And so here we stand, almost but not quite at the end of our journey. The scripture that Bonnie read earlier was the letter written by Christ to the Christians in the city of Philadelphia, which was the sixth of seven letters written to the churches in the area known then as the Province of Asia. Philadelphia is unique for a couple of reasons; firstly they were the youngest of the seven cities having been settled only 150 years before the birth of Christ. And so they were about a hundred years younger then Halifax is now. The second thing that makes them unique is they were the only one of the cities to have an NHL team. The Philadelphia Flyers. As well as a professional baseball team and football team. This is a picture of what remains of the stadium they played in. You don’t believe me do you? Good.
The city was founded by Attalus the 2nd who the ruler of the city of Pergamum between 159 -138 BC. We are told that Attalus cared so much for his brother Eumenes that he was known as Philadelphos, which literally means “One who loves his brother.” And so the city was named Philadelphia, which means city of brotherly love. And you thought the Philadelphia in the US was where that term was coined. Sorry.
If we pull up a map here we discover that Philadelphia was located in what is now Modern Turkey about 80 kms Southeast of Sardis. It was built where the borders of Mysia, Lydia and Pyrgia met and was actually established to be a centre for Greek culture for the area. The earthquake that destroyed Smyrna in 17 a.d. also wrecked havoc on Philadelphia but with a difference. The aftershocks of the quake continued to rock Philadelphia for years. Strabo, an ancient geographer actually referred to Philadelphia as “A city full of earthquakes.” Whenever a tremor was felt a mass of people would rush out of the city, away from the possible dangers of falling buildings, and into the open plains. You’d have to think that would start getting on your nerves pretty quick.
When the city was rebuilt after the original quake by the Emperor Tiberius it was renamed to Neo Caesarea, or the New City of Caesar. Later on when the Emperor Vespian was particularly kind to the citizens of the city it was renamed once again to Flavia, after Vespian’s family name Falvius. At some point some one must have said “This is silly.” And so the name was changed back to Philadelphia.
Out of all the cities it is Philadelphia that receives the greatest praise and no condemnation at all from the risen Christ. The church has such an impact in Philadelphia that long after the rest of Asia had fallen to the Muslims Philadelphia remained a Free Christian City amidst a sea of pagan people. Philadelphia was the last bastion of Asian Christianity. It is one of only two cities that still remains today, and here we can see ruins that date back to when this letter was written along side of relatively modern apartment buildings.
Again Christ begins by telling the church Revelation 3:8 “I know all the things you do, as we mentioned before while Christians will be judged on their individual salvation, which is based on God’s grace and our faith, the church will be judged corporately on the spiritual condition of the majority of it’s constituents, and on it’s works. The things it did and the things it didn’t do.
We need to remember that the church is not a comfort club for the Saints. We are not just here to provide a refuge from a hostile world. The church has a mission firstly 1) The Mission of the Church is to Change the World. And that happens when we stand up and say “This is the truth” and then demonstrate that truth by walking in it. And that not only involves what happens inside the walls of the church but also what happens outside the walls of the church. We need to speak out against social injustice. That may mean taking a public stand against pornography or against abortion or drunk driving. There will always be issues in this world that are diametrically opposed to the word of God.
Whether it is the child labour that John Wesley preached against or the slavery that Orange Scott preached against or the death of tens of thousand innocent children through abortion today the church has to take a stand. We also need to speak out against immorality and say this is right and this is wrong. And those judgements are not to be based on what the world says is right or wrong or what everyone is doing. Nor are they to reflect social standards, but they are to be based on the world of God which is timeless and unchanging. If we simply let everyone decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong what do we end up with? (Video clip: What is sin. I downloaded this from http://www.namb.net/essentials/whatis.asp) And that is why Jesus said The word of God provided the moral compass that the Philadelphia church used to guide their actions.
Christ then goes on to say. Revelation 3:8 “ . . .and I have opened a door for you that no one can shut. What door was it that was opened to church in Philadelphia? That question has been asked for 2000 years and there have been all kinds of answers suggested. One of the most logical answers would be that this represents the open door of evangelism. If that is the case then secondly 2) The Mission of the Church is to Change People. 1 Corinthians 16:9 for there is a wide-open door for a great work here, and many people are responding. In Colossians 4:3 Paul urges believers to pray for him that “God would open a door for our message.”
Because of the Philadelphia’s location on the road of the imperial postal service a great deal of traffic flowed through this city and it was to these people that the Philadelphian believers ministered and by touching travelers from distant places they sent the gospel far and wide, while they remained at home.
Prophetically the Philadelphian church represents what has been called “the age of revival” which was between 1700 and 1850. It was during this time that revival broke out in England through the Wesley’s, Whitfield and Booth, at the same time North America experienced the fire of the Holy Spirit through people like Asbury, Edwards and Scott.
It was during that time that world missions, national evangelism and the Sunday School had their birth. Evangelical Christianity sprang forth during this period in history and it’s advent has changed the face of the world. In relating the Philadelphian letter to where we live in 2003 we have to note the fact that if the door was indeed the open door of evangelism it did not open accidentally or by itself. Jesus continues to say in Revelation 3:8 “ . . .You have little strength, yet you obeyed my word and did not deny me.” The door of evangelism may have been opened by what the believers in the church said but it was propped open by the way they lived. Oliver Goldsmith stated “You can preach a better sermon with you life then with your lips.” Although the Gospel has tremendous power in the lives of the unredeemed, that power is unleashed primarily through the illustration of your life. Yes I know the story about the man who found a bible and read it and became a Christian, never having met another believer. But that’s no the way it normally happens.
