The Church Of The Open Door

Have you ever heard this expression before?

“If you’re looking for the perfect church, and you find it – if you find the perfect church – well you better not join it because it won’t be perfect anymore.”

I love this. And the reason is because no one is perfect, right? There’s no such thing as a perfect church. It doesn’t exist. Now I’ve already made a similar statement in sermons before, when I asked if New Hope was perfect, and I said no – all of you go here, myself included. Well today, it’s time that we rephrase that question. My question to us is no longer, “Is New Hope perfect” but instead, it is now, “Is New Hope faithful?”

There are no perfect churches, but there are faithful churches.

And so today, in our series in the book of Revelation (singular, not plural) on the Seven Churches, we now come to the 6th letter to the church in Philadelphia. The faithful church.

The Church in Philadelphia

And you see, this church was faithful both to God’s Word, and it was faithful to Christ’s name. Similar to the church in Smyrna, the persecuted church, the church in Philadelphia is the only other church that is commended by Jesus – He doesn’t have anything negative to say. So, as we get started this morning, if you brought your Bibles we will be in Revelation 3, starting in verse 7, and as we’ve been doing in this series, I’d like for us to read through this passage first, and then we’ll begin to drill down into the specifics.

“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 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 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.’”

— Revelation 3:7-13 (ESV)

Before we start to go through all of this, I’d like to first focus on something for us to keep in our minds throughout this message, it’s the characteristics of the church that we see in verse 8:

“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.”

— Revelation 3:8 (ESV)

Characteristics of the Philadelphian Church

So let’s look at this – what incredible characteristics to have in a church, right? Right there at the end of verse 8, “I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and not denied my name.”

So, we’re to be two things:

faithful to the scriptures

faithful to the savior

We also learn from verse 8 that they were the Church of the Open Door. Christ clearly opened a door for them, and I think that this same principle is also true for us today both individually and corporately. Meaning, if we follow and are faithful to His Word, and we’re faithful to Christ in His glory, then God will open a door of opportunity for us.

It’s then our part to be faithful and step through that door.

There are six sections to our text that I’d like for us to look at.

Section 1: Destination

The first section we’ll look at is the destination.

"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."