Church at Philadelphia

A Great Commission Church

• Oswald Smith says, “Any church that is not seriously involved in helping fulfill the Great Commission has forfeited its biblical right to exist” (Newell, Mission Quotes, 257).

• how they see Christ, how they value the power of the gospel, and how they trust in and live by the promises of God.

• Count Nicolaus Ludwig Von Zinzendorf

◦ I have but one passion: it is Christ. It is Christ alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.

A Great Commission Church Sees Jesus as Awesome

• important high-plateau city on a main highway that connected with Smyrna, which was about one hundred miles due west.

• In AD 17 the city was devastated by an earthquake and then rebuilt by Tiberius. As a result, it was loyal to Rome. Called “the gateway to the East,” it was something of a “missionary city” for the spreading of Greek culture.

He Is the Holy One

• Who God is, Jesus is, because Jesus is God. He is pure, undefiled, spotless, without stain or blemish.

He Is the True One

• (). What He says is the truth because it flows from the True One.

He Is the Sovereign One

• where the Bible says, “I will place the key of the House of David on his shoulder; what he opens, no one can close; what he closes, no one can open.”

• He alone has the key that lets people into the kingdom of God. No wonder Jesus said in , “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.”

A Great Commission Church Is Faithful to the Gospel

• Be Persistent in the Work of the Gospel (3:8)

• Jesus Will Protect Us According to His Plans (3:10)

• First, “the hour of testing” is focused on unbelievers.

• Christ promises deliverance or protection to His children not from trial or persecution in general but from a specific and definite testing that is aimed at rebellious humanity.

• Because the believers in Philadelphia had successfully passed so many tests, Jesus promised to spare them from the ultimate test. The sweeping nature of the promise extends far beyond the Philadelphia congregation to encompass all faithful churches throughout history. This verse promises that the church will be delivered from the Tribulation, thus supporting a pretribulation Rapture. The Rapture is the subject of three passages in the New Testament (; ; ), none of which speak of judgment, but rather of the church being taken up to heaven. There are three views of the timing of the Rapture in relation to the Tribulation:… text, that the Rapture takes place before the Tribulation (pretribulationism). Several aspects of this wonderful promise may be noted. First, the test is yet future. Second, the test is for a definite, limited time; Jesus described it as the hour of testing. Third, it is a test or trial that will expose people for what they really are. Fourth, the test is worldwide in scope, since it will come upon the whole world. Finally, and most significantly, its purpose is to test those who dwell on the earth—a phrase used as a technical term in the book of Revelation for unbelievers (cf. 6:10; 8:13; 11:10; 13:8, 12, 14; 14:6; 17:2, 8). The hour of testing is Daniel’s Seventieth Week (), the time of Jacob’s trouble (:…

• Our Lord protects us to the end…

• Alan Johnson: [Verse] 10 does not settle the question of the time of the rapture in relation to the tribulation. Rather, it remains ambiguous. One might be on the earth and yet be exempt from the “hour of trial” if (1) the “hour of trial” is an equivalent derived from the briefer term “trial,” and (2) this “trial” is directed only at the unbelievers in the world, while the believers are divinely immune not from trial or persecution in general but from a specific type of trial (God’s wrath) aimed at the rebellious on the earth. To this writer, the most natural way to understand the expression to be “kept from the hour” of something that is universal in the world is not to be preserved through it but to be kept from being present when it happens…

Jesus Will Honor Us by Giving Us a Home and His Name (3:12-13)

• “Often the only parts of a city left standing after a severe quake were the huge stone temple columns [pillars]” (Revelation, 1983, 61).

• To be a pillar of Christ puts the believer in a position of absolute and complete security.

• We discover at the end of this book that the new Jerusalem is both a place and a people.

• The names signify who my God is, where my home is and who my Lord is! I belong to the Father, heaven is my home, and Jesus is my Lord. I bear the signature of my God!

◦ David Platt rightly says,

• This, we remember, is the great reward of the gospel: God himself. When we risk our lives to run after Christ, we discover the safety that is found only in his sovereignty, the security that is found only in his love, and the satisfaction that is found only in his presence. This is the eternally great reward, and we would be foolish to settle for anything less.