The Church With Friends in High Places

Francis and Edith Schaeffer founded L'Abri, a ministry to the youth of Europe. Edith tells this story about the beginning of their ministry—I don't remember all of the details, but it went something like this. They had begun their work in Switzerland, but that part of Switzerland was strongly Catholic and since they were Protestant, they experienced a lot of opposition. Even the local government officials were doing what they could to hamper their work. One day, Edith was talking to one of their neighbors, an elderly woman whom she had befriended, and told her about the difficulties they were experiencing. The neighbor was upset about their problems and commented, “I'll have to talk to my son about this.” Edith records that she was glad that the woman sympathized but didn't think much more about it—until she found that this neighbor lady's son was one of the highest ranking officials in the government of Switzerland—and he was able to use his influence to silence the opposition and help establish the Schaeffer's ministry. They succeeded because they had friends in high places.

And strangely enough, that was something of the situation of the church at Philadelphia as we see from Christ's letter to her in Revelation 3:7-13. This church doesn't seem to have been large or influential. Verse 8 describes it as having “little strength.” Perhaps it had very few members; certainly, these members were not important members of the community—likely they were the poor, the outcasts, and the slaves. And they were surrounded by powerful enemies, by Jewish agitators who were using their influence in an attempt to stamp out the church. But while the church was small and persecuted, they had someone on their side—they had Jesus Christ himself on their side, supporting their cause and for that reason, they survived. They were the church with a friend in high places.

Today the church sometimes seems small and insignificant. In America, we have been blessed to have religious freedom and general recognition; the church is still a definite part of American culture. But that doesn't change the fact that there are loud and boisterous voices trying to drown out the voice of the church; more and more, there are efforts to silence or marginalize the testimony of true Christianity. Sometimes today being part of the church still means being part of something seemingly powerless and futile before our enemies. But just like the church at Philadelphia, the church today has this promise—the promise of a friend in high places.

The church at Philadelphia had a friend in high places, and that friend was Jesus Himself. This letter is His testimony of friendship to them. But as we look at it we see several things specifically about this friend which served as a comfort to them. It wasn't just that they had a friend, but it was WHO this friend was.

He was a reliable friend. In verse 7, Jesus identifies himself as He that is holy and He that is true. Holy means without blemish or sin and True means without error or deception. Since these terms are so often applied to God in the Bible, it's easy to skim over them as you read. Obviously, God is holy and true. But I think they have a special significance in the context of this letter and Revelation in general.

Everyone has heard of a “fair-weather friend.” That someone who is your friend when everything is going well, but when things go wrong, they become strangely absent. They are not the ones who to count on to stick up for you when everyone is against you; not the ones who will speak up on your behalf when the crowd has turned on you. But the church's friend is the Holy and the True—He is not a fair-weather friend. He won't be pressured into turning against us; He will not lie or betray us no matter what happens. 

And this is important because it is one of the main points of Revelation. The book of Revelation shows the conflict of Satan and the world against the church. But over and above it all stands Jesus, the holy and the true. The world changes, the world may change in drastic and catastrophic ways before the End of All Things, but Jesus remains true, true to Himself and His church. He is the one who can be depended on. He cannot be corrupted, bribed, bullied, or deceived. Our human friends may betray us—one of Jesus' own disciples betrayed him. But we have a friend who will always be faithful and true.

But not only that, but He is a knowing friend. There are certain phrases that occur over and over throughout these letters, and one of them is this phrase: “I know thy works.” Jesus said that to each of the churches in Revelation. They were all different, with unique difficulties and situations. But Jesus knew exactly where each church was and what they needed. Jesus has high words of commendation for the church at Philadelphia. It is doubtful that the world around this church saw anything so praiseworthy in it. Human nature being what it is, it could be that the other churches in Turkey did not see Philadelphia for what it was. But Jesus knew.

So often our friends and family do not and cannot understand us; they don't really know where we are or what we need. After I wrote that paragraph about betrayal, I started thinking about it, and I don't think I've had a friend personally betray me, at least not in any significant way. But there have definitely been times when friends have hurt me in some way simply because they didn't know or didn't understand. 

But Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows where we are and what we need. He understands us fully and completely. He knows us personally and He knows us as a church. When the world looks at the church and sees only the mistakes and the hypocrites; when our friends look at us and see only the flaws and the faults, Jesus sees the whole picture. Of course, that is a double-edged sword, as we've seen with the other churches of Revelation, but the point here is just that Jesus knows exactly what our situation is and so He is the one who can help us.

