or returning to Revelation 3. I remember as a child, a young
teenager, that for some reason or another my sisters had mentioned
to me how scary this book was, especially Revelation chapter
13. And I've, one of those guys, I've kind of got a morbid sense
of curiosity. You know, I've, I said, I drive
by an accident. I got to look. Somebody tells
me something scary. I got to see it, you know? So
I remember setting up one night and opening up and reading Revelation
chapter 13. And you know, if you don't know
what this book is about, that is a scary chapter. A beast rising
up out of the sea and all this kind of stuff going on. And actually
in the church in which I was raised, they made the book of
Revelation out to be essentially a scary book. But it's exactly
the opposite. When you understand this book,
it's one of the most comforting portions of scriptures you'll
find anywhere. And as we go through this book
of Revelation, keep this in mind, Revelation is not saying anything
new. Now evidently it was the last
book of the Bible to be written. But there's nothing in the book
of Revelation that is not somewhere else. Nothing that I've found
yet anyway. Every truth that's contained
in this book is also declared in the rest of Scriptures. Because
you see, the Scriptures have only one message. They have this
message, the message of Christ Jesus, the conquering ruler and
savior of his people. That's what all the scriptures
are about. And in one way or another, wherever you read, look
for that theme. How is it showing me Christ and
Him crucified and risen and ruling all things for the welfare of
His people? That's what this book is about.
Now the book of Revelation tells these things to us in a way that
no other book does. John uses a style of writing
that none of the other writers used. But once we understand
the style, we understand the words, and they're glorious.
Now, there are seven letters in this book, seven messages
that were sent to seven individual churches in the area of Asia.
Not the Asia that we know, but they called it Asia. Actually,
it's pronounced, I think, Asia. But these churches actually existed. They were real churches, but
each letter that was written Though written and addressed
to a specific church, yet they all end with verse 13, as in
verse 13 here, He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit
says to the churches. These messages were not just
for those churches. They were for every church. They're
for us. And while any individual church
may say, well, you know, I see us more in Thyatira, or I see
we're more like the church at Ephesus, or more like Philadelphia
or whatever, Actually, there are elements of every one of
these seven churches to be found in every one of the Lord's churches. The very fact that our Lord chose
seven churches to write to tells us something. You see, seven
almost always in the Scriptures signifies completeness or the
entirety of something. And when He writes to seven churches,
He's writing to the whole church. There are Ephesians in our congregation,
there are Smyrnians and Pergamum, I don't know how, Pergamites,
I don't know what you call them. And in fact, I'll tell you this,
probably as we've been going through this, you have found
elements of every one of these churches in your individual self. And so we're not simply to look
at these as historic letters written to historic churches.
We're to do with these scriptures as we do with all the scriptures,
what is our Lord Jesus saying to me that I might learn from it and
be transformed by it? Now, in those seven churches,
there are only two of which our Lord speaks positively without
any correction, without any rebuke, and that's I believe they're
the church, yeah, in Smyrna, and the church in Philadelphia. And both these churches are described
in diminutive terms. That is, well, the ones from
Smyrna, he said, you're poor. You're poor. Yet you're rich. Now, the interesting thing is,
the church at Laodicea, which Lord William will look at next
week, they were known for being rich. But our Lord said, you're
poor. When will we learn that the things
which are highly esteemed among men are an abomination to God?
When the Lord told the Philadelphians, or the folks from Smyrna, that
they were poor, he meant poor by the world's standards, but
they were rich in the things of God. And he says here to the
church of Philadelphia, you're weak, but they were not weak
in the things of God, they were weak in the estimation of the
world. The things the world holds low, God holds high. The things
the world thinks is great, God says they're worthless in my
sight. And then both of these churches
are said to suffer at the hands of the synagogue of Satan. This
world has always had plenty of people in it who said, we are
of the people of God. We're God's people. And there
were Jews that, well, you know, for the most part, the Jews just
despised the church of the Lord Jesus Christ and they slandered
the church of the Lord Jesus. They said, God doesn't love you,
God's not interested in you, you're not the people of God,
we are. And the Lord said, they're liars. They are of their father
the devil, just like the Jews of the Lord's day. Now understand
when I say Jews, I'm not talking just about a race of people.
Primarily the leadership in the religious world of the Jews.
