Philadelphia: The Strength of a Weak Church • Beyond The Sermon

Well, hello and welcome to beyond the Sermon, a Bethany podcast, where we have the privilege of digging deeper into our Sunday messages. I'm Tami DeLeeuw, and today I'm joined with Pastor David Baxley and Pastor Steve Musto. And we are on to a new letter. We are. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's not Philadelphia brotherly love kind of thing. Well, it is Philadelphia brotherly love, just not the one in Pennsylvania. Okay, there you go. There you go.

It's funny, though. This town, although it's called Philadelphia, was not really known as Philadelphia. It had multiple names. And if you are digging through, you know, historical records or something, it might have many different names, and there are reasons for those names. So, yeah, just a little odd.

We don't rename our towns very often in our world, but, yeah, they did. We also don't have kings conquering us every few hundred years. Yeah, we're kind of tearing down and rebuilding us back yet. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. That's a good clarification. Oh, my goodness. So let's jump in, I think. Are you ready for that, guys?

So I think I'm just going to go ahead and read it. We're in Revelation 3, starting in verse 7, write to the angel of the Church of 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 power.

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 who 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. 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.

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 and my new name. Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. So we're seeing Jesus a different way this week, which is always fun to start with. So he has a key.

Yeah, the key Of David. So what do we know about David? What are some things we know about David? Well, he was a shepherd boy. Okay, let's go back a little farther.

That was his history. Yeah. He was a king. He was a king. There you go.

And not just a king. You know what kind. He was. What? He was the great king to which the Christ would eventually come through.

Well, and he was a king. He was a man after God's own heart. Yeah, so. So he was the prototype. Yes.

He's the one that everybody gets compared to. Okay. It's like Elijah or Moses or something. It's like prophets. There are a lot of prophets.

Yes. But yeah, Elijah, he was the og. He was the og. There you go. My kids would say, yeah, that's good.

Yeah. So we have, we have a key that is going to open something and we have Jesus portrayed in the line of David. So there's a royal piece to this and there's something that only he can do, that nobody else can do. And so this is all very important and important for the text. All right, so my first question for you is in verse 10, the verse.

Does this verse support the doctrine that the church will be raptured before the final three and a half years of tribulation? Because I think that's where people get that from. Do you? I mean, so let's read it. Because you've 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.

And so, yes, a lot of people would. When we talked about the Rapture, the word that's not in revelation, but that we associate with revelation, this comes up, and this passage comes up like, well, wait a second, he's going to pull one church out of that time of testing. The problem comes with, is he really talking about the Rapture? He was really talking about that particular time of testing. So we know that things in revelation are often representational of other things and that they're not speaking literally about anything.

But what does Jesus mean by testing? So there's nothing to indicate in the text that Jesus is talking about that specific period, that either three and a half year or seven year period of time, which isn't really three and a half years or so, seven years, but that specific period of time that's going to be a part of his right after he ascends from heaven or whatever. So there's nothing to indicate he's talking about that. And let's remember where this takes Place. This takes place before those themes have really been introduced.

These letters are at the front of the whole letter. And so it would be a little odd for him to be talking about this thing that John hasn't even had the vision of. It'd be like he was dropping something. They couldn't even pick up at that point. Right, yeah.

And that's not impossible because they could have gone back and looked at it later and gone, oh, we've seen where he's alluded ahead. So he does. Yeah, we've seen that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

So the other interesting part, though is the phrase that we translate, keep you from. So I'm going to keep you from detesting. And what does he mean by that? So that phrase in Greek is only in Revelation, is only here in Revelation, but John uses it elsewhere only one other time, though. I think what it refers to generically is God protecting us through something, not removing us from something.

And so that's kind of the idea that, hey, I'm going to walk with you through this. So it's like if you find out that you have cancer or something and you get this reassurance from the Lord that, hey, I'm going to keep you from the worst parts of this, or I'm going to keep you from this. It doesn't mean he's going to take you away and take your life. It means he's going to walk with you through. I'm going to keep you from experiencing as bad as it could possibly be because I'm going to walk with you through it.

So that's kind of the idea that I think is coming across. Well, I don't know if you're going here already, but I'm going back to John 17. And Jesus is talking to his disciples. He's speaking to them about what is about to happen in John 17:12. He says, hey, listen, why I was with them.