Because the fact that we have a friend means more than just that we have someone to sympathize with us, as great as that would be. Our friend is someone who can help us, for He is a powerful friend. In verse 7, Jesus identifies himself as the one who has “the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth.” The picture here is of one who has absolute and final authority, the one whose decisions cannot be questioned, whose rulings cannot be overturned. The language of verse 7 sounds a little strange to us, but it takes on a special meaning. There Jesus tells the Christians in Philadelphia that he had opened a door for them that no one could shut.

In Brian Selznick's novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Hugo makes friends with the usher at a theatre who promises to get him into the theatre, even though he's too poor to afford a ticket. But when the owner of the theatre finds out that the usher was letting people in without a ticket, he comes down and puts a stop to it. The usher had opened a door, but someone with more authority shut it. But when Jesus opens a door, when He makes a promise, when He gives us an opportunity, nobody can come down and shut the door. He is the one with ultimate authority and power.

This is the friend the church at Philadelphia had; this is the friend the church always has—the one who is always reliable, always knowledgeable, always capable. That is one of the main themes of Revelation—the church has gone through many traumatic things since its institution. Before the end comes, it may have to go through things far more traumatic. But Jesus is always there; He is the constant friend of the church, no matter what happens.

But this letter does more than simply reveal who Jesus is. Jesus isn't simply a Friend. He is a Friend who has made certain promises and we see in these verses His promises to the church. 

He promised to empower them. I already mentioned verse 8: “I have set before thee an open door.” We don't really know exactly what Jesus meant by that, but most commentators think this means that they had an opportunity, an opportunity for spreading the gospel. Here we have a seemingly small and insignificant church, one surrounded by opposition and perhaps outright persecution. And yet this church was given an open door, an opportunity to proclaim God's word. 

And this is a pattern we see throughout the Bible. Often it was when God's people were at their lowest point that God gave them an opportunity. Think of Daniel, captured by an enemy empire and carried far away from home—and then given a chance to proclaim God's word in the court of the emperor himself. Think of Paul and Silas, thrown into jail and yet able to preach and sing to prisoners and a jailer who never would have heard them otherwise. Think of Jesus dying on a cross and given a chance to speak a word of pardon to a dying thief. 

God empowers his church. It may not always be in the way we would choose or expect. The church will not necessarily become rich or successful as the world counts success. But when God is on our side, we can count on having the power we need to fulfill our mission. The church may be weak but it can never truly be ineffectual if God is with her. No matter what other people can do to us, the one thing they cannot do is stop us from fulfilling God's plan. They can fight us; they can hurt us; but they cannot stop us. They may muffle us but not silence us; they can imprison us but they cannot contain us. When God opens a door, no one can shut it. 

God had promised to empower the church and give them an opportunity to minister even in the midst of difficult times and along with that came a second promise: He would protect them.

In verse 10 Christ promises: “I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world.” Scholars aren't agreed about exactly what this hour of temptation refers to it, except that it was some kind of crisis—something terrible was coming into the lives of the Philadelphians and the world around them. And in the midst of that time, Jesus would protect them, He would keep them. They were the church that had little strength, but they had a Friend with all power who was fighting on their side.

This promise was given specifically to the church at Philadelphia involving some specific situation they would be facing. But there is a general principle involved here. And that is that God protects his people. Paul told the Corinthians, “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13) Peter expressed the same idea when he said: “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations.” (2 Peter 2:9)

In this life, as Christians, we are going to face difficult times and hard situations. There will be many days on which it is hard to follow God. But we know however bad things are, there is always a way forward. We may have enemies who try to prevent us from serving God; we may have powerful foes who try to put stumbling blocks in our way, but we know no matter how powerful they are, there is a limit to their power. No one can ever force us away from God. St. Paul wrote to the Romans, “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

In the worst situations, God will protect us and will make a way of escape. He is the one who opens the door of escape as well as of opportunity. As I said before, that door may not always be what we expect or want. For many Christians in the midst of persecution, that door has been the door of death—the door which leads out of this world into the presence of God. But the point remains the same--that God has promised to protect and keep His people.

The church has gone through countless times of testing and trial since John wrote his revelation. We do not know what the church may yet have to face before the end. But we know that God will protect the church and keep it—sometimes bringing out of the trial, somethings bringing through the trial, but always keeping close at its side.

