Philadelphia: Small, but Steadfast [B]

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Transcript:

Turn with me to Revelation chapter 3. Revelation chapter 3. And we’re going to pick up where we left off this morning in talking about the church at Philadelphia.

And I know that there are some of you who were not in here this morning. And so just to kind of catch you up, we won’t go into it in as great of detail as we did this morning, but just to kind of catch you up with where we were and what Jesus had to say about the church at Philadelphia. I explained this morning that the church of Philadelphia was not a perfect church because there’s no such thing, but they’re pretty close.

And the church at Philadelphia gives us sort of a model, sort of an example that we can emulate of a church made up of fallen men, made up of flawed men living in a fallen world that was nonetheless faithful to what God had told it to do. We’re not led in this to believe that Philadelphia was perfect. They’re just like any other church in that regard.

But they’d been faithful, they’d been steadfast in obeying the Lord. and it gives us hope that we too as a church of flawed human beings in a fallen world, that we too can be faithful and we can be a church, that any church that obeys God could be a church that Jesus would compliment for their faithfulness, which is exactly what He does to the church here. Jesus starts as He does with all of these letters by identifying Himself.

He identifies Himself to the messenger of the church at Philadelphia by calling Himself the Holy One, the True One, the One who has the key of David. He that openeth and no man shutteth and shutteth and no man openeth. And as I explained this morning, when he says he’s the Holy One, it means that he, above all others, above all other people that, supposed gods that are worshipped throughout this world, that he and he alone is holy.

That he and he alone is without blemish, without sin. All these other religious leaders that people have worshipped and bowed down to are fallen sinful men, except Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the true one. He’s genuine.

He is who the Bible says He is. There’s no deception. There’s no misguiding about who He is.

He is God in the flesh. He is everything He claimed to be. He’s true.

He has the keys of David and He opens and no man shuts and shuts and no man opens. And all of this works together to paint the picture of Jesus as one having authority. And as we know from our readings of the Scriptures, Jesus has all authority.

That Jesus is, in fact, the sovereign king of the universe. And as it says already in this passage, he opens doors that no man can shut, and he shuts doors that no man can open. He reminds the church at Philadelphia, I know thy works, and this for them was a good thing to hear because they had been faithful in their works.

I know thy works, and behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it. And as I shared with you this morning, I had read this verse before, but the first time I really remember paying a great deal of attention to it was in that movie Facing the Giants, when it’s read to a man and he’s told that in his ministry in the school where he works, God had given him an open door. And I tried to convey this point this morning.

I don’t know if I did it adequately. What I was trying to tell you is, much to my surprise, the verse was not taken out of context in the movie. Now, I don’t read this as necessarily a promise to all people at all times, But we sometimes hear verses of Scripture taken out of context and used to say, well, see, you can do anything.

But what they were talking about in this movie was Him having an open door to do ministry, which is exactly what God was telling the church at Philadelphia. He had opened doors for them, not for them to line their own pockets, not for them to be more prestigious, not for them to be more powerful or successful, but opened doors for them to share the gospel, and opened doors for them to serve Him. And we serve a God who opens doors that no man can shut.

And he tells them, you have a little strength and has kept my word. This little strength is not referring to their spiritual strength because as we’ll see, to be a church that’s faithful, they were full of spiritual strength. It’s talking, I believe, about their numbers, their prestige, their influence, their money, all the things that the world would look at and say, make somebody important, make somebody successful.

And to say they were not very strong, they had but a little strength, they were very likely a small church. And as I mentioned this morning, that kind of gives us common ground with them because the world would look at us and say we’re a small church. The world would probably look at us and say we’re insignificant in numbers.

We’re insignificant in the amount of money that we bring in. We’re insignificant in all of these measures because there are churches far bigger, far richer, far more influential than we are. And yet he tells this church, even though they have a little strength, he opens doors that no man can shut.

He says, Thou hast a little strength that has kept my word and has not denied my name. And we talked this morning about faithfulness. And I said this recap was for people who were not here this morning, but you might have been here this morning and have forgotten already what we talked about.

So this is a refresher course for everybody. If you did, that’s okay. That’s why we’re recovering.

He says that they have kept his word and have not denied his name. And we talked about the meaning of faithfulness. I feel like I’ve been harping on the concept of faithfulness for months now.

Not every message necessarily, but through various messages, talking about if we could work on one thing during this time. We as a church need to work on faithfulness. And that’s not to say that we are not faithful in some things, but there are some areas where maybe we’re not as faithful as we should be.

