SPEAKER_00: Good morning and welcome to our 11 o'clock adult service, and welcome to those of you joining us online.
SPEAKER_00: The topic under consideration today is the significance of doors in our lives, the spiritual significance of doors.
SPEAKER_00: And we begin with Revelation chapter 3, portions of 7 through 13.
SPEAKER_00: And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia, write, these things says he who is holy, who is true, he who has the key of David, he who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens.
SPEAKER_00: I know your works.
SPEAKER_00: See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it.
SPEAKER_00: For you have a little strength, and you've kept my word, and have not denied my name.
SPEAKER_00: Because you have kept my command to persevere, I will also keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, I am coming quickly.
SPEAKER_00: Hold fast what you have, that no one may take away your crown.
SPEAKER_00: He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out no more.
SPEAKER_00: I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God, and I will write on him my new name.
SPEAKER_00: He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
SPEAKER_00: If any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come to them and dine with them, and they with me.
SPEAKER_00: Turning now to the book Apocalypse Revealed, we get an explanation of the open door.
SPEAKER_00: See, I have set before you an open door.
SPEAKER_00: An open door clearly symbolizes an entryway.
SPEAKER_00: In the spiritual world, there are actually paths that lead to heaven, and here and there one finds gates and doors.
SPEAKER_00: People who are being led by the Lord to heaven go along paths that lead to it, and they enter through the gates.
SPEAKER_00: Since the Lord alone leads a person to heaven and opens the door, therefore he calls himself the way and also the door.
SPEAKER_00: Because a door symbolizes an entryway, and the new Jerusalem symbolizes a church formed of people governed by the Lord's truth and goodness, therefore the New Jerusalem is described as having gates, and they are said to not be shut.
SPEAKER_00: And no one can shut it.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord alone opens and closes the doors to heaven, and because it is the Lord alone who does the opening and closing, it follows that hell cannot prevail against these doors.
SPEAKER_00: And lastly, a portion of Divine Providence number thirty-three that speaks to the fact that we have a role to play in the opening of the doors in our mind.
SPEAKER_00: Surely anyone can see, simply on the basis of reason, that the lusts of evil with their delights obstruct and close the doors to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And that the Lord cannot cast these lusts out as long as we ourselves keep that door closed and throw our weight against it from the other side to keep it from opening.
SPEAKER_00: That we ourselves have to do the opening is evident from the Lord's words in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come to them.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord add his blessing to the reading and hearing of his word.
SPEAKER_00: The text for our sermon this morning is from the book of Revelation, chapter 3, verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it.
SPEAKER_00: I invite you to reflect at the beginning of this sermon on the experience of opening and closing doors.
SPEAKER_00: You may not have even thought about it this morning, but you have likely opened and closed ten doors, twenty doors already, and the day has only just begun.
SPEAKER_00: How many doors do we go through in a week?
SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, the experience of going through doors can be relatively mundane or routine, like opening and closing your car door.
SPEAKER_00: But then the experience of going through an entryway or a door being opened into something that you were anticipating takes on more significance.
SPEAKER_00: Think of waiting to go in for a concert.
SPEAKER_00: Or think closer to home here in this congregation, the tradition of waiting outside at Christmas time for the tableau with the doors being closed and then the doors are open, and you can come in to experience that beautiful sphere of worship.
SPEAKER_00: There are profound moments where doors open for us that we still remember.
SPEAKER_00: I remember as a 14-year-old coming to this country, and we were going through the airport and through customs and security, and then I remember these big sliding doors in the international part of the airport swinging open, and here I was coming into this new country, America.
SPEAKER_00: No idea what the experience was going to be like.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I remember that as a profound thing.
SPEAKER_00: The doors to this cathedral, if I'm not mistaken, every single door in this cathedral is different.
SPEAKER_00: And each one is handmade and incredibly special.
SPEAKER_00: And the significance of that, which we'll get to in the sermon today, is that each one, since this is a house of worship, each one of these doors, unique in its craftsmanship and its uh entryway, is a picture of a truth from the Lord's Word.
SPEAKER_00: Every single truth having a different purpose, a different function in terms of us entering this house of worship.
SPEAKER_00: A really remarkable thing.
SPEAKER_00: What made me think of this topic for this Sunday is that this is the time of year that many of us are involved in one way or another with school graduations and school closings.
SPEAKER_00: And so this whole concept of graduation is that of a person moving from one phase of life to the next.
SPEAKER_00: And whether we have experienced that directly or not, we can relate to it.
