CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Revelation 3:7. Philadelphia.—Situated at the foot of Mount Tmolus, and named after Attalus Philadelphus, King of Pergamos. It was a centre of the wine trade. Holy and true.—ἅγιος, not ὅσιος. It represents the holiness of consecration rather than that which is ethical and indwelling. The word “true” implies that He will be sure to keep His word. Key of David.—See Isaiah 22:22, Access to, and control over, the house of David, i.e. the regal house or palace, is plainly designated by the key; in other words, regal dominion is its meaning. Christ’s actual management and control in His Church are implied. Openeth, etc.—With reference to occasions and opportunities of service. An opportunity of Christian service should be thought of as a Christ-opened door. In at such doors His Church must be ready to enter.
Revelation 3:8. Open door.—For the figure compare Acts 14:27; 1 Corinthians 16:9; 2 Corinthians 2:12; Colossians 4:3. An opening for some form of missionary work is clearly suggested. The safety of a Church lies more truly in enterprising service than in self-culture. The healthiest Church is the most active one. No man can shut it.—So they need not fear the opposition indicated in Revelation 3:9. Little strength.—This is praise, not covert blame. “The point is that his strength is not great, not that he has a little left in spite of the strain upon it” (Simcox). Thou hast some energy. Plumptre thinks “the words point to something in the past history of the Church of Philadelphia and its ruler, the nature of which we can only infer from them and from their context. Some storm of persecution had burst upon him, probably, as at Smyrna, instigated by the Jews, or the Judaising section of the Church. They sought to shut the door which he had found open, and would have kept so. They were strong, and he was weak; numbers were against him, and one whose faith was less real and living might have yielded to the pressure. He had kept the Word unmoved by fear of man.”
Revelation 3:9. Synagogue of Satan.—The antagonistic Jewish section; but the term suggests that they were doing their evil and hindering work in a secret and underhand way, as if they were serving Satan, the deceiver. Worship before thy feet.—As suppliants in a time of grievous distress. The idea is that troubles were at hand which would ruinously affect both Jews and Christians, but rest so heavily on the Jews that they would be glad to gain the help and defence of the Christians.
Revelation 3:10. Hour of temptation.—Trial which severely tests faithfulness. Terrible persecutions burst on the Churches, arising from heathen panic and suspicion.
Revelation 3:11. Take thy crown.—That which is reserved for the faithful combatant. “Perseverance is essential to the final reward of the Christian.”
Revelation 3:12. A pillar.—A figure from the use of pillars in supporting ancient temples. The classical architecture involves the use of pillars. See Galatians 2:9. “What pillars are to a temple, literally considered, the like will such Christians as those in Philadelphia be in the spiritual temple built by the Saviour.” The idea of established, permanent goodness is suggested. And the man who proves strong under strain is made a strengthener and supporter of others. My new name.—Inscriptions were often made on pillars, and they have been actually found on the sides of the four marble pillars which survive as ruins at Philadelphia. The allusion is to the golden frontlet inscribed with the name of Jehovah (Revelation 22:4; see also Revelation 9:4; illustrate by Exodus 28:36). Stuart says: “The name of God, inscribed on one’s forehead, designates the generic idea of one devoted to objects and purposes spiritual and heavenly; the name of the New Jerusalem marks the peculiar city to which the conqueror belongs; the new name is that which is peculiar to the Christian as such—to a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. With such a distinction impressed upon him, or at least borne upon the frontlet of his mitre, the conqueror would be recognised and acknowledged by all as entitled to his place in the New Jerusalem.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Revelation 3:7-13
A Church Above Censure.—Godet says: “No church receives richer praise than Philadelphia, the sixth; it seems as if she had but one step to make in advance to obtain her admittance into the church triumphant.” Three facts connected with Philadelphia may be noted, as having some historical interest:
1. Like Sardis, it had severely suffered from the great Asiatic earthquake in the reign of Tiberius.
2. That of all the Seven Churches it had the longest duration of prosperity as a Christian city, and is still a spacious town, with the remains of not less than twenty-four churches.
