His Perfect Love

Larry: Today on His Perfect Love, we're introduced to a faithful church.

Guest (Male): It is time for His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt Vanderven. Imagine being on the receiving end of a letter from the Lord that was full of commendations and encouragement to keep doing what you're doing. Wouldn't that feel great? We'll be looking at the Lord's letter to the church in Philadelphia found in Revelation chapter 3 verses 7 through 13. They received such a letter, and we'll look at that today on the broadcast so we too can please the Lord with our lives. Here is Pastor Matt with The Faithful Church.

Matt VanderVen: So Philadelphia, this is the sixth of the seventh church that we read about in chapters 2 and 3. Uh it records just an important message as it is to all of the other churches. Out of the seven, only Smyrna, which we talked about a few weeks ago, and Philadelphia, Smyrna being known as the persecuted or afflicted church. Smyrna, excuse me, that was Smyrna, Philadelphia being known as the faithful church here are not rebuked for any shortcomings, and we ought to pay attention to that because what are they being commended on? Why is there not a call to repentance within this church?

I think God has a lot to say about that. Along again with the church in Smyrna, which we read in chapter 2 verses 8 through 11, the church of Philadelphia was not told to repent. A charge shortly or strongly you might say issued to all of the other churches as we have read. Jesus wanted the church in Philadelphia, the church that's known by the name of brotherly love. That's a good it's a good name for a church. He wanted everyone here and everyone at that time to know that they were in completely they were completely receive all of his commendation.

Philadelphia is commended beautifully. Please look at verse 7. I've set before you an open door and no one can shut it. Believe it or not, that is the promise and part of the blessing and commendation that's given to this faithful church. To the brethren in Philadelphia, the Lord described himself as the one who has authority over the church. Now, as we've talked about in the last five churches we've covered together, the letters sent to those churches, we know that each time Jesus appears to that church and it's significant in the identification and way he appears to them.

Some of the churches or one of the churches appeared with what? A two-edged sword. Another church he appears with fine brass. All that speaking of judgment. Another church he appeared to with eyes of like a fire, you know, looking in those eyes and all seeing all knowing God. Each time he appears to a church, he's communicating something about himself and his intention. So the intention that he wants to communicate to this church, the faithful church of Philadelphia is that he has authority over all things. There is no such thing as a Christian that should ever echo the words, this world is out of control.

That is not accurate biblically. The world is absolutely in God's control. God is sovereign. Now, he is allowing some things to happen that are what we would describe maybe as downward spirals because of wickedness, evil, and giving people over to a debased mind. All of us would say yes, we agree with that without a doubt. But to say it's out of control would be inaccurate. It would be like a Christian saying, I believe in luck or, you know, chance or or some type of coincidence or happenstance. No such thing for the Christian. We know there's no such thing as coincidences.

God is sovereign. He knows the beginning from the end. He's the Alpha and the Omega. He's the ancient of days. There's nothing that hasn't happened that God isn't aware of it and nothing that will happen. We're going to spend a lot of time in prophecy as we get to chapter 4 and on cuz it's all about the future at that point. Right now, we're in the present age, the church age, but it's important to know that God is not missing anything. Jesus is not missing a thing and he has complete authority. Why would that be so important to a church like Philadelphia?

The faithful church. Why would they need to know that Jesus is in complete control and the blessing of an open door is right before them? Think about it. What are they going through? There's a synagogue of Satan within their midst. We talked about that once before because that was also brought up in regards to another church, the church of Smyrna, which we I'm in my introduction I mentioned about them, the only two that didn't weren't told to repent. The synagogue of Satan we're going to go through it, but basically think of it as today the wolves among the sheep and or there's people that were rising up within this church of Philadelphia and they were legalists and they were bringing all kinds of false doctrine in and they were doing all kinds of things to basically stumble other Christians.

And he basically said they're liars. They're teaching a false doctrine and their false witnesses. So you got this whole thing going on. It's not only attack from within, you got the attack from without, the culture at the time, the city, everything else. It's a pagan city, right, in Philadelphia. Don't you think if you're faithful and you got your hand on the plow, don't you want to hear Jesus say keep going, don't quit? I know things look like they're kind of spinning out of control, but they're really not. I'm in complete control and I have the keys of heaven and earth.