When you read in the New Testament it says the Jews came to him
and said, what it's talking about is leaders among the Jews, the
Pharisees and the Sadducees and the priests and all those, the
ones that were locking up the kingdom of God so the people
couldn't enter in. And these were the same Jews
that crucified the Lord Jesus Christ and the same Jews that
persecuted the people of God. But in these cities where churches
would rise up there were also synagogues and these Jews would
persecute the church of the Lord Jesus. And this is mentioned both in
the city of Smyrna and the city of Philadelphia. And this stands
for all of false religion and in particular that false religion
which claims to be the religion of the scriptures. Now he talked
about synagogues of Satan. Today we might talk about churches
of Satan. And we don't mean that church,
you know, that Anton LaVey, I think was his name, he raised up the
church of Satan and they go around in black robes, you know, and
they got their little stars turned upside down and they do their
incantations and all that. My friends, that's just a joke.
Nobody's fooled by that outfit. The churches of Satan which are
a trouble to the church of the Lord Jesus Christ are the churches
in which there are preachers in fine suits. and big offerings
and active missions programs. I'm not saying everybody that's
like that is of the Church of Satan. I'm just saying the Church
of Satan, to outward appearances, looks better than the Church
of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's more powerful. I'm talking
about the way the world sees Satan. It's more powerful. There's
more of them. There's more of the Church of
Satan than there is of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. You
see, the Scriptures tell us that Satan masquerades as an angel
of light, not darkness. Satan doesn't deceive people
by saying, look, all right, God, he's not really God, I'm God,
follow me. He wouldn't get many people to follow him like that.
He comes in and claims he's an angel of light, a messenger of
light. I've got the true way. It's what he did to Adam and
Eve. He just distorted what God said. And then it says that Satan,
as an angel of light, are we then surprised that his ministers
should appear to be ministers of righteousness? Now you take a group that just,
you know, it just says, oh, forget God. Well, he's not fooling anybody. And he really won't have much
power or sway in this world Everybody has within their hearts the understanding
there is a God and a God to whom we must answer. The scriptures
say the fool has said in his heart there is no God. And there's a few atheists that'll
get together and pat each other on the back and claim there is
no God, but the rest of the world is looking at them saying, you
idiots. Everybody knows there's a God. So Satan isn't going to
make much traffic in this world by saying there is no God. He's
going to come make traffic by saying there is a God. He'll
even name him by the name that we call our God. He'll just make
a phony version of him. And that's what these people
did here. And they were persecuting the church of the Lord Jesus.
Now here in Revelation 3 verse 7 it says, To the angel of the
church in Philadelphia write. Now this is our Lord talking
to John. He says, You write this down. He's like a Our Lord is
like a boss dictating a letter to his secretary. And he says,
John, you write this down and you send it to the Church of
Philadelphia. And he identifies himself at the beginning of the
letter, which was common back then. You know, we sign our name
at the bottom of our letters, but back then they put them at
the front. So it says, these are the words of him who is holy
and true. Here's our Lord's first identification
of himself to these people in Philadelphia. Now our Lord is
not saying, I'm holy and true in this, shall we call it self-righteous,
arrogant, holier than thou. Now he was holier than everybody
else, but that's not what he's meaning here. The Philadelphians
had had enough of the corrupt and the false. They'd had enough
of these synagogues of Satan trying to infiltrate them and
persecute them and violate them with their corruptions and with
their error. How refreshing it would be for
folks like that to hear from someone who's holy, entirely
set apart from corruption. You know, You just can't help but make
this comparison in our day as we see the political engine getting
wound up for next year's election process. And you know, I don't
even pay attention to what those guys say anymore. I really don't. Because I found out for the most
part it doesn't matter what they say. It just doesn't. They are corrupt. They are unholy. They're just like me. You know,
the scripture says, let God be true and every man a liar. When
are we going to believe that? And you know, you see these politicians
and they are corrupt and they are false. But here's what's
worse. You look at most preachers in the world today. They are
also corrupt and false. I was going through the television
list. You know, we got that satellite
dish. Well, you can check off the stations you don't want to
get. You know, I don't even want to
fool with them. I was going through it the other day to pick up a
few sports channels, see if we could get them back on, and I
noticed I'd clicked off every religious channel that came on
there. And what gets me is there's a whole lot more of them than
I remember, but I went through, and I did. I clicked every one of
them off, because to my knowledge, there's not a man on them telling
the truth. Every one of them are corrupt.
