21 It shall come to pass in that day
That the Lord will punish on high the host of exalted ones,
And on the earth the kings of the earth.
22 They will be gathered together,
As prisoners are gathered in the pit,
And will be shut up in the prison;
After many days they will be punished.
23 Then the moon will be disgraced
And the sun ashamed;
For the Lord of hosts will reign
On Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
And before His elders, gloriously.
Let’s look on to the third part,
Lift up your heads, O you gates!
Psalm 24.7
And be lifted up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.
Who is the King of glory? And what are the gates?
Think about it, ‘gates, doors’ are things which give you access or shut you out.
I’ve got a key to that door at the front which enables me to open it and to let me into this church.
You haven’t. Most of you haven’t. If you came here and that door was locked, you would not be able to get in because you need somebody to open the door for you.
There is a picture here of Jesus as the door. The One who opens the door when we come to God.
The door is closed and we need somebody to open the door.
When you look around the world today, you can see that the religion and most of the world is organized in such a way to keep Jesus out, and to keep us from opening that door that leads to God through Jesus.
You’ve got society today being organized to keep the true God out. Religion, atheism, secularism, evolution, or the diversity agenda, all the godless propaganda you have on the news and in entertainment, the LGBT agenda, the multi-faith belief, and the increasing power of the control system in which your opinions are being manipulated and controlled are all designed to keep you from putting your trust in Jesus Christ, and to keep Jesus Christ out of this world.
I don’t know if you notice how the media today keeps the Gospel out. It tries to. Sometimes It manages to sneak in, but most of the time, it’s kept out of the official media.
And there are increasing powers trying and keep God out of His world, even though the earth is the Lord’s.
As a result of this, the world is under judgment, and we have increasing disasters and catastrophes taking place on the earth. We have an increasing number crises which no one can solve, and it’s a result of Jesus being kept out of the world which He made.
Isaiah 24 says,
The earth mourns and fades away,
Isaiah 24.4
The world languishes and fades away;
The haughty people of the earth languish.
5 The earth is also defiled [polluted] under its inhabitants,
Isaiah 24.5-6
Because they have transgressed the laws,
Changed the ordinance,
Broken the everlasting covenant.
6 Therefore the curse has devoured the earth,
And those who dwell in it are desolate.
Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned,
And few men are left.
This is a prophetic scripture which speaks about the state of the world in the end times. It’s the result of God being kept out of it that the earth is going to be defiled and polluted under its inhabitants. Because they’ve not kept His Commandments, they’ve transgressed His laws and broken the everlasting Covenant.
And it’s happening now. We see the world being shaken by natural disasters, by wars, by famines, plagues, earthquakes. human mismanagement of the earth. This is a subject I’ve put in my This Month in Prophecy talk.
My prophecy talk was banned, or at least has been suppressed on Youtube, so we’re going to have to redo it. But you can see that’s all part of the movement to try and keep the Word of God out.
This is increasingly the case in this country. We still have quite a lot of freedom but in a lot of countries: Iran, Afghanistan, China, and recently in Russia as well as other places, you see that the world is being organized to keep the Word of God out, to stop people fom knwoing the Word of God.
And religion is also organized to keep the Word of God out.
Jesus spoke about the scribes and the Pharisees who closed the door to people, preventing them from entering into the Kingdom of Heaven
“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.
Matthew 23.13
That is the function of most of the world’s religions today, including nominal Christianity. You can see how religion is organized to keep people out of the Kingdom of God, and keep Jesus out from coming into His world.
Well, Jesus is going to do something about it because He is going to blow open those doors and come in in His power and His glory, and He wants us to open the door in our lives to Him.
In John chapter 10 we read how Jesus speaks about Himself as being the one who opens the door, so that we can go in and be saved through faith in Him.
In verse 7 Jesus says,
7 Then Jesus said to them again, “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. 12 But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. 13 The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. 15 As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. 16 And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.
17 “Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. 18 No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.”
John 10.7-18
Jesus is the one who opens the door and He says, ‘I’m the door, and if you come in by me, you’re going to be saved, and you’re going to come in and have good future and know that you have a future and a hope.‘
And He tells us how He is going to do this: ‘I am going to do this by laying down my life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world‘.
