LETTER TO A LITTLE CHURCH

Revelation 3:7-12

Revelation 2-3 contain what I like to refer to as the "Jesus Letters." The Lord Jesus dictates these seven short epistles to John. They are addressed to seven churches in seven cities located in what today is the country of Turkey.

When you hear the name Philadelphia, you are inclined to think of Pennsylvania and the city of brotherly love. The name does carry that meaning, but it was in use long before Columbus discovered America. This original city stood in a wide valley on the road between Sardis and Laodicia in Asia Minor.

Philadelphia was located on a major fault line and in 17 A.D., the city suffered heavily from an earthquake. Writing three years later, the historian Strabo notes that there were still aftershocks and tremors to be felt. When a quake would hit, the only place of safety would be outside the city walls and away from the buildings.

After the A.D. 17 quake, the city was rebuilt and renamed Neocarsarea ("new Caesar"), but the original name of Philadelphia still continued to be used.

We are not told how Christianity came to Philadelphia. There is not mention of the city in Paul’s epistles or in the book of Acts. There is no record of the church plant that took place here. It was just a little church on the outskirts of big things.

As this letter opens, it begins with a description of the one who is writing the letter. In this case, the writer of the letter is Jesus. This is important. John is writing the message, but he is only the secretary. He is writing what Jesus tells him to write.

This letter begins with a dramatic picture of Jesus. That is what the book of Revelation is all about. It is a book that reveals Jesus. You might have thought it was about gloom and doom and destruction and beasts and dragons and tribulation and wrath and many of those things can be found in the pages of this book. But it is ultimately a book about Jesus. If you have come to this book and haven’t found Jesus as the central theme, then you have missed what is the big idea of this book.

Notice how he is described.

• He who is holy
• He who is true
• He who has the key of David

In the ancient world, keys were a symbol of authority. Do you remember when Jesus gave some special authority to Peter? Jesus gave a pop quiz and asked the disciples who they thought He was. Peter jumped up with the answer and proclaimed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. Because of that insight, Jesus gave authority to Peter over His kingdom.

Jesus gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Revelation 1:18 says that Jesus has the keys of hell and of death. Those aren’t two separate sets of keys. They are one and the same. It speaks of authority over the kingdom and authority over hell and over death.

But that is not all. In this passage, the key is described as the key of David. That takes us back to the Old Testament. It takes us back to the days of Isaiah and to the southern kingdom of Judah and to a time when the people had turned away from God to worship idols of their own making. The leaders of the nation were leading the people in this sort of wrongful worship and God promised that He would take the wicked leaders away and replace them with the one of His own choosing.

Eliakim was appointed to the position of royal custodian over the house of Hezekiah (Isaiah 36:3). He was given the authority to dispense the tax money in the royal treasury. He was also responsible for allowing people to come for an audience before the king. When he closed the door to the palace in your face, you would not be allowed to enter. When he opened a door for you, your way was secure.

Jesus Christ is the antitype of Eliakim. He has the key of David. No one can come to the God of Israel unless they come through Jesus.

This was significant to the church at Philadelphia because the city in Philadelphia contained a large Jewish population. The Jews in that city were antagonistic to the church. They claimed that they were the recipients to the promises of God and they thought of the believers as renegades and heretics. They maintained that they were the only chosen people of God.

Jesus says that He has authority over the house of David and that includes having authority over the people of God. He is the rightful king of Israel and He is the heir to the throne of David. His people are those who are Jews on the inside -- whose hearts have turned toward God.

We saw in the first point that we know the one who is the keeper of the keys. What does a key do? It unlocks that which has been previously locked so that the door can be opened. This brings us to the second point. It is that a little church only needs a little power to use an open door.

Notice how the door got open in the first place. The One who holds the keys opened the door. No one will be able to shut the door that He has opened.

The reason no one will be able to shut this door is because it was not opened by the believers at Philadelphia. It was opened by Christ Himself. When Christ opens a door, it stays open and it is not shut until He wants it shut.

Notice what Jesus says to the church at Philadelphia: You have a little power, and have kept My word, and have not denied My name (3:8).

This church was not strong in itself. They were not rich. They did not have a great building. But what they did have was real. They had a purity of purpose and they had a little power with which they had been faithful.

