The Only Church Jesus Never Corrected (Most Christians Miss This)

There's one letter in Revelation where Jesus has absolutely nothing negative to say to the church. Do you know which church he's talking to? In this letter, Jesus talks about an open door set before all of us. You may not be able to see it. You may feel too small, too tired, too beaten, even too worn down to walk through it, but it's there before you. And Jesus himself put it there. And he says no one on earth, no enemy, no one in hell, no circumstance in our lives can close it if he opens it. But here's the thing almost nobody talks about. An open door doesn't mean an easy door. If you've ever felt like you've had nothing to offer, or maybe you're too far gone, or maybe too weak, or maybe you feel unseen and overlooked, this letter today is for you. Welcome back to Get Into the Word. My name is Robbie Gallaty. We're continuing our journey through the seven letters to the seven churches in Revelation. And today we come to the sixth letter. This was written to the church in Philadelphia, not Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is a city in modern-day Turkey. Now, as I mentioned earlier, this is the only letter where Jesus doesn't correct or critique the church, not even a single rebuke, not a single warning of discipline, just pure, unconditional affirmation and promise. So whatever this church was doing, I think you and I need to pay close attention. Let's look at Revelation chapter three, verse seven. Right to the angel of the church in Philadelphia, thus says the Holy One, the true One, the One who has the key of David, who opens and no one will close, and who closes and no one opens. I know your works. Look, I have placed before you an open door that no one can close because you have but little faith, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. Note this, I will make those from the synagogue of Satan who claim to be Jews and are not, but are lying, I will make them come and bow down at your feet and they will know that I have loved you because you have kept my command to endure. I will also keep you from the hour of testing that is going to come on the whole world to test those who live on the earth. The first thing I want to introduce is how Jesus introduces himself. It says Jesus is the Holy One, the true One, the One who has the key of David, who opens and no one will close. Now stick with me because later on I'm going to explain to you what all this means from a Hebraic perspective and it's going to bring the entire passage to life. Here's the key to understanding Revelation that most people miss. We study it with two resources in our hands at all times. We have the biblical text in one hand and the ancient context in the other. Text, context. When you see a phrase like the key of David, your first question should be where does this come from in the Old Testament? A Messianic

Jewish rabbi once told me that he believed, I was at a retreat with Judaic Christian Studies with Dr. Dwight Pryor who was my mentor for years before he passed, and at this retreat this Jewish Messianic rabbi said to me he believed every time Jesus opened his mouth in the New Testament he was quoting, connecting, or hinting at the Old Testament scriptures. Well, makes sense. Jesus was the Word made flesh. Now the challenge for most of us is that we don't know the Old Testament well enough to even catch it. This is why I'm so passionate about getting you into the Word until the Word gets into you. My wife Candy and I have developed three different Bible reading plans, if you're unfamiliar with, called the F260. I'm going to put a link below, but you can go to our ministry website called replicate.org and you can download these plans. Each of the plans are designed to walk you through essential passages of scripture in a way that's manageable and also deeply rewarding. If you want to follow along with me as I preach through the whole Old Testament, I'm doing that with my church right now at Long Hollow. Our people are reading a verse through the week and I'm preaching on one of the verses they read when they come to church. How many times have you walked into a service and the pastor says, open to Obadiah? And some of you say, Oba who? Right. I mean, I get it. it because you don't know. But imagine reading through Exodus, and then I preach through Exodus. Imagining reading through Deuteronomy, and I preach through Deuteronomy. So back to the text. Where does the key of David come from? Well, Isaiah 22, verse 20. It says, on that day, I will call for my servant Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, I will place, don't miss this, the key of the house of David on his shoulder. What he opens, no one can close. What he closes, no one can open. Does that sound familiar? Well, Elkiakim, or Eliakim, was the palace administrator

