Keys. I have keys. Lots and lots of keys. Thanks to keys, we can keep safe the things we consider valuable. But we are also kept from access to those things. Keys; we all have them, we all need them, we all appreciate them, but we all resent them at times.
If you don’t have the right keys, your feelings may range from irritation to embarrassment to downright fear. On Mondays I generally work at maintaining my house, my yard, and my cars. That means I have quite a bit to do outside. So I go out, start to do some work, find that I need a tool, and go to the basement door, only to find it locked. Hey, didn’t I just come out this way? But she who is the queen of the castle is very security conscious and has closed it. And I don’t have the key. I have to ring for entrance to my own house. An irritation, because I don’t have the keys.
Every now and again, because I keep my personal keys and my church keys on two separate rings, I arrive at the church and find that I have forgotten to bring the keys to this place. So here I am, for nearly eighteen years the senior pastor, but I am standing on the step, in the rain, pushing the doorbell, and answering the question, “Who is it, please?” If I say, “Smith”, the answer comes back, “Who?” If I say, “Pastor”, the answer comes back with a giggle, “Do we know you?” Embarrassing, not to have my keys.
If you don’t have the keys you need, you can be irritated; or you can be embarrassed; or you can become fearful, because suddenly the situation is life-threatening. Do you remember that on 9-11, some people died in stairwells in the World Trade Center because they came to locked doors and did not have the keys? Oh, it can be terribly important to have the keys.
When John was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and began to hear a message for the ages, he heard something about keys. He heard a word from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. An awesome thing! And the core of what John heard had something to do with keys. Listen:
“Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hell.”
Keys. I have keys. Lots and lots of keys. Thanks to keys, we can keep safe the things we consider valuable. But we are also kept from access to those things. It can be terribly important to have the keys. Maybe we’d better take an inventory of those keys.
I
Notice that the Book of Revelation was written primarily to the church. John in the Spirit on the Isle of Patmos was instructed to write to the seven churches. If you know anything about the symbolism of numbers in the Bible, you know that seven is the number of wholeness. It means completeness. Just as there are seven days in a week, so also when the Bible speaks of the seven churches, it means the whole church.
So let’s see – do I have the keys to the church? (Display ring full of church building keys). I do; but then I may lose them or misplace them. So do I need to be anxious about the keys to the church? When the Lord Jesus says that He has the keys, He has the keys to the church. He is the Lord of the church. And the message that He speaks, “Do not be afraid ... I have the keys”, is a message about the church. For without His keys, you see, the church is an irritation, a frustration, and a disappointment.
I don’t know about you, but much of the time when I pick up the newspaper and read about some church, it is an embarrassment. If it is not a report about a treasurer gambling with his church’s money, it is a story about a pastor accused of sexual misbehavior. If it is not an account of police being called to supervise a sanctuary, it is a clipping about millions of offering plate dollars being paid to victims of abuse. It’s often irritating and embarrassing to read about the church.
And yet John is able to report to us that the one who loved us and freed us by His blood is making us into a kingdom. He is appointing us as priests serving God. He says that one day every eye will see Him and every tribe will acknowledge Him. This is a word about the church; we are going to be kings and priests. We are going to live in the presence of God continually. Christ loves the church and has appointed the church to be His kingdom. With all of its spots and stains, with all of its sins and shortcomings, still the word is, “Do not be afraid ... I have the keys.” He has the keys of the church. Do we need to be afraid of the future of the church? Can He keep is secure?
The issue is that we have left our keys at home. We have misplaced the keys of the Kingdom. Like your hapless pastor, standing and punching the doorbell and petitioning for admission, we have locked ourselves out of much that the Lord wants to do through His church. We have locked ourselves out because we are afraid. We have not heard Him say, “Do not be afraid ... I have the keys.”
