We have made our way to Revelation chapter 3 verse 7. The church in view here in this letter is the church in Philadelphia. We have this letter and then the final one will be in Laodicea. Today our focus again is the letter that the Lord had sent to the church in Philadelphia. Another church that has one of only two, Smyrna I believe the other, where there was no chastisement, no condemnation, no correction from the Lord but an encouragement and I believe much that is relevant for us and many churches certainly in the world today. Verse 7, Revelation chapter 3, and to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, 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. I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are who lie, behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you. Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world. To try those who dwell on the earth, I am coming soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown. The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down from God, from my God, out of heaven, and my own new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The church in Philadelphia was by most understanding, I think, a small church. It's a little church. Jesus says to them that he knows that they have but little power. Not that they merely thought that they did, but he understood that in them there was only a little power. Today, maybe this is how it's always been, men seek comfort in size, in many, in great numbers of people. They look and they estimate their strength based on their numbers. And I think that that translates and that also is applicable to the way men think about a church. We tend to think that a large congregation of people maps to a powerful church, one with lots of capability and power. And contrary-wise, we can think of a small church as one with little power, and perhaps that is true in its own sense. But what I want to present to you today, and if there was a title for our thought today, it would be Open Doors for Little Churches. There's much that can be brought out from this letter, but I think that's the thrust of the idea that the Lord has placed on my heart for us today, open doors for little churches. And as the world looks upon the size of a church and estimates its relative strength, we know that God doesn't measure the same way that man does. To me, there is neither a certainty of strength in the size of a church, and by the way, there's no certainty of weakness in the size of a church either. We cannot look at a large church and assume strength, and we cannot look at a small church and assume weakness, or correlate opportunity, because we're going to find out, again, that it is the Lord who opens doors. He opens doors to all kinds of people, all kinds and all shapes, all sizes, all circumstances that churches find themselves in. We know that the Lord often uses the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. That's what He told us when Paul wrote to the Corinthians. I came across this about J. Hudson Taylor, the famous missionary to China. Someone complimented him on the work in the China Inland Mission, and great things had been done. Incredible work of the Lord seemed to have taken shape and taken place at the leadership and the work of Hudson Taylor in that land, and someone one day complimented him. And he said, Taylor did, it seemed to me that God had looked over the whole world to find a man who was weak enough to do his work. And when he at last found me, he said, he is weak enough, he'll do. He goes on to say, all giants, all of God's giants in our eyes have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned that he was going to be with them. But when he set out, no doubt he had no idea of the extent to which his work would last, not only or to reach in his day and to last even to our time, but he himself knew that it was the Lord who looked and saw a weak man, not a strong one. The Lord is writing to this church in Philadelphia and he's going to tell them a great opportunity is before them. We'll talk more about this in a moment, but he's basically is telling them, I have opened a door for you. I have. Who has opened this door? There's more self-description in this letter to Philadelphia than in the others, as Jesus writes to this church in Philadelphia, this small church apparently. Certainly one that seemed to be small and insignificant even in their own eyes and certainly the eyes of the world, but Jesus provides a great deal of self-description We don't know fully why he did that, but we want to look at what he said about himself. He said to them, to the angel of the church in Philadelphia, write the words first of the Holy One. God repeatedly declares in scripture his holiness. He says it again and again. You can't read the book of Leviticus and every other chapter or so, read God saying to Israel and to us, I am holy. In Isaiah 43, verse three, for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. Leviticus 11 44, for I am the Lord your God, consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy for I am holy. The scriptures are clear on this point and it is essential for us to know God rightly, to think of Him correctly, we must understand His holiness. And often we confuse righteousness and trustworthiness and goodness with holiness, but what is holiness itself? Charles Spurgeon said that in holiness, God is more clearly seen than in anything else, save the person of Jesus Christ, of which his life was holiness in repetition. God has many qualities and attributes, but holiness is not just a quality of God, it is an essence of God. He is holy. But holy, what does that mean? It means not just righteous. It doesn't mean just true. He's not being repetitive, the Lord is, when He says, thus says the Holy One, the True One. It's not just repetitive. It is saying two different things. For something to be said as being holy, it means that it is unique. It is separate. It is unlike other things. God in His