They have all turned away. They are all saying the name
Jesus. They're all saying the words
grace and everything. But you listen to them. It's
not the Jesus you and I worship. It's not the grace in which you
and I trust. They are wicked men and women
filled with self. And they're just raking money
to themselves and people are following them. And then there
are others. who are full of corruption and
self-aggrandizement. And when they speak, you've got
to be so careful to sift out what they say. Isn't it good
to get a word from someone who's holy, in whom there is no corruption? And because there's no corruption
in him. I mean, what you see is what you get with the Lord
Jesus Christ. As he represents himself, that's exactly as he
is. When he speaks, It's absolute
truth. And you can just open your heart
and your mind to it and take it in. You don't have to filter
it. Every book written by a man,
I don't care what man it was that wrote it, I've got some
commentaries by some good men and some men I respect and know
personally. But when I read their books,
I've got filters on. I try to put the scriptures between
me and that book. Because the very best of men
can lead you astray and be wrong. All to hear from the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's why this book is so important.
We may not understand everything that's in it, but I tell you,
everything that's in it is true. Everything in it can be received
with full confidence because it's the Word of the Living God.
And so the Lord identifies Himself. He says, These are the words
of the Holy and True. You can know what I'm telling
you is truth because there's no corruption in me. I always
tell the truth. And he says, I'm holy and true
who holds the key of David. Now we don't think of David like
most people do, or the people that would have been receiving
these scriptures. But David is a great figure in the Old Testament,
King David. So great was he that he is one
of the most prominent illustrations of the Lord Jesus Christ in all
the scriptures. Jesus is called the Son of David. And David believed, according
to God's promise, that there'd always be one of his offspring,
one of his descendants on the throne. Who do you think that
is? Why, there's no... You can go
there to Israel now, there isn't a throne at all, let alone a
Jew to sit on it. The descendant of David is Jesus
Christ. And David understood that this
was a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. And now David, was the
king that made Israel prominent and powerful in the world. Solomon
continued that work, but David's the one who went and conquered
the territory. David was the military man, and it's as though
he gained the key to that kingdom that had been promised to the
Jews. And the Lord Jesus Christ says, I have the key of David. I'm the one possessed of all
the power that is illustrated by David's conquering. Now, David,
all he did was conquer a patch of real estate over there, but
that was an illustration of something. That all the universe would be
brought under the authority of the kingdom of God, ruled over
by Jesus Christ. And the Lord Jesus says, I've
got the key. I open, I shut. I rule. The Lord here is talking
about His sovereignty. If there's any title which belongs
to the Lord Jesus Christ, it is that title, Lord. He is Lord
of heaven and earth. As He left this world, He says,
All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Me. There is
no authority but that which comes through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Men raise their fist at God and think they have separate authority.
They can exercise their authority apart from him? Nonsense. Every
king sitting on a throne today, every president in an oval office,
or every prime minister sitting in his office, whatever he is,
he is there by the appointment of the Lord Jesus Christ. I guess
we've got to go through this process of election next year,
but I tell you what, The Lord Jesus Christ has already ordained
who's going to sit there. And that man, whether he's Republican,
Democrat, Independent, or indifferent, I don't know, whatever he is,
whoever he is, he will sit in that office and he will do what
it is that the Lord Jesus Christ has ordained for him to do for
the glory of Christ and for the good of his people. And you can
bank on that, child of God. Whoever gets in there, he was
a president put in there for you. So he's going to do things
I don't like. Don't worry about that. Whoever
gets in there is going to do some things you don't like. But
I'll tell you one thing. He's going to do whatever it
is to preserve you until Jesus Christ calls you home. He is
God's agent. He is the Lord's agent to accomplish
things for the good of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do
you believe that? That's what this whole book's about. That
Jesus Christ is the one who's really in charge, no matter what
it looks like. I hold the key of David. He opens
the door at his will. It says here, I hold the key
of David. What he opens no one can shut
and what he shuts no one can open. He opens the door at his
will and nobody can open it until he opens it and once he's opened
it nobody can shut it. Our Lord looked at those Pharisees
in His days, those religious uppity-ups, with all their rules,
with all their regulations, and all their discipline, and all
their apparent success in the things of God, and He says, You
shut up the Kingdom of God against people. You closed the door. You're trying to lock it up,
and you won't even go in yourself. Do you realize that, that the
most religious people in this world will not go into the Kingdom
of God? I don't mean that just as a matter
of fact about the future. I'm saying that it is their will
not to go. You set the kingdom of God before them. You set before
them all of God's grace revealed in Christ Jesus and they want
nothing of it and they don't want anybody else to have it
either. But our Lord has opened the door
and not all the Pharisees and Sadducees and not all the Baptists
and the Reformed and the whatever, nobody can shut it. isn't that
good to know? The door of the kingdom of God
is open and nobody can shut it in your face. You may not go
through. You may be a fool and choose
not to go through. But my friend, the door stands
open for Jesus Christ has opened it. And if you stay on the wrong
side of the door, there's nobody to blame but you. You say, well I want to but there's
things preventing me. Really? Hogwash. What's my family standing
in the way? So what you're telling me is
that the Lord Jesus Christ opened the door of salvation to you
but you're not going to go through because your family stands in
the way? It's not them in the way, it's you. Really? I don't
know any other way to put it. He said, I've set before you
an open door and no man can shut it. Men try to shut up the kingdom
of God from the weak and the nobodies. The strong, the disciplined,
the successful, and the proud of this world, they keep contempt
on the simple, on the failures, and on the meek. You know, even
our conscience will try to shut that door. We have a wicked conscience. I know what people think an evil
conscience is. They think a man's got a bad conscience, it means
he's never disturbed by sin. They say, that's a bad conscience.