A fellow pastor sat with me the other day and talked about his congregation. He pointed out that their plot of ground is so small that they have no place to expand. So the pastor asked his people to consider adding a third floor to their two-story building. They said, “No, that would be expensive”. So then he asked them to put some activities in the parsonage, which is standing empty, because he is not living there. They said, “No, we need to keep it nice for the next pastor.” For the next pastor? What about this one? He caught the message in that – something like, “You won’t be here long, not if we can help it.” My pastor friend said, “They are afraid to take any risks, they afraid to spend money, they afraid to grow, they are just plain afraid.” Who has the keys to that church, I ask you? Not the Lord, it would seem!
I spoke too with another pastor who has had to preach a “line drawn in the sand” sort of sermon. The church that pastor serves has money locked up in Certificates of Deposit. They put it there so that it would be safe for the day when they needed it. This past summer they employed a youth minister, as an experiment, to see if they could reach more young people. It worked; they did reach more young people. And so now the proposal is to continue with this youth minister. The money is there, so what’s the problem? It’s locked up in Certificates of Deposit, and more to the point, it’s locked up in the value system of the people, who would rather hang on to dollars than use them to grow the church. Who has the keys to that church, I ask you? Not the Lord, it would seem!
But I read in my Bible, in Matthew’s gospel, that the Lord has given His church the keys to the kingdom. I read that He has founded His church and that the very gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And so, despite the irritations and the embarrassments that go with being a church leader, I have decided that I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid of the future of the church. I will not be afraid of the future of this church, because in the last analysis, it is not I who has the keys to the church. We may lock up our resources and we may lock out those who should be reached; but the Lord will prevail and will open up His church, one way or another, with us or without us. I’ve simply decided to hear Him say, “Do not be afraid ... I have the keys”. He has the keys to the church; He will make a kingdom of priests, never mind the irritations and the embarrassments. I shall no longer worry about what I do with the keys to the church, for He has the real keys.
II
On the other hand, what about the keys to my personal life? The keys to my house, to my cars, to my strongbox. Maybe I need to check and make sure I have those. After all, with the things I say about my wife, I may be locked out of the house this afternoon! Maybe I’d better make sure the keys to my personal life are in hand. (Display house and car keys). Looks like everything is there – front door, side door, basement door; good car (that would be hers), old car (that would be mine). Yes, everything is intact. I have the keys to it all. So is there any reason to be anxious about my personal life? Don’t I have everything under control?
The idea that we can control and lock up our own lives is an illusion. We are not in control of what happens to us. Ask the nearly three thousand California homeowners whose houses went up in flames over the last few days. What good are the keys to a burned-out shell? Things go away in an instant. Ask Robert and Alberta Faulkner about their little red car; this Wednesday afternoon in a flash it was sandwiched between a stoplight-runner and a Metrobus, and the last I saw of it, a fireman was cutting its door off. It’s gone. Praise God Bob and Alberta are not gone, but this material possession is. But do you know that as they were lifting Alberta on to a Gurney and strapping her into place, in her hands, though she was unconscious, there was a set of keys?! They ran a strap around her whole body and her hands, and the keys too! Oh, don’t we hold on to the keys to our personal lives?! Of course we do. But material things can be gone in an instant. Is that something to fear?
There are other ways we lock up their personal lives. Because we are afraid, we lock others out. We keep others away, even though they intend to do us no harm, but only to help. I shall never truly understand the privacy that some of us keep so intensely, so that when we are in trouble, we lock out the deacon, we lock out the pastor, we lock out our Christian brothers and sisters, and explain it all by saying, “I am a very private person, you know.” Yes, I do know; but do we not believe in prayer? Do we not understand that when we are sick or when we are struggling or when we are in a conflict, the counsel and the prayers of faithful people are critical to our recovery? Some of us lock up our personal lives and hide the keys. Why? It has to do with fear. It is a testimony to the depth of our anxiety, to the pervasiveness of our shame, and to the power of our fear that we do not want anybody to know when we have deep personal needs.