I'm protecting them by your name that you have given me, and I guarded them. And then later on verse 15, he says, I am praying that you take them out of the world. Not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one. And this is exactly the theme you're going with. Jesus is not, okay, okay, this is where you're going.

I figured we hadn't talked about it yet, but yeah, this whole idea that we, uh, we. We want to see, and we wrestle with this a lot, Lord, just, just take that away from us. Take the. I mean, even Jesus said, if there's A way, let the cup be taken from me. I mean, our humanity desires.

And so we kind of lean into that sometimes because we really want that. And Jesus just continually lovingly reminds us, I'm not taking you out of it. This is. This is a. This is a part of what we are doing together for the kingdom of God.

But I've got you. I'm not telling you I want you out because there's a mission you're on, but I'm holding you throughout all of this. Yes. And I think God generally, when we look at scripture, God generally saves his people after testing. Yeah, that's good.

From the test. Yeah, no, that's really good. Yes. You know. Yes.

They endure, and then as they're enduring or at the end of that endurance, he, you know, removes that from them in some way, shape or form. And we have the benefit of being able to look back on history, and we can say that if the intent was to save the Philadelphian church from persecution, it doesn't happen. Then God broke a promise. And we know that God can't do that. Well, either he broke the promise or they did not keep their testimony.

That's right. Yeah. So I think they did. I mean, I think the history is on their side on that one. It would seem that they did.

I actually spent yesterday afternoon going back and rereading some of the early church fathers. We have some letters and some other things around the time of the 2nd century, early 2nd century, mid 2nd century, of things that have been happening in the various churches. And a few of the churches are the churches in Revelation. And so you get a sense of what's happening, happening in Philadelphia. And we've talked previously about Polycarp being the head of the church in Smyrna, and he also was connected to the church in Philadelphia and very similar what they went through in those churches.

But he would visit Philadelphia fairly often. And they went through quite a lot of testing, and they seemed to be a good church, and they seemed to be faithful to the Lord. So this is another church, only two, that really was not rebuked. Right. So that feels huge.

Yeah, it is, absolutely. But. But also that Smyrna, which is the other church. Yeah. Also experienced a time of testing.

Yes. With a different number that we also remember wasn't a literal 10. 10 days. 10 days, that's right. I was like, yeah, don't be afraid of what you're about to suffer.

Look, the devil's about to throw some of you in prison to test you, and you will experience affliction. For 10 days, be faithful to the point of death. You know, not to rehash that, but it is interesting that churches that are not getting the rebukes, but are also getting this image of the hardship and the pain of suffering and the testing that comes with their faithfulness and how both of them are.

We've talked last couple weeks about some hard churches of compromise and tolerance and the rebukes that came with that. And the church is not getting the rebuke. It's not that, hey, you guys are doing so good. This is going to be easy. It's you guys are doing so good.

And that really means it's also going to be really hard because to be faithful for Jesus is hard and it comes with pain. I think the other reason for the non rebuke here is probably he says they're weak or they're small. And most scholars think it's because they're new. They're not weak because they're pathetic. No, they're weak because they're new.

And we'll talk about that more in the message this week. We'll talk about how, what does that mean to be new in the faith and figuring it out? And Jesus again doesn't put any other pressure or stress on them or rebuke them. He lovingly takes them by the hand and leads them through this. Hey, this is going to be hard.

No doubt about it. But I'm not telling you, you guys are doing something wrong. I don't know that they're in a position yet to be responding to those things. We talk about this often. Actually, this came up a couple weeks ago after a message I talked to a couple people about this.

The idea that sanctification is the process of becoming more and more like Christ throughout our lives. And we want so badly for people to catch up to us and be where we are. And we just lose our ability to be okay with them coming along in that process. We want them to come to Christ and then change and stop doing all the bad habits that they're doing and stop saying these things, talking like this and watching those things and doing these. We can be calling them to things, but there's a certain degree of we don't go into first grade classrooms and say, you guys are really.

Here's Shakespeare. Yeah, you guys are idiots for not being able to understand physics. What kind of school is this? What kind of education are you getting? How stupid do you have to be to not.

But that's what we do all the time to people who are followers of Jesus, that's part of the discipleship process. We forget about our own journey. Yeah. A couple years ago, someone was visiting Bethany, and I was talking to them, and I think I preached that Sunday. And they were really surprised by a couple of things I said in my message.