No, it's not. Man like that may be possessed
of a bad conscience, but here's what a bad conscience is. A bad
conscience is one that convicts you for your sin in such a way
as to keep you from coming to Christ. That's what a bad conscience
is. A bad conscience says that you
cannot come to God through Jesus Christ because you're a sinner.
Well, my friends, that's exactly the reason to come to God through
Christ, because you're a sinner. If you were righteous, you wouldn't
need Christ. If you were without sin, you wouldn't need the Lord
Jesus Christ. He'd be a big waste, wouldn't
he? But the conscience says, oh, don't go to God. Wait until
you get better. You've got to straighten up your
life, then you can come to God. That's a wicked conscience, my
friends. I don't get cranked up about
a lot of things, but I get cranked up about that. Anything that comes from your
conscience that holds you back from coming to God through Christ,
that's a wicked conscience. I'm not good enough. That's right. You're not good
enough if you're going to come to God to try to earn His blessings.
But I'll tell you this, here's the problem with most of us.
We aren't bad enough. We aren't bad enough in our own
eyes to think that nothing less than Jesus Christ can save us. We still think we've got something
to offer. And so long as you think you have something to offer
or even hope that someday you'll have something to offer, you
are possessed of an evil conscience. An evil conscience won't tell
you that you're a sinner. An evil conscience will tell
you that you can be good. That's a wicked conscience. And
that wicked conscience will shut the door in your face. And even
us believers sometimes find that our fleshly conscience will shut
the door or make it look like the door is shut. Even the unbelief
that remains in our flesh closes the door. In John chapter 20,
verse 24, Let me tell you what's there
to save a little time. But our Lord has been crucified
and He's risen again. And the disciples have kind of
huddled together in a room with the door locked. And the Lord
walks in. There He is. You know what? The doors that are closed by
fear and guilt and unbelief are no hindrance to the Lord Jesus
Christ. He walks right through. And old
Thomas, in his unbelief, had said, Oh, you tell me he's been
raised from the dead. I tell you what, I will not believe
until I see those prints in his hand and feel the wound in his
side. And the Lord walked through those doors and said, Thomas,
here you go. See? See the hands? Here, see
my side? And Thomas fell at his feet and
said, My Lord and my God. Oh, he opens doors that look
closed to everybody else, but they're not closed to him. And
they are not closed to those who will follow him. The door that's closed by fleshly
unbelief is only a shadow. It's a mere pigment. Pass through
it. just like Christ did. I've been reading little bits
of John Bunyan's autobiography. Oh, that man confronted so many
figments of a closed door. And in some regards, I'm glad
he did. It helps us if we'll understand, if we'll take his
autobiography the right way. But some people kill themselves
with John Bunyan's words. And they are always afraid of
the appearance of a closed door. Failing to learn, as John Bunyan
did, those appearances of closed doors are closed doors in appearance
only. He says, I have opened a door. I've set before you an open door. Nobody can shut it, but it looks
closed to me. If it's the door of Christ, friends,
walk through and you will find that there really was an open
place there after all. It just looked closed. Go not
by what you see, but by what you hear in the gospel. No door opened by Christ can
be truly shut. There is no authority above Him,
no power above Him, no will above His. No matter what it looks
like ahead of you, go to God through Christ. The door is open. Now our Lord
says to these people, He says, I know your deeds. Nothing is
hidden from the eyes of him with whom we have to do or to whom
we must give an account, says the book of Hebrews, chapter
4, verse 13. Nothing's hidden. You know, that's
got to be terrifying to a person whose sin is hidden by some kind
of veneer of self-righteous morality. You know, we live in a pretty
good town, outwardly speaking, folks pretty honest outwardly. Most of them. I'm glad I live
here. I joke around with my friends
that live down south, particularly when they live near bigger cities.
