Revelation 3 7-13 — Tim Conway

Christ’s Message to the Church in Philadelphia

Revelation 3 .7 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've 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. Now, I'd stop right there and just make this comment.

The Hour of Trial and the Coming Judgment

The last verse I just read, that's the kind of verse that our premillennial dispensational friends like to latch onto and say, see? There's a seven-year great tribulation coming and there it is right there.

And what Jesus is saying is that He is going to eradicate the church prior to the rapture so they won't have to go through this. You don't want to read it that way. Our Lord's warnings all the way through these churches, are warnings of, I'll come to you like a thief in the night.

They're warnings like, I'll kill her children. They're warnings like, I'll remove your candlestick. They're warnings like, I will spit you out of my mouth. I will throw her into a deathbed. What we want to see here is when this talks about trial, we're not just talking about some difficulties that are coming through a period of time.

You want to see this trial like a courtroom trial. What He's talking about is, there's a day coming when the whole world is going to be brought to give an account. I'm coming as a thief in the night. That's what He says to the church right before this.

He's going to come and it's an hour when we don't expect. And when He comes, what's going to happen is those who have been faithful and those who have been overcomers are not going to fail and fall to this resurrection of judgment.

He's going to protect us in that hour. That's the picture here. So anyway, let's resume. I am coming soon. You see, that's the issue. You see the connection. This is when He comes. When He comes, it's the end.

It's like the parable of the ten virgins. You've got five that are wise and five that are foolish. And when the bridegroom comes, it's over. The door's shut and it's the end. And what happens? You have five foolish ones that are kept on the outside.

You see, they're the ones that are going to be facing this trial that's coming upon the whole world. When we think about tribulation, tribulation is one of the words that He mentions to actually the church right before this, the first one in chapter 3, namely Sardis.

But He talks about tribulation coming. This is the tribulation that's talked about in Romans 2. This is a tribulation of punishment and damnation and hell. And He's coming and it's all over. He's coming.

We know what happens. He comes and He divides. And basically what He's saying is He's going to protect these people from being on the left. He's going to protect these people from that. I'm coming soon.

And He says this, 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. Okay, so let's dive in. The first thing I want us to do is try to go back and actually visualize what we have here. Now, I'll tell you right up front.

Philadelphia’s Historical and Cultural Setting

I've gone to Wikipedia and I've done searches on ancient Philadelphia online. And various things come up. And I've seen pictures. Pictures of what it looks like today. I see the amphitheater that was actually there back in these days.

It's a great big thing in the side of the mountain there. You can see the ruins. You can see old pillars from buildings. I was in Izmir a couple times years ago. It was once or twice. I forget how many times I went over there.

I think twice. But Izmir is Smyrna. And there's a road, I believe it's 67 miles, highway that goes straight to Philadelphia. I didn't take that. If I was there longer, I would have loved to have gone up there and seen that area.

And the beauty is that these are the two churches. They're connected by a 67 mile highway. These cities were the only two among the seven that had nothing negative said about them. So, imagine with me.

I got to looking at pictures. The city of Philadelphia sits at the base of a great big mountain. It's called Mount Tomolis. And don't think about a peak like this or like your typical volcano looking mountain.

It's more like Mount Massive that Joshua and Evan and I climbed this past summer. It's a massive wall of a mountain just huge. And this city sat down at the base of that. And then looking the other way, it went out onto a great fertile volcanic plain.

And what we do know about it is it was very fertile and it was a tremendous place being close to the Mediterranean. It's the Aegean Sea area. It's in what today is western Turkey. And it was fertile. And what we know for a fact is they grew grapes out there.

We know that raisins and wine were a big deal there. And so, imagine, Roman days, one of the chief commodities, and it was a wealthy city. I understand it was on a major Roman road, east to west road.

And it was a place of commerce. It was a place of wealth. Well, you can imagine, if it's the Roman days and your big thing is grapes and wine, what God they probably worshipped. And it's true. They worshipped Bacchus.

You all remember Bacchus? He's the Roman god. C .S. Lewis puts Bacchus, I think in his chronicles, you may remember him. He had leaves in his hair and grapes in his hair, and he went around carrying a glass of wine.