3. That of all the seven its name alone appears in the catalogue of modern cities. We may assume that the address was sent directly to, and in precise adaptation to, a particular person, the “angel of the Church”; but he is to be regarded as the embodiment of, and representation of, the whole Church.
I. A Church with an ability.—“Thou hast a little strength.” And He recognises the “little” who never “breaks the bruised reed nor quenches the smoking flax.” The little strength suggests that the Church had been subjected to severe strain, but had not lost its vitality. It had been weakened, but it had not lost hold. The difference between this and other Churches lay in this: the Living One saw them weakening and losing vitality; He saw this one keeping its life and trying to get its full strength. Their light was going out; its light was trying hard to keep in. It is precisely that “little strength” which Christ still looks for. It is the sign of ability; it is a basis of possibilities—a sphere in which Divine grace can hopefully work. Churches cannot but feel the strain of circumstances and persecutions, they cannot but be weakened thereby. But they need not wholly fail. Evan under the extremest pressure they can keep a “little strength.”
II. A Church with an opportunity.—“I have set before thee an open door.” That figure distinctly indicated special opportunities for engaging in the missionary work of the Church. It is a special honour for a Church to have such opportunities; but it is also true that in the generous missionary activities of a Church are to be found the best security for its continued vitality. The Church alive enough to do earnest Christian work is alive enough to resist the influence of evil. Recalling the texts in which the figure of the open door is used, Plumptre says: “In all these cases the open door refers to the admission of the Gentile converts into the great house of God, the widening opportunities for the mission work of the Church which the providence of God placed in the preacher’s way. That phrase must, in the nature of things, have become current in the Churches which owed their very existence to the labours of St. Paul; and when it came to the ear and was recorded by the pen of St. John, it could not fail to recall the same thought and to signify the same thing.” No greater sign of Divine approval can come to a Church than the opening before it of larger and wider possibilities of usefulness.
III. A Church with a security.—“I also will keep thee.” God always is to His people as they are to Him. He meets them, responds to them; is always as they are, but always better to them than they are to Him. “With the merciful Thou wilt show Thyself merciful.” Keep the faith, then; God will keep the promise. The keepers will be kept ones. “He who had ‘kept the word of the endurance of Christ,’ the message which bade him endure, should in his turn be ‘kept’ from (or in) that hour of trial or temptation, the ‘fiery trial’ of 1 Peter 4:12, which was about to spread over the ‘whole world’ of the Roman Empire.”
IV. A Church with a fixity.—“Will I make a pillar.” The main idea of a pillar is of a thing put to an important and responsible service, and permanently kept to the doing of its work. Goodness is sure to get permanency. And good work, missionary service, shall gain continuity. Nothing shall hinder the work of the Church, and it shall be its joy to keep at work. Of this we may always be sure: more work comes as our reward for faithfulness in using opportunities given.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Revelation 3:7. Key of David.—Some early commentators saw in this key the key of knowledge which the scribes had taken away (Luke 11:52), and understood this expression here as implying that Christ alone could unloose the seals of Scripture and reveal its hidden truth to men. In support of this they refer to Revelation 5:7-9. The fault of the interpretation is that it is too limited; it is only a corner of the full meaning. He who is “the True” alone can unlock the hidden treasures of truth. But the use of the word “David,” and the obvious derivation of the latter part of this verse from Isaiah 22:22, points to a wider meaning: Jesus Christ is the true Steward of the House of David (compare Hebrews 3:2; Hebrews 3:5-6). The faulty, self-seeking stewards, the Shebnas of Jerusalem and Philadelphia, vainly claimed a right of exclusion from synagogue or church, where Jesus, the God-fixed nail in the sure place, upon which the bundle of earth’s sorrows and sins might securely be suspended (Isaiah 22:23-25), the Eliakim of a greater Zion, had the key of the sacred and royal house. In this the chamber of truth was one treasure, as the chamber of holiness, the chamber of rest, the chamber of spiritual privileges, were others. In other words, though in a sense, the keys of spiritual advantages are in the hands of His servants, “He still retains the highest administration of them in His own hands.” The power of the keys entrusted to apostles gave them no right to alter “the essentials of the gospel, or the fundamental principles of morality.”—Bishop Boyd Carpenter.