The church has God's protection and therefore will survive. But the promise is more than mere survival. Jesus makes a greater promise: He promised to vindicate them. As I said earlier,  the Philadelphian church was facing problems with Jewish agitators, with those whom Jesus calls “the synagogue of Satan”--since despite their Jewish ancestry and profession, they were truly serving the Devil and not the God of Abraham. We don't know what was involved in this opposition—whether the Jews had involved the government in some kind of formal persecution or whether it was more of a personal battle. We don't know the details of the struggle—but we do know the outcome.

In verse 9, Jesus promises the church concerning its enemies: “I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.” This is a fascinating verse and I would love to know more about what it means and how it was fulfilled. But the picture at the very least is this—Jesus was going to vindicate His people; He was going to prove to their enemies that they WERE His people. When all was said and done, there was going to be no doubt about the fact that the church was loved and accepted by God.

This promise is repeated in a more general form a few verses later when Jesus promises the overcomer that he would be a pillar in the temple of God and would have written on him the name of the Father, the name of the Son, and the name of the city of God. It's an odd-sounding picture, but again it is this idea of vindication and acceptance. When you walk into a building and see a pillar holding up the ceiling, you don't think: “I wonder if that truly belongs there.” Obviously, if it's a pillar, it belongs. And someday, perhaps in this life and certainly in the next, God's people will have a testimony so that nobody can look at them and think: “I wonder if they truly belong to God.” It will be obvious and self-evident. They will have a testimony from God himself that they are His.

God will not forget or neglect His people. This doesn't mean they wouldn't experience hardship or trials. Jesus Himself experienced hardships and trials. But they had this confidence that even in the midst of those things, He was with them, protecting them, empowering them, and that, someday, He would bring them victory and vindication. That was God's promise to them.

But there is another side to this. I said that Jesus was their friend—and there is something very unique about friendship. You can love someone who does not love you—that is true with romantic love as well as with spiritual love. You can love someone who does not love you. You can be friendly to someone who is not friendly to you. But you CANNOT be friends with someone who is not friends with you. Friendship, by its very nature, is two-sided. So, while it is true that God loves even His enemies, if we want Him to be our friend, we have to be His friend. This relationship is, of its own essential nature, two-sided. Jesus made promises to the people of Philadelphia; Jesus has made promises to us. But with those promises comes certain responsibilities on our side. We have a duty to Him. And duty can be briefly summarized with the word “loyalty.”

In verse 8, Jesus says that the Philadelphians had “kept my word, and hast not denied my name.” In other words, they had remained loyal to Jesus. Despite the pressure and opposition from those around them, they had not given up their faith. If they had just said, “we are not followers of Jesus,” it is very possible that their Jewish opponents would have left them alone. But they didn't do that. And not only were they loyal to their faith, but they were acting upon it, living according to God's word, doing what He wanted them to do. They were obedient to their faith and lived it out in the midst of a difficult time. In verse 11, Jesus follows up this word of commendation with a command: “Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” In other words, Jesus is exhorting them to remain loyal, to keep up what they were doing, to keep on being faithful to Him.

Earlier, I mentioned people that are called “fair-weather friends”--those who are only your friend when things are going well but who will mysteriously disappear when the pressure comes. We have a wonderful confidence that our friend, that Jesus is not that kind of friend to us. But by the same token, we must be sure not to be that kind of friend to Him. An old proverb states that A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed. Not that anyone can “earn” anyone else's friendship by how they act; not because we make friends specifically in order to get something out of others; but because we realize that the best test of the reality of someone's friendship is how they act in difficult times. 

God does not need any circumstance to know the quality of our friendship towards Him—He knows that, obviously. But the point still holds that if we are making a claim to be friends of God; if we are banking on the promises which He has made us, then we must be willing to stand for Him in the difficult moments. If we are to be friends of God indeed then we must be friends in need, holding fast to his word and letting no man take our crown.

Bonita Coleman once said: “Everything turns out for the best if you know the right people.” So often in life, have the right connections and contacts can mean the difference between failure and success. Those without influence, without allies often find themselves unheard and ineffectual.

To the world, to the opposing Jews, the church at Philadelphia seemed that—week and ineffectual, with no resources or contacts with which to fight back against opposition; they had no way to make their voice heard. But they had a friend in high places; the highest of friends in the highest of places—a trustworthy friend who knew their situation and had the power to help them. This friend had promised to empower them, protect them, and vindicate them before their enemy, so long as they remained loyal and obedient to their pledge to Him. 

The world has changed since Revelation was written. In many ways, the church has changed. The situation we face today is not identical to that faced by Philadelphia or any of this church. But our Friend has not changed and we can have confidence in Him, just as the church at Philadelphia did 2000 years ago.