here that you just don’t mess with, am I right? If you mess with one of them, you’ll probably bring down the wrath of the whole family on your head and probably on the next 20 generations of your family. So, you’re going to show them a certain amount of, well, fear if not respect, when you come across one of them whether you like them or not, amen?
Well … imagine having the last name of “Jehovah.” Can you think of any person or family who is more powerful than God? If you have the last name of “Jehovah,” I would imagine that you can move about safely, wouldn’t you? Now … imagine not only having the last name of Jehovah, but the name of the city of God, and Jesus’ own new name as well. It might sound something like this: Gordon Pike, son of Jehovah, from the City of God and the Future City of Heaven on Earth, of the royal family of Jesus Christ. I like the sound of that. Why don’t you take a minute to try it on for size. Say your name … followed by “son or daughter of Jehovah, from the City of God and the Future City of Heaven on Earth, of the royal family of Jesus Christ.” Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Like the church in Philadelphia … like the church in Anthony, Florida … like many small churches … we may feel weak. We can either wallow in our weakness and whine and moan about what little strength or power we have … or we can use our weakness to inspire us to turn to the most potent and more powerful force in Heaven … the force that created Heaven itself. Our weakness can expose our lack of faith or it can inspire us to seek God. We don’t have can rely on our own strength which … like the Christian community in Philadelphia already knew was not enough … or we can rely on the “key of David” who can open what can’t be open and can shut what no one can shut.
The “key of David” will open doors for us that we can’t open for ourselves but we have to have the faith to walk through those doors when He opens them for us and we have to have the faith to accept His decision or judgment when the door is shut. Besides, what choice do we have? If there’s something that we are determined to do and the “key of David” has shut the door, guess what my sisters and brother? There’s nothing we or anyone else on earth can do to open that door. Going against God’s will will ultimately end in frustration and failure. Faith comes from trusting that if God opens a door, if there something that God wants us to do, if there’s some place that He wants us to be, then He will go with us. God is with us on both sides of the door, amen? He’s opens the door and He’s already on the other side waiting for us to walk through it … and it doesn’t matter what size the church is because God is going to be doing all the heavy lifting. If He calls us, He will equip us. God is not going to set us up for failure.
Our faith in the One who opens doors that can’t be opened and closes doors that can’t be closed should be a great and present comfort is these crazy times when it seems like the hour of trial and testing has come. It may not be the beginning of the Tribulation but no one can deny that we, like the Christian Community in Philadelphia, are in a time of testing. I hope and pray that it doesn’t get to the point that it did for the Christians in Philadelphia where we may have to decide to profess that we bear Christ’s name or deny that we are Christians out of fear or social pressure. A time is coming when we may have to do like the Christians in Philadelphia and either declare the name of Jesus at great personal risk and patiently endure because of our faith in the “key of David” and our refusal to worship the gods of today’s society or deny His name out of fear. If and when that time comes, we will be able to patiently endure … not because of our little, limited power but because of the name of the One we refuse to deny, amen?
Like the “ecclesia” or called community of believers in Philadelphia, Jesus commands us to hold fast to His Word, to hold fast to His promises, to hold fast to what we have … however little or insignificant it might seem in our eyes or the eyes of the world … and He will make sure that none can seize our crown or snatch what little power we have from us because the crown that we wear … the crown of victory … is not our crown … is not our victory … but His crown and His victory. They may destroy our buildings. They may even destroy our bodies but they will never be able to destroy the Temple of God where we place our hope of spending eternity with Him.
When the Apostle Paul speaks of our present suffering, he says that they are not worth comparing with the “glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). “Who,” asks Paul, “shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we faced death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things,” says Paul, “we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:35-37) … and Jesus encourages us who bear His name to be “conquerors.” If we conquer … if we stay true to His Word … if we hold firm to our faith and trust in Jesus, the key of David, He promises us that He will make us a “pillar in the temple of my God [and we] will never go out of it” (Revelation 3:12). “I am the gate,” says Jesus, “whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture” (John 10:9).
Communion is a celebration of the One who opened what we could not open ourselves – the door of Heaven. He opened it on the cross and then He walked through the door of death and He waits for us on the other side where He will call us by our name and welcome us into His Temple, His city and we will call Him by His new name because He will write it on our hearts.
[Communion.]
