Revelation 3:10-13

November 17, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts at 17:20 in the audio file.

Or, The Kingdom Has a Keeper

The church in Philadelphia was being harassed, and it was religiously motivated. Religious harassment is the most tenacious, because it’s based on judgments of right and wrong that are justified out of the box, no understanding required. In Philadelphia there was enough of a Jewish population that they were making life miserable for the Christians–similar to the situation in Smyrna. Jesus commended the Christians for clinging to His word and His name (Revelation 3:8), and promised that He would eventually vindicate the Christians before the haters (Revelation 3:9).

Drawing on imagery from Isaiah 22 and Isaiah 60, Jesus promised these Gentile believers that He was the keeper of His kingdom (Revelation 3:7)), that He had opened the door for them to come in (Revelation 3:8), and that the Jews who hated Him and made themselves ostensible gate-keepers would be brought to acknowledge that Jesus loved the church (Revelation 3:9). They would come and bow down and know that Jesus was the Keeper.

To those being discriminated against, Jesus gives assurance and exhortation and just conquer promises.

From or Through? (verse 10)

He picks up on their good works: they didn’t budge in their commitment. The basis of what He would do builds on what they did: “Because you kept the word of my endurance….” The ESV: “you have kept my word about patient endurance” isn’t as good as the NAS: “you have kept the word of My perseverance.” The church endured not so much in holding onto Jesus’ exhortations to endure but rather in holding onto the truth that Jesus Himself endured. Jesus endured to the cross. Jesus was tempted, harassed, rejected by Jewish leaders, falsely tried, and then tortured and killed. He remained faithful through it all, and the Philadelphian Christians received and lived according to that story.

Because they kept that word, Jesus said, “And I will keep you.” He wasn’t going to keep their word, but keep them “from the hour of trial” (ESV) or “hour of testing” (NAS). The rest of verse 10 is a detailed description of this particular “hour.” It is the hour “which is about to come on the whole inhabitable world to test the ones inhabiting the earth.”

The first thing to note is that this is not a local concern only. There had been trouble in Philadelphia, but this will be trouble everywhere man can be, far as the curse is found. “The whole world” (ESV), is the household of man’s dwelling, the place that isn’t the heavens or the underworld, and “the ones inhabiting the earth” are the persons, frequently mentioned in the rest of Revelation as the enemies of God. A coming “hour of testing” will be a global testing.

Note second that the Philadelphian church will be kept from that testing hour.

Let me flag the next few comments by acknowledging that it is precarious to build a doctrine on a preposition. Also, we are blessed to have more of God’s Word than the Philadelphians. We have our own copies of the complete Old Testament, as well as New Testaments. And while we believe that Revelation 3:10 fits the broader context of Scripture, we should ask what “from the hour of trial” indicates in the immediate context of Revelation 3:10. What does it mean to be “kept from” the global hour of trial? What encouragement did the Philadelphians grasp from this promise?

The preposition in Greek is ek, usually meaning “from.” There is another preposition that is typically translated “through,” and another for “in.” Jesus doesn’t use those. He promises to keep the Philadelphian church from the hour of testing. It sounds like a pre-test deliverance, a removal ahead of time. If that “hour” tests the whole world, if it tests the ones dwelling on[...]