That was the Roman god Bacchus. Now, we look at that today and we read C .S. Lewis and that's basically a parable. We can kind of take it as fictitious and mythology. But you remember, these people worshipped Bacchus.

They were deceived by this. The other thing that we know about it is that they were very close to Rome. Even though they were off in what's western Turkey, they were fairly far away from Italy and Rome.

The fact is that they were very close and they were very committed. And we know for a fact that they had imperial cult worship. They were very given to worshipping the Caesar. Now, like most of the Roman cities, they worshipped the plethora of gods, but they were really given to Bacchus.

They were really given to Caesar worship. We know those things about that. And among the Roman population, we know that there was a population of Jews. We know that from the very letter. Look at v. 9.

Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say they are Jews and are not...". Understand this. Jesus puts the proper name on everything. People call themselves the synagogue of God. Jesus comes along and says it's the synagogue of Satan.

The thing about Jesus is He puts everything in the true perspective. Scripture does that. And the God behind Scripture does that. He puts the proper names on everything. And you believe it, on judgment day, the proper names are going to be put on everything.

If anything is true about these seven letters, it's a picture of judgment day. Because what you find is the Lord who has these eyes that are like fire. That's how He's described in these letters. A little later in Revelation, He's described as having seven eyes.

The Lamb had seven eyes. Those seven eyes are the seven spirits of God that go out into all the world. These are eyes. Fire, they see in the dark. Seven eyes, that's perfect discernment. He sees everything exactly as it truly is.

Somebody says, I'm a Jew. He says, you say you're a Jew, you're not, you're a liar. In other words, a Jew is one inwardly. It's not just enough, not all Israel is Israel. And that's what's being called out here.

These people, were they physical descendants of Abraham? Certainly. And they lived here. And He knows they did. And He knows that the Philadelphians in this church, they knew about these people. So the Jewish people tended to be industrious.

Here's what we know. The Jewish people, they typically have wealth. This is one of the things that really bugged the Nazis about them. They were typically where they go, they're industrious. They're involved in the commerce.

And because of their industriousness, they would have migrated to the places where money was to be made. And this was a place for money to be made. And the thing is, okay, you've got Romans, you've got Jews, and in the midst, you've got this church.

A church that Christ has planted, one of His candlesticks, is in the midst of this whole thing. Now they're hated by the Romans. Why? Oh, the Romans said all sorts of things about them. They're incestuous.

They're cannibals. Why? Because we supposedly eat Christ's flesh. We're incestuous because brothers and sisters marry each other. They call them atheists because they didn't believe in their gods and wouldn't fall down and worship their Caesar.

And so they were hated. The Jews hated them. Why? Because they had all their Judaistic, Mosaic law-keeping as being the proper way to get to heaven. And the Christians came along and said, you can't be saved by law-keeping.

And they said, oh, these people, they're denying Moses and they deny all the Old Testament worship. So they were hated. And here, you have a church. They found themselves as light in the midst of this darkness.

The Church with Little Power

So, if we got on our time machine and we went back there, and suddenly you're out in the midst of the city. I saw these old Roman streets and they still have pillars and stuff. And there was fantastic architecture there.

But don't think this. Don't think that you would have gotten out and you would have gone up and seen this massive cathedral that said Church at Philadelphia. Wasn't like that. You would have got there and you would have seen all the impressive things that the Romans did and all their engineers and laid the roads and built these massive structures.

And there were the Jews and undoubtedly in the marketplace, they were the ones controlling the sale of this and that. They probably owned parts of the great... I mean, you can just imagine how it was.

But you know what we're told? We're told this. Verse 8, I know that you have but little power. And we know, we've heard this. Probably you've heard this. It's the Greek word dunamis. And dynamite comes from it.

It's the word that has to do with power, strength, ability. Basically what Jesus is saying is you're not very impressive in the eyes of the world. You don't have much. That's what He's saying. You don't have much ability.

What we would find is a church with little strength. Now think about that. Think about what a church with little strength looks like. We know all about that. I think we're a church with relatively little strength still.