Maybe there are areas where we’re faithful, but we could be even more committed to what God’s asked us to do. But as I’ve talked about faithfulness, it occurs to me, that’s kind of an abstract idea. We have in our minds what we think it means, But as far as what it looks like in the real world, it’s not something that we define or explain easily.

But Jesus defines and explains it for the church at Philadelphia. And it gives us, if we can’t think of any place, if we can’t think of how are we supposed to be faithful, I don’t know everything God wants me to do. We can start like the church at Philadelphia did because He said, They have kept My word, and they have not denied My name.

The two principles there are that what they knew of God’s word, they obeyed, and they had not denied His name, meant that they had not recanted, they had not renounced Christ when persecuted, and the way of their living and their testimony, they did not renounce Him with their lives. What do I mean renounce Him with their lives? There are so many people in churches today who profess to be Christians, and yet they walk outside the church doors, and their lives demonstrate nothing of it, nothing of the kind.

Folks, not only in their testimony before persecution and their unwillingness to say, I renounced Jesus Christ had they not denied His name, but also in the fact that this church was faithful in living the things that they knew God expected from them, and by their testimony, not just their beliefs, but by the way they lived outside of the church, they had not denied His name. And the question I don’t want to ask myself, but that needs to be asked as we read through this is, have I denied His name with my actions? Have I kept His word?

It’s a question we ought to all ask ourselves. If we want to be faithful, though, that’s what it looks like. Folks, we may not know everything that God wants us to do.

You may say, I’m supposed to be faithful and work on faithfulness. I don’t know everything God wants me to do down the road and be committed to. Folks, we don’t have to know everything God wants us to do to start out with.

There’s a Steve Green song that I love from a lady at Southgate used to sing called The Plan. And the chorus says, I don’t have to have the plan in hand. I don’t need to have the end in sight.

All I need to do is follow you wherever you lead and do what you ask me to. I love that song. Folks, we don’t have to see the end of the plan.

We don’t have to see everything that God expects for us in order to be faithful. But the things that we do know, we should obey. Faithfulness begins with.

. . Faithfulness begins for us even as children in Sunday school.

Oh, God says not to steal? Okay, then I won’t do that. A child is not going to understand the complexities of theology.

Who are we kidding as adults? As an adult, I don’t understand all the complexities of theology. But even as children, we can understand and obey the Word of God.

Is it always easy? No. But more often than not, what God says, what God expects of us is plain and simple.

When it comes to the things He wants us to do and the ways He wants us to live our life, God doesn’t tend to speak in riddles. Because when it comes to spiritual matters, we’re not that bright in the first place. And so he tells us, usually in very plain language, what he expects from us in terms of how we’re to live our lives.

So what does it look like for us to be faithful? As I said this morning, when God says don’t steal, we don’t steal. When God says don’t bear false witness against our neighbors, we tell the truth. When God says have no other gods before me, we look around at our lives and the things that we give more devotion to than the living God and we get rid of them.

Simple concepts. Again, vast gulf here between simple and easy. But in terms of, a preacher talks about faithfulness, but I have no idea what it looks like.

That’s what it looks like. Starting with what we understand of God’s Word, obeying it, and putting it into practice. I don’t know that the church at Philadelphia knew any more than we do about God’s Word.

That’s not to say they were ignorant. They didn’t have the whole New Testament in intact form yet, in a collected form yet. And we have so many resources these days to study with.

Somebody was talking about this on the radio too yesterday. I like listening to preaching, biblical preaching, I should say, as I’m traveling back and forth. And you’ve got to be careful because not everything on radio and especially on TV is biblical. But they were talking about the vast amount of knowledge that we have in this day and age.

We can get on, not only do we have a full copy of the Bible in our houses, most of us, the average American household has, I think, three. And my wife jokes about how we’re working on three or four houses at this point with the number. But I’m a pastor.

It’s my job. I’m supposed to have lots of Bibles and use them. But the average American household has three Bibles.

That wasn’t the case even a hundred years ago. People that aren’t in the so-called vocational ministries, pastoring and preaching and these things, can have commentaries in their houses. You can get online and find sermons preached on just about every topic.

You can research Greek and Hebrew without knowing Greek and Hebrew. And I can attest to that because I don’t speak Greek or Hebrew. And yet I can go on the computer and find out what the words meant.

And folks, we have unprecedented knowledge of God’s Word. They didn’t have at their disposal, at their fingertips, the things that we have now. And yet they were still able to be faithful to God.

Why would we assume that we have to understand the whole plan, the whole entirety of the thing, what they called in psychology classes the gestalt, which I like to use that word just because I like to pronounce it. means all the pieces fitting together and working together and all that. Why would we assume we have to understand all of that in order to be faithful to God?