I have the keys of hell. I have it all. I'm in control and sovereign. You keep your hand on the plow. Why is that important? Cuz you're going to put your eyes somewhere. Either you're going to put them on your circumstances in the moment where you're going, man, this is out of control. It's not. Or you're going to put them on Jesus and going, that's a distraction. I know what I need to do and I'm all about my Father's business. It's all a battle for the mind and perspective absolutely matters. You're either going to have a temporal perspective or an eternal perspective.

And that's what he wants the believers in Philadelphia to understand. Hands on the plow, no looking back, the cross before me, the world behind me, even unto death. I will be faithful. It's a very commending letter, but also a sobering letter. Philadelphia, as I have been doing for each and every church we go through, I talk a little bit about the context of the church. It matters cuz the letter specifically has certain touch points that Jesus is sort of I guess maybe if he was to write to you and I here in Harrisburg, there's certain things like he'd say that river.

Boy, it 's an artificial divide, isn't it? People on the West Shore and East Shore, they are all my people. Why are we dividing over a river and a bridge? Maybe he'd say something like that. I don't know. Maybe he wouldn't, but I believe he would. The point is is there's something cultural about the areas we live that only if you live in that area, you know the difference. There's a lot of touch points within this versus today that give indication of what was like to live in Philadelphia and and the people that would receive this letter, the church of Philadelphia, they had known exactly what was going on, that Jesus was speaking directly to them because he's telling them things that only he knows and they could only be aware of.

So where is this city of Philadelphia? It's in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. Like to draw your attention up to the map here. If you look right over here, you can see Philadelphia near Smyrna there. Also you can see Sardis right above it. It it was an imperial post road, important trade route in between. It was infertile area with lot of fertile ground near the Cogamus River Valley. It's about 105 miles just to give you representation there. Philadelphia is about 105 miles from Smyrna, what you see up there. It also because we don't see the topological, you know, the the ability to see the heights or depth of where you're looking at there because it 's not a topo map.

What Philadelphia actually said is about 650 ft above sea level, okay? So it's kind of up a little bit raised, kind of like a terrace. This city was actually one of the later found cities of the ones we've been reading in the Bible. It wasn't founded until after 189 BC. It's one of the youngest cities that way in the seven we read here. It was on the highway that led sort of to the interior area. If you look up there, you can kind of see you you had to pass Smyrna, Sardis. Smyrna and Ephesus were close to the coastal areas like that.

So you know, think about it in those days like much of everything else, the waterway was used for trade and to put things on ships and they would, you know, send cargo, things like that. One of our brothers at first service was sharing with me what he does is a truck driver. He works truck trailer and he was sharing. I said, boy, I haven't seen you in a few days. You're doing all right? And he says, oh yeah, he says I had a really long trip. And I said, oh, where'd you go? He says, I had to go all the way from Maine to California.

And I said, oh man, how long was that? And I think he said four or five days and one way and then four or five days back, right? So you're talking almost a week and a half to two weeks and he's bringing cargo, things that are needed to those people that live in California and or Maine and he goes back and forth. Pray for him. He's got to do it again here in a few weeks. So these are long hauls as they would say or trips. So I want you to think about that because that's the same idea.

This is a way to go inland to Philadelphia and you were pretty far inland. So it it was on one of what they called the major veins or highways that led to the interior. And it was given its name Phil well, we call Philadelphia, but the original name was given in honor of Atlas the Second because of his loyalty to his elder brother and I 'm going to say his name wrong. It was Eumenes the Second. He was the king of Lydia. Now, there was another name given to this church. Well, not the church, but the city.

It was also known as the Decapolis because it was considered as one of the 10 cities of the plain. Just to ground us in this for a minute. Let's look at some pictures so you get an understand. We're talking about a real place. This is a real city. You can go to Turkey today and see this very picture. The other thing I want you to see is you see those really large columns? Those are pillars. I'm going to be talking about that because Jesus spoke about one of the blessings or gifts for those that overcome is that their name is going to be written in the new heavens, right?

