This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
Our faith at times is weak and we pray for God to strengthen
our faith. But when the Lord looks at our
heart and He sees what little is there, he can do much with it.
And He encourages them regarding the little strength that they
have and He tells them to remain faithful.
Verse 8 He says you've kept my word and you have not denied my
name. And that's what I pray you're
doing every day in your life. You're keeping the word of God
and you're not denying the name of Jesus Christ.
When it comes to puppy litters, often there seems to be a runt
of the litter, one that's smaller, maybe even a bit weaker
than the rest. And sometimes that runt is
fighting for his life. Other times he ends up being
rejected by the mother or the siblings.
But in today's teaching, Pastor Clark gives you a different
message. Maybe you feel like your faith
is like the runt of the spiritual winner.
You're bringing the little bit of faith you have, and you're
asking God to do greater things with it.
Keep fighting for that spiritual life.
Now. Here's Pastor Clark in
Revelation Chapter 3 with today's edition of Living Waters
of Grace. And to the Angel of the church
in Philadelphia, right these things, says He who is holy, he
who is true, he who has the key of David, he who opens and no
one shuts and shuts and no one opens.
I know your works. See, I have set before you an
open door, and no one can shut it.
For you have a little strength, have kept my word, and have not
denied my name. Indeed I will make those of the
synagogue of Satan who say they are Jews and are not but lie.
Indeed, I will make them come and worship before your feet,
and to know that I have loved you because you have kept my
command to persevere. I also will keep you from the
hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world to test
those who dwell in the earth. Behold, I am coming quickly.
Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown.
He who overcomes I will make him a pillar in the temple of my
God, and he shall go out no more.
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 I will write on him my new name.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the
churches. It's about four hours from here,
right? That's what I used to think when
I didn't know much about the Bible.
I thought, well, I didn't know Philadelphia, PA, was recognized
in the Scriptures. But the Philadelphia, it's about
25 miles southeast of Sardis, and it's one of two churches.
It wasn't exhorted to repent, nor was it rebuked.
So that encourages you as we study this Book of Revelation
together, especially these seven churches.
I think as we study them, sometimes we get a little
disheartened because we say, boy, look at the church.
It's such a mess. The body of Christ seems to be
so fragmented and confused. And yet as we've studied, we've
seen that Smyrna and Philadelphia had remained
faithful. So my prayers we study about
these churches of the past days would encourage us today that we
can be strong and be faithful. We don't have to be dead, we
don't have to be antiquated, but we can still be relevant and on
fire to, to be a light to the loss in this world that we live
in. The city had a small population
one time. It was a beautiful, beautiful
city, but it had a lot of problem with earthquakes.
And so people really didn't like living here.
After 8017, when the city was destroyed, it was then rebuilt
again, but it never really took upon its splendor that it once
had. So people lived sort of out in
the suburbs away from the city itself.
But this church is encouraged in the midst of the current
tribulation that they're dealing with like Smyrna, to be
encouraged and to stay strong and to persevere.
The warning is that in the midst of what they're going through
presently as we study this book, that there's something even
worse that's going to happen in the days ahead.
A great calamity was coming upon the whole earth.
So in verse 7, Jesus is speaking and he says to them, write these
things, says he who is holy and he who is true.
Jesus Christ is the only one you can depend upon in this life.
He's the only one that will never lie to you.
He's the only one that is 100% true all the time.
Other voices, other people, we're all but dust, we're all
but flesh. The Bible says the flesh of man
the is like the glory of the grass.
It appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
Our life's like a vapor. It's just here for a little
while and vantageeth away. All the great men of the past,
all the great Bible leaders, and in the Old Testament, in the New
Testament, are all gone now and with the Lord.
All those who live throughout the course of modern history,
who were great spokespeople for God in the midst of the days
that they lived, are no longer here.
But there's one voice that remains clear and strong and
true day in and day out. It's not dependent upon
physicality. Yet He was here as a man, God in
the flesh, who dwelt on the earth.
Now He's at the right hand of the Father, interceding for you
and me night and day before the throne of God.
And he promises in the midst of all the struggles and the trials
of life, he will build his church, and the gates of hell
will not prevail against it. And so Jesus is speaking to them
to listen to him, for he is faithful, He's holy, perfect,
pure, sinless, and always true. It gives to us in this section
also this relation to David, the King of Israel, who was the
forerunner in the sense of the picture of the Messianic throne
that would one day come and be established by Christ himself.
And so we remember David, King David, and David had the key to
the heart of Israel, as Christ has a key to the heart of the
church, the bride of Jesus Christ.
