OPENED DOORS OF OPPORTUNITY
#426 OPENED DOORS OF OPPORTUNITY
Scripture Revelation 3:8, 20; 4:1 NIV Orig. 10/15/1967
Rewr. 5/12/1987
Passage:
38 I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.
20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
41After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.”
Purpose: Calling attention to our present advantage from God if we grasp the meaning of circumstances put before us.
Keywords: Consternation Hope Opportunity Revival
Special Program
Introduction
Checking the meaning of the word “door” in a dictionary, you may find any one of dozens of definitions. A cheap one may say nothing more than “access” or “passageway.” My Brittanica says little more. “Frame used for closing or opening . . . Any means . . . of exit or entrance.” The principle rendering in both examples then would be that a door is something to hide behind.
Scripture uses the word variously, even that way. But there are other meanings and we draw from those other meanings this morning.
The psalmist uses it as a barrier, not to keep closed, but to get opened. “Be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in.” (Psalms 24:7). Yet again, he uses the idea to suggest humble service. “I’d rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in tents of wickedness.”
Jesus, you remember, drew word pictures often with such imagery. In prayer: “When thou has shut the door, pray.” In parable, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24). As an expression of finality in faith: “They that were ready went in: . . . and the door was shut. (Matthew 25:10). As an example of Himself: “I am the door; by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” Notice the strong imagery there that it is not something to lock ourselves behind, it is a place to which we have occasional respite, remembering even as we do, that the greater place for good is beyond those doors.
I. The First of These Doors is the Door of Decision. V20 “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”
We must remember that the one addressing the door is the One who knows our sin. History is full of incidents of people and nations thinking their sin is of no consequence. Jeremiah saw the real trouble for Judah. The northern kingdom had fallen. Jeremiah 7:9f “Will ye steal, murder, commit adultery and swear falsely and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not; And come and stand before Me in this house which is called by My Name, and say, ‘We are delivered to do all these abominations?’” The remarkable thing about Jim Bakker’s recent media exploitation. His sin of adultery was bad enough. But for seven years he had practiced deceit.
The One standing at the door demands the response of faith and faithfulness. We must never be deceived into thinking that polite acknowledgment and practical indifference will placate the holy and righteous God. Your testimony in your community depends on your faithfulness. Deacon, hear me, faithfulness is expected. Your church may not take action, but God will. Teacher/worker, God expects you to do your best, and to seek to improve.
We are as close as a church can be to losing Church Training to disinterest. Some of you are saying “Who cares?” which is the devil’s remark. Most of us got our basic training in Church Training.
Trusting Christ, we moved forward to grow in Him. We will do well to recall Luke 9:62 “No man having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit.” It was so easy to feel uplift of revival. Some took the courageous way of openness. Still others felt some innate desire. [The] next Sunday we weren’t even average. Church Training was the lowest in my memory. So, some were out of town for M.D., but why stay absent yourself that night.
Hear me, the One at the door respects your privacy. We ignore Him to our peril. Our children will be less spiritual than we. Our friends and neighbors need to know what it is that we really stand for. Faithful pastors must conclude, “Lord, if I can’t lift their vision, send one who can.”
II. The Next Door is That of Decision. V8 “Behold, I have set before thee, an open door.”
It is not in the sense of time or place. We still hear people talk about the good old days. We remember the value of such times. But we also remember the hardness, and the work. Someone spoke of the days when “a man’s word was his bond.” But it’s tough, in a $90,000 home, waiting for microwave meal to heat, watching Walton Mountain, on a 2T4 HEU, wishing for the “good old days.”
But, you see, God would have us where we are, for Jesus’ sake. The “direction” in missions came at Antioch.
· Acts 11:19 “preaching . . . to none but Jews only.”
· Acts 11:20 “preaching the Lord Jesus unto the Grecians.”
· Acts 11:26 “called Christians first in Antioch.”
It had not to do with time, place.
Nor is direction set by our circumstance. Naught else in all of nature has the power to change circumstance. Birds fly 5,000 miles with seasons. Whales swim thousands of miles to breeding site. Wildebeests migrate by the millions for grass. But all are responding to their inner clock. People can and do often change their circumstance. Tragically, many cannot. Calcasieu River bottom dwellers. And, our changing is sometimes running away. Every believer should claim the proof-text for circumstance and direction: Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.”
Such direction is limited only by our dedication. Jeremiah voices a word of consternation. Jeremiah 9:24 “But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord that exerciseth lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight,” saith the Lord.
Oswald Chambers quotes Quaker, Mary Hooker. “When Jesus found the Galilean disciples they were mending their nets.” She added, “The majority of Christian people are always washing and mending their nets, but when Jesus Christ comes along, he tells them to launch out and let down their nets.”
It is thusly that He is speaking to us today. Do what you can, where you are, now.
III. Finally, We Must Also Perceive a Door of Division. 4:1 “After this, I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven.”
It is through this door that God’s word gains access. What power is the word allowed in your life? Even if we are in Sunday School. Too often is the first time we’ve touched a Bible since last trip, which for many was not last Sunday, or even the Sunday before. How it should grieve us to learn Mormons’ regard for their book, Jehovah’s Witnesses specially prepared texts, and we [with the] Bible take it for granted.
It is through this door that we experience the resurrected Jesus. Through that door the record is set. Through that door we experience reality. Romans 8:34 “It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.”
Through that door gains entrance, the convicting and convincing power of the Holy Spirit. You will not remember John Marco Allegro, but his idea of truth caught on with the news media a while back. An ex-lay-preacher, he put forth the junk that Old Testament prophets saw visions as a result of LSD trips, and that early Christians were a politically slanted, drug-taking cult. Media will print and produce garbage if it will sell to the public. The Garbage barge is symbolic.
Conclusion
We experience many doors in our lifetime. Too often, they are “frames for closing” or “Any means of exit” (Brittanica), rather than entrances through which God is allowed to assert His sovereignty in our lives. Heed the message of Walter de la Mare’s Listeners.
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.1
1de la Mare, W. (1979). The collected poems of Walter de la Mare. London: Faber.