True Mora Strength.
I. Its connection with Christ.—
1. He recognises it (Revelation 3:7). A glorious and faithful description of Christ is this. He is holy, true, supreme.
2. He honours it (Revelation 3:8). He is the key of all spheres, and opens a sphere of usefulness for the morally strong.
3. He imparts it. He is the moral power. All true moral strength is derived from Him. What power He had over circumstances, Society, temptation!
II. Its influence over error (Revelation 3:9).—These Jews were of the “synagogue of Satan.” He had synagogues then; he has churches and chapels now. The general idea is that false religion shall pay homage to Christian moral power, which comes in contact with it as
(1) a morality;
(2) an institution;
(3) a theology. It appeals to man’s craving after self-interests, worship, truth.
III. Its future reward.—
1. Preservation (Revelation 3:10). The strong in truth and Christ have ever been, and ever will be, supported in trial.
2. Visitation (Revelation 3:11). Death comes to usher us into everlasting blessedness.
3. Exaltation (Revelation 3:12). Three ideas here:
1. Stability—pillar. Utility—a pillar is a support.
3. Divinity—“write upon him the name of My God.”—Caleb Morris.
Revelation 3:11. “Behold, I come quickly.” Possibly the bishop of the Church at Philadelphia was Demetrius (John 3). If this is the case, we have before us a holy man, who, probably, was not a very resolute one, and was placed in a position of much difficulty. Such a bishop had, as a rule, two kinds of difficulties to contend with. There was a fermentation of thought on the frontiers of the apostolic Church in which Jewish and heathen ingredients were constantly producing one or another form of so-called Agnostic error—one phase of which is described in the epistle to the Colossians, and another phase in the epistles to Timothy and Titus; and this was a constant subject of anxiety to the primitive rulers of the Churches of the Lesser Asia. Besides those dangers from within, there was the constant danger of popular violence, or of official persecution, from without. Each Jewish synagogue, and, still more, each heathen temple, was the centre of a strong anti-Christian fanaticism which might at any moment arouse the passions too violently to be appeased with anything short of bloodshed. Demetrius—if he was the bishop—had hitherto made head against the anxieties around him. Hitherto he had kept the Word, he had not denied the name of Christ, he had the promise which past faithfulness always commands, while, at the same time—since no such promise can suspend man’s freedom to rebel or to obey—he is warned of the urgent duty of perseverance. If our Lord’s words are understood of His Second Coming, it is obvious that we must assume the good bishop of Philadelphia died without witnessing their fulfilment—nay, he has been in his grave for something like eighteen centuries, and our Lord has not yet come to judgment. The event has shown that the predictions uttered by our Lord at the close of His ministry referred only remotely to His Second Coming, and immediately to the destruction of Jerusalem. But this saying of our Lord, “Behold, I come quickly,” cannot have referred to the destruction of Jerusalem; and yet, if it meant the Second Advent, the bishop of Philadelphia did not witness the fulfilment of it, and it is still unfulfilled. St. Peter warned Christians that this delay would be used in after times as an argument against Christianity. The scoffers would probably rest rather on the indefinite postponement of Christ’s coming, than on any supposed intrinsic impossibility attaching to it. St. Peter meets this by reminding us that God necessarily looks at time in a very different way from that in which man looks at it. To man it seems that an event will never arrive which has been delayed for some centuries, and so that judgment, long apprehended, but long delayed, will not really take place at all, but may well at once be classed among the phantoms of a morbid and disordered brain. With God it is otherwise. Long and short periods of time do not mean to Him what they mean to us. “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years.” To us “long” and “short” are only comparative epithets; they mean a comparison of some given period of time with some other which we have before our minds. To God a period may be little enough by comparison with the standard of eternity. “Quickly” is a relative term, which may mean one thing when man uses it, and another when it is uttered by the Eternal Being. In death our Lord comes to each of us. There are two things about death which are full of meaning, and which do not admit of any sort of contradiction. The