The Church of Philadelphia
Tom Shrader examines Christ's letter to the church at Philadelphia in Revelation 3:7-13, highlighting how Jesus identifies this church by their faithfulness and the open door He has set before them. He emphasizes that God sovereignly places believers in strategic positions to serve and represent Christ, even when they have 'little strength,' and promises to strengthen them to persevere until His return.
“You were born again to serve. Like Jesus, you came not to be served, but to serve.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: What Christ Says to the Church (Revelations)
Recorded: 2004
Duration: 38 min
Themes: faithfulness, perseverance, opportunity, strength, service, endurance, obedience, hope, feeling weak, facing opposition, new believer, ministry leader, pastor, struggling with doubt, seeking purpose, church member
Scripture: Revelation 3:7-13, Isaiah 22:22, Psalm 23
Theological Themes: ecclesiology, church identity, divine sovereignty, eschatology, end times, biblical prophecy, spiritual warfare, sanctification
Full Transcript
If you have Bibles, you can open them to Revelation chapter 3 verse 7. It's important and I know repetitive, but I've got to get this big point that we are looking at the seven churches in the book of Revelation. There are seven churches that Jesus is addressing through the Apostle John. What started this whole series, you might remember, is a comment that John Stott made that these seven churches are actual churches at the end of the first century. Seven churches represent seven types of churches that we'll see throughout history.
Now where I went with that, and this became like one of those big aha moments for me, is churches are made up of people. So these are maybe seven types of people that I might encounter in the body of Christ. We looked at a loveless church like the church at Ephesus, or a suffering church. Then we looked at a compromised church and then a corrupt church and then a dead church.
Today's the church at Philadelphia, and there's huge practical stuff here. I want to try to go down this big point and connect one giant point with you for our entire time.
The Message to Philadelphia
Let's read the passage in verse 7: "And to the angel of the church at Philadelphia write: These things says"—and here's the author, Jesus, and we said He always customizes His identification of Himself to fit what He sees or identifies as the strength or weakness—"He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens."
Now He doesn't identify any weaknesses in that church. That's not to say that the church was perfect, but as Jesus is speaking He goes right to the strength with a familiar phrase: "I know your works. See, I have set before you an open door." So that becomes the key—that's the strength, this open door. What is that? How does that work?
"I have set before you an open door no one can shut it." And then He adds, kind of interestingly enough to me anyway, "You have a little strength. You've kept My word and have not denied My name."
Verse 9: "Indeed I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, those who say they're Jews and are not but lie—indeed I will make them come and worship before your feet and to know that I have loved you. Because you've kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole earth to test those who dwell on the earth."
Verse 11: "Behold, I'm coming quickly. Hold fast to what you have that no one may take your crown."
Verse 12: "He who overcomes I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. And I will write on him"—and I have three things highlighted—"the name of My God, the name of the city of My God, that is the New Jerusalem which comes down from heaven from My God, and I will write on him My new name. He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches."
The City of Philadelphia
If you still have that map that we distributed the first week or in the back of your Bible in that picture map setting, you see Paul's missionary journeys. John is addressing these churches, coming from Patmos onto the mainland in Turkey and making a complete oval. All these cities are 30-40 miles apart: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, now today Philadelphia. It's the church that has before it the open door. That's what I want to really dwell on today.
The recipient is the angel of the church in Philadelphia. The city of Philadelphia—remember we said last week that we didn't know much about Thyatira, we know a lot about Sardis—it was the youngest of these cities, the newest. Founded in 150 BC, it was named by the king of Pergamos who loved his brother. Philadelphia—brotherly love. It was a city that had its name changed over and over again but kept coming back to this.
One of its characteristics is it was a city that was, and I quote from one of the historians, "a city full of earthquakes."
Living with Constant Tremors
Let me read you from William Barclay: "It often happens that when a great earthquake comes, people meet it with courage, but the ever-recurring minor shocks drive them into sheer panic. That's what happened at Philadelphia. Shocks were an everyday occurrence. There'd been in 17 AD an earthquake that had destroyed Sardis and ten other cities, but not Philadelphia. But there were these recurring earthquakes. There were gaping holes and cracks in the walls of the houses. No one part of the city was in ruins, but destruction all around. Most of the population lived outside the city in huts and feared to even go into the streets lest they should be killed by falling masonry. Those who still dared to live in the city were reckoned mad. They spent their time shoring up shaking buildings and every now and then fleeing to open areas for safety. These terrible days in Philadelphia were never fully forgotten, and people lived ever-waiting subconsciously for another tremor, ready to flee the city to save their lives."