SPEAKER_00: And there's many other things that happen in our lives where there is a transition from one phase to the next.
SPEAKER_00: A door is closed and a new door is opened.
SPEAKER_00: That could be the loss of a job or the beginning of a new job, thinking of the graduates yesterday at the Bernathan College and the new opportunities in front of them, which, perhaps no surprise, the door corresponds to opportunities, new opportunities, and thinking of those graduates and the new opportunities in front of them as they think about their future life.
SPEAKER_00: But wherever we are, we all have that experience of going through these transitions.
SPEAKER_00: And it's useful because this is the function of correspondences.
SPEAKER_00: They're not just simply a nice thing to remember, like water represents the Lord's truth, or a mountain represents love to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They have a very strong functionality to them.
SPEAKER_00: And that functionality is to get our mind into the right kind of mindset.
SPEAKER_00: So again, that's why I wanted to start with our experience of going through entryways, going through doors.
SPEAKER_00: It might be into a beautiful park or into a beautiful garden, into a mansion that has been opened up to the public with incredibly beautiful manicured lawns and things like that.
SPEAKER_00: That experience actually has a spiritual counterpart.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is why the scriptures mention doors many, many times, doors and gates, because they correspond to this concept of moving forward, motion, changes.
SPEAKER_00: We talk about in the new church about changes of state.
SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes we might think of a change of state as sort of this amorphous thing that doesn't really have any boundaries, but changes of state from being single to married, or married to having a partner leave us, there's these different changes that happen.
SPEAKER_00: And so all of the states that we experience in life, childhood and young adulthood, and then older age, each of those states have a beginning and a middle and an end.
SPEAKER_00: And so for the purposes of the sermon today, I'm inviting you to think of these beginnings and middles and ends as going through doors, as going, because this is what's happening to us spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: We are spiritual travelers.
SPEAKER_00: As we go through life in this world, our spirit is traveling.
SPEAKER_00: It's traveling along different paths.
SPEAKER_00: And we're coming to doors.
SPEAKER_00: Some doors that seem to be locked to us, some that appear to be open.
SPEAKER_00: So it's a fascinating thing to be thinking about that if our spiritual eyes were to be opened, we would see this incredible network of paths.
SPEAKER_00: And in the context of today's sermon, what the Lord is doing to encourage us and lead us toward the paths that lead to heaven, every path being different for each one of us, because each person is their own unique person.
SPEAKER_00: So the function of a door.
SPEAKER_00: The thing about doors is that they serve a very powerful and important function, closed as well as open.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to end by thinking about this open door that is spoken of in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: But the scriptures do encourage us to close the door sometimes, obviously, close the door on evil, and we have the ability to do that.
SPEAKER_00: But also think of when the disciples asked the Lord to teach them how to pray.
SPEAKER_00: The very first thing that the Lord said, and when you pray, close the door.
SPEAKER_00: Close the door to your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Or close the door to all of the distractions.
SPEAKER_00: And that's really important because we really do need what you might call head-down time.
SPEAKER_00: We need to be able to when we're reading the word or when we're thinking about something, concentrating on something really important.
SPEAKER_00: It's a bit disconcerting to have the door open.
SPEAKER_00: Now close the door, head down.
SPEAKER_00: Let me think about this.
SPEAKER_00: Let me put some real concentration into this.
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, in the book Conjugal Love, we're told about the sort of the routine of how a day in heaven goes.
SPEAKER_00: And we're told that in the morning, it starts off with this beautiful singing, just like it, like this is basically the heavenly temperature outside right now.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry for those of you online if you're not in such a nice uh day.
SPEAKER_00: But we happen to have this incredible day, beautiful day.
SPEAKER_00: And so the day starts off in the morning in heaven with this beautiful quietness, the birds singing.
SPEAKER_00: And then what happens is in the morning it's that head-down time.
SPEAKER_00: And then this passage talks about how the windows are closed, the doors are shut, because the angels are engaged in their use in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: It's a really nice deal because the concentration is in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: And then at midday the doors and the windows are swung open and people are invited inside, and there is an engaging with the neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: But in the morning, we're engaged in our use.
SPEAKER_00: And so you have to have times where the door is closed.
SPEAKER_00: So that's an important thing to remember.
SPEAKER_00: So when it comes to the correspondence of doors, we are taught in the teachings of the church that doors and gateways have this functionality having to do with being introduced to something.
SPEAKER_00: Being introduced to something really, really amazing and cool.
SPEAKER_00: Being introduced to something new.