They were faithful with what they knew and what they had available. You may not know the whole Bible. You probably don’t know the whole Bible.

I don’t say that to be mean to you. I don’t know everything in this book. I don’t understand all the types and shadows and nuances of this book.

I’m working on it, but I won’t in this lifetime understand everything that’s in here. And yet, there are things in here so simple and so plain that I should be able to obey what I do understand. That’s where faithfulness for us begins.

And he tells the church, You have little strength, you have kept my word and has not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews and are not, but do lie. Behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know I have loved thee.

Two things important to point out here, as I pointed out this morning. And after we’re through with this verse, We’ll move on to the things we did not talk about this morning. But he talks about the synagogue of Satan, those who say they are Jews but do lie.

This is not an anti-Semitic slur. People like to read all sorts of things into the New Testament and say it’s anti-Semitic, but the very God who called the Jews out, who chose them, and who has kept them as a people for 6,000 years, well, from Abraham, 4,000 years, it would be hard to imagine that God being anti-Semitic. Folks, the protection and provision of God, I’m convinced, is the only reason that the Jews and the state of Israel exist today.

And so for God to make an anti-Semitic slur doesn’t make sense. Now, he’s not attacking these people. When he calls them the synagogue of Satan, he’s pointing out the very simple principle that in this life there are no free agents.

We either serve him or we serve Satan. And these people, these Jewish people who were persecuting the churches, claimed to be God’s servants because they were descended from Abraham. And Galatians chapter 3 teaches us, and Galatians chapter 4 and some places in the book of Romans, they all teach us that it’s not our biological descent, it’s not any kind of lineage or heritage that makes us righteous in our standing before God, it’s faith.

I preached a message several months ago called, What They Should Have Learned From Abraham, and that was the premise of it. These people were so hung up on being the descendants of Abraham and being righteous because they were descended from Abraham, When the Bible makes it clear, even in Genesis, it’s not some New Testament reinterpretation of what went on. Even in Genesis, it talks about Abraham being justified by what?

Faith, exactly. And so they were hung up on being the descendants of Abraham, and yet they denied the very thing that Abraham was justified by, the very thing that made Abraham righteous. And so these Jewish people, he says they say they’re Jews, but they lie, because it wasn’t anything outward.

It wasn’t biology and heritage that made one a Jew. it was the condition of the heart before God. And it was faith in God.

And so he said these people who claim their mind are not. And he says, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet and to know that I have loved thee. Again, that does not mean they were to worship the church.

That means that one day they would, that many of these people would bow their knees in humility and surrender and submission before a holy God. And very likely it would be a result of the gospel ministry of the church at Philadelphia because God had given them an open door. And when these people finally gave their lives to Jesus Christ, the church would get to be there and see this happen.

This isn’t a threat about, I don’t believe, that one day you’re going to lord this over them and you’re going to run roughshod over these people. I believe this is a promise to the church at Philadelphia that they were going to get the joy of seeing those who had persecuted them come to Christ. Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing to see? Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing to see?

I got in trouble one time for comparing the Apostle Paul to Osama bin Laden. It made somebody mad when I said Osama bin Laden could have gotten saved with the same amount of grace it took to save the Apostle Paul or that it took to save you and me. But when you think about it, there’s some parallels there.

Osama bin Laden persecuted the Jews and Christians and hated all of us and went around in the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and they’ve killed people and done terrorism. Folks, before he was the Apostle Paul, Saul of Tarsus was a religious terrorist. He went throughout the known world and killed Christians and took letters from government authorities authorizing him to do so. And we think that’s so far-fetched to see that their persecutors, these religious terrorists, would come and bow at their feet and worship God.

And yet the Apostle Paul, the greatest probably of all the persecutors in the first century in Judea, bowed at the feet of God, humbled himself, trusted Jesus Christ as his Savior. Folks, I believe this is a promise to the church at Philadelphia that they would get to be part of the extreme joy, the extreme joy of seeing their persecutors come to be their brothers and sisters in Christ. I’ve heard our missionaries in Lebanon talk about how they’ve had members of Hezbollah. You know about Hezbollah.

Car bombings and suicide bombings and all sorts of things and attacking Christians and how they’ve had members of Hezbollah in Lebanon come to Christ and are now able to sit in the church, not only with people who’ve been born into Christian families, but Jewish background believers as well, and able together to worship the Lord Jesus Christ and embrace one another as brothers. I remember a story being told about that at one of our, it’s either a national meeting or a mission symposium, and wanting to cry. I tell y’all too much about things that make me tear up, but they told that story, and I remember tearing up, thinking how wonderful it would be.