And they're like, they knew me from 15 years ago. Different church, different context. And they said, I couldn't believe you said that. Like, I tried to convince you of that 15 years ago, and you didn't think that. And I said, really?

I didn't. And I had forgotten the journey God had taken me on and what I believed so strongly 15 years ago and how God had shaped me and. And grown me and taught me and. And. But.

And this is what I believe. But I. Without forgetting that journey, I. I'm like, well, this is what I've always believed. Why doesn't everyone else. This makes complete sense to me.

And I had fallen for that same trap. And it took a friend from the new me back then to remind me, you know, this isn't who you've always been. Right. Yeah, you were this once. And.

And in my friend's defense, he. I would look back and say, I was wrong and he was right, but he still loved me. He didn't expect me to be David. Fifteen years later, he met me. David, 15 years before.

I tell you, man, I think I was telling you a couple weeks ago, I am so grateful I'm not pastoring in Wheaton, Illinois. Oh, yeah, we're talking about that. Yeah. Because I don't really want to bump into the people that knew me back when. It's hard enough to pastor, but we don't always let people become.

We just remember the past. Yeah. So there's a piece of all that in there. Jesus is letting them become, letting the Holy Spirit do the work. I said to somebody the other day, hey, we could move on.

We could do something with this, and we could jump in and combat it and have some sort of conflict around this, or we can back off and let's let the Holy Spirit do what the Holy Spirit is going to do and see if that conviction wells up in this person, this person responds to it. And they did, and they came around, and that's what the Holy Spirit does. I'm so glad I didn't jump in with, I'm sorry, I have elected myself your Holy Spirit, and I will be the one to convict you now. Well, and then does that go with, we've got something that is either being closed or something that is either being opened and and the people aren't doing that. It is Jesus who is doing that, even in our sanctification process.

It's what God is doing in us. Right? Yeah. That closed open thing is really an interesting imagery because they're being shut out of the synagogue, just like others are being. There's a high Jewish population, so that's what this door is.

Yeah, we think there's kind of an allusion to. Because if you couldn't go to the. If you were Jewish and you couldn't go to the synagogue and you're in the Roman Empire and you can't take part in the guilds, who are you? There's no safe place to go. No, you're a person without a country.

And so the door has been closed to them. And I think what Jesus is saying to them is, oh, I'm sorry, they think they closed the door. That they closed the door to you because they closed the door to the synagogue to you. Do you realize the keys that I have, I don't hold just like some key to a broom closet somewhere. I hold the keys to life and death.

I hold the key of David of unlocking and opening all of life and eternal life to the. To not just opening. I think the key of David would be unlocking the full richness of what Judaism represents in a relationship with Yahweh. Because that's what you have. You've got the royal family and everything else represented there, but all of eternity as a result, that comes through a relationship with Christ.

So he's unlocking something that's way bigger than unlocking the door of a synagogue in some town. Well, and that's part of the tension we see in this and the other church, too, is that you have the Jews who are so convinced in their denial of Christ, they're holding fast to the real faith they were given. And it's the reminder. Jesus is like, no, actually, I am the fulfillment of all. Like going all the way back to all the prophecies and all these things, like, this is me.

And they think they're shutting you out because you're missing something. But actually, I am the fulfillment. The real faith that was passed on to you from the old to the new is through me. And the only way to experience the. Which I'll word it this way, the actual Judaism that Christ was bringing about in fulfillment is through him.

And they're shutting the door, thinking they're protecting, but they're actually losing. They're in line with the enemy, and they don't even know it. But you are with me. So even though you feel alone, the door is wide open. You get to experience what they won't get to.

And one day come back to this picture here, they're going to know with deep regret as you get to experience the glory that I have for you. But in the regret, I mean, you see that they will know and they will know that I have loved you. Yeah. And so that's the win. Oh, that's.

Yeah, I'm glad you emphasized that phrase. That's sweet. It's not a regret. I blew it. It's like they're going to.

They missed out on that love. One of the things I love about the Philadelphian church is Jesus calls them. You know, you're going to walk through this open door, but you're going to walk through this open door, not in might and power, with a sword in your hand and a crown on your head, and you're going to decimate enemies and Rome is going to bow down to you. You're not going to do that. You're going to walk through an open door with humility.