And in verse 8 it says that this church has set before them an
open door and no one can shut it.
The open door is the doorway of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the
doorway of salvation. The church down through the
years has been persecuted by many, many forces and factors to
try to keep the church from being alive to proclaim the good
news of the gospel to the lost. The church today in our culture
has been given an open door in Westmoreland County, here in
Greensburg, in our country, in the US of A.
We still have the privilege, don't we, to proclaim freely the
gospel of Jesus Christ. There's an open door.
We're not being put in jail yet. We're not being threatened that
our lives would be taken away from us if we preach the gospel,
unlike other countries that are going through very, very
difficult, tragic times. I got an e-mail the other day of
one of the countries in Africa, one of the States and the nation
of Africa who are being martyred as we speak because of their
faith in Jesus Christ. We, we don't realize at times,
do we, the privilege we have to share our faith.
We can share our faith in our jobs.
We can share our faith in our neighborhood.
We can share our faith wherever we go if we're so inclined.
But I'm afraid that somehow we have been deceived into thinking
that somehow the doors aren't open, that people don't want to
listen and aren't, they're not interested in what's the use?
And boy, I'll tell you, we really got to get over that.
We need to pray as a church that the Lord would inspire every one
of us to proclaim freely the gospel wherever we have an
opportunity, wherever we have a chance.
And the Lord, he's the one that opens the doors.
And sometimes those doors shut, don't they?
We think of the trouble that the nation Russia has had, the
country, and how at one time in the early 1900s, they were a
very, very powerful spiritual nation.
They were able to worship. There was many worship
communities all over the country of Russia.
And then the movement of Stalin and Lenin came on the scene and
they said the religion of Christianity is the opium of the
masses. It deadens people and deludes
them. And So what we need to do is get
rid of anybody that believes this message of Jesus Christ.
And so they began to take the pastor's out of their homes and
take them to the gulag and put them in persecution and chains,
robbing them from their families and their loved ones.
And they thought if they got rid of all The Proclaimers of the
Gospel, Jesus Christ, that they could shut the church down.
The church began to be an institution of the KGB.
And so whenever people would go worship, they had to be very
careful because they would be turned in if they were too into
their belief in Jesus Christ. And so the church then became
religious institution, not a spiritual Organism.
But what's exciting was, and what eventually happened, that
wall of communism fell down and the door was once again open
right with missionaries there who are proclaiming the gospel.
Many Calvary Chapel churches have been planted throughout
Russia. But again, slowly, things seem
to be heading the other way. Again.
We have friends in Kiev who are being hassled to find a place
where they can gather freely and worship in a building.
They're being told by the government that they're a cult
and they're not welcomed in the in the country.
And so they're trying to dismantle any kind of a vestige
of true Christianity again. And, and these things come and
go in cycles. And Billy Graham said after that
wall fell down that now the door is open.
We can't hesitate. We need to get into that country
and proclaim the gospel while we have a chance because there's no
guarantee that that door is going to be left open forever.
And so the church has been faithful to get into Russia and
many, many things have occurred there within the the church
itself, many people coming to faith in Jesus Christ.
And the religion of Russia, which was based upon the ancient
tradition of Orthodoxy, has also come alive where many of the
Orthodox pastors are on fire for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And they're saying it's not about religion, it's about
relationship. It's about truly knowing Christ.
It's about studying His Word and it's about going out into the
community and fighting people to come and to see the difference
that Christ can make in a life. So the Lord is working in these
days all around the world, but there's some countries like
Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran that are closed to the gospel.
And if you get into these places and you try to preach and share
the gospel, you will risk your life.
You will be in prison, you will be taken to the jails, and many
times you'll be martyred for your faith.
So we can't take this open door lightly.
And I'm afraid in our culture in America, we have taken it
lightly, haven't we? We have not taken the
opportunities that we have been given by God to share our faith.
And that's a serious indictment upon all of us.
At the back of the bulletin there is a call to repentance,
and it says the faithfulness of the evangelical church in the
past contrasts sharply with its unfaithfulness in the present.
Earlier in this century, evangelical churches sustained A
remarkable missionary endeavor and built many religious
institutions to serve the cause of biblical truth in Christ's
Kingdom. That was a time when Christian
behavior and expectations were markedly different from those in
the culture today. They often are not.
The evangelical world today is losing its biblical fidelity,
moral compass, and missionary zeal.
We repent of our worldliness. We have been influenced by the
gospels of our secular culture, which are no gospels.
We have weakened the church by our own lack of serious
repentance, our blindness to the sin in ourselves which we see so
clearly in others, and our excusable failure to adequately
tell others about God's saving work in Jesus Christ.
