Our scripture reading this morning is from Revelation chapter 3 verses 7 through 13. Revelation 3, 7 through 13, and this is God's Word. "...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 they are Jews and are not, but 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 out of heaven in my own new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Let's pray, Father in heaven, as we come to worship you, open our hearts and minds, change us into the image of your son Jesus, whose word this is and whose name we pray. Amen. For the past few weeks, we've been looking together at the letters from Jesus to the churches as recorded in the book of Revelation by the Apostle John. Each letter begins with a description of the one who's sending the message via John through the angel of each church. Every letter begins with the words to the angel of the church in the book of John, and then write. Then there is a self description of Jesus, so that the church knows who it is that has the authority to say these things. It's not John, and it's not the angel. It's Jesus himself. To the church in Ephesus, he says, the one who holds the seven stars, which are the angels of the churches, and walks among the seven lampstands, which are the churches. To Smyrna, he says, the one who died and came back to life. To Pergamum, he says, the one with the sharp two-edged sword, speaking of his judgment. To Thyatra, he says, eyes of flaming fire and feet of burnished bronze. And to Sardis, he says, the seven spirits of God and the seven stars, which are the seven angels. Then he says to the angel 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, and who shuts and no one opens. So when he says the Holy One of Israel, what is exactly he referring to? Well, what it brought to my mind was the scene from Isaiah chapter six, where Isaiah goes into the temple of the Lord. He says, in the year the King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting up on the throne high and lifted up, and the train of this road filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings. With two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew, and one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the threshold shook, and the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having his hand of burning coal, that he had taken with tongs from the altar. He touched my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips, and your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for. Now you might be thinking, why are we referring to Isaiah when Jesus is calling himself the Holy One? Well, in the Gospel of John, the same writer of Revelation, John has a lengthy quote in chapter 12 where he's quoting Isaiah. And he said, Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Isaiah is saying that when he saw the glory of God, he was referring to the glory of the Son of God, the one who became flesh and dwelt among us. So when he says the Holy One of Israel, he's referring to himself as the Lord God, the one who was, who is, and who is to come, the one who spoke into existence, everything that there is. As Colossians chapter 1 verse 15 tells us, as John chapter 1 verses 1 through 3 tell us, but then he says, he's the one who has the key of David. Now that's different than in chapter 1 where he says he has the keys of death and Hades. It's different. Isaiah 22, 22 is the reference, and it's to Eliacom, where God said, I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open and none shall shut. He shall shut and none shall open. That's exactly what Jesus said about himself, that he has the key of David. No one will open except him. No one will shut it except him. And the point is, is that where Eliacom once ruled over Israel, now Jesus rules over true Israel, which is the church, not just in Philadelphia, not just in all of the churches that have been mentioned so far in the book of Revelation, but over every church that exists in the entire world, Jesus is the ruler over that, including Bedford Presbyterian Church. But all of this, he writes to the church of Philadelphia and be assured that what he's saying is that he has the key and that Christ alone is the one who determines who will and who will not enter the kingdom. Now most of the churches in the list of seven receive both commendation and criticism. Some receive only criticism, such as next week we'll see Laodicea is only criticism. But Philadelphia is one of the, I think, only two churches who receives only commendation, only encouragement. Philadelphia, along with other churches in the region, which is modern Turkey, by the way, knew the devastation of earthquakes. And they still do as recent as, maybe you remember this, as recent as April, Istanbul, Turkey, had a 6.2 magnitude earthquake. 