And the new temple of God that way and it's going to be written on the pillars or this is I will erect in a pillar with your name. Why? Because in Philadelphia, one of the things they would do today if somebody was affluent and they wanted to give money to a hospital or a park or something, they might give money and then they would sometimes give them like a tag or something that says in donation or in love from or you know what I mean or something like that. And it was a philanthropic gift or something like that and they put their name on it.

That's part of our culture. We understand those things kind of happen at I guess hospitals or or other places like that. We at the church don't do that because our love offerings go directly to the Lord and we don't want our left hand to know what our right hand's doing. But in the world, that's kind of how they they operate, you know, put these kind of things like that up there and and so in the city of Philadelphia, one of the things that was significant is they had a lot of these really large pillars and what they would do is they would actually go through and they would put these tags on the pillars for people who had worked on it or made it or maintained it.

So it was kind of part of the local culture, okay? During the reign of Vespasian, okay, or Vespasian, depending on how you want to say it, it was called Flavia. It's modern name again, as I said, was it's considered by some to be sort of a corrupt corruption of the Turkish word. And and this is to to help like if I said to you what does L in the Hebrew mean? Okay, and the house of, right? Elohim, right, God of or Bethel, Beth L, Beth being the front part, L being the suffix, Bethel in the Hebrew, house of God, right?

So you understand. It doesn't take long. I mean predominantly Muslim country, predominantly although there still is a Christian population there. I know this is recorded so I'm not going to say what we know about a Christian population there, but I can assure you there's an underground church and there is a Christian population there that we're aware of and we need to be praying for them. But is what some people believe that name here because when they would say in Islam or who are they talking to to God. So believe that this this name really was a sort of a footnote to the city of God.

But again, more likely most scholars believe its name comes from the reddish sort of color of the soil. Again, not all that different from us. There is a place called Redlands, right? Everybody here should know where the Redlands are, Redland, right? And near the new Cumberland area. And if you ever go over there and you were to excavate or dig, you would find that the dirt is what color? Red. Redlands, right? We're super creative. So it's Redlands, right? So it's the color of dirt. It's interesting. Anybody ever gone up to 3-mile island? They're putting a new development and I went over there to do an inspection and as they were excavating, I was amazed and shocked to see the soil.

I have never seen soil so black, so black. I've never seen anything like it. I I I literally did you bring this dirt in or was it just so rich? And they said, no, this is the dirt all around this area of 3-mile island. This is what it's like from all of the aftermath of what had happened. So you know, you can learn culturally, you know, obviously they knew this as you know, and speaking to the reddish color of the soil, we would know if somebody said Redlands to us, we know where we 're talking about New Cumberland or in that area, Fairview Township maybe.

In addition to all of these names, it was also called Little Athens because the magnificence of the temples and other buildings that were adorned there and I showed you some of the runes of those. Philadelphia quickly became an important wealthy trade center. And this is important because we saw already when we looked at that map of the cities, it was inland. Do you remember that? So what would have happened at this time is because more and more roads were going inland much like Pittsburgh where I'm from in the city of Rochester also, major trade routes happen through Lake Ontario.

People put stuff on boats. Just like in Pittsburgh, there was a lot of waterways so people would bring things over that way. But then what happened is people went in more and more inland, more and more inland. Railroads, trains, you know, obviously different things like that took over trucking, going across country with truck tractor trailers and things like that. So a lot of the coastal cities as they became sort of cuz of the cost and expense of living so close to the water like that, they just became very unobtainable or I guess unmanageable, the cost like that.

So what happened is more of these inner area, inland coastal non-coastal cities began to grow wealthy and began to see more commerce. Philadelphia was one of them. It grew in power and it retained its importance really to the late Byzantine times. It was agriculturally prosperous as I mentioned. It was in that that area where it was the Cogamus River Valley, what we saw when the house very fertile, rich area. But the the area was subject to frequent earthquakes. In 8017, the city now this obviously this letter was written in 80 95 so it was after it was completely rebuilt.