Now that was just a comment about the geography of the city. I want to step outside of that. My experience is in most of life we're like those people in Philadelphia. We handle the big earthquake pretty well. It's the tremors that get us.
You get the call that's got this tragic news attached to it—maybe it's physical, maybe it's relational, maybe it's economic—and you seem to take that first punch. But it's all the time after that. I can't tell you how many times I've stood in church in a reception area when we've had a family that has experienced some tragedy and been able to say to the people around them, "Listen, this is great that you're here today, but they really need you four or five, six weeks from now when life goes back to normal." We absorb those big things, but it's the little things in life.
There was a book—there's a guy, he was a Brit, wrote a biography on Richard Nixon, and I don't know why—big book too—I don't know why I picked it up.
I was reading a biography about Nixon – not a big fan – and this guy set out to write really a scathing biography, but it ended up being pretty favorable. He was quoting Kissinger, and Kissinger was saying that Nixon could accelerate in the big events, put him in China, put him on the big stage, but that he couldn't live in the ordinariness of life. I've always been big on this – that's where we coined the phrase "mastering the mundane" – I've always been big that we live in the ordinariness of life.
I mean, we talk about Iowa football or football in general – I'll talk Iowa football. So you've got these times – I can't imagine – they started seven or eight years ago, they do in June as a fundraiser for Iowa Children's Hospital, they do a ladies football academy. It's all women, various ages. I've always wanted to send the girls; I thought they would love it. They're talking to the girls and they teach them – they're tackling dummies, they're throwing passes – but one of the things they do is they let them come out of the locker room with the music blaring and out the tunnel. I think that would be so cool.
I can't imagine what it's like November 12th – they're going to play Michigan there at night, so it'll be a night game. For the first time in the history of the school, they're going to play Iowa State this year at night. They've never done it. So they asked the athletic director, "Why have you never done this before?" And he said, and I quote, "We're afraid of drunkenness and debauchery." So I'm not sure I want to go to that game, a night game at Kinnick.
Living in the Two-a-Days
But I can't imagine what those guys will be like, because by November 12, Iowa will still be undefeated, Michigan will be highly ranked. Coming out of that tunnel will be incredible. But these kids are going through two-a-days and strength training all year long for those 12 shots at running out of that tunnel. That's pretty impressive. But you don't get to the tunnel if you don't do the two-a-days. We live in the two-a-days.
Our life is peaks and valleys. We live more on the downslope or the upslope or the valley than we do on the peak. And that's why I say I have this theory – and I always get a bunch of grief – but I don't think most people love their kids. They say they do. I don't think they do. They love to talk about taking the kids to Disneyland for a week, Hawaii for two weeks, but that's not what parenting is. It's every day. It's every night.
Haley was, I don't know, seven maybe, young. I was doing something on parenting, and it was at the time the debate was quality time versus quantity. So I went to Haley and I said, "What do you need from me? Quality time or quantity time?" And she said, "I don't know what you're talking about." And I said, "Quality time – good time, talking, playing, wrestling. Or quantity – just volumes of time." And she said, "I need quality time and lots of it." And that's the mundane.
It's making 10 calls to get one appointment and five appointments to get one proposal and 10 proposals to maybe get the deal in escrow before the guy blows it out. I thought that was so interesting. These people lived in the middle of that all the time.
The Strategic Importance of Philadelphia
Here's another thing about Philadelphia that was key: in the Greek mind, it was a fundamentally important area to control for the propagation of Greek culture, Greek language, Greek literature. It was an outpost to maintain the Greek grasp on the area. So hang in there with me. This is easy to see. If it was strategic for that, it was likely a strategic outpost for the Christian faith. I think that's what that open door has to do with it.
The Four-Fold Identity of Jesus
Jesus says in verse 7 that He is, and He identifies four things. He is holy. That's a word – there's no moral contamination. Holy is an odd word to get a hold of. It means other than. He's holy. He's completely different than us.
And He's true. There's two aspects to that. One is true like a true statement versus a false statement. The other is true like a genuine thing. You get a knockoff driver. You get a driver and you take it and it looks like a ping. Maybe it feels like it, feels a little different maybe. It hits more like a ding than a ping. It doesn't quite have that sweet spot. That club head seems to – the toe and the head seem to come into play a little more. It looks like the real thing, but it isn't.
So we can combine those two words and get this picture of Jesus. He is not a truth. He is the truth. He is the real genuine article. He is the one true God.
He is the key of David. It's a direct quote from Isaiah 22:22. It's a picture of His authority. He's the final authority. So in our election year and all time, He controls who's in control. And He opens and no one shuts, and He shuts and no one opens. He is God.