first is the certainty that it will come to each of us some day; and the second is the utter uncertainty of the day on which it will come. When the end before us is so certain, and the date of its approach so utterly uncertain, man’s true wisdom cannot be doubtful. It is a matter on which the most clear-sighted philosophy and the most fervid religious faith are entirely agreed: it is to sit easily to the things of time; it is to keep the eye fixed on that which will follow after time; it is, day by day, to untwine the bands and cords which scenes and persons among whom we live here are constantly winding around our hearts, that we may be ready at a short notice to quit them for the world in which all is lasting and all is real. Duty will not be done less thoroughly because done while conscious that this is a passing scene, since, if it is done rightly, it will be with an eye to that higher existence for which it is a preparation. The expected coming of Christ throws a flood of light upon various aspects of human existence. We are struck with the insignificance of life. If Christ’s coming means anything, it means the introduction of a life which has no end. The coming of the Lord means that all the wrong-doing and the passions on men, which create so much misery, will have had their day. It means the exercise of man’s highest powers to the fullest extent of their capacity, the beginning of an existence in which thought and heart and Will will rest in perfectly ecstatic satisfaction on their one true Object, and an existence which will last for ever. If a large number of human beings are disposed to look almost exclusively upon the darker side of life here, there are others who regard it chiefly as an opportunity for enjoyment, and often of lawful enjoyment. The pleasures of sense, kept within limits, do promote happiness. But the devotion to the pleasures of sense is an illusion which will vanish at the coming of the Lord Jesus. Many value wealth as a means of gratifying ambition. They value the consideration and respect which are paid to high position. The coming of Christ is the coming of One who has taken the measure of human life, and Who, by His incarnation and His death, has put His own mark and certificate on real greatness. Many devote themselves to knowledge of polite letters. That pleasures of intellect are higher than those of sense, and even higher than those of public life, is sufficiently indisputable. But the seat of true enjoyment or happiness is not in the intellect; it is in the heart. There are those to whom the service of God, manifested in His blessed Son, incarnate, crucified, and risen for man, is the main object of human life—men who, living in this world and doing their duty in it to the best of their power, yet are not of it; men who set their affections on things above and not on earth, and look forward to the day “when He who is their life shall appear,” in the humble hope that they too will appear with Him in glory. For them Christ’s message is sent: “Behold, I come quickly; hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.”—Canon Liddon.
Revelation 3:12. Monuments in. Heaven.—In every one of the seven epistles to the Churches our Lord describes his correspondents as so many warriors. Nothing is promised but to “him that overcometh.” What is the promise announced by the Captain of our salvation to him who has bought a sword, and finally achieved a victory?
I. Some great change must be wrought in men before they could suitably be likened to pillars in a temple.—More is made in Scripture of the vanity of the soul by nature than of the body by nature. We shall do wrong unless we take the benefit of the contrast between what sin makes us, and what Jesus Christ makes us. If the Christian is a pillar, we must not imagine he is a pillar of support, as being necessary to the temple. The pillars are to be thought of as pillars of commemoration. Monumental pillars were reared in the Grecian cities of Europe and of Asia, within the temples of their gods, to celebrate a battle and announce a victory. The monument was sanctified by the temple, and the temple was adorned by the monument. The simple, bold doctrine of the similitude amounts to this, that a good man, in glory, will preserve the fame of his victories fresh in the memories of eternity; he himself will be the monument of past battles, past conquests. The Christian will live on, to tell his own tale among the ranks of the redeemed. The Christian warrior, in truth, never dies, for, the moment when he drops his sword on the bloodred plains of the Militant Church, without a moment of inaction he passes to chronicle his prowess in the Church Triumphant.