And what a difference. We went on a staff retreat about a week ago, a little over a week ago, and we had a chance. When you're on staff retreat, you're talking about your church, right? So we're talking about Bethany. We're talking about the things that are there and what we're doing and how it looks, and the difference between trying to walk in strength and trying to walk in weakness.

There's this balance between those two things, and walking in weakness is often walking in humility. And I think Philadelphia, they don't have anything. Just don't have anything. They don't have any clout. They don't have anything.

And yet they're still called to walk forward in Jesus. And so something that happens when you're part of a larger church like Bethany is, is we can lose our weakness, we can lose our humility. We have a lot of systems to make sure we don't drop balls and people don't get left behind and everything else. But in those systems, they become this heavy flywheel that starts turning, and it's easy to let it keep turning and lose touch with the fact that we're here to serve and to love people and serve and love each other. So the retreat was a great reminder for me of, oh, yeah, that's what we're doing.

And we love each other, and so we get to serve together and do all that together. But being called not to just be stronger get stronger. They are not being told to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and carry on. And that is the message that we often hear. Yeah.

Nor are they told. They're told there's. They're told they have no power, but they're not commanded to find power. Yeah. They're not commanded.

Somehow gain influence in your community, somehow become the voice of change. Be the ones that finally tell people how bad things are. And. And he comes back and says, I will do this, that you. You remain faithful to me.

If all you ever say is powerless, if all you ever say is small, if you're faithful to me, the win is in your faithfulness, not in your size and not in your power. Like, that's just. I think we feel like to be a successful church, we have to somehow gain enough power and influence that we are somehow dominating the scene or convincing everyone around us to change. And he's just reminding us, I think, in that sweetness. Just follow me.

So let's do a little church history lesson. Story from the second century. This is fun, just because I read it yesterday. So we mentioned Polycarp. So he gets arrested.

He's hated because he's preaching Christ. So he doesn't want to hide because he wants to keep preaching Christ. But the church has basically convinced him, you need to hide. We need you. We need your voice and the whole thing.

So he's like, protect the president kind of thing. Yeah, sort of like that. We're going to protect you. And we see this later in history. People do the same for Martin Luther and Calvin and others.

So Polycarp is protected, But Rome marches in. They torture a slave in some house somewhere until the slave gives up where Polycarp is hiding, and they come and get him. And these soldiers come in ready for this huge battle to take Polycarp down. And they come in and they find this old man who's lying on a bed resting. And they're like, what are we doing?

And Polycarp says, I will gladly go with you, and I will tell all my followers and whatever to stand down and not give you peace. Would you give me an hour to pray? And the soldiers agreed to give him an hour to pray. So he stops and he prays. He actually prayed for two hours.

But what it says in the writings is that he prayed with such humility and with such love, even for the people who were arresting him, that many of them started asking, why are we here? What are we doing? Even in his prayer, he was being an example and a witness. And he got Arrested, he was taken. Deny Christ, honor Caesar.

He won't do it. And all people around are just having. Well, there are a number of people who want to see him killed. And so they start collecting firewood and stacking it up so that they can burn him to death. And they're going to nail him to the post so that they can.

Because if you don't nail him to the post and you just light him on fire, he's going to run out. And he says again, I won't run. I'll stay here. I promise you, I won't run. And so they don't nail him.

They leave him in there and they light the fire and he prays this gorgeous prayer. We have the prayer and the flame actually doesn't burn him. It's a miracle. And the flame kind of goes around him and it takes someone else than stepping in and stabbing him to kill him. But all of this to say this gentle, humble man, and this is the church.

These are the early church fathers and mothers. I mean, many people just went to their faith not shaking a fist at the government or saying, how dare you do this to me? Don't you know my rights? Don't you know who I am? I'm going to get you in the afterlife.

Wait till you face Jesus. You know, none of that stuff. It was with joy that they were deemed worthy of suffering and with a profound sadness that they couldn't reach those people. And I look at that and I say, well, of course, Philadelphia, which has Polycarp's mark on it, is marked by humility and weakness and softness and all of those things, and how much better would we be? This is probably.