An Inadequate View of God
I was watching the other day. I was at home and I had a boatload of time and didn't feel like reading. I didn't want to watch the US Open to see if the ball moved, and I'm out of that. I don't want to know who's going to play in the Olympics or not play in the Olympics. So I'm watching some YouTube stuff and I'm watching a Q and A with John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul.
Whenever you get those guys together, the questions tend to be stated in a negative way. I don't know why that is. It's not what's good but what's bad. So the question was, "What's wrong with the church today?" There's a whole assumption in that question. Both of them answered essentially the same: we have an inadequate view of God.
A.W. Tozer used to say this big statement: the problem with our theology is that it doesn't rise high enough or ascend high enough or descend low enough. It doesn't rise high enough. We don't let God be God. He's God. See it in verse seven: He opens and nobody shuts, and He shuts and no one opens. He's in absolute control. He's a sovereign God.
Now in my tribe, we see and believe that God is sovereign, and we dwell especially on
God's Sovereign Placement
Salvation means God chooses who He's going to save. God determines that. My heart is hard, I'm separated from God, so I can't understand spiritual things and unless God moves and changes my heart, I'll never respond to the gospel. But we don't go to the next step. He's sovereign in all of life.
You were born, it's a generalization, I imagine it's generally true, you were born here in the U.S. You were born in 1915 or 16 as I look around the room. You were born sovereignly and placed here. You weren't in India. You were six feet tall, not 5'5". You were given a certain set of opportunities, not in some fatalistic way, but sovereignly placed with a skill set, with a platform. And God's sovereign and He reminds them of this.
The Open Door of Service
Why? Well, because He's going to go right to the strengths. Look at verse 8. "I know your works," familiar statement, I think we've seen it in all of the six churches. I know this, I'm not a disconnected God, I'm not a remote God, and "I've set before you an open door." Now we don't know exactly what that means. We don't know if Jesus is saying I've set before you myself, I am a door, the imagery, or if He's talking about open door, meaning prayer or mission opportunity.
I think service. Let me just pound on this one point in our life, is we have before us this open door of opportunity to represent Christ wherever we go, in the strategic places that He has you, wherever it might be, at the club, at the market, church, the neighborhood, and you are there to represent Christ and you do it by serving.
I came across this quote the other day, Mark Guy Pearce says this, and I quote, "Unless our faith saves us out of selfishness and into service, it will certainly never save us out of hell and into heaven." Now, when I read that, I went, wow, that's a big deal, I need to break that down. He's not saying my serving saves me. What he's saying is God redeemed you for a purpose and that's to serve.
Transformational vs. Transactional Relationships
Somebody gave me a book the other day and that's disruptive, that's the new word. We went through reinventing. Now everything is disruptive. We're gonna disrupt the medical community, disrupting education. This guy has decided he's gonna disrupt the commercial real estate business, which could use some disruption probably, I would guess. But he said, what I'm gonna bring into it, and this would translate into any industry or frankly, any relationship. I would bring into it, I'm gonna bring in an aspect of service. Not serving you transactionally, so the two words, I don't think it's unique or new. I'm not gonna have a transactional relationships, but transformational relationships.
I'm not gonna come into a transactional relationship with you, be nice to you, love you, get you a gift.
A Picture of Transformational Service
My brother's playing golf the other day in Branson, Missouri, which I thought was interesting. And you gotta know my brother, he hit a ball and he goes over and there was a single behind him. He's playing with a group of guys. He got over the ball and he thought that it was his ball. But when he got to the ball, it had a logo on it, a tiger hawk that said, "Go Hawks." So he knew he wasn't hitting an Iowa golf ball.
And so this guy comes up and he said, he was really a nice guy. And said, "I think that might be mine." The guy said, "Yeah, it is. And you know, are you from Iowa?" "I'm from Iowa." And then once you start that, you're into maid rights and pork tenderloins and everything that goes with it. You know, I told you, I saw the t-shirt last week. "I went to the Iowa State Fair and all I got was type two diabetes." That's a great t-shirt, but that's true.
So my brother said to him, ah, my brother's in Phoenix and he's a big Iowa fan and they go to Kinnick once a year, blah, blah, blah. So the guy reaches in his bag and pulls out a sleeve of Pro V ones with the Tiger Hawk logo on it and gives them to my brother and the guy's gone. He never sees him again. Now that's the kind of relationship we're talking about. It's totally transformational. There's nothing in it for this guy.