essence is unlike anything else in the world. You and I are alike in many ways. There are certainly differences. All of creation is alike in the sense that it has been created by God, and thus we all share everything in creation. You and me, the mountains, the streams, the sun, the moon, the stars, the galaxy, all of us share something in common and makes us not holy from one another, not distinct from one another, in the sense that we owe our existence to this holy one, God. The unique one, God. And again, God has many attributes, but holiness is at the center of them all. One might even rightly answer the question, who is God? With, he is holy. There is nothing and no one like him. And even our holiness as children of God is to be a representation and a reflection of the holiness of God, not ours, but His. You see, what makes you and me holy or gives us the opportunity to be holy is when we reflect the holiness of God. And all of our other attributes, righteousness, if we can attain any of it, truthfulness, honesty, integrity, all of these things, they're a reflection, ultimately, of the possessor of all of these things, which is God. And it's important for us to understand this nature of God as being holy. There's a danger for us if we don't understand the holiness of God. If we don't see His holiness and one of those dangers is we get the idea that God is loving and kind, which is true, but is somehow at the same time indifferent to His laws being broken or to His creation being obedient. God is holy and He has created the world and you and me and He. calls us to his worship and praise, and it is right that he does so. and i think this is what i've been important to this church in philadelphia to be reminded of this holiness of god as they struggled against a culture that in their day like ours demanded conformity to pluralism to the idea that everyone's way is their own and their own path to god is their own and it's all equal whether you call god god or buddha or whatever in this culture as it mounts its It demands for God's people to conform to these ideas. It's not new to us. Philadelphia was experiencing the same things in their Greek pagan culture as they were faced with this mounting pressure to conform to the world around them. God reminds them and he says, I've opened a door for you. Who has? The Holy One. the Lord Jesus Christ, the unique one. And as the church in Philadelphia struggled against that culture of conformity to paganism and pluralism, and at the same time struggled against Jews who demanded obedience to their customs and traditions rather than to God, to be reminded of the holiness of God would have certainly been an encouragement as they thought about this God that they served. They didn't serve the Pharisee, they didn't serve the pagan, they served the true and living God. This idea of holiness being the idea of separateness. To name something holy is to declare that there is a separateness to it, that it is different. And by claiming to be the Holy One, Jesus declares that he is God. Many who do not believe that Jesus was the Son of God will try to say that even He in Scripture never claimed to be the Son of God, and they clearly have not read the Scriptures fully. Jesus here makes no doubt about who He is. The Holy One, the True One, and we're going to get to this door that He's going to open, but we want to, again, just take a moment and remember who it is that's opening this door. The Holy One, God, the One who is true, who speaks the truth, who knows the truth. If there is something that is of great need today, and what seems to be disappearing from the landscape of the larger society in which we live, it is this understanding that there is truth. There is truth, and there is a true One. His name is Jesus. He's the true one. He is the truth and the life. He is the one that separates right from wrong, false from truth. The one with the key of David, and having the key of David means that Christ is the possessor, the owner, the rightful heir of David's throne with the accompanying right to rule God's people. Jesus is the one with that key. He's the one with that key. It's important to always remember this. It is Christ who has the key and not man. It's Jesus who opens the door to heaven, not men. No one has the key but Him. To have the door to God's kingdom unlocked for you, then you're going to have to go to the one who has the key. And the only one who has the key is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is now at the right hand of the Father, but works and speaks to us through His Holy Spirit that He has sent into the world to comfort, and to guide, and to draw, and to convict, and to save, and to discern, and to give us what we need today. He's the one with the key. There's no man who has this key. There's no preacher who has this key. There's no priest who has this key. There's no wise man or woman who has this key. It is Christ and Christ alone who has this key of David. It opens up to the kingdom of God. This is the one who is opening the door. And not only is he opening, but he is one who opens, and when he opens, no one can shut. When the Lord opens a door. No one and nothing can close that door. No power of hell, no power in earth can shut the door that God has opened. And if you don't believe that, then just look around and understand that God's church is still here in the world today, though all of Satan's power and all of earth's power for thousands of years now have been focused on its extinguishment, we are still here because God opened the door, and the doors He opens, no one can shut. No one can close that door. When God opens a door for you, and He's gonna open a door for the church in Philadelphia, He already had, but when He opens the door, this Holy One, this Righteous One, this Unique One, this God of God's ruler of heaven and earth, He has opened a door, and when He opens it, You and I, no one else can ever shut it. We can refuse to go through, but we can't shut it. Not only