150 people were hurt, but because of modern design, not many buildings were destroyed. But that wasn't the case when this was written. Philadelphia had experienced a particularly devastating earthquake in the recent past, and Philadelphia was a church that was full of architectural wonders, beautiful buildings, and most of them had been demolished. So their former glory had been diminished and the city had lost its power and prestige, and even more so, the Christian church. And Jesus says to them, 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. What is an open door? There are several places in the Scripture that talk about an open door. And when they arrived, they gathered the church together. This is from Acts. They declared all that God had done with him how they had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. That gives us a clue of what he means by an open door. In 1 Corinthians 16, for a wide door of effective work has been opened to me and there are many adversaries. Paul is saying that he has a door open to proclaim the gospel, to reach out to those who do not yet know Christ, but that there are many adversaries. In Colossians chapter 4, he says, remember he's in prison, he says, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the Word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. Jesus is telling the church in Philadelphia that they have little power, but he's opened the door. Now we're not a big church. We have little power. I'm making a transition here to show how we are not dissimilar, at least in this case, to the church of Philadelphia. And there is an open door. And I've noticed as I've been here these last 12 years that when I try to talk to people about the gospel, the people that are most open to hearing about the gospel, about the birth, life, death, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, unfortunately aren't the Canadians. Some, yes. But there's all kinds of people that are coming here from all over the world, all kinds of immigrants. That's why we're doing the ESL, or English as an alternative language. And we have in our church people from Brazil, people from Ukraine, from China, from Vietnam, several African countries. Because God has opened the door for people to come here to have the gospel proclaimed to them by any Christian church that will do it. And so my encouragement to us is God was encouraging Philadelphia that the door had been opened. It had been opened to them for him to come into them and for them to go out and proclaim to their culture the gospel of Jesus Christ. Though you have little power, I have opened the door. There are opportunities to witness everywhere. Some of you I've heard say, well, I don't know any non-Christians. Or everybody I know has a church. Well, that's just not possible. Because over 90% of the people who live here in Nova Scotia do not attend church of any kind. So it's not possible that you don't know somebody who isn't a believer. One person that I've been witnessing to, I won't name her, she's my pharmacist. I bought her a copy of Mere Christianity. It's very accessible. And I wrote on the inside, won't say her name. Please read this book. I want you to go to heaven. We have opportunities all around us to tell people about Jesus. The door has been opened. And it's opened here more than in many places. For a year, I was a interim pastor at a church in a little town in Illinois called Kishwaki. And the church was about 500 people. There were two other evangelical churches in the town. Kishwaki is not a big place. One of the churches had 300 people and one of the churches had 200 people. So there's about a thousand, about a thousand members of even these were evangelical churches. I'm not counting the other churches that were there, but these were the evangelical churches. So there's a thousand members of three evangelical churches and the population of Kishwaki was 1200. So there's not a lot of opportunity for evangelism in Kishwaki. Doesn't mean you don't do it. Doesn't mean everybody that's a member of the church is a believer. But there wasn't a lot of opportunity. That's not the case here. That's not the case here. All of you, all of us know many, many people who are going to die and not go to heaven if they don't hear the gospel and believe. And there is opposition. There were adversaries. And they were called the synagogue of Satan. Like many other cities, the church is facing opposition from the Roman government and from the established Jewish community, which Jesus calls the synagogue of Satan. The Jewish leaders had apparently compromised with and in some cases consorted with the Romans in order to keep their standing and privileges in the city, which is not unlike how things were while Jesus was doing his earthly ministry before his resurrection. Remember the Pharisees were always conniving with each other to figure out how to diminish his popularity. First, they tried to trick him with questions. Hold up a coin and say, should you pay the tax or not? Jesus befuddled them by saying, whose image is on it? It's Caesar's. Well, then give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what is God's, meaning you are made in the image of God. So you give all of yourself to him and you can give the coin to Caesar. And when that didn't work, they killed him. But that was part of God's plan, too. But still, they're opposed to the Christian church here in Philadelphia because they would not compromise their beliefs in order to get along with the culture. They insisted that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, which the Jews did not believe. The unbelieving Jews, I should say. And there was no small thing to be opposed by the Jewish community at the time because they numbered in the thousands. While the Christian church was considerably smaller, one commentator says probably a few dozen at that time. That resulted in great hardship. And persecution for the church. The emperor Domitian persecuted Christians because they wouldn't worship him as a God. Trajan. Made being a Christian illegal. If you were accused of being a Christian. You were brought before the court. And you were given an opportunity to recant. And you were told you had to curse Christ. And worship the Roman gods. In one instance. Trajan brought six Christian leaders. Among them was Ignatius. And they were told. First they were asked if they're Christians. They all said they were. Then they were told they had to curse Christ. And worship the Roman gods. They refused. Trajan said, Well, I'll give you a month to reconsider. They said we don't need a month. We don't need a month. We will never. Curse Christ. We will never. Worship other gods. At that point. Trajan ordered their execution and they said. Thanks be to God. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine being in that situation where your life is on the line where you are asked. To curse Christ or you asked to recant your faith. You were asked to say I no longer believe. And I will worship the gods that you have told me to worship. Under penalty of death. Would you be able to say. I won't do that. I will not do that. Think about it. If we're not able to say if we think we're able to say that how are we not able to tell our neighbor about Jesus. So. They didn't recant. And they were ordered to be executed. Apparently they were given the option of how they wanted to be executed. And Ignatius chose to be executed by wild beasts. Could we stand firm. In the face of such threats. What I want you to notice here is that Jesus doesn't promise that we will be spared those difficulties. In John 15 and 16 he promises that will be hated because Jesus is hated. He's promised that if they persecuted him they'll persecute us. In the letters to other churches he tells them to hold fast despite imprisonment even death. Here he tells the church to endure. Not that they will be spared. Because you have kept my word about 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 think there he's referring to the judgment day when everybody will stand before the Lord. John mentioned this in chapter one of Revelation. I John your brother and partner in tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus. Was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and testimony. Jesus in Luke 21 says nation will rise against nation kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes in the various places famines and pestilences. There will be terrors and great signs from heaven but before all of this they will lay hands on you. Persecute you delivering up you up to synagogues and prisons and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name's sake. This will be an opportunity to bear witness. Settle it therefore in your minds. Not to meditate before how to answer for I will give you a mouth of wisdom. Which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict. You'll be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends. And some of you will be put to death. You'll be hated by all for my name's sake. But not a hair of your head will perish by your endurance. You will be saved. The writer of Hebrews says. Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Looking to Jesus the founder and perfecter of our faith. Who for the joy set before him endured the cross. By your endurance you will gain your lives. Run with endurance the race that's set before us. The Christian life is not a sprint or a leisurely stroll. It's a marathon but we are not left alone. Because Jesus endured the cross. For the joy set before him. We are the joy set before him. And because he's opened the door of salvation. And for the salvation of others through us. We have hope and assurance. On judgment day we will not be found guilty of our sin. Because Christ has endured the cross for us. He tells us we'll receive a crown. And we would be made pillars. And why that's significant is remember Philadelphia had endured earthquakes and the ornate pillars that held up the buildings and crumbled. There was a reference to earthquakes in Revelation 6. Where everyone on the judgment day will call to the mountains and rocks fall on us and hide from us from the face of he who seated on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb. But Jesus promises them and us that we'll be pillars forever. The one who conquers I will make him a pillar in the temple of God. Never shall he go out of it. And then he will give us a new name. Revelation 19. Jesus talks about the marriage of the lamb has come and the bride has made herself ready. That's not the case in every country but in Canada usually when the bride gets married she takes the name of her husband. Tracy was not a Radford. She was a Swearingen. She got a deal on that one. But she's been a Radford longer than she's been a Swearingen since we got married. And when we are betrothed to Jesus when we are going to experience the marriage supper of the lamb. It's because we have a new name that will be given to us that will be written on us that we are his. We belong to him. In a few minutes we're going to share together in the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is both a looking back at what Jesus has done for us. The life that he lived in our place. He lived the life we should have lived. The death he died in our place. He died the death we deserve to die. And that he was risen from the dead for us. So that if we believe we might come into his presence forever and we will be pillars and we will be in his presence forever and we will be his bride. But it's also a looking forward to that day to the marriage supper of the lamb. So we're looking back at what Jesus has done. We're looking forward at the glory that we will share with him on that day. So now I would ask that you would prepare your hearts to come to the Lord's table.