Francis Bacon said it best “He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.” He that shares the gospel , builds with one hand; he that shares the gospel and lives the gospel, builds with both; but he that shares the gospel but doesn’t live the gospel, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other. Could it be that we build up the gospel with our lips and tear it down with our lives.
I have become convinced that the most effective form of evangelism is not that which is perpetrated on unknowing or unwitting strangers where we rattle off the four spiritual law, then demand a spiritual response to the intellectual proposition we’ve made. If a response is given too often it is in an attempt to ease the pressure which we’ve put our prospect under. I wonder if we are sincerely concerned with the person’s salvation or if we are just concerned about collecting spiritual scalps?
If we are going to see people effectively won to Jesus we are going to have to win our friends and they will not be won by words alone. When our friends and family see the power of Jesus Christ exhibited in your life and hear the gospel that you share with them out of love for them and concern for their souls then we will see people come to the Lord.
When the Apostle Andrew first met Jesus the first person he went to was his brother, not a stranger. And yet it seems that with the ones we claim to love the most, we are so afraid that we might offend them if we talk to them about Christianity that we quietly watch them go to hell. When William Booth signed the guest book for King Edward the 7th he summed up his life’s work. “Your Majesty” he wrote “Some men’s ambition is art. Some men’s ambition is fame. Some men’s ambition is gold. My ambition is the souls of men.”
Is your ambition the souls of men, do you weep at the thought of your friends and family being lost for an eternity in a godless hell?
In 1912, 39 year old, Rev. John Harper a Scottish preacher was making a transatlantic trip to preach at the Moody Church in Chicago. As fate would have it the vessel he choice was the Titanic. We all know the story about the disaster but do you know the story of John Harper? Harper like many others ended up in the water, and as people desperately tried to survive in the chilled waters, Harper swam to them.
The minister asked people in the water if they knew Jesus. Eventually, Harper approached a passenger clinging to a jagged piece of wood and he pleaded for the man to trust Christ. The minister was completely exhausted at this point. As he succumbed to the conditions and went under the water to his death, Harper said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."
A few years later at a meeting of survivors of the Titantic, the final man who encountered John Harper told the group that he had been saved twice that night. First, he had accepted Christ as his personal Savior because of Harper’s efforts. And, of course, he had been rescued from the deep Atlantic seas. He said “Alone in the night with two miles of water under me I believed, I am John Harpers’ last convert.”
We need more John Harpers, more men and women who put the salvation of others ahead of everything else in their lives including life itself. And yet if we are going to have that door of evangelism open to us then we need to live a life in which people see Christ.
I love the story of the pious old church member who asked the children in the junior Sunday School class “Why do you think people call me a Christian?” There was an embarrassing silence and then a small voice in the back piped up and said “Because they don’t know you.”
People may doubt what you say but they will always believe what you do. If you claim to be a new creation people won’t believe you until they see that you are a new creation. But there is more then simply living the life there also has to be an invitation to experience what you have experienced. Although the value of a good example can never, never, never be over emphasized people need to know why and how you live like that. In verse 9 the power of their influence is shown, listen to the words of Jesus: Revelation 3:9 Look! I will force those who belong to Satan—those liars who say they are Jews but are not—to come and bow down at your feet. They will acknowledge that you are the ones I love.
Because the men and women of the Philadelphia church not only preached their faith but lived it as well the nominal Jews in the community came to know Christ. When the example of your faith shines throughout our communities we shall see the nominal Christians in our community, those who say they are Christians but are not, we will see those men and women come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. How? By the sermons that Denn Guptill preaches? No. Most of those people will never hear me preach, they will come to know the living Christ through the sermons preached by your life.
Because when your life becomes an example to them of what a Christian ought to be and that isn’t what they are they will seek the truth. And that open door will be open to all in the community. People will only believe what Christ can do in your life when they can actually see what Christ has done in your life.
If you claim that Jesus gives you power in your life but you remain powerless what are people going to believe, your words or your life? If you talk about the joy that Christ gives you but you walk around looking like your puppy just died, what are people going to believe, your words or your life?
It is no accident that the church which Christ praises the most had the greatest concern for reaching people with the good news. Throughout the New Testament Jesus spoke with praise of those things which were productive and with scorn of those things which were unproductive. Listen to his words in John 15:1-2 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.” I heard someone say once that evangelism was like the weather, everyone talks about it but nobody does anything about it. But we have to. In seventy years there’s a pretty good chance that everyone who is here today will be dead. Pretty sobering thought isn’t it? And Jesus has entrusted us with the future of the church, and that future will only be realized as we pass it on.
The closing remarks to the Christians in Philadelphia echo the other six letters. They are told to hold fast, persevere, and overcome. Because it’s not just how your start the race that counts but also how you finish the race. So where are you at today? Where are we at as a church?
I hope you enjoyed the message. PowerPoint may be available email me at denn@bccnet.ca
If you could build a church for a dollar. . .
Would you?
The go to www.helpbuildachurch.com