that, he is the one not only that opens doors that can't be shut, he shuts doors that then cannot be opened. He closes opportunity when he chooses to close it. Book of Revelation calls out the Lord, and often it will say, our sovereign Lord. He chooses, and He makes these decisions in His own divine counsel, unmoved, unprovoked merely by anyone other than His own will, listening to the prayers of His saints, of course, and being moved upon their compassion, and yet He closes doors And when He closes them, they remain shut. And this, by the way, is one caution for us all. When the Lord opens a door, go through it. When He opens a door, go through it. It may not remain open. And when He shuts it, it's going to be closed. I have regrets in my life of doors I didn't walk through that I no longer can because He shut the door. That doesn't mean that I am morose or that I retreat. I pray and we wait and we listen and we watch for God to open other doors. And when he opens them, may we learn from past mistakes and walk through the door. He's opened it, no one can shut it. But when he shuts it, no one's gonna be able to open it. Job said it this way, all the way back, Job, the oldest book likely of scripture, contemporary of Abraham, Job said it this way, if he tears down, none can rebuild. Speaking of God, if he, God, shuts a man in, none can open. Job knew it all the way in the early days. And Jesus reminds them at the end and the closing of the New Testament, I am that one. I'm the one who opens the door and nobody closes it. I'm the one who closes the door and pound on it as you will and strike against it as you will, it will not open to you again. far from teaching and preaching the lack of responsibility of mankind to respond to God in free choice. This defines that. God says, I open and I close, but you decide whether to go through it or not. And he says to them just that very thing in the first part of verse eight. I have given you an opportunity. I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. Having declared, His possession of the key of David. The Lord proclaims that He has set before the church in Philadelphia an open door, and recall, if God has opened it, no one is going to be able to shut it. This is the opportunity that He has given, and He has given it to a church in the second half of verse eight that says this, I know that you have but little power. He recognized that for them, and he knew that they did as well. Philadelphia, again, seems to have been a small church. Whether that's to be taken in the sense that they truly were literally a number of a small church, which I tend now, at this point in my study, to agree with, that it seems that it's probably a smaller community of people. Whether that's true or not, what is true, and what we can know, is that they had little power. The open door the Lord placed before them represented though an opportunity of great service. Didn't it? Wouldn't it by default? When you consider that the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the master of heaven and earth, the omniscient one, the omnipresent one, the omnipotent one has opened it. That's a door he's opened. then that is a door of great opportunity for anyone, even a church with little power. And they knew that. The church in Philadelphia understood it. The other churches that received letters were likely, seemingly, probably larger in some cases, and much larger than the church in Philadelphia. To the average onlooker, the church in Philadelphia probably seemed of little consequence and worthy of very little notice at all. Well, that church in Philadelphia, the Lord wrote them a letter, too. This is a little community, that little church up there in Philadelphia, he wrote them a letter? Because, by the way, these seven churches, we know there were others. There was no letter from the Lord in Revelation to the church in Galatia or Thessalonica. We know that they were there. Why these seven? He wrote a letter to the church in Philadelphia too? That little church? Hardly worth anyone's notice? Sound familiar? This little power of theirs might even, I wondered about this, I wondered if it would even present to that little church a stumbling block to their belief that the Lord was opening a door to them. Maybe they fought something like this. There are other churches with more resources, more people, more, quote, power that can make a true difference in the Lord's work. But you see again, God does not measure as men do and often prefers to work in the exact opposite manner as men do. 1 Corinthians 1.27, as we've already quoted today, God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. 2 Corinthians 12.10, for the sake of Christ, Paul says, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. Why is he content with those things? For when I am weak, then I am strong. I believe God opens doors to service that represent work far beyond sometimes our own perceived power and ability. It's been my experience and I want to share this with you. It is at, and I'm just going to read it the way it came to me, it is at the moment God opens a door like this that an individual and a church must determine if they are going to trust God and go through it, or if they are going to take an earthly-minded measure of the situation and remain still. The moment that that door is opened and that God lets us know, I've opened a door here. I have, the Holy One, the True One. I've opened the door to you. Yes, I recognize your little power, which makes you just the type that I need for this work. Have you ever thought about how many times in Scripture it works that way? Remember Gideon? Gideon, your army's too big. What was it, 10,000 it started out with and whittled down to 300? Everybody remember David? The runt of the litter? one that no doubt this isn't God's chosen surely it's it's his older brother one of them no it's David and then by the way I thought of Job as the other side of that coin a man who was of great influence and power and