First Church West is a little church as churches go, but it has before it an open door. This metaphor of an open door is used throughout the Scriptures to describe an opportunity.

• In Colossians 4:3 Paul calls on the Colossians to pray that God might open up a door for the word to be proclaimed.
• In 1 Corinthians 16:9 he speaks of how a wide door for effective service has opened to him.
• 2 Corinthians 2:12 speaks of how he came preaching the gospel of Christ when a door was opened for him in the Lord.

Paul saw all sorts of opportunities -- all sorts of open doors. And the notable thing about some of these open doors is that, to the casual observer, they might not have appeared to be open doors at all.

You’ve heard the story of the two shoe salesmen who went to a third world country to sell shoes. The first one wrote back after a couple of weeks, "You might as well bring me back home. I can’t sell shoes here because no one here wears shoes." The second one wrote back saying, "This place is a gold mine for business. No one here wears shoes and that means everyone is a potential customer. Send more shoes!!!"

There is an open door in your life. Based upon what Jesus says here, I can tell you something about that open door.

• It is a door of opportunity for some tremendous ministry.
• It is a door that might not be so obvious without the eyes of faith.
• It is a door that has been opened by Christ and no man is able to shut it.

Christ is not necessarily calling you to become a mega-church or a mega-Christian. But He is calling you to be faithful where you are and to use the little power that He has given to you and to keep His word.

The church at Philadelphia was facing some stiff competition. It came from the local synagogue. The synagogue prided itself on being Jewish. They looked upon themselves as being God’s chosen people and they looked with disdain on everyone else. In the process, they had somehow missed what it really means to be one of the chosen people of God.

I didn’t write those words. They were written by a Jewish man named Paul of Tarsus -- you know him as the Apostle Paul. He was saying that being Jewish is really about being a Christian; that Christianity is essentially Jewish and that if you have rejected Jesus, then you have actually rejected the Jewish Messiah, the One whose coming was promised by every one of the Hebrew prophets.

In case you haven’t noticed, there has been some bad blood between the church and the synagogue over the past 2000 years. There have been times when the synagogue persecuted the church and there have been times when the church persecuted the synagogue and I’m here to tell you that none of that should ever have taken place.

Let me say it for the record so that there is no misunderstanding -- there is no room in Christianity for anti-Semitism because our Lord and Savior was Jewish. For a Christian to display anti-Semitism is for him to rail against the very person of Christ.

On the other hand, when a synagogue or a temple or even a church sets itself up as the enemy of the gospel, that synagogue or temple or church has entered into league with Satan himself. That is why Jesus calls such a place the "synagogue of Satan."

You might be thinking to yourself, "We would never do anything like that! We are on God’s side and we hold to the right theology and we belong to the right denomination." Let me remind you of what the Old Testament prophets had to say about that.

Paul says something similar in the New Testament. He says...

God isn’t impressed with your theology and He isn’t impressed with your church attendance and He isn’t even impressed with your good works unless there is first a foundation of humility and faith and love.

On the other hand, when you begin to show true humility and true faith and true love, then not only will God be pleased, but also those who were once at enmity with Christianity will themselves be changed. God says, "You show that humility and faith and love and I will make them to come and bow down at your feet, and to know that I have loved you.

Everyone who has lived in Florida for any length of time is familiar with storm warnings. This passage contains a storm warning. Such warnings have been given to God’s people in the past.

In the same way, this small church at Philadelphia is given a storm warning. She is told that there are bad times ahead. There is an hour of testing that is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell upon the earth.

What is this "hour of testing" from which the church at Philadelphia was to be guarded?

There is a very popular teaching today that says this refers to a future 7-year people of great tribulation that will come over the earth just prior to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. It is said that, before this seven year tribulation can take place, there will be a "secret rapture" in which Christ will come silently and suddenly and take all of His believers away.

The problem is that the Bible doesn’t teach of such a secret coming of Christ. To the contrary, the Bible teaches that when Christ returns every eye shall see Him and it will be anything but secret.

What we have here in this promise to the church at Philadelphia is a temporal promise -- a promise that was for a particular hour of testing and we are able to open our history books today and to see how wonderfully this promise was fulfilled.