I say, man, in the winter, I can go into town. I'll park my car.
If I've got to go in the store, I'll leave the thing running
while I go in, so it'll stay warm when I get back out. Most
places, you get out of the car, you lock it, you put the club
on the steering wheel and everything else, and somebody still might
steal it. Well, it's not that way around here. That's good.
I'm glad we live in a society like that. But let me tell you
something, friends. That says nothing about what's
in the hearts of the people around here. If God were to remove those
restraints, those, shall we call them natural graces or common
graces that He's blessed this thing with, I tell you, we wouldn't
even be able to live next door to people. And when men mistake
that outward civility for true righteousness, it's got to be
terrifying. when they read that the Lord
Jesus Christ really knows their deeds. He knows what goes on in the
heart. But you know, this truth is comforting to those of us
who feel so weak and struggling and know so much of our failures
in doing that which is right. Oh, what comfort! Because the
Lord does not look on the outward appearance, He looks on the heart.
We want to please Him, don't we? And the Lord says to His
people, I am pleased. I am pleased. Well, we can't
please God. Well, the Bible says in Romans
chapter 8, verse 8, that those that are in the flesh can't please
God. And that just leaves us with this kind of unspoken conclusion,
but those who are in the Spirit can please God. It says in Hebrews
11, 6, without faith it's impossible to please God. Well, the natural
next step to think is, but with faith, it's possible to please
God. And in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse
1, Paul says that all believers live in such a way as to please
God, and we ought to strive to do that even more. And in Hebrews
13, verse 16, it makes this statement. that to give and to serve and
to love, this is pleasing to the Lord. And the Lord looked
at this Philadelphian church who had everybody in there was
a nobody. They didn't have any shakers
and movers. They didn't have any powerful people. They were
weak in the eyes of the world. But He says, I know your works.
I know what's really going on. I know your hearts. That which
is born of God-given faith and love is pleasing to the Lord,
even if our flesh corrupts it with pride and the hope of reward. Don't ever hold back from doing
good because you know that your flesh is going to pollute everything
you do. Just go ahead and do the good anyway. You say, but
I'm afraid I'll be proud. Well, then if you hold back,
you're going to be proud of the fact you didn't open yourself
up to pride. Friends, pride is just part of the flesh. You ain't
going to get rid of it. It's right there. Don't ever hold back from
doing good. Don't ever hold back from exercising
that inner man in works of love and faith because you think to
yourself, well, there's no way I can please God. Anyway, the
Bible says you can. As a child, did you not want
to please your parents? I didn't always please my parents.
My parents always loved me, always accepted me. And most of the
time, I tried to please them. And my life at home was more
enjoyable when I was pleasing them than when I wasn't. You
see, we've got to separate between the Lord's dealing with us in
eternal matters and our Lord's dealing with us
in the day-to-day flow of our lives. And there are things we
do that please Him, and there's things we do that displeases
Him. Let us pursue those things that please our God. The Lord
said, I know your works. He said, I set before you an
open door which no man or no one can shut. Actually, it doesn't
say no man. The King James says no man, but
actually the word is just no one. Not a man, not an angel,
not a devil. Not any group of men. Not the
whole world can shut that door, not the preacher. I try very
hard to speak in such a way as promotes the grace of God and
promotes your confidence in it, but I'm just a man and once in
a while I'll say things that overly restrict the apprehension
of God's blessings. Well, you just ignore that door
if I ever shut it, because it's a fake door. It isn't real. Lord Jesus Christ sets before
men an open door, sets before His church an open door, an open
door of eternal salvation. Do you remember when Christ set
before you the open door? Now notice He says, He does not
say, I opened a door. Indeed, He did open the door.