But in 8017, the city was destroyed by such a severe earthquake. The aftershock of this of the earthquake made the city almost uninhabitable for several years from this major earthquake. There was an ancient writer by the name of Pliny or Pliny, depending on how you want to pronounce his name. He lived about 80 23 24 to 80 79 somewhere in that area. And he thought that the earthquake he writes about it. He says this is one of the greatest disasters in all of human history. That's how severely destroyed this area was at one time. Because of the earthquake, Emperor Tiberius relieved the city of taxes and tribute for about five years because of just the decimation.

If you would have gone to Philadelphia at that time, you know every city's got a rep, reputation. You understand what I mean? Every city's got a rep. Everywhere you go. I traveled a 14 years or somewhere in there for Microsoft, planes, trains, automobiles. Every city I went to throughout the United States, you know, hotel after hotel, city after city. I've been almost everywhere. I can tell you every city, every town, every neighborhood places I went, everywhere had a rep. Oh, you're going here. Oh, watch this. Or oh, you got to go here. You got to try this food.

Everywhere has a rep. Philadelphians in this church, in this area, they had a rep too because they had been through so much with the earthquakes and the destruction. They were very well known as survivors. It's no coincidence that Jesus called them the overcomers. They had a rep for it. They were known for it. They were known for being that. If you're taking notes, something good as we read through this, keep these things in context. Now, is it interesting in our modern day age? Cuz I think God sometimes uses touch points to remind us of things, to draw our attention back to scripture different and he can use anything to do that.

He'll even sometimes use things of the culture of the world to draw our attention in. So here you and I are. We're We're not too far from the city of brotherly love in Pennsylvania, are we? The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, right? What is it? 2 hours from us if that, something like that, 2 hours and 15 minutes maybe depending on traffic. Philadelphia, city of brotherly love. They made a movie. Well, they've made several movies that have happened in Philly, right? There's one in particular that I always think about and I remember growing up in upstate New York and certainly I've been to Philadelphia a number of times and and there's something that I always was struck about um so much history there.

But from this one movie, I remember this actor. He plays this role. He's a boxer. Some of you are going to recognize this movie. He says I need a Nobel. What movie am I talking about? Come on. How can we not talk about that? We're in Pennsylvania, right? If I would have sold that in Rochester, people would have been like, what do you mean? I don't understand. Now, you all know it's But what was the whole thing? Rocky, right? You get knocked down, but what? It's not how many times you get knocked down. It's what?

That's what we do, right? We're Pennsylvanians. We get back up, right? That's exactly what we're not quitters. We're overcomers, right? It's that same idea. They were known for being survivors. Philadelphia and the surrounding area, we're overcomers. We're survivors. Sometimes I think he leaves those little touch points, those little God kisses just to remind us to draw us back to scripture to say, remember I've written about this. Be the faithful church. Be who I've called you to be. So I just thought that was just, you know, a free information, just just a little extra information there.

Let's look at verse 7. We're going to go line by line, okay? And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia, write these things says he who is holy, he who is true, he who has the keys of David, he who opens and no one shuts and shuts and no one opens, right? So what's the first thing we get out of that? We've got to draw our attention to immediately the Anglos again, that word, the messengers, the angels. This is not a letter that John wrote. This is not a letter that Pastor Matt wrote. If there's anybody here this morning and there's any conviction, let's bring that to the Lord and ask him to examine the heart.

We don't want to look at the messenger and we certainly don't want to look at Pastor John here or the apostle John that way. He's simply writing what he was told to write. It's from Jesus Christ, from the Spirit of God, it's from our Lord. And as an Anglos and again this word was given to John the Baptist, as I've said many times, so it was used for a human, but it was also used as supernatural supernatural beings like angels in heaven, okay? So the word can be used both, but again, as I've said in the past, why would Jesus come to John on the earth to write a letter to tell John to take and dictate, you know, write this down for me and then oh by the way, I want you to give it to my angels which are in heaven and you're here on earth.