But I mean, you imagine when there were 10 of us and we're meeting over in a little house over on Hackberry. I mean, what's that? It's pretty pathetic. We met in a burger place. Mark, I'm not knocking your burgers, but we met in this little burger place just on the east side of San Antonio.

Not incredibly impressive. And you know what? The fact is there's a lot of churches like that. They don't have these incredibly impressive edifices and St. Peter's Basilica, and it's not that kind of thing.

Even here, we've got the UPS driver, the FedEx driver who calls James and says, I'm looking for a church, but all I see is an abandoned warehouse. Am I even in the right place? Not altogether very impressive.

That's what you would have found if you would have gone back there. You wouldn't have even seen these people standing out in any kind of notable way unless some of them were being put to death in the amphitheater or something and there was some kind of gathering for that.

But what's that mean? What's it even mean to be of little strength? What does that look like? I'll tell you one thing it looks like. It looks like that thing that Jesus Himself notices about these people beyond everything else.

He's got these eyes of fire, which later are called seven eyes, the seven spirits of God. He's all discerning. His judgment is perfect. His evaluation of things is spot on. I mean, when it comes to analysis and His estimation of things, it's perfect.

And you know what happens when He looks at this church? He says, the first thing that stands out to Me about you is you have little power. Little power. They had very limited ability. Now, I just thought, okay, wait a second.

One thing that I want to do right here that I know 10 years ago when I was going through these I didn't specifically do is I want us to think about a theology of ability. I'm not talking about God's ability.

We know His ability. He's Almighty. Infinite power. With God, nothing is impossible. I'm talking about our ability. You know theology. Theos, God. Theology part is basically we're dealing with the science of God or the study of God.

I want us to think about the study of God, the study of Christ. We might call it a Christology of ability. I want us to think about Christ and our ability to do anything. Now notice this. He doesn't bring any fault against this church.

When He says you have little power, He's not faulting them for that. In this world, people get faulted for that. You're a football player. You can't do what you're supposed to do. You get faulted. You go to work in a certain place and you can't perform.

You get faulted. He is not faulting them. He's simply pointing out a reality. He's simply assessing them. Here's the thing. Here's the thing scripturally. Think with me. If I have anything spiritually speaking, even physically speaking, where did it come from?

Now you remember John the Baptist. You remember him? Remember that guy? There he is in John 3. These guys are coming to him and saying, hey, John, you know that guy you baptized? Yeah, I know him. He's over there and he's baptizing more than you are even though he's not baptizing.

His disciples are baptizing is what we're told. You remember what he said? He said no man can receive anything unless it's given to him from above. You see, that's the truth. Without me, nothing. You have no abilities.

Now, he's talking specifically spiritually right there, but look, the reality is this, because he's talking about Christians, he's talking about bearing much fruit over against the branches that don't do anything.

But you know, even branches that get thrown into the fire, they can do lots of physical things. They can go off to a job and they can perform different things and they may have skills and they may be able to drive a race car or they may be able to do a computer program or whatever.

Even those things come from Him. He is the giver of all of these things. You know, the Apostle Paul said this in 2 Corinthians 3. He said this, he said it's not that we're sufficient in ourselves. He said our sufficiency comes from God.

In other words, our ability to do anything is not found in us. It's found in the Lord. Look, I'm stressing this because I want you to recognize that if somebody only has a little bit of power, it's not Jesus faulting them for that.

It's Christ who's responsible for it. He's the one in control of it. He's the one who measures out what everybody gets. So, and one of the great places where we see this is the parable of the talents.

So if you've got your Bibles in front of you, turn over very quickly to Matthew 25. Matthew 25. We also get a similar parable in Luke 19. We won't pay particular attention to that right now, but I do want you to see the parable of the talents as we find it here in Matthew 25.

Now notice with me, I'm going to begin reading in v. 14. For it, I'm reading from the ESV, it, the Kingdom of Heaven is what he's speaking about. That's the it. He's saying the Kingdom of Heaven will be like a man.

Now we know this parable. We know who the man is. The man is Christ. Going on a journey. We know what that is. He's gone away. Where? To glory. Until when? Until he returns. So he's away right now. And what's he done?

Well, he called his servants and entrusted to them his property. Now this is important, because everything that we get given, now remember these servants, one in the end is wicked, and two, well done, good and faithful.