When we started being attacked by terrorists a few years ago, it was normal and it was natural to hate those people. And I did for a while, and some of you all may tonight, but somewhere along the way I started even more so longing that one day we might be able to embrace them as brothers in Christ, that one day they might come to Christ and experience the same forgiveness that we’ve experienced. Can you imagine?

Can you imagine the joy? And some of you may be sitting there thinking, No. If one of them walked into church tonight, I’d be mad I’d leave.

You might, but if you think about it and realize that we’re all guilty of violating God’s law and we’re all deserving of hell and God offers His grace to all of us, folks, it’ll change our perspective. And I believe this was a promise to them that some of their persecutors would one day be embraced as brothers and sisters in Christ. They would get to be there when it happened because, not because of their size, not because of their influence, but because God had given them an open door. He says in verse 10, and we didn’t get this far this morning, but He says in verse 10, Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I will also keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth.

In some of these details from verse 10 on, there’s debate and discussion, as with all of these letters to these churches, there’s debate and discussion about these details and what they mean. And some people will say, well, I think this refers to this. I think this is an allusion to this practice, and I think this means this.

And the bottom line is they’re all, well, some of them are good theories, some of them are not so good theories, but we don’t really know. And we can debate and we can discuss, but some of these details, we may not know, we may not understand them exactly as somebody in the church of Philadelphia in the first century would have understood them. But again, there are main and plain things that we can take away from them without knowing all the details.

He says to them that there’s this time of temptation, this hour of temptation. Some have expressed the thought that this must be the great tribulation. Some have expressed that this is a particular persecution under a particular emperor that’s being talked about.

Folks, I don’t have an answer for you. I’d love to be able to say I know all the answers of what he’s talking about here. But what we can take from this passage is that he tells the church at Philadelphia there would be difficult times that were coming.

There would be times of temptation. There would be times of trial when it would be difficult to stand. and He promises His protection in the midst of that.

Folks, we could spend all day arguing, what is this hour of temptation? But the really important point for us to see here is that there was coming a time of difficulty, and Jesus had promised to the church at Philadelphia His protection. And if we as a church, if we as Eastside got word from God that there was going to be a time of trial, a time of trouble that was to come on the whole world, and again, does that mean the whole world?

Does that mean the whole known world? But that He was going to protect us through it. Would we sit here and debate?

What does he mean? What exactly is this hour of temptation going to look like? And argue about that.

And argue about what the world, what does he mean by the whole world? Or would we rejoice in the fact that he promised to protect us through it? I’m not saying it wouldn’t be important to know.

But for us as Eastside today, looking at Philadelphia, we can still not know some details and still rejoice in the truth of this verse that he promised to protect the church at Philadelphia. And from what I’ve read, the church at Philadelphia lasted a lot longer than the other six churches out of the book of Revelation. But evidently there was still a.

. . I don’t know everything about their doctrine, but what many have called a Bible-believing New Testament church in the city of Philadelphia well into the 8th century.

Now, if that’s the case, they way outlasted all the other churches of Revelation. He had promised to keep them from the day, from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth. And He promises them as a result of their faithfulness, as a result of their being His, that He would protect them from this coming time.

He says, Behold, I come quickly. And to the churches in that day, I don’t think there could be any greater promise in times of persecution, in times of tribulation, than to know that He comes quickly. And we say, But it’s been 2,000 years.

He still hasn’t come back. And I know it’s just a silly one-liner, but my answer to that is, Well, if He said He was coming soon and He hadn’t come back in 2,000 years, it’s even truer now than it was then. It’s even sooner now than it was from their perspective.

But the fact is, He said He would come quickly. Two things we can figure from that. God’s perspective is not our perspective.

And for God, thousands of years is the twinkling of an eye. And when Jesus says, I come quickly, He didn’t give us a time frame. But at the same time, we can also understand that even though He didn’t come back for the church at Philadelphia, He did come back for the church at Philadelphia.

All of those people have gone on now to their reward. He said, I’ll come quickly. And folks, I believe as His churches, we have the promise of His protection.

We’re going to talk about that in a minute. The promise of His protection, not only that He’ll walk through things with us, but also that one day, whether He comes back for all of us at once, or He comes back for us one by one if He tarries, He’s coming quickly. That these present trials and sufferings do not go on forever.

Behold, I come quickly. Hold fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. He’s not threatening them with the loss of eternal life.