Small Acts of Service Matter
Sandy said the nicest thing to me the other day. I thought, it sounds really small. She was in a meeting and it was a dinner meeting and she was going over and Sandy doesn't eat dessert, but there was one cookie left. And so she was, and a guy came up and said, "Hey, I'll split it with you." And she said, "All right." And so we cut it with one piece clearly bigger than the other piece. And then he took the big piece.
And here's what she said. "Whenever you split something, you always take the smaller piece," which is interesting because I do. And it rips my heart out because I'm cutting it and I'm going, I'm bigger than you and I got to. But it's that kind of stuff.
Born Again to Serve
What He's saying is you were born, let me say that differently because it just popped into my head. You were born again to serve. Like Jesus, you came not to be served, but to serve. And there is before the church at Sardis. And so then I would argue before us, this opportunity in this world that by its very nature says, "Mind me," they're stumped when you come along and you say, "I'm here to serve you."
Now, the reality is most people will respond to that. And it'll be the old Zig Ziglar stuff. "It's amazing what you can get, if you help other people meet their needs" and all that stuff is you come along and you're here to serve.
The Problem with Empty Words
I spoke at Grand Canyon University and I was in one of the, I don't know if it's the leadership school or business, I don't know what it was, some classroom. And I was to talk on leadership. So I had my notes and I knew where I was going. And I came in and up in the front was this collage of words: integrity, honesty, service, and it just, and I said, "I gotta put these away." I said, "I'm gonna talk about this. This makes me throw up. This is in every boardroom of every organization on the planet."
Living with Little Strength in a Performance-Driven World
The world is filled with fake benchmarks and aspirational achievements that aren't real. There's a whole service industry built around lowering the bar. I was at my therapy the other day doing a squat with two-pound weights—only because they didn't have one-pound weights. I was doing my squats and got up and said, "That's really shaky." She said, "Well, you didn't fall." I said, "Wow, how low is the bar in this workout? I didn't fall over." She just keeps telling me, "Well, you haven't fallen yet."
If you show up on time and you're reasonably nice, you're in the top 10% of your industry. If you can give correct change on top of it, you've excelled—you are a one percenter. You'll earn the trip to Casa Grande for the weekend. You'll win it all.
But here's what Jesus is saying: by our supernatural nature, like the city of Sardis, God's placed these open doors all around you. He opens them and nobody can shut them. You come in and, as verse eight says, you have little power, little strength—you aren't much.
The Danger of Pride
I got college football in my head already—Wolverine pride and Trojan pride and Irish pride. Here's what Jesus is saying: You have no reason to be proud of it. You have nothing to be proud of. You aren't much. And that's what Jesus is looking for—people who aren't much, who follow Him.
I had coffee yesterday with a guy, and this is perfect. I've been waiting to share this, but I didn't know how to say it. His son graduated from the Naval Academy. I said, "Was that hard? It sounds hard to me." He said, "It was really hard early on." This is the Navy—we're not even doing Army or Marines yet, we're Navy. He said, "They just keep breaking them down and breaking them down and breaking them down, because you can't be a leader until you learn to follow."
Learning to Follow Before Leading
That's my point. If you Google leadership, you'll get millions of sites. But if you Google follower, you'll get like 200,000, and almost all of them are Christian related. In August, when I'm back up with the student leaders at Grand Canyon University, my whole thing won't be—because it's the student leaders and they're looking for leadership advice—I'm going to tell them, "Here's 20 bucks, buy a John Maxwell book. Now you know how to lead." No, you have to be a follower. I have to follow Jesus, be like Christ. He didn't pick you because you're extraordinary. He picked you, and that made you extraordinary.
God Uses the Weak
You have little strength. A week from Saturday, Sandy and I are going to Cannon Beach where I'm teaching. I'm splitting the week—I'm doing the first half, Daryl's doing the second half. Typically if we're there for a week, one guy does the morning, one guy does the night. No matter how spiritual you think you are, it's very competitive. You're speaking to the same group of people and you want them to like you more than you want them to like the other guy. I mean, it just is. You say it doesn't matter, but it does matter. I always take the morning because the people are fresher. It's tougher at night.
We're at Forrest's home, and the evening speaker is someone—I guarantee you have one or more of his books on your shelf. I'm the morning guy. We get there in the afternoon, so they start with the evening speaker. We're at Forrest's home, rustic, and he's got on these pressed khaki pants and this starched shirt, and his hair is coiffed. He's got this perfect, rich, honey-toned voice. He does this thing, and I'm thinking, "Uh-oh." When I saw it on the sheet, I thought, "This is going to be a problem."