under King Hezekiah. If you don't know the story, here's what's happening. He held the literal key to the royal treasury, the house of David, in a sense. That phrase, the house of David, was a Jewish idiom for the kingdom of God itself, the riches of God, the temple of God, the presence of God. To hold that key meant you controlled who got in. And Jesus is saying, listen, guys, I hold that key. Not Caesar, not the Romans, not the empire, not even the Jewish religious leaders who were shutting the doors of the synagogue in the faces of Jewish believers. Now, by the way, if you're interested, put below. I'm thinking about doing a video on who is the people of God, or who are the people of God? Who were the Jewish people back then? Why are they called the synagogue of Satan? And you can do exegetical gymnastics all you want, but that's what the text says. Or are the people in Israel the chosen people of God, or is there a difference between the nation and the government? If you're interested in that video, I'm thinking about putting it out. But here's what he's saying. I'm the one who controls, who enters the kingdom of heaven. Not someone in the Old Testament, not a ruler today. Jesus Christ controls it. Now, I want you to look at the second Old Testament quote

that is woven into the passage. Jesus says in verse nine, I will make them come. Let's look at it again. I will make them come and bow down at your feet, and they will know that I have loved you. Now, pop quiz before I give it to you. What does that echo from the Old Testament? Well, it's Isaiah 49, 23, which says, they will bow down to you with their faces to the ground and lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord. You see, in Isaiah, God was speaking about Gentiles who would bow down before his people. But Jesus flips the application entirely. Here, it's the Jewish religious establishment, the ones who had been persecuting believers, cursing them out, cutting them off from business and economy, cutting them off from their own families. He says, no, these people, don't miss this, will bow down before the very people they rejected. The message of Jesus is unmistakable. It doesn't matter what nationality you come from, what synagogue your family attended, what church you grew up in, it doesn't matter how religious you are or even your spiritual pedigree. If you do not confess Jesus as Lord, the day is coming when you and I will bow down before him in judgment. You gotta remember, when Jesus came the first time,

he came as Savior. When Jesus returns the second time, and by the way, he's coming back, we'll read this in Revelation for sure, when he comes the second time, he comes at judge. And here's what I tell people. You either bow the knee to him now as Savior and Lord, or you'll bow the knee to him tomorrow when everyone will bow the knee, whether you believe or not, as judge. The church in Philadelphia had been expelled from the synagogue for believing in Jesus. Their families had been disowned. Their community, in a sense, had rejected them. And Jesus looks at them and says, listen, they shut the door of the synagogue on you, but I have placed before you another door that no one and nothing can close. Jesus also made a similar point in the Sermon on the Mount. If you remember, Matthew 7.13, he says these words. Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide, and the road broad that leads to destruction. And there are many people who find that and walk through it. But narrow is the gate, and difficult the road that leads to life, and very few people find it. Both roads, in a sense, are right in front of you. Both roads are wide open. One is crowded, downhill, comfortable. and it leads to destruction.

The other road is narrow, steep, sparsely traveled, but it leads to life. And so here's the question I want to ask you. Not did you say a prayer as a child once, not were you baptized when you were little. Let me ask you this instead. What road are you presently on right now? Where are you heading? What direction is your life moving? If the path you're walking feels easy, popular, unchallenging, you may want to stop and check the map. Now, let me give you the ancient context of this city because this is where it really comes alive because it completely changes everything about what Jesus is promising. Philadelphia was founded in 140 BC with a specific mission in mind. The founders wanted to use it as the base to Hellenized the Eastern world. They wanted to bring Hellenism or this mindset of Hellenism. And by the way, I need to do a video on the four parts of Hellenism and how they create and connect to Hollywood. If you're interested in that, put a comment below because that's one that really is eye-opening. But to spread the Greek culture and the language in Asia Minor, this idea of Hellenism was prevalent. It sat on the greatest highway in the ancient world, and that's why Philadelphia was such a promising city.