But when He comes to us in the preaching of the gospel, He sets
before us that open door. It's already open. He opened
it at His cross. He says, on this rock, the rock
of who He is, the Christ, the Son of the living God, on this
rock I'll build my church. The gates of hell shall not prevail
against it. Does He mean that the church
can assault the gates of hell and win? No, that's not what
He's talking about. He went into what hell really means. Hell
is a region of the dead. The Greek word's Hades. He went
into the region of the dead and He came out. The gates couldn't
hold Him in. The gates of hell cannot prevail against Christ
building his church. He busted out of Hades and the
doors opened. And he sets before all his people
that open door and says, come on out of death into life. And
those gates cannot and will not hold back one of God's elect,
one of God's redeemed, one of the spirits called. They all
shall come through. He gives us an open door of deliverance
through and from all our trials. The Philadelphians were suffering
persecution for the cause of Christ, and the Lord set an open
door of deliverance before them. And we have our troubles, and
the Lord delivers us from every one. Now let me explain to you
what I mean by deliverance, what the Scriptures mean by being
delivered from a trial. It doesn't mean that the trial
will not affect your flesh. He may try you with an illness
that leaves its marks and its scars, and you'll have them the
rest of your life. Here's what it means to be delivered from
trial, that when the trial is over, you will have endured it
with your faith intact. That's what deliverance is. why
a trial may come upon you, in fact a trial will come upon you
someday that's going to kill you. It's going to take your
physical life. Trial of illness, trial of a
car accident, I don't know what it'll be. But the Lord will deliver you
from that trial. He will give you an open door of deliverance
and you will pass through it all, believing God. All right, and then he gives
us an open door from this life into the next. This was a very
comforting picture to me. As the years roll by, and it
seems they roll by pretty fast, I become more and more interested
in the subject of death. Bonnie and I are celebrating
our 30th anniversary today, and it seems like just a few days
or weeks ago She walked down the aisle, most beautiful thing
I'd seen in long, well, forever. It's wonderful. Here it is 30,
and you know, not that many people make it to 60 years. If we go that many more years,
I'll be 82. Maybe I'll make it that long,
maybe I won't. But they're clipping by pretty fast. And therefore I see that the
grave opens before me. Not really that far in the future. And I'm flesh enough that that
troubles me. A little trembling goes on. What's it like? I've never died
before. What does it feel like to die?
What will the experience be? I believe we can apply this scripture
to that event that the Lord will come to you in that hour and
say, Behold, I've set before you an open door, and no one
can shut it, pass through without fear. For you see, for the unbeliever
it's a passage from the only life he has into everlasting
death. For the believer it's a passage
from the only death he'll ever know into everlasting life. We
think that when men die, that they pass from life to death.
For the believer, it's exactly the opposite. Child of God, what
you are experiencing right now is the closest thing to death
you'll ever experience. This is a living, prolonged death. That's all it is. A slow slide
to the grave. But at the end of the slide is
a door. A door opened by the Lord Jesus
Christ and he sets it before his people and nobody can shut
it. They may bury you and there may
be people who secretly say, well I never really thought much of
him. Can't be any way he's a Christian. I hate to say it but I think
he's in hell. Doesn't matter what they say. Doesn't matter
what they say. They can't shut the door. I've
set before you an open door. Don't fear to walk through it.
Well, as I said, we ain't going to make it all the way through.
But I want to give you a little teaser, a trailer, or whatever
you want to call it, for this evening. Because here, actually,
the real gold in this scripture, at least as I saw it, is yet
to come. Look at verse 9. I will make
those who are of the synagogue of Satan who claim to be Jews,
though they are not but are liars, I will make them come and fall
down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you." We believers, if we're truly
believers, there's nothing of greater interest to us than that
our Lord should be vindicated before all the world We read
that scripture that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess
that Jesus is Lord. And all that rejoices our heart.
You know what our Lord just said? That his great interest is that
his church be vindicated in the sight of the world. And that
all the world who has persecuted the church and said the church
was nobody and that their message was just antinomian nonsense
and all this kind of stuff, God has said, I'm going to make them
fall down at your feet. fall down at your feet. In fact, the
Greek word is normally the word for worship. And it's a picture
word like a dog does. You know how a dog does when
a dog is submissive. You know, they come and they'll
just get down on their belly or even roll over, but they're
right down there at your feet. They'll fall at your feet and they'll
acknowledge you are the ones that God loved. You are the ones
that Christ loved. You were right all along. And
there, I tell you, that warmed my heart and I hope you'll come
back and the Lord will do the same for you. Be in the field.