But listen to the Lord Jesus. He says, “I have the keys”. He has the keys to our personal lives, for John says that your brothers and your sisters share with you, in Jesus, persecution and patient endurance. Brothers and sisters share patient endurance. The Bible says that there is no trial that is common to us that Jesus Christ has not also endured. So He has the keys to my life. He understands my personal life. He can give meaning, He can bring openness, He can bring power. It matters not about my privacy. He has given me brothers and sisters who will care for me, no matter what I have done or have failed to do. What good news! “Do not be afraid – I have the keys”
Not long ago one of you drove a group to a church event, using the church van. You let all the passengers out and turned right around and locked up the van, with the keys inside! Now that’s embarrassing! If that had been you, what would you have done? Some of us would have tried to hide that mistake; we would have done everything in the world but ask for help. Coathangers in the windows and everything else. We can’t admit that we need help! But look what the Lord provides through your brothers and your sisters; the driver called another church member who lives only a couple of blocks away, and guess what? He had a spare key! In only a little while the van was open and everyone was on their way, with a good laugh.
Why are we so afraid to let others help us in our personal lives? The Lord Jesus has the keys to our lives. He unlocks meaning and purpose. Do not be afraid. Here are the keys to my life. I am really not afraid of losing these keys; someone else will be there for me. Someone else will help me unlock my life’s problems. He has the keys.
III
But we are not finished yet. It is not yet over and done with. For every one of us knows that this life will end. It cannot last forever. The Bible says that it is appointed to all once to die. It is going to happen! No argument about that? The other day we read about Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, an incredible relic of the Second World War. She was 106 years old, a very long life. But guess what? She did die. This week we learned that the world’s oldest person, age 116, died in Japan; she was known for sleeping two complete days and then staying awake the next two days. But guess what? She is asleep now, for a lot longer than two days. Death is real and cannot be escaped. The poet Tennyson says that we think we were not made to die; another poet cries out, “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Ah, but think all you want, rage all you wish; yet we are going to die.
And so I have another key to display. I have another key to wonder about. (Display skeleton key). It is a skeleton key. The skeleton represents death, where we are stripped of life and flesh. A skeleton key opens many doors, doors common to all of us. Death is a door common to all of us. Are you afraid of what this key represents? Are you fearful as you approach the abyss?
Most of us are. Let’s be honest. I know of no one who is in a hurry to open the door to eternity. This week I heard someone say that she had sat down with her pastor as he was dying, and he confessed to her, “I am so ashamed. I’ve consoled many dying people, and now I find that I too am afraid to die.” But it’s just normal. It’s real. There is no shame in that.
And so, oh, how important it is for you to hear the good news today! Oh, how I want you to hear this ringing word from the Lord of life Himself:
“I have the keys – I have the keys of death and hell.”
Oh how I must know, when I come to that cold door, that there is a key to unlock it and take away my fears. Oh, how I must know that when I cross that narrow passage, there will be nothing to fear. I have staked my all on this – that when it is all over, He is the first and the last and the living one. That when all else ends, He remains. That when earth and heaven shall pass away, He will stand. When the skies split open, and time shall be no more, He will continue. If the earth be devoured by humanity’s own stupidity, He will save. If we succeed in detonating our lovely blue plant, He will redeem. If the earth should change, the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though the waters roar and foam and the mountains tremble with its tumult, I tell you, there must be a river. There must be a river whose streams make glad the city of God. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved. God will help her, when the morning dawns.
Do not be afraid; He has the keys. Do not be afraid. He is the first and the last and the living one; He has the keys. Do not be afraid. He was dead, and see, He is alive; He has the keys. He has the keys of the church (scoop up church keys), so we are not afraid of the future of the church. He has the keys of our personal lives (scoop up personal keys), so we are not afraid for our possessions or our privacy. And, praise God, at the last, He has the keys of death and of hell. On this we have staked our very lives. In this we have invested our eternities; He has the keys. He has the keys. To death and hell. To everything. He has the keys. He has the keys. (Take skeleton key to Communion table)