II. The assertion that the good man in glory will be his own monument must nevertheless, be qualified.—How far have we got? Only to the point that a warrior in Christ’s army shall be, in heaven, a memorial of the battles he fought on earth, just as the pillars in the temple preserved the exploits of the ancients; only with this great difference, that the pillars of antiquity have long since been removed, but the pillars of the Church will remain for ever. But what, after all, is a pillar? Has the marble monument done anything? If you think of the marble is it not wholly and entirely as the workmanship of the artist who chiselled and fashioned it? You really look at the characters on the sculpture; you look at the names of the men to whom the marbles are inscribed. When it is said that the Christian will be a monument to himself, what is “himself”? Who is he? Is it to the honour of the man that the pillar will be set up in the temple? What of the inscription on the pillar? If the monument is not for itself, for whom is it? God’s name is first on the monument. “I will write upon him the name of My God.” Then comes the name of the city of God, the new Jerusalem. And then the new name—“Immanuel, God with us.” The source of your victory, the motive of your victory, and, last and best, the Author of your victory. I am to fight the good fight of faith only because upon me, if I conquer, three other names will be inscribed above—God; Heaven; Immanuel. My only, or chief, reward is to be, that I shall display to the myriads of God’s creatures the exceeding riches of His grace. This would be no promise to others, but to the child of God it is the sweetest and richest of all.—Henry Christopherson.
Gibbon says: “Among the Greek colonies and Churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect—a column in a scene of ruins—a pleasing example that the paths of honour and safety may sometimes be the same.”
The Pillar a Monument.—
1. He shall be a monumental pillar in the temple of God; not a pillar to support the temple (heaven needs no such props), but a monument of the free and powerful grace of God—a monument that shall never be defaced nor removed, as many stately pillars erected in honour to the Roman emperors and generals have been.
2. On this monumental pillar there shall be an honourable inscription, as in those cases is usual. (Illustrate by the names inscribed on the Arc d’Etoile in Paris). On this pillar shall be recorded all the services the believer did to the Church of God, and there shall also be put the new name of Christ, the Captain of His salvation.—Matthew Henry.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
Revelation 3:7. Philadelphia.—“We arrived at Allah-Shehr, the ancient Philadelphia.… entering the town through chasms in the old wall, but which, being built of small stones, did not appear to be particularly ancient: the passage through the streets was filthy in the extreme, though the view of the place, as we approached it, was extremely beautiful, and well entitled to the appellation of the ‘fair city.’ … We walked through the town, and up to the hill on which formerly stood the acropolis. The houses were mean in the extreme, and we saw nothing on the hill but some walls of comparatively modern date. On an adjoining hill, separated from the first by a deep fosse, or a narrow ravine, were similar fragments of walls; but we observed a few rows of large square stones just appearing above the surface of the ground. The view from these elevated situations was magnificent in the extreme; highly cultivated gardens and vineyards lay at the back and sides of the town, and before it one of the most extensive and richest plains in Asia. The Turkish name, ‘Allah-Shehr’—‘the city of God’—reminded me of the Psalmist: ‘Beautiful for situation is Mount Zion,’ etc. We returned through a different part of the town, and, though objects of much curiosity, were treated with civility; confirming Chandler’s observation that the Philadelphians are a ‘civil people.’ It was extremely pleasing to see a number of turtle-doves on the roofs of the houses; they were well associated with the name of Philadelphia. The storks retain possession still of the walls of the city, as well as of the roofs of many of the houses. We called upon the bishop at three o’clock, who received us with much kind attention.… At five o’clock we accompanied him to his church; it was Palm Sunday, and the service extremely long. I could not help shedding tears at contrasting this unmeaning mummery with the pure worship of primitive times, which probably had been offered on the very site of the present church. A single pillar, evidently belonging to a much earlier structure, reminded me of the reward of victory promised to the faithful member of the church of Philadelphia—‘Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God.’ ”—Arundell.
Revelation 3:12. Pillars in Temples.—Turner, in his “Nineteen Years in Polynesia,” records the views entertained by the Samoans in reference to a future state. In that state the chiefs were supposed to have a separate place allotted them, called Pulotu. The house, or temple, of the great king of these subterranean regions was supported, not by pillars of wood or stone, but by columns of living men—men who on earth had been chiefs of the highest rank. Chiefs, in anticipation of death, were often pleased with the thought of the high honour which awaited them, of being at once the ornament and support of the mansion of the great chief of their Pulotu paradise. What a striking coincidence have we here with the language of Scripture, and one which throws an additional interest around our instructions, as we read the words of Him who exhorted His people to perseverance by the cheering declaration, applicable to all, high and low, rich and poor, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God”!