It connected Europe to Asia. And because of its position on that road, the city became known as the gateway to the East, the doorway to, in a sense, an entire continent. Now, let's read verse eight again, and I want you to keep that in mind, and let's see what Jesus is saying here. I know your works. Look, I have placed before you an open door that no one can close because you have but little power, yet you have my word and have not denied my name. Jesus is essentially saying, Philadelphia, you know exactly what a doorway to a mission field looks like. You were built for that purpose, but I'm not asking you to spread Greek culture. I'm asking you to advance the kingdom of heaven. The city was, in a sense, the missionary base to reach the world, and Jesus was not placing the same calling on the church that met there. But here's the line I don't want you to miss. Because you have but little power. Now, Jesus doesn't say I'm opening the door because you're strong enough, you're capable enough, you're well-resourced enough. No, he doesn't say that. He says the exact opposite. He says that he's gonna open the door to the church

because they have very little power. They were small. They were persecuted. They were insignificant in their own eyes. They didn't have the social capital or political influence of other churches. They felt like, at times, they were losing ground. Some of you are like, man, I feel like that now. Jesus looks them right in the eye and says, you are exactly who I want behind the door. And don't miss this. An open door doesn't mean an easy door. Paul understood this better than anyone. If you remember what he said in 2 Corinthians 2, verse 12, he said, when I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though the Lord opened a door for me. And then he goes on to describe how he was continually opposed, how difficult the ministry was, how he was attacked at every corner. You would assume Paul would say God opened the door and everything was hunky-dory, everything was easy. No, not the case. In Colossians chapter four, verse three, while writing from a prison cell, Paul says, pray also for us that God himself may open a door for us to preach the word, to speak the mystery of Christ in a sense, for which I'm in chains.

Open doors back then and sometimes today come with chains. Open doors tend to come with opposition. The presence of difficulty does not mean you've walked through the wrong door. It may mean you have walked through exactly the right door. Somebody needs to hear this. Let me tell you a story about my own personal life. When I arrived at the church, I pastor now. When the second pastor of Long Hollow left in the 90s to plant a church across the street, it was a difficult time for those who stayed at Long Hollow. He left behind members without staff and about 200 people. Half the church went across the street and planted a church. It didn't look like Long Hollow was going to survive. I think our church had gotten down to about 180 people at that time, 1996. But there were faithful men and women, many of whom are still. at our church today. And what they did is they stepped up. They started praying. Some in the congregation had to preach on Sundays. Others opened their own checkbooks and paid out of their own pockets the curriculum for the Sunday school or the church material that they would study on Sunday morning. But more importantly, every single person got on their knees and they desperately prayed for God to intervene. Attendance dropped and the people thought,

well, what are we gonna do? An interim pastor named Gene Mims, he worked at Lifeway, came in and told the remaining congregation that this was the best thing that could ever happen to them. Why? And they thought he was crazy. What are you talking about? This is the best thing. People are leaving, our church is declining. It seems so counterintuitive to what was happening. But here's what he said. Because you need God to show up and you are dependent on him to move. He's the only hope for Long Hollow. Shortly after that, our church called a country preacher from Cleveland, Tennessee at the time, named David Landreth. What followed was only a God story. God allowed him to, by God's grace, to see the church grow from 200 to almost 7,000 when I had gotten here 11 years ago. And then in what can only be described as a divine act of humor and grace when our pastor passed away tragically from cancer. The church called a former Roman Catholic, alcoholic, former drug addict from New Orleans, Louisiana, who had only been a believer for a little over 10 years to be their pastor. I'm gonna show you a picture. I may do my testimony one day for you,

but I'm gonna show you a picture of what I looked like six months before coming to Christ. Now, I'd love to say this picture is me going to prison or jail, but it's actually me at the DMV. This is just a normal day in my life. That guy is mad at the world. You can see it on my face. Now, here's the point of saying that. When we are weak, God becomes strong. And I believe we serve a God that wants to take a mess and turn it into a message. Friends, the reason God puts us through testing is to give us a testimony for him. God loves to take people and turn their checkered past into trophies of his grace. You need to hear that today. And I believe with everything in me that it was precisely because of the weakness, not in spite of the weakness, that God used this church. Now, this is not a unique story. This is a pattern of the kingdom of God. When you get to the end of yourself, that's a good place to be. Look at me, because that is the beginning of God. When Jesus is all you have, I like to say, you realize that Jesus is all you need. Can I get an amen? Now, think about Paul. You want to talk about weakness?