So, I mean, this clearly is a picture of what's being given to everyone. Not just the elect. This is what's being given to everybody. And it's not ours. It comes from His resources. That's what it says.

It says entrusted to them His property. To one, He gave five talents. Okay, stop right there. When he talks talent here, this is not like the musician who's talented and can play the violin. That's not what he's talking about.

Talent is a word that we don't often use. It's a measure of weight that was used to measure precious metals. So a talent is roughly equal to 70 pounds. So, a guy gets five talents. Well, you can do the math.

70 times 5. What's that? 350, right? 350 pounds of precious metal. Let's say gold. That's the picture here. One guy gets 350 pounds of gold. Then he goes to the next guy. He gets two talents. Two times 70.

You have 140. 140 pounds of gold. A third servant gets just one talent. 70 pounds of gold. This is Christ. And notice what He's doing. He's distributing His resources. And what does He do? Obviously, it's in this world.

This isn't eternal. This is in this world. Because it's the things that we get now where there's faithful and unfaithful. It's the place we're at while He's away on His journey. And what's happening is when He comes back, He is going to take an account on how we used what was given to us.

And that's the picture that we see here. He bestows. He distributes. He gives. Now, here's the thing. Can you see the folks over in Philadelphia? As He gives 350 pounds over here and He gives 140 pounds over here, He says, ah, you at Philadelphia, what am I going to give you?

I'm going to give you little. Is that just 70 pounds? Or is it 10? Is it just a partial talent? I'll tell you this, He didn't give them as much as He gives to others. He gave them very little. And He's the One who does it.

He is the One responsible if we get little power. Think with me. Power. Christ gives us the power to win souls. He gives us power. This is what we're praying for right now. He gives us power to pray effectual prayers.

To lay hold upon Him for the sake of our children. We'll know if He gives us more power to accomplish that by the fruit. What happens in our children? He gives us power to be involved in missions. He gives us power to evangelize.

He gives us power to get money. He gives us power to excel in any aspect of life. He gives us power to exercise spiritual gifts. If one guy can preach or if one sister especially has a gift of mercy, that's Christ.

He's totally responsible. That is not left up to us. This is something we really need to grasp. Because sometimes I get the feeling that you've got people who think, well, I can be mentored into getting more.

Or if I just go to seminary, then I'll get that extra... Now look, there are things we can do to stir the gift we have, but you can't produce more than what Christ has given to you. That's the issue. He gives us power to be wise.

He gives us power to be discerning. That's what a talent represents. It's a weight of that which is precious metal. It's the gracious weight of the silver and gold that Christ entrusts to us individually and to us corporately as a church when you put it all together.

Because that's how He's talking. He's talking about corporately when you take everything that I've given to all the people that make up this church, it's just little. But notice very carefully. Notice, to one, He gave five talents, roughly 350 pounds of gold.

The other guy gets about 70 pounds of gold. Now, the truth is, 70 pounds of gold is a lot. But we all have to admit, it's also a lot less than the other guy got. That's the thing. This church in Philadelphia, in certain ways, they got little.

And He says, you have but little power. Brethren, here's the thing. This is a reality. This is a reality about churches. Other churches may be given more power, more ability. That's just true. And others may be given less.

That's true individually. Look, none of us have a problem of looking at Charles Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd-Jones and saying, Brother Tim does not have the same weight of preaching gift that they have. That's true.

That's no illusion. And you can look at John Wesley and you can say, wow, he had a real ability with souls. I mean, he evangelized and people came to Christ more than I've been given. And I recognize that.

That's real. He had greater abilities there. I mean, we recognize that those differences exist. It's no illusion. But what's so critical is that we grasp this. It's all by design. This man who went on this far journey, he allotted to each one exactly what he intended for them to have.

And you get what you get. You get what he gives. But think with me about how the world looks at this. See, now this is key. Because we are a product of our culture and of this culture's worldview. And we need to think.

We need to think different than the way we often think. And this needs to happen in the church. Think with me about what all this looks like to the world. I mean, from the vantage point of most people out there in their worldview, what happens when you find somebody who has little?