When he was done, every person I talked to said, "Isn't he amazing? Isn't he amazing?" The objective of the message is to have them go, "Isn't God amazing?" Now, it's not that guy's fault—it's how we are. But He chose you with little strength so that your skill set, whatever it is, doesn't get in the way of the message. You're a messenger.
God's Promise to the Faithful
He's looking for obedience and faithfulness, and He says, "I'll protect you, and you will persevere." Here's the promise at the end: that Christ will return, that I'll be a new creature, that I'll persevere to the end.
I was doing some exercises yesterday, and I said, "What number was that?" She said, "I'm not counting. I wasn't counting—I got distracted." I said, "52." She said, "Well, no, it's not 55." I said, "I think seven." So we negotiated while I'm sitting there with my leg up in the air with the weights on it. I said, "I can only do one more." She said, "You can do two." I said, "All right, I'll do one good one and one not very good one, but I'll do two more."
She's helping me, and I just know what I am—I want to quit. I got a simple exercise where I'm just working on this shoulder, just building strength, and I'm just shaking. I did planks yesterday. A guy just set the world record for planking—you know what planking is, on your feet, on your arms. He just set the world record: eight hours and one minute. I did 30 seconds yesterday, and you could have put a margarita on my back and I could have shaken it all up. I was shaking so much I didn't have anything that wasn't shaken.
When I'm all done, she said, "Tom, that's really good." I said, "Really?" She said, "Well, no, but you did it." I want to quit. I don't want it anymore. And what He's saying—and maybe you need to hear this today—is you'll persevere. You'll break the tape. You'll go all the way to the end. Not because you're strong. He's strong. You're of little strength, but He'll give you that strength to persevere.
So to the church at Sardis, He writes this. I'll open these doors to you and me. I see that all around us. Everywhere you go, there are open doors and opportunities to make a difference, to be salt and light. And He'll give you the strength. I'm teaching Sunday at Gateway, which is our campus. You go to Globe and make a right. I mean, it's so far out there. And they assigned me the 23rd Psalm because, and I just add the word because at the front of it, because the Lord is my shepherd, all these things are true. That's what you have.
God's Invitation to Service
So God not only invites you, He's brought you into what He's doing in this world. And He's not asking you to save the world. He's not asking you even to save your world. He's asking you to be salt and light right where He's placed you, that you're going to be different than the people around you, that people are going to see that. I go back to that whole idea of service, real service brought into the world is so different.
Confession time. I was early today, exceptionally early. And I was coming up because I'd like to drive in South Scottsdale and look around. I don't know why. And I'm coming up Hayden and I see this strip center and there's this neon sign that says the local donut. And I'd never seen this before. And I figured that's got to be the equivalent of a greasy spoon. I mean, that's got to be good.
So I went in and I didn't know even going in, I'm saying, okay, God, don't let me buy a donut. And I can hear Him say, well, then you shouldn't probably go in there. That would be the best thing. And then they had this case of donuts and lady came out and said, would you like one? And I said, no, I want like a half a dozen. I like a half a dozen, but I'm only going to have two. And so I said, I'll have that one and I'll have this one. And she said, that's, I don't know, $2 and 37 cents or whatever. And I gave her the money. She gave me change. And I said, thank you.
The Power of Exceptional Service
Here's what she said. It blew me away. She said, you're welcome. She didn't say have a good one. No problem. That's my latest one. Thank you. Oh, no problem. Really? I paid a hundred dollars for this $4 worth of food and it was no problem for you to bring it. That's cool. She said, you're welcome. And that attitude stuck with me.
That's how easy it is to be exceptional in this very ordinary world. But your motivation is not to build a customer base to sell donuts. Your motivation is you love God. Therefore you serve Him. And because you serve Him, you serve the world. Got it?
Looking Ahead to Laodicea
Next week, the passage is at the church of Laodicea and it has in it a couple of passages. Even if you're not too familiar with scripture, you'll recognize, behold, I stand at the door and knock and I spit you out, not because you're hot or cold, but because you're lukewarm. So next week, the church at Laodicea, read ahead, see what you see, make some notes, and we'll talk about it next week.
Father, thank you for this amazing truth. Thank you that like the church at Sardis, you've put before us today, open doors. Give us the strength and the wisdom to know what those doors are. And then to be your hands and feet and represent you with salt and light in the midst of this world you've placed us. God, thank you that as we leave this place, we don't leave it alone, but we leave with your Spirit filling us and dwelling us, driving us. God, do that. Will you please allow us to persevere? Let us be strong, not in our own strength, but in yours. We pray that to you in Christ's name. Amen.