By the end of his life, Paul has been beaten with rods three times. This is his own account. Whipped five times within an inch of his life. He was stoned and left for dead. Shipwrecked three times. Adrift at sea. He carried the weight of church planting across the whole globe, and at that time, the ancient world of the Roman Empire. He was fighting off opposition from inside the church. He had attacks from outside the church. Simultaneously, his body was broken and bore the wounds to prove it. His resources were depleted. Very easy for Paul to have given up hope. And yet, when he showed up, people got saved. When he prayed, God moved. When he stood up to preach, kings bent the knee. Not because Paul was strong, but because the weaker Paul became, the stronger Jesus became through him. As Paul went down, Christ went up, and that's why in 2 Corinthians 12, 10, he says, one of my life verses, he says, for when I am weak, then I am strong. Here's the hard question. I want you to think about this. Did you ever consider that the suffering you're walking through right now

might actually be God's answer to your prayer? You prayed, God, use me. God, make me like you. God, work mightily in my life. God, bring people to faith who are far from you. And then the very thing God does is send his choice instrument in your life to accomplish this pain, and what do we do? We go to a prayer meeting and pray it away. God, take it away, God, remove it. Friends, don't pray for God to remove the difficulty until you've learned what he's teaching you inside of it. Suffering breeds dependency, and dependency is always where the power of God flows in our life. Now, I wanna show you something. in the text that makes sense when you know the history of the city. And it's one of the most personal promises from Jesus in an encouraging way to this church. Philadelphia sat on the edge of a volcanic ridge. The ground there was geologically, in a sense, unstable. Strong tremors and sudden jolts would be felt constantly by the people. When an earthquake hit, the people had no choice. They fled the city and then they camped in the open fields in order to live until the aftershocks subsided. Then they would return back to the city and rebuild the city again, only to wait for the next earthquake.

They were perpetually, get this in your mind, going in and out of the city, never fully settling, always on the edge, never certain that the ground beneath them would one day give way and they would die. This instability wasn't just physical. It extended to their very identity. In 17 AD, the first major earthquake leveled the city. They rebuilt it and renamed it Neo-Caesarea in honor of the emperor who had helped finance this reconstruction project. 43 years later, put a pin in this, in 60 AD, another earthquake devastated and destroyed the city. So they rebuilt the city for a second time and named it Flavia after the Flavian dynasty that once again funded the work. Think of government subsidies. Think of FEMA back then, ancient FEMA, coming to help the city rebuild, government grants, if you will, today. The people eventually rejected both names and pushed to restore the city back to the original name, which was Philadelphia, phileo, brotherly love. That's where we get the word Philadelphia. The city didn't know what to call itself. Everything was unstable. The ground still shook. The buildings fell. The names had changed.

They had no solid foundation, no permanent identity, no certainty about anything, past, present, or future. And then Jesus writes these words to them. And if you don't know what I just said, these words are just, in a sense, words on a page. And I'm gonna show you what Jesus says here that's pretty eye-opening in verse 11. Jesus says this, I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have so that no one takes your crown. The one who conquers, I will make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he will never go out again. 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 out of heaven from my God in my new name. Do you see that? Notice three things in this promise. First of all, a pillar in the temple of my God. Where does a Jewish mind go when they hear the pillars in the temple? Well, they go to Solomon's temple, in a sense, straight to the temple Solomon built in 2 Chronicles 3, 15 through 17, if you're interested. Solomon erected two enormous pillars in front of the sanctuary of God. Each one, the Bible says, was 27 feet tall. And he did something interesting. He named them. He named one on the right, Jochum. On the one on the left, he named Boaz.