Therefore, if we are looking to that door, that door which is closed, which you can’t get through, through which you can’t get past by your own effort, you know that you can get through it only One Way, that is, through Jesus opening the door and coming into your life so that you can have God dwelling within you.
And Jesus tells us that He opens the door:
‘These things says He who is holy, He who is true, “He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens”: 8 “I know your works. See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it; for you have a little strength, have kept My word, and have not denied My name.
Revelation 3.7-8
That’s Jesus Word to the church at Philadelphia, one of the churches which He commends. He tells them there that He has opened the door, He has got the key of David, He is the One who opens and shuts, and shuts and no one opens.
A quote from the Book of Isaiah about a situation which took place in the Temple where there was a man called Shebna who was looking after the opening to the Temple and, because he was a corrupt priest, he was closing the door so that people couldn’t get in. And Isaiah says that the key of David is going to be taken away from Shebna given to a man called Eliakim who is going to open the door and let people in.
15 Thus says the Lord God of hosts:
“Go, proceed to this steward,
To Shebna, who is over the house, and say:
16 ‘What have you here, and whom have you here,
That you have hewn a sepulchre here,
As he who hews himself a sepulchre on high,
Who carves a tomb for himself in a rock?
17 Indeed, the Lord will throw you away violently,
O mighty man,
And will surely seize you.
18 He will surely turn violently and toss you like a ball
Into a large country;
There you shall die, and there your glorious chariots
Shall be the shame of your master’s house.
19 So I will drive you out of your office,
And from your position he will pull you down.20 ‘Then it shall be in that day,
That I will call My servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah;
21 I will clothe him with your robe
And strengthen him with your belt;
I will commit your responsibility into his hand.
He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem
And to the house of Judah.
22 The key of the house of David
I will lay on his shoulder;
So he shall open, and no one shall shut;
And he shall shut, and no one shall open.
23 I will fasten him as a peg in a secure place,
And he will become a glorious throne to his father’s house.24 ‘They will hang on him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the posterity, all vessels of small quantity, from the cups to all the pitchers. 25 In that day,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘the peg that is fastened in the secure place will be removed and be cut down and fall, and the burden that was on it will be cut off; for the Lord has spoken.’ ”
Isaiah 22.15-25
So Jesus is saying that he’s going to be like Eliakim, the good priest, who is going to open the door so you can come into the presence of God, and not like the bad one who is shutting the door so you can’t come in.
He has got the key that can open you into the door, into the into the house, and He says He has got an open door before you which no one can shut.
God opens the door to you and me. No one else can shut it, so we can go through that door into God’s presence.
Interestingly, the next church in the Book of Revelation is the church at Laodicea which received no commendation. The only condemnation from the Lord Jesus on this church, the last of the seven churches, is their wretched miserable poor blind and naked for which they need to repent.
We have verse 19 where He says,
19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. 20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. 21 To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
Revelation 3.19-21
There is an interesting picture in that passage because you’ve got Jesus knocking at the door of the church, asking to be led in.
Where should Jesus be? He should be inside, shouldn’t He?
Therefore, if you’ve got a church where Jesus is knocking on the door, on the outside, there has to be something wrong with what’s going on on the inside.
But He says here that, ‘If you open the door, I will come in and dine with, and I will have fellowship with you‘.
And interestingly, it’s the believer who has to open the door. Jesus is not going to force His way in, we have to open the door.
When you go to St. Paul’s Cathedral, there’s a very famous picture of this which by a man called Holman Hunt which has Jesus knocking at the door and there’s no handle on the outside, there’s only a handle on the inside.
You have to open the door yourself to let Jesus in.
It’s a picture of Jesus opening the door but also telling us that we have to open the door to Jesus so He can come into our life and we can have fellowship with God, and open the door to heaven.
The following passage speaks about John receiving the Revelation, but it is also a picture of God opening the door to you and me:
After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, “Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.”
2 Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne. 3 And He who sat there was like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like an emerald.
Revelation 4.1-3
God opened the door so they could go up into heaven and only God can open that door. That door is closed unless we come at His invitation, and we can only get in through Jesus the Messiah and by the Holy Spirit.