That's an indictment against all of us, isn't it?
Is that speaking to your heart? Raise your hand speaking to
mine. When the church has an open
door, no one can shut it. That's the good news.
When Christ, His sovereignty, allows the body of Christ to be
able to mobilize and to do His work in His way, no one can shut
it. We have all these rumors that
are going around in our culture now about the change of freedom
of speech and freedom of religion, How the Airways are
going to be changed and you're not going to be able to have
conservative values proclaimed through the media.
All these warning signs are out there, and there's people
posturing to prevent you and I from having a free voice in the
country that has been founded based upon religious freedom.
So we need to pray and we need to vote, and we also need to
talk to our legislators, our congressmen, our senators do our
part in regard to seeing this door staying open by the grace
of God. Now, there's always obstacles
whenever the doors open. There's always adversaries that
would try to keep you from proclaiming your faith.
Could be your family, could be your friends, could be Co
workers that would keep you from talking about the need that
these people have to have a savior.
Many times it's fear what blocks us from sharing our faith.
Sometimes it's humiliation. We don't want people to think
we're weird or we're different. Sometimes we're afraid that we
might offend someone and they won't want to be around us
anymore to be our friend. They won't like us.
Sometimes it's in this case of the Church of Philadelphia, it
was the Jews who were really making it difficult for these
people to be able to share their faith.
In Matthew 2313, Jesus speaks about this group of people that
were harassing the early church and he says, but woe to you
scribes and Pharisees. This is the religious leaders of
the time. Hypocrites for you.
Shut up. The Kingdom of heaven against
men, for you neither go in yourselves nor do you allow
those who are entering to go in. They made the faith so difficult
that no one would want to be interested in even attempting to
follow the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
There was so many rules and regulations and obstacles for
the people to have to go through to be accepted.
Gentiles for sure, were seen as being unclean and unholy.
And boy, you don't mess around with the Gentiles because if you
do and you allow them to come into your synagogue, you're
going to have nothing but the impurity.
And so they made the synagogue not a spiritual dwelling place
for God, but they made it a ritualistic institution that
judged people based upon their outward nationality or their
appearance or their background. But Jesus says in John 14-6,
Jesus says I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.
No man comes to the Father but through me.
Jesus didn't say that religion is the way.
He didn't say ethnicity is a way.
He didn't say denominations of the way or specific leaders of
the way. He said I am the way, I am the
truth, I am the life. No man comes to the Father but
through me. And so many organizations and
institutions and unfortunately churches will proclaim that you
cannot come to the Father unless you come through them, unless
you come through the hands of a man.
And Jesus never taught that, did he?
Jesus said the traditions of men make the word of God of no
effect, and so whenever we have to jump through hoops in order
to get somewhere spiritually, we end up forgetting it and falling
away. And Jesus said if you tie a
millstone around the neck of one of his children, he said the
judgment that awaits you is something you don't want to have
to deal with or endure. The church is persecuted.
Philadelphia. And Jesus says that this church
has a little strength. And that encourages me.
We don't need a lot of strength to be effective, do we?
All we need is a little. And we have a little strength
here, don't we? We do.
And what can God do with a little?
He said, If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall
say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into
the sea, and you shall have what you prayed for it it shall come
to pass the mustard seed, the smallest seed, and what Christ
says can be done with that seed. Our faith at times is weak, and
we pray for God to strengthen our faith.
But when the Lord looks at our heart and He sees what little is
there, He can do much with it. And He encourages them regarding
the little strength that they have, and He tells them to
remain faithful. Verse 8, He says you've kept my
word and you have not denied my name.
And that's what I pray you're doing every day in your life.
You're keeping the word of God and you're not denying the name
of Jesus Christ in any situation.
Opportunity. You have a chance to lift Him up
and to proclaim Him. Now Smyrna in Philadelphia were
given the same admonition here in the sense of Jesus giving him
a heads up as to what is the real problem here in regard to
the persecution. And he says I'm going to make
those in verse 9 that those are the synagogue of Satan who say
they're Jews and are not but lie.
Jesus says in John 839 the Jews are saying, hey, Abraham's our
father. There's a lot of pride in the
Jewish nation even to this day. Aren't, isn't there?
I mean, they're the proudest nation on the face of the earth.
That's why everybody hates them. But there's a reason for some of
that that isn't so much in rooted in sinful pride.
It's an anointing of God and his hand upon his chosen people.
Yet there is this tendency because of the pride, that
because I am a descendant of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, I'm special. I'm better than everybody else.
And just as Jesus remark when they're having this discussion
with Jesus, well, Abraham's our father.