Think about somebody with little money. They're poor. Think about somebody with little health. Oh, they've got polio or scoliosis. Or they're in a wheelchair. Think about people with little intellect.

People with little stature. People with little strength. I mean, think about that in the world. Little resources. Little athletic ability. What happens? I mean, what happens when you have a team out there and they're playing and you've got the guy out there that's the most pathetic because he's the weakest?

Because he just wasn't endowed with a big frame or quickness. What happens? Do you know what happens in this world? We pity them. That's exactly what happens. Now, I don't know if Joshua remembers this, but I remember this.

Years ago, when Joshua played soccer, I was there at his practice one Saturday and there was a place there on... I think that field was over at Alamo. And they had that field out there and there was only one place where the parents could find shade.

It was down at one end of the field. One day, the coach took Joshua's whole team and there was probably like 20 guys. He took them all the way down to the other end of the field down to the goal at that end.

And he had the whole team line up on the goal line. About 20 guys. And you know, it's one of those classic moments in sports. I couldn't hear because they were too far away, but I could see. And you could just see this whole thing play out.

Well, here's what happened. Coach says, you captains. Okay, these guys come out. Coach kind of drops back. You know how this thing works. The two captains, they start picking teams because coach wanted two teams.

So each captain starts picking. Well, what happens? The first guy looks across that line and he says, ah, I want the guy that I know is capable of the most goals. Or, you know, the guy who's my best friend or however that looks.

You know, there's reasons. And so he picks and then the next captain picks and this goes back and forth. And you know how this plays out. You know, the guy runs over after he's been picked and he's whispering into the ear of the captain and he's saying, hey, pick Scott over there.

Pick Joe over there. You know, and this is how it's happening. The other guys are whispering to him and they're helping him decide. And this thing was playing out like this until there were like three or four guys left.

And now, you know, it gets kind of hard. These are the guys nobody wants. Why? Well, because they lack what it takes to get picked. They lack the coordination. They lack the ability to make the goals.

They lack the quickness. And one of the captains points and a guy comes off the line and like he's so happy to be picked and he's going over to the team and the captain's like, no, I was pointing to the guy next to you.

And the guy turned around and he hung his head and he walked back to the line of shame. Back to that line of insignificance and unwantedness. Why? Why are those guys still over there? Well, they don't have an older brother who is, you know, friends with the captain saying, hey, pick my little brother.

They don't have any of that. And they lack the stuff. And you know, when you see the guy drop his head and shamefully go back to the line, what do we all feel? As I was watching that, it's like, you know, you feel for the guy.

But that's how it is here. We feel sorry. Why do we feel pity for them? Because that's how things get measured in this world. In this world, if you can't perform, you're a loser. And that's how it is.

That's how it is in the workplace. That's how it is in our universities. That's how it is in our government. I mean, it's just the way the world operates. If you can't perform, in this world, you know.

Look, the sports stars out there, there's no great moral character in most of these guys. But they've got the ability to put a ball through a rim. Or they've got the ability to get another kind of ball over the home run fence.

Or they've got another kind of ball across the line. Then the whole world stands up and applauds them. Or you've got the movie stars. Again, people not known for their moral integrity. But what? They've got beauty, they've got looks, and they've got money, so they get applauded.

That's what happens in this world. People with money, people with good looks, people with intelligence. That's in the academia realm out there. It's in our schools. You know, if you're smart, you get the scholarships, you get recognized, you excel.

If you've got coordination, if you've got skill, that's the measure of success by this world's standards. But what's so striking about this church at Philadelphia is he looks at them and he says, yeah, I know you're pathetic by world standards.

I know it. I know you don't measure up, and I made you that way. But, you've kept My Word. That's what we want to notice. After pointing out that they had little power, notice what he says next, verse 8.

I know that you have but little power, yet you have kept My Word and have not denied My name. Were they little in power? Better believe it. But they were big in obedience and big in honoring the name of Christ.

And here's the thing that you want to recognize. Jesus doesn't say to them, well, I see your spiritual gifts are little. I see that your resources are meager. I don't want you on My team. That's not what we find here.

