Revelation 3:7c “He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens”:
The third descriptor Jesus offers the church is that He possesses the key of David. What is the key of David? Isaiah, writing about 250 years after David, writes about Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, the high priest. Eliakim is in this passage seen as a type of Messiah or Christ, a picture of He who was to come.
Revelation 3:7b He who is true,
Christ tells the church of Philadelphia that He is first holy, and then that He is true. Once our Lord simply stated that He is, “the way, the truth, and the life,” John 14:6. Homing in on this with greater focus, Jesus tells us, “I am…the truth.” Holiness and truth are interwoven, and the reason why is simplicity itself.
Revelation 3:7a “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, ‘These things says He who is holy,
We have come to a pristine, spiritually vital church. Unlike Sardis, who was falling apart at the seams so to speak, Philadelphia was a spiritually active and powerful organism. God was clearly at work in them mightily. But we will get to that in due time.
Revelation 3:6 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”’
Before merely skipping past verse 6 since we have covered it several times now, I would like to briefly relate God’s penchant for instructional repetition. God inspires the writers of Scripture to repeat something several times, and that for good reason. We easily forget, gloss over, or outright ignore something staring us plain in the face.