Hey, give us a break. Hey, we're, we're in, we know
what we're doing. We're connected.
Jesus says to them, if you were Abraham's children, you would do
the work of Abraham. Now in James it tells us faith
without works is dead, and that James used Abraham's faith as an
illustration of real faith. It was manifest in the obedience
of Abraham, wasn't it? Abraham believed God, the Bible
says, and it was accounted him, accounted to him for
righteousness. But in James it also makes it
very clear that Abraham's belief or his faith was based upon what
he did. There was evidence that he had
real faith because he obeyed what God told him to do.
That's one thing to be a physical descendant of Abraham,
it's another to be a spiritual descendant by faith.
If you turn to Romans chapter 2 for a moment, Romans chapter 2
verse 28 and 29, it says for he is not a Jew who is 1 outwardly,
nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh, but he
is a Jew who is 1 inwardly. And circumcision is that of the
heart in the Spirit, not in the letter whose praise is not from
men, but from God. That's why Jesus said you must
be born again to enter into the Kingdom of heaven, right?
You can't bring your kids to church and have them worship and
open the Bible and do all this stuff.
If they haven't met Jesus personally, it doesn't make
sense to them. They just become religious
Pharisees. They think, well, I'm a
Christian. Why?
Because I go to church? Or I'm a Christian because I was
baptized, or I'm a Christian because whatever.
You have to be born again to enter into the Kingdom of
heaven. So your kid, just because the
mom and dad's a Christian, they've been born again.
Your kids aren't automatically born again because the mom and
dad are born again, right? Everybody has to come to a point
of recognizing their need of Jesus Christ and be born from
the Spirit. Only the Spirit gives life.
The flesh profits. Nothing.
If you flip over to Romans 9, now Romans Chapter 9 verse 6,
but it is not that the word of God has taken no effect, for
they are not all Israel who are of Israel.
So these people in Philadelphia are acting very religious and
spiritual and they're the biggest pain to the church
because they're seen in the culture as the religious
experts. And meanwhile they're totally
clueless about what real Christianity is about.
And this, because they're born in Israel and they're
descendants of Abraham, doesn't make them truly the remnant or
the seed of Abraham, it says in verse 7.
Nor are they all children because they are the seed of
Abraham. But in Isaac your seed shall be
called that is those who are the children of the flesh.
These are not the children of God.
So just because you're born a Jew and you're a descendant of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob doesn't make you a child of God, but the
children that the promise are counted as a seed for.
This is the word of promise at this time.
I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.
And not only this, when Rebecca also had conceived by one man,
even by our father Isaac, for the children not yet being born,
nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God
according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him
who calls it was said to her, The older shall serve the
younger, as it is written. Jacob I've loved, but he saw,
I've hated. And so in the mystery of God's
plan, he always had a remnant, didn't He?
You had this whole nation going through the wilderness, being
delivered from the bondage of Pharaoh.
Not all of them were believers. Many of them obviously lost
their lives out in the wilderness and God's judgment
came upon them. But there was always a seed that
God had four ordained. The Bible uses the word
election. God's choice is choosing, always
balancing that out with that God is not willing that any should
perish, but all should come to repentance.
But God has a special feeling for his elect or his bride
today, if you're a Christian here and you believe in Jesus
Christ and you've been born of the Spirit.
Thanks for being with us today here on Living Waters of Grace.
We're in the Book of Revelation, and we find it fascinating how
influential and involved the angels are in this book.
They bring about whatever it is that God has instructed them to
do, but it's through their actions that much of the
judgments come on the earth. The angels are in submission to
God as their authority, but He utilizes them in unique ways
throughout this book. Like angels have a specific
purpose from God, you have a unique purpose and plan too.
God wants to use you in your life as a testimony to others
and to bring others who are currently lost into the fold of
God. God would love more than
anything for all who are willing to come to Him for salvation,
but he wants it to be their choice, not a forced situation.
This is the way God works, not forcing himself on anyone, but
giving each person free will. If you're interested in learning
about this choice that's free and that it's a gift, go to
calvarychapelonline.com and click on the About Us tab and
then find the link for what we believe.
We'd love to be a help and a resource for you as you walk
through what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
If you find the contact tab on our website, you can get in
touch with us or submit a prayer request.
We'd love to hear from you. That's all for today's edition
and Revelation, but there's much more that Pastor Clark plans to
share with us from this culminating book of the Bible.
Stay tuned for that. And make sure to mention this
radio program to others. Invite them to tune in to Grace
FM 91.7 FM and they can stream worldwide at Grace Radio dot FM.
This has been living waters of grace.