In fact, if we think back to our parable in Matthew 25, do you remember what happens when the Master comes? He says, well done, good and faithful servant. He says this, you have been faithful over a little.

Luke 19 says, very little. And He says, enter into the joy of your Lord. You see, the issue is not what you get. That's not it. It's not what you have. What we have to recognize is this, Jesus and His kingdom's standards are concerned with this, that you be faithful with what you have.

If you have little, you be faithful with it. If you have much, you be faithful with it. And I'll tell you this, it's probably easier to be faithful with a little than with a lot. And yet, we get people in the church, they like pine away and wring their hands.

Oh, it's like they've got this mindset that they can never be what they need to be in the kingdom unless they can preach. They can just never be what they need to be unless they can get to the mission field.

People think like that. We get people in the church from time to time, it's like, oh, I can't teach, I can't preach, woe is me. That's what I really want to do. That's what I need to do if I'm going to be significant.

That's not it. Now look, if God is giving you teaching gifts, you don't want to bury them in the sand. And the best way you're going to know whether you have those is by the testimony of the corporate gathering of God's people.

It's God's people that are going to recognize because they're going to recognize whether you have the ability to impart God's grace to them. But we don't need to have this self-pity. Oh, I just don't have the money that they have.

I can't give like they can. I can't pray like Brother So-and-So can pray. I lack. I mean, look, be done with that. Be done with that. And notice, well done, good and faithful servant. It wasn't well done because they had a lot.

He says well done because you've been faithful over little. That is what it is to please the Lord. And that's what the church at Philadelphia did. And that's why they received nothing but praise. He finds not a single fault with these people.

Undoubtedly, they got to the end. Well done, good and faithful servants. You've been faithful over a little because that's what he says they had. And he finds only commendation for them. Brethren, we're so much a product of our culture.

We're so inundated with its philosophies and its mindsets and its methods of measuring success. So I'm about halfway done here. What I want to do in the rest of this is I simply want to point out just five sets of truths that to the world seem contradictory.

Little Power and Faithful Obedience

But if we know our Bibles, they're not contradictory. One, we can have but little power and please Christ. And you see that. Notice v. 8. We've already looked at it, but let's look at it again. I know that you have but little power and yet you've kept My Word.

We can so easily fall into that trap. We need more ability. We need to advance to some greater ministry. We need a greater name. If only I could obtain to a certain level of learning. If only I could learn what the Puritans know.

If only I could learn deep theology from the Systematics book. You see, sometimes people are geared that way. It's always like, I've got to have more. I've got to have more. If I'm really going to please the Lord, if I'm really going to be acceptable in this whole thing, I've got to be able to do what so-and-so does.

But just remember this. King Saul, a long time ago, you know, he was a man that had a stature that was head and shoulders above every other man. He was endowed physically. Big man. Remember, he leads the forces of Israel against the Amalekites.

You know, the whole Agag deal. And what happens? He defeats them. Wipes them out. Yeah, pretty impressive, right? Great power. Smashes the Amalekite hordes. We're all impressed. The world's impressed by that.

Give me generals. Give me commanders. Give me chiefs. Give me admirals. Men who've won victories and won these battles. Yeah, here's a man. He won the battle. Lots of power. Lots of strength. Lots of ability.

But you know, as he comes with King Agag at his side and with a bunch of sheep and cattle, Samuel says this, God is not pleased with you. You see, it's not all that brawn and all that spectacular. You know what he says?

God is not pleased with your sacrifice. God is not pleased with burnt offerings. Because he's saying, you know, we spared the best of the animals because we're going to sacrifice them to the Lord. When he finally admits he was being a coward and he was going to honor the people rather than God.

I have a verse I often think about there in Isaiah 66. You know this. The Lord says, you want to know the man to whom I look? You want to know who really impresses Me? Who I take really focused attention on?

It's this, humble, contrite spirit, and trembles at My Word. You know how we know that somebody can have very little strength and yet have strength enough to be obedient? It's because Philadelphia did it.

I mean, they're the example. Brethren, this church lacked what other churches had. They were probably small in number, small in spiritual gift, no notable preachers, probably no notable names, no high-ranking authorities had been converted and added to this church, no high-ranking military men.