Allow my tangent on my tangent. We have developed in Christianity, in my estimation, a very strong, very testosterone filled, go get them mentality of Christianity that reflects our time. And I have often said to myself, I don't have the big long beard and I'm not, you know, jacked and I don't have all the look of the guys that are out there influencing. Is there a place, is there a place for me as a voice in Christianity and as a church, would I be better off kind of doing all those things? I see, this is what I see.

This is what dominates my news feeds and in my social media. And there is a certain amount of bravado and bluster to that. It's not that it's not genuine. I think in many cases it is. But the same thing can be accomplished with gentleness and kindness and soft spokenness and humility and the early church is an example of that that I wish we had more of.

Instead of the way you get an audience who wants to listen to the humble. The humble person, the way you get the audience in our world is by saying the outrageous things. So, anyway, that's my tangent. We tend to, like, big and superhero and loud and boisterous. You never know what he's going to say.

Oh, man, he might say something outrageous this week. I mean, that's the podcasts that everybody listens to. And sometimes I hear stuff on podcasts and I go, come on, man. Why are you saying that? You got to go pastor your church.

You got to go preach on Sunday, or you got to talk to people after the service on Sunday. You just said this thing. Why would you say something like that? But as we are walking through, practicing the way, some ladies and I on Tuesday nights, we are hearing that one of the marks of a true disciple is love. And I don't see love sometimes in the boisterous and in the fight.

Yeah, well, I think it comes back to what we said last week is. I know I hear the narrative regularly that, well, to love someone is just to tell them the truth. Yeah. And I would say, well, you know, as I read multiple times, when love is defined in the Bible, I hear phrases like kindness and gentleness. Patience.

Yeah, yeah. Not beating someone head with the wrong that they've done. You know, like. And that's. That's what I try to.

When we come to these conversations, because I know in my natural self I want to debate. I just know that's who I am. I know I'm surprising you guys, but there's this part of David that just loves to do that. And by God's grace, I hope that is dying in me more and more for the sake of listening and modeling again, as we're talking today, just. You don't need power to live the gospel.

In fact, living the gospel the way Jesus did is denying the power that you could claim and try to execute for the sake of being nailed to a cross and even looking down and saying, father, forgive them, please, somehow make a way that they can also know me. Yeah. Yeah. You're not the only one who likes to argue, by the way. You don't carry that log alone.

I think I'm carrying the other end of that. I like to argue, too.

It comes, and I'm good at it. That's the problem, you know, I'm pretty good at it. And learning when that's okay to have those discussions or turning them into Instead of arguments, turning them into discussions has been part of the journey. And not weighing in with advice, instead asking questions. All those things.

That's hard. Yeah. Philadelphia was really known for its earthquakes. And he says all these fun, random facts today. Yeah.

But as you read, that's what I've always loved about it. So as you read this, keep this in mind. He talks about there being a pillar. What are pillars for? They're for security.

They hold things up. So there's a pillar that holds everything up. This would appeal in a place like Philadelphia that is used to that. Just. Yeah.

It's a fascinating, fascinating place. I'm interested to be able to. To talk about it and unpack. And the phrase on next in that line, which I just love. Read it.

Yeah. It says, I will make you a pillar of the temple of my God and he will never go out again. Never go out. Because they would have to run out of the city whenever the earthquakes occurred because things were collapsing. Yeah.

And he's like, this is going to be so stable and so safe and so wonderful. Yeah. You'll never have to flee. Like most people lived outside the city. Yeah.

Because it was that. Yeah. Just was. Just because you didn't know. You didn't know.

So really, the only place that was safe was not around tall things that could fall on you. And so most people lived out in the countryside and they would come into the city to do business and that kind of thing, and then at night, they would go back out again. So this pillar, it says, has a name on it. So we've talked about name a lot, and I know I had shared in a few podcasts. Name appeals to me.

Is there anything here we can talk about with. 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 in the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God and my new name. So really what this is is ownership. In Toy Story, Andy writes his name on the bottom of Woody.

Woody Shoe. And I think that's the idea that this is property of Jesus Christ, Yahweh, and part of the New Jerusalem. That's pretty awesome, isn't it? And then we've got that picture of the New Jerusalem coming down. Go back to Revelation 22 again.

Awesome. This has been super fun, guys. Always is. Yeah. We only have one more church after this.

Yeah. So. All right. Well, thank you, and thank you for joining us. Have a great week.

Bye. Bye.