That would be kind of odd, wouldn't it? Because John's on earth and the angels are doing fro. So clearly I believe he's talking to like a John the Baptist, in this case pastors of the church or leaders of the church. And he says to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write and like I said, he introduced himself very clearly here. He who is holy and true who holds the key of David. Now, I'm going to come back to this because this is important. We can't go too far without stopping and going, what do you mean the key of David?

I I don't understand this. How many verses are there in this book again? 404. How many verses in this book refer to Old Testament passages that without a thorough understanding or even an elementary understanding of the Old Testament scriptures, we're going to have no idea what Jesus is trying to communicate to us. 278. This is one of the 278, the key of David. This will be familiar to us if we've never read this before. That's okay. This is going to be familiar to us as we look this up, but there's only two places in all of your scripture, all of 66 books you have, only two books, Revelation and the book of Isaiah.

That's right. Isaiah. I heard somebody say Isaiah. That's correct. Please before we go on, how did Jesus Christ describe himself through his character to this church of Philadelphia, this faithful church? He is holy and true. You and I are being told where can being conformed into his image. We ought to be what? Holy and true, okay? So let's not miss that and skip that too quickly. Well, the key of David, again as I mentioned, is found in the book of Revelation and Isaiah. What does a key do? Well, a key indicates control or authority. Therefore, having the key of David would give one control of David's domain, right?

In other words, where was where did David live? King David. In the city of Jerusalem. That's right. The city of David and the kingdom of Israel. So the fact in this verse we read here, Jesus holds the key shows that he is the fulfillment of what? Couple things going on. One, the Davidic covenant because if you have the key for it and you have the authority over it, it means you fulfilled it or completed it. So clearly the Davidic covenant, which was messianic promise that there would always be from the line of David, one who would be on the throne.

Jesus, fulfillment of Davidic covenant. Second thing, the ruler of the new Jerusalem. How do we know that? Well, we're going to read in Revelation Jesus is the king and priest, the high priest, and he is going to establish the new heavens and the new earth, okay? So again, holding that key is vital and important.

Larry: Pastor Matt Vanderven on His Perfect Love. Thanks for taking part in today's study of Revelation, a book that comes with a blessing attached to those that read and study it. If you were blessed and encouraged by the Lord, we'd like to know. Email us while it's fresh on your mind. They're at our website His Perfect Love .org. Be sure to include your prayer requests. Also at our website, you'll find an archive of these studies in Revelation, making it easy to replay a message you enjoy or catch what you miss on the radio. Again, we're at His Perfect Love .org and now at oneplace.com as well.

Look for us wherever you get your podcasts. And Pastor Matt is back with us now. Matt, if someone listening right now would like to support His Perfect Love, what are some ways they can do that and where can they go to make a contribution?

Matt VanderVen: Larry, the first thing I would do if anyone asked how they could come alongside His Perfect Love and the ministry of Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore would be to please pray. Pray for the ministry, pray for the word of God to go forward, pray for touched hearts for the day of salvation. Pray for people, Christians uh of God worldwide that are facing oppression, affliction, martyrdom. You know, prayers are mighty weapon. We need to be people of prayer. If someone was moved to by God to financially support the ministry of His Perfect Love and partner with us to get the gospel to as many people as possible on the radio waves and and through whatever mechanism through the gospel's handing out Bibles, different things like that, I would encourage them to go to our church website at ccharrisburg.org and they can click on the upper right hand corner and select the giving tab.

And under the giving tab, they can select what ministry, whether it's His Perfect Love or Bible outreach or children's ministry or anything like that, a certain missionary in a particular country, whatever the Lord may be putting on their heart and they would like to share with us. Again, the most important thing we need to be is we need to be a people of prayer. So if God is encouraging to come alongside and partner with us, I just want to say thank you. I hope that we are an encourager of your faith. That's our heart's desire here at His Perfect Love, my heart's desire.

And God bless you and and just love you all and thank you so much for all you do to be an encouragement to the body of Christ. Again, just drop by ccharrisburg.org and click giving in the top right hand corner. And thank you for your support. There is much more to come in Revelation. Don't miss a moment of the journey here on His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt.

Guest (Male): His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.