Revelation 3:8

Revelation 3:8 KJV (WS)

8 I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.

Introduction

Today is vision Sunday.

A day where we look forward to what lies ahead of us in the coming year.

I mentioned this a little bit ago, but I see 2025 as a bit of a transition year for our church.

For 3 years we have been working on this construction project.

In a few weeks, we will begin wrapping up this phase our building plans.

It’s exciting and it will certainly be fun to be in the new space.

We said from the beginning that the reason we were doing this is so that we would have the capacity to reach more people for Jesus.

As this project comes to a close, it’s time to make good on those intentions.

Evangelism and discipleship.

Two sides of the same coin.

We exist as a church to glorify God.

We glorify him by reaching people with the gospel and training them to live out the gospel in their own lives.

We live in a growing, exciting community.

It’s a place that people are moving to be a part of.

As our Jerusalem grows, so does our responsibility.

This year we will celebrate 70 years of ministry in Collinsville.

Do you know how many people lived in Collinsville in 1955?

2000.

Now, we are just shy of 10,000 people, and that number is growing.

In 1955, Oologah only had 240 people compared to 1,500 today.

Our task continues to grow.

We could sit back this year and say, man that building project was tiring.

Let’s take a break and let the building do the work now.

People are going to want to come and see what it looks like.

We will have so many guests we won’t know what to do with them all.

This is not the mentality that our church has adopted in the past.

We were founded in 1955 to be actively involved in telling the people of our community about Jesus.

In 2025 we want to reaffirm that commitment.

As an encouragement, I want us to consider some things about this church in Philadelphia.

Our passage starts with a reference to the past.

It was the past that had led the church of Philadelphia to where they were.

We’ll cover the details later, but our verse starts off with a divine acknowledgment that God had been watching their faithful service.

So much of what goes on at a church, takes place behind the scenes.

A church’s ministry is much deeper than the music and preaching on a Sunday morning.

It is the culmination of a thousand acts of service.

It is performed my ministers who will never draw a paycheck from the church.

It is a story woven by all of the members young and old.

Though the faithfulness of so many may go without recognition, God says to this congregation, I know thy works.

What a great assurance to hold on to when you are faithfully serving behind the scenes.

What a comfort to remember when it feels like your efforts go unnoticed by man.

They are never unnoticed by God.

It is because of their works that God comes to them with good news.

God writes to the people of Philadelphia and presents the church with an opportunity.

This opportunity will manifest in the itself in the form of an open door.

An open door refers to an opportunity for ministry.

In the New Testament, an open door almost always refers to a ministry opportunity.

We will be studying some of these instances in the coming weeks.

An open door is not a chance to advance ourselves or to increase our comfort.

It’s not a chance for us to walk through some opportunity to gain more influence.

When God presents us with an open door, it is not primarily about us and our priorities.

Unless, like the Philadelphians, our priorities match up with His priorities.

When God opens a door in front of us it is always meant to be a means by which his kingdom will advanced and increased.

To prove this, look at how God explains the open door that He is giving the church at Philadelphia.

Through this, we see where His priorities are.

If you were to study verse 9 you would find that God is foretelling an advancement on the positions of Satan in the city.

God was going to vindicate the Philadelphian church.

He was going to give them victory over those that had opposed them.

The enemies of the church of Philadelphia would experience a change.

They would not worship the church, but they would worship among the church.

They would come to the realization that God had loved the church of Philadelphia all along.

A revival was going to take place in Philadelphia.

This was the open door that God was going to open for the Philadelphians.

Notice one other thing God said about this door.

No man could shut it.

We forget how amazing it is to serve our God.

In one verse, John has reminded them that…

God sees their sacrifice when no one else does.

God will open a door for them to be able to reach their city and no man could close it.

How does a church position itself to receive such a blessing?

God explains why this church was given an opportunity for ministry.

We see three things that God witnessed in their service to HIm.

They had little strength.

No one knows how big of a church this was.

Whether it was big or small, this church had adopted the mentality that we’ve been talking about on Sunday nights.

They operated with the belief that they could do nothing on their own.

They knew that human strength was insufficient to actually accomplish anything truly lasting.

As we’ve seen in the book of Mark, when we are powerless, He is powerful.

The church may have been small, it may have been poor, but it served almighty God.

They had also kept His word.

Think of this phrase this way.

Kept = guarded.

The Philadelphian church guarded the word’s primacy in every aspect of their ministry.

There are so many strategies and approaches to ministry that people like to promote.

God has already given us the handbook on life and ministry.

We say that the Bible is our final authority.

The Philadelphian church would have agreed.

They refused to allow it to be replaced in their individual hearts.

They made it the focus of their preaching and teaching.

When we accept that our power is insufficient to accomplish our mission, then we are forced to turn to something that has the power of God upon it.

That has to be His word.

It is alive and powerful.

They had not denied His name.

A couple of things to help us understand this statement.

The Philadelphians had not openly denied Christ.

Neither had they kept silent regarding the name of Jesus.

Instead they had openly proclaimed their allegiance to Jesus the Christ.

Philadelphia was not a hot spot of persecution, but there was opposition to the Gospel.

We do not get to choose what level of persecution we get to face.

But we do have a choice in how we respond to it.

As we look at these three testimonies of the church’s faithfulness, we can se why God opened this door for increased ministry; it’s because of their hearts devotion to God.

The church at Philadelphia demonstrated that open hearts for God are rewarded by open doors for ministry.

That is what our theme is going to be this year.

Open heart; open door.

Application

This year we want to cultivate hearts that are open to God’s direction.

A heart that draws strength from God.

A heart that keeps the Bible at the center of our life.

A heart that is unashamed to proclaim the name of Jesus.

If we will cultivate this kind of heart, then I believe God will open doors for us.

We want to walk through the doors of opportunity that God offers us for ministry and evangelism.

God will give us chances to share the gospel with people.

It could be a conversation with your neighbor.

It could be a co-worker going through a difficult time of life.

It could be a divine appointment with a stranger.

He will also present opportunities for you to minister to others.

Like this upcoming children’s Sunday on the 26th.

You know foster families play a vital role in the lives of thousands of children.

You’d like to be a blessing to them but you don’t know how.

We are going to give you an opportunity to minister to them by either donating a gift card or helping us prepare the cards that we will send out.

Conclusion

We say that we want to have an outwardly focused church.

In order for that to happen, we must give attention to the inward condition of our hearts.

If we will seek to humble ourselves, obey his word, and proclaim his name, then I believe that in 2025 God will open doors for us to reach more people with the Gospel.

Can you think of a better way to celebrate God’s faithfulness over the last 70 years then by dedicating the year to telling more people about him?