position God humbled him to use him And by the way, Job was the same inwardly in both. But in the eyes of the world, he was a man who was powerful and successful, had a large family, had much wealth and riches in the world, and he yet was faithful to the Lord then. And then God turned that around, and Job was faithful even in the midst of that. But the man's earthly measures are usually 180 degrees out of phase with God's heavenly measures. We can't examine things the way that makes sense merely to us. And when God opens a door, as he does for Philadelphia, this small church, this church with little power, he says, look here, I've opened a door. Go through it. Go, and when he does that, go, even without all the answers in advance. If you're like me, an over-thinker, an over-planner, what's gonna happen if situation A, B, C, D, all the way to Z happens? I wanna know all of the what-if scenarios, and I wanna know what I'm supposed to do when those what-if scenarios come about, and Jesus is standing there the whole time simply pointing at the open door. It's at that moment that we're going to have to choose to trust the Holy One or remain still. Going through the door without all the answers, without any earthly confidence or certainty of success, risking failure in our eyes and in the eyes of others. But the Lord has opened the door. The fact remains. The Holy One, the True One, the One who opens doors that no one can close and who closes and no one can open. He has just told them in no uncertain terms, I've opened the door. It's now yours to go through it or not. But I've opened it. And I want to give you a little bit of spiritual insight here in the few years that I have had the privilege of walking with the Lord. You're going to have to go through the door again tomorrow when you wake up, and the next day, and the next day. There are going to be moments and times in your life, pivotal places and pivotal times, maybe which you won't even recognize at the time, that were pivotal for you to walk through the door that God opened. and follow that as God would lead you and guide you. When He opens a door, no one can close it, but know that when He closes it, it's never going to open again. The Lord recognizes their faithfulness, and that's why I think in part, He says, I recognize your faithfulness. Now I've opened another door. I've opened a door here for you to exercise that faithfulness. Though small and of little power, The church in Philadelphia remained faithful. Whatever degree of power and strength we might believe we have as a church, our primary goal is ever and always to simply remain faithful. Faithful to the Lord. What does the Marines say? Semper Fidelis. Always faithful. Always faithful. Though they were small, they remained faithful. And the Lord tells them how this is all going to pan out, and I don't know how much time I want to take in going through verses 9 and 10, but the Lord tells us, tells the church in Philadelphia, His plans for men. In verse 9, He tells them His plans for the unbeliever. Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie. Behold, listen to what he says to this little church. Behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet and they will learn that I have loved you. The Lord says, ultimately, all are going to recognize that you were my servant and I have served and I have loved, I should say, you. Isaiah 45, 14 puts a little light, I think, on this passage because if you're like me, you thought, wait a minute, these people are going to come and worship me? You're going to worship these Philadelphian saints? The Lord is the only one worthy of worship, and that is true. So how does all this come together? How do we reconcile that reality? Isaiah 45, verse 14, thus says the Lord. The wealth of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush and all the Sabians, men of stature, shall come over to you, speaking to Israel, shall come over to you and be yours. The wealth of Egypt, all of it, the merchandise of Cush, the Sabians, men of stature, they're all, Israel, gonna come over to you and be yours. They shall follow you. They shall come over in chains and bow down to you. They will plead with you, saying, and here's the insight, Surely God is in you, and there is no other, no God besides Him. That's what people are going to recognize in the end, about those who follow Christ and go through the doors that He opens. As they come to them, and they recognize them, as they come to us, and we, no doubt at that time, are where? Our souls at the feet of Christ. Our worshiping of Him and any pointing to us points directly back to Him, and I believe surely this means that the unbelieving world will be at the feet of believers as they worship Christ, the only one worthy of worship. Certainly not worship due to them, but due to our Lord. That's the plan for the unbeliever. They're going to acknowledge it. They're going to state it. Every knee is going to bow. Every tongue is going to confess, as we read in Scripture, that Jesus Christ is Lord. He tells them what his plan is for the believer because you've kept my word in verse 10 about patient endurance. I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world. And boy, you want to go down a theological rabbit trail, you start reading the commentaries on that verse and the post-millennialism and pre-tribulational premillennialism and mid-tribulation. I mean, you can get into all of the terms and you can get buried in some of those arguments. And I'm not saying that they're not without some worth, But I'm telling you this, what this simply says to me is that the unbeliever is headed toward you are not. As a believer, church, you're headed to a home in heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ to ever be at peace and safety because of who He is and what He has done. The unbelieving world is headed for a trial, an eternal one, a non-ending trial. And I know this trial particularly talked about an hour and so it is a specific period