Jesus was speaking to this little church in the latter half of the first century. It was a church that had been holding fast against persecutions and He tells them that these persecutions were going to get a lot worse before they got better. They did. Over the next 200 years there was wave after wave of persecution that swept over the entire known world. Christianity came under the attack of the greatest superpower the world had ever known. The emperors of Rome made it their mission to destroy the message of the crucified carpenter.

Though the hurricane of persecution savaged and all but obliterated the churches within the empire, there was one little church that continued to survive. It was the church at Philadelphia. Nor does the story end there. Islam swept over the Middle East in the seventh century and the churches in the Middle East were virtually destroyed. I don’t know whether it is true, but I am told that a small church continued to exist throughout all of this period.

Nor is that the end of the story. Although this promise was given to the church at Philadelphia, I believe that we are able to take that promise and find application for us today.

The storm warnings are still out. The persecutions that began in that first century so long ago have not ended. The church throughout much of the world is continuing to be persecuted, even as we speak. The earth is being tested by war and by famine and by disease and by various distresses and there were Christians today in certain parts of the world who are under the sentence of death for holding to the message of the cross.

I didn’t say that to darken your day. I say it to tell you about the hope. For you who keep the word of His perseverance, He also promises to guard you through the hour of testing. There is a light at the end of your tunnel. You continue to trust in the Lord and you can weather whatever storm you are facing. You can hold out against the forces that threaten to bash your very world to pieces. Hold fast! Remain faithful!

In the summer of 2004, Paula and I had opportunity to visit the city that was once Philadelphia (it is called by another name today). I was eager to see for myself the little church with the open door. Do you know what I found? I found it is no longer there. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps the church died out. Perhaps the people moved away -- there were a number of Greek and Turkish migrations that took place in the early part of the 20th century. Perhaps the Lord eventually closed the door that had been open for so many years.

There is a principle here. It is that yesterday’s faithfulness is not sufficient for the needs of today. You are called to hold fast and to remain faithful today.

This letter to the little church at Philadelphia is one of seven such letters in the book of Revelation. Each of these letters is from Jesus and each letter ends with a promise.

This is a conditional promise. You know what it is to be given a conditional promise. It says, "If you do this, then I will do that." The condition for this promise and the condition for every promise given to every one of these seven churches is the condition of overcoming. Jesus says, "If you overcome, then there is a promise for you."

You are thinking, "Wait a minute, John. How can I know whether or not I have overcome? What exactly do I have to do to overcome?" The Bible gives the answer:

Have you come to Christ in faith, believing the message of the gospel? Have you come and trusted in the One who died in your place, relying upon Him and resting upon His finished work on your behalf? That is what it means to overcome. It means that you come and you trust in the One who overcame on your behalf.

When you do that, there is a wonderful promise here for you. Notice the elements of this promise:

1. The Promise of Permanence: He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore (3:12).

This promise had a special significance to the people of Philadelphia. Remember that they lived in a heavy earthquake zone. Their city had been destroyed by an earthquake. Every time a tremor hit, the only thing to do was to get out of town before buildings started to collapse.

Jesus says there is coming a day when they will never have to worry about getting out of town. When they will not have to go out from it anymore. You come and trust in the One who overcame on your behalf and there is a promise of permanence. He says, "I will never lose you or forsake you."

2. The Promise of Possession: I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name (3:12).

It was customary in that day for a man to brand his property, whether material or animal or even human slaves. Jesus says that He is going to mark us as the personal property of God.

If you were to go through my house, there are a few things that you would find that have been marked as the personal possession of John Stevenson. My personal Bible has such a mark on the inside cover. It is mine. We have the name of God written upon us. It is a mark of possession and a mark of protection.

Do you remember the mark of Cain? Cain was the first murderer in the Bible and God marked him so that no one would take vengeance upon him. That was a mark of protection. If God went through all that trouble to put a mark of protection upon a man who had murdered his own brother, how much more will He take care of you?

3. The Promise of a Pillar: He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God (3:12).

• He is presented among the seven golden lampstands (1:12-13)
• He is clothed in a floor-length robe and has a breastplate of gold (1:13). That is a description of the clothing of the High Priest.

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