He’s not threatening them with the loss of reward in heaven. But the crowning glory that they had as a faithful church, he says, hold fast that no man take thy crown. This honor that was bestowed on them, the kind words, the compliments that Christ had bestowed on them would be like a crown of glory.

He says, hold fast what you have that no man take thy crown. Don’t let anybody dissuade you from doing the things that you’ve been doing and that you know to continue in. Him that overcometh, verse 12, will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out, and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is the new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God, and I will write upon him my new name.

And this, like the matter of the hour of temptation, there’s a great deal of debate about what this is about. But what we do know is that he says he’ll put that church in the temple of his God, he’ll make them pillars that go no more out, which is a good thing. If you’ve got pillars in a building, they’re not meant to go anywhere.

If they do, it usually means the building’s coming down. But he talks about their permanence in the presence of God. Them being pillars in the temple of God means they will be present in God’s presence forever.

That would be a great promise to a church that feels like we’re small and we’re doing the right things, but are we really accomplishing anything? What they would want to hear would be that God knows that God has opened the door for them and that God has this incredible reward in store for them that nobody can take away. They’re to be in the presence of God.

And as far as these names being written, people debate about it. The most credible explanation to me sounds like it has something to do with an illusion they would have understood to the high priests having names and things written on their vestments when they would go into the temple. But all of this, again, we could debate the details, but all of this lends itself to their being in the presence of God serving Him for eternity.

What a wonderful promise. What more do we need to understand? It’d be great if we understood the rest of it.

It’d be great if we could look at this through the eyes of the church at Philadelphia and say, I know what he meant by that. But folks, if we glean nothing else, there’s this promise that they would be in the presence of God for eternity serving him. And isn’t that enough?

In verse 13, he that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. Now we’re about out of time tonight. We’ve got about 10 minutes left.

I just want to share with you, now that we’ve talked about his letter to the church, I want to share with you a few quick things that we can take to apply to ourselves and a few principles that we can apply to our situation. The first is that a faithful church has a spiritual impact disproportionate to its size. A faithful church has a spiritual impact disproportionate to its size.

The church at Philadelphia was told you have a little strength, and yet they were told they had this open door. They would have understood what an open door meant. From what I’ve been told, the city of Philadelphia had been built a few centuries before this as a missionary city for Greek culture.

What I mean by a missionary city was it had been built on the border, on the boundary between the Greek empire and some other areas that they had conquered. And it was built there to be a big city that would influence the region around it to where within a few hundred years, the people all around the city, even across this border, essentially thought of themselves as Greek. They had had an open door to go in and promote Greek language and culture and civilization.

And so for them to have an open door to go out and accomplish things, I think the people at Philadelphia, if what I’ve been told is true about the founding of the city, they would have understood very clearly what this meant, to have an open door, to go out and accomplish things that seemed insurmountable. Folks, it was not their size or their strength that made this church great. You hear me on that?

It was not their size or their strength that made this church great. It was their faithfulness in serving a God who opens doors that no man can shut. And we can look around and say, I haven’t seen a count for tonight, but we’re something like 30 or 40 people here tonight.

Fayetteville’s a big town. What could we possibly accomplish? How many people really could we reach?

How many people really could we share the gospel with? How many really could we disciple? We’re just a small church.

Folks, in human thinking, that’s true. If we went out as ourselves and tried to create a human, a man-made movement with 40 people, we’d probably fall flat on our faces, but hallelujah, we serve a God who opens doors no man can shut. If it’s up to us to open the doors, we’re in big trouble.

But God opens doors that no man can shut. This is not necessarily, as I’ve said, a promise that we can read this and say, oh, we have an open door. Am I telling you we have the same open door that the church at Philadelphia had?

No. Maybe we do, maybe we don’t. We can’t take that from this passage that was written for us, but to them.

What we can take from it is that God opens doors. And I believe that having given us the commission of going and sharing the gospel and making disciples, reaching people for Christ, changing people’s lives and their eternities, having given us that commission and that job to do, I believe God opens the doors necessary for us to do it. And so while I can’t tell you we have the same open door to reach Fayetteville in the same way that they had an open door to reach Philadelphia, I can tell you tonight that somewhere in your life God has opened a door for you to do what He’s called you to do.

And by the way, we don’t necessarily get to determine what that door is. But God opens doors that no man can shut, and a faithful church has a spiritual impact disproportionate to its size. What can we do?

Not a whole lot, but we serve an incredible, mighty God. And if we will listen to Him and follow the leadership of His Holy Spirit and talk to people when He tells us to talk to them and serve them when and how He tells us to serve them and do things for them as He tells us to do and basically listen to Him and obey the things that He tells us to do, He’ll take care of the rest. A