of time and it is a specific trial. Ultimately when it all washes out, the church in Philadelphia has no fear of the trial that is coming on an unbelieving world because they are not going to be subject to it. Deliverance from the trial that is coming to the unbelievers promised to the church. gives them this encouragement as we come toward our close today. I'm coming soon, says it again. The Lord said that multiple times in his earthly ministry while he was here that we read about in the Gospels and he says it multiple times here in the book of Revelation. I am coming soon. And again we want to remind you that that word soon in the Greek, it doesn't just mean soon as in a very short amount of time, it means suddenly. I mean, just suddenly, whether that suddenness is what we would determine as soon or long is almost set aside with that idea that it's going to be sudden. And so he says, I'm coming soon. Hold fast what you have. Hold fast what you have so that no one may seize your crown. Church in Philadelphia understood we have but little power. Fine. Hold on to it, Jesus says. If you're like me, most of the time, as you approach the Lord, you sense a weakness in yourself, an unworthiness in yourself, but then you're reminded again, it isn't me that I am coming to the Father with. It is the righteousness of my Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord. That's why I can approach the throne of God boldly, not because I can approach Him in the name of Kent Welch. That would be the worst thing I could possibly ever think to do. I don't approach Him with that name. I approach Him with the name of His dear Son, Jesus Christ. It's when we close our prayers in His name, in the Lord's name, not in mine or someone else's that I may think a lot of or little of. It's in the Lord's name that we come before the Lord. And He says to them, you have little power? Great. Hold on to it. Grab a hold of it and don't lose hold. So no one else can seize your crown. Don't lose your crown. The crown the Lord has for you and only you. The one he has for you and only you. It is the enemy who wants us to think that our place is insignificant. that our work isn't worth mentioning. In contrast, the Lord says, hold on to it and don't let anyone seize what I have prepared for you. For you. He gives many great promises to the faithful in verse 12 that we won't take the time today to unwrap, but I encourage you to go and read it again and consider the promises that the Lord has left His church, the name that He's going to write on our hearts and upon us, the new names and the new life that we will enjoy in this day that is coming suddenly. It says in verse 13, once again, if you've got an ear to hear, then hear. If there is the smallest opening in your heart to the voice of the Spirit of God in your heart, listen. If there's just a crack, it's not as open as it needs to be yet, but there's something there, then hear. Listen to what the Spirit of God says to the churches. Acknowledge it, understand it, internalize it, invest your thoughts in it. Think critically about them and apply them to your own life. And then to see this little church with open doors, As the Lord would open them one after the other, and we leave those doors to Him that He opens, and we leave those doors to Him that He closes. But for us, it's ever and always forward. Isn't that what Paul said? Forgetting the things that are behind. It's Satan that wants you to live there. It's the enemy that wants you trapped in history. God is bringing us to a new thing. He says, behold, I do a new thing. I give them new life. A new life that will never end because I have spoken life into their souls. So as we follow the Lord and faithfully try to follow Him, we forget what's behind. We are thankful for the lessons there. We are appreciative of the time that the Lord has given us in the past. We are pained about the times that we failed and floundered, and yet it's not there that we live. We learn from the past. We anticipate and we look forward to the future, but we live today. It's the only day we have. It's the only day we will ever have today. Learn from that in the past, anticipate that in the future, and if you're not prepared, today, as you live today, follow the Lord and become prepared. Acknowledge Him as your King, repent of your sin, trust the Lord Jesus Christ, turn everything over to Him, acknowledge that you don't have the strength, that your righteousness is as filthy rags to Him, and come to Him and repentance and faith until he saves you and gives you a new heart and a promise of a new home in heaven. And that promise when Jesus said, I've gone to prepare a place for them is now yours. And there's a place there for you. But do that today. Don't do it tomorrow. Who says you have tomorrow? You didn't do it yesterday. Fine. Yesterday's gone. It's no longer relevant. In an accounting term, you might call it a sunk cost. It's gone. let it go, move forward, faithfully walking through the doors that the Lord opens for you, that you know nobody's gonna close that thing. Nobody's gonna close that door, the Lord opened it. And yes, in my own life, there have been moments in this preparation, in this study, in these thoughts, these opportunities of life that God has given me to be the pastor of this church, to do work in other places. These are doors I didn't even know existed, but he opened. When he opened them, nobody's going to shut them except him. And no one will shut them, and no one will open them when he has shut them. So while the door is open, ours is to follow and to move, whether we believe ourselves large, small, or somewhere in between, is irrelevant. What's relevant is the Lord, the Holy One, the True One, the possessor of the keys to the throne of David, the One who opens the doors that no one can shut, and the One who shuts the doors that no one can open. What matters is He's opened the door, and we're going to follow. He who has an ear, let him hear this from the Spirit of God today.