Think about this, he named pillars, immovable things, indestructible pillars, permanently fixed pillars. And here's something beautiful about what those pillars stood for. The temple in Jerusalem was built to face the east toward the rising sun, toward, in a sense, the Mount of Olives, from which Jesus, one day, the Bible says, will come back. The two pillars of Jochum and Boaz framed the eastern doorway, the entrance, if you will, to the house of God. So when Jesus, you're gonna love this, when Jesus says, I will make you a pillar in the temple, he's saying, you will stand, as a follower of me, permanently in the doorway of the kingdom of God. You will be immovable. No one will be able to shake you. You will never flee the city again in fear anymore. You're gonna be fixed, framed, called by God in his presence, permanently. I love that. Secondly, he said, you will never go out again. Did you hear that? Makes no sense if you don't know the context. The people of Philadelphia had spent their entire lives going in and out, fleeing earthquakes and rebuilding, fleeing again and coming back. Now, I didn't do that as much as them, but I can tell you, living in South Louisiana, Chalmette, to be exact, right outside of New Orleans,

as a child, we would leave, many times, as a teenager, whenever a hurricane would come. would come to the city and they would come regularly. We would leave and go out of town and then come back. Very similarly, that's what we did. And Jesus says, no, no, no, no more. Not you, not anymore. You're never going to be driven out again. That's good news. Number three, and here's the final one. I will write on him the name of my God on my new name. Gonna give you a new name. Three times in two verses, Jesus says, I will write on him. For a city that had been renamed twice and still wasn't sure what to even call themselves, this meant everything to them. Here's what Jesus, in essence, is saying. I'm giving you a name that will never be changed again. I'm gonna give you an identity that no earthquake, no persecution, no religious authority, no government, no circumstance in your life will ever alter again. You belong to me and that is your name forever. Some of you are watching this today and your identity is built on something that has shifted under your feet. A career, a relationship, a dream, a reputation, a season of life that maybe has passed and the ground you're walking on feels unsteady and you don't know who you are anymore.

Jesus' words to you today are the same words he spoke to Philadelphia. I'm gonna make you a pillar. I'm gonna write my name on your life and you will never go out again. You will be immovable and unshakeable in my kingdom. Everything in this letter points to a single question that Jesus is asking every person who's watching this right now, so come in close. What door has he placed before you? And are you willing to walk through it? For some of you, the door is the most fundamental of all. It's taking a step to enter the kingdom of God. You've heard the gospel, perhaps for the first time, perhaps for the hundredth time, and you have not walked through the door. You've not accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior and put your faith in him. Jesus says today, the door is open and he holds the keys and no one can close it and no one can shut it unless he says so. The question is not whether the door is open. The question is whether you will walk through it. Now for others, you're already in the kingdom, but there is a door to still walk through. It's the door of obedience. It's been standing in front of you for months, maybe even years, a call to surrender more fully, a step of faith into full-time ministry, a step toward a full first-time mission trip

that feels too costly, a conversation maybe you need to have with your neighbor or your family member. Maybe it's an assignment that seems too big for you to partake in. You don't have the resources. You don't have the intellect. You don't understand. Maybe you're too weak, you feel like. And Jesus' word to you right now is the same word he gave to that small, seemingly insignificant, earthquake-rattled, persecuted church in the first century Turkey. You have little power, but you have kept my word and I have placed before you an open door. You see, the weakness you're ashamed of may be the very thing Jesus uses to display his strength through you. The limitations you keep apologizing for may be exactly the conditions under which God will do his greatest work. When Jesus is all you have, let me remind you, you will discover that Jesus is all you need. He placed this door before you. It's time for us to walk. If you enjoyed this episode, let me encourage you to share it with a friend. Do us a favor, subscribe to the channel, like it. Until next time, get into the word until the word gets into you.