SPEAKER_00: And also, I think it's without trying to get too bogged down in the details, the door also has to do, it's not so much the intellect as it has to do with the will.
SPEAKER_00: And this comes to something that I think we all experience, which is the experience of feeling like all the doors around us are options, have been shut, and we don't know where, well, where's the door?
SPEAKER_00: Where's the door to a new opportunity?
SPEAKER_00: And it's a it's a hard thing, it's a will thing.
SPEAKER_00: It can be very painful for people, for all of us, when we feel like the doors are being slammed in our face.
SPEAKER_00: So they have to do with the will part of our mind, wanting something that we don't have and or that we realize we are lacking.
SPEAKER_00: Now, interestingly, doors in the word almost always have a good correspondence.
SPEAKER_00: In the recitation this morning, Jesus said, Truly, truly I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.
SPEAKER_00: I am the door.
SPEAKER_00: It's a curious statement, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: There's many, many names that are given to the Lord in the scriptures, and one is the door.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is the door.
SPEAKER_00: And as I mentioned earlier, in terms of what's happened in this cathedral, with all these incredibly beautiful, intricate, unique doors that lead into this temple of worship, each one is uh different in the sense that it represents a different truth, a different truth that the Lord uh is guiding us to experience.
SPEAKER_00: So, doors in the scriptures, there are the doors to the temple that's often mentioned, especially in the Old Testament, the doors to the tabernacle, and of course at the end the twelve gates of the holy city, which interestingly, those gates, are also gates that are never shut.
SPEAKER_00: I want to get to that in a moment.
SPEAKER_00: So the correspondence of doors is that there is this sense of when we go through an open door or we're able to find the door and we open it, there is a communication.
SPEAKER_00: A communication, in the case of all of these good correspondences, of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is desiring to share something with us.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's really the spirit behind this text.
SPEAKER_00: See, I have set before you an open door.
SPEAKER_00: So doors are the Lord's truth, the many very different truths in the word, which introduce us to new ideas, new attitudes that we can take on, new habits, noble goals and ambitions that we have, we're just not quite sure how to get there, and ones that we don't even realize, didn't even realize existed.
SPEAKER_00: So this is the significance of these doors and why they are mentioned so much in the scriptures and in the teachings of our church.
SPEAKER_00: So again, if you think about whatever stage of life you're in, your spirit is on the move.
SPEAKER_00: We are in motion, we are traveling down paths right now.
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's fair to say that what we're trying to do in terms of looking for purpose and direction in our lives is we're trying to find doors to open that will bring more meaning and more purpose to our lives.
SPEAKER_00: There's a phrase in the scriptures that I think is useful to think about because it speaks to the challenge that we have about finding doors that we know are there but we can't find them.
SPEAKER_00: And the phrasing is from early Genesis, and it talks about these uh the this enemy that was against Lot's family that surrounded their house, but under the protection of the Lord's angels, this enemy labored to find the door.
SPEAKER_00: Almost sounds like a dream.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, laboring, trying to find something in a dream, but I think we all have that experience of there's something that we know that we're missing, and we cannot find the door.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot find that portal, so to speak, or that gateway.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very powerful thing.
SPEAKER_00: And it probably, if you think about it, it doesn't take too much to think about well, why is that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the busyness of life, our occupation, stress, there are many things that make it so that we labor to find the door that the Lord wishes to open for us.
SPEAKER_00: Our reading today, Divine Providence 33, makes the point that the Lord is always knocking at the door of our mind, but that it is our job to open the door.
SPEAKER_00: And the point is, we cannot open the door so long as the weight of our anger or annoyance or self-righteousness or judgment or unforgiving heart is leaning against the door.
SPEAKER_00: That wording is so striking in Divine Provence 33.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know whether you've ever had the experience of going up to a door and it's like, it's locked.
SPEAKER_00: And then you realize, oh, it's a push.
SPEAKER_00: And in a similar way, we have blind spots where we cannot see our own selfishness or things that are in the way of us being able to open the door.
SPEAKER_00: Because the Lord is knocking on the door and he's waiting for us to open the door.
SPEAKER_00: And it's almost like, I mean, it's a humorous thing if you hit that passage, it's our full weight is against the door, and we're trying to open it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's just not going to work.
SPEAKER_00: Now, ultimately, it is the Lord who does the opening and the closing of all doors, but there is obviously this freedom of choice piece.
SPEAKER_00: We have to be uh the ones who discover these blind spots and discover that there's something that we're missing.
SPEAKER_00: I want to leave you as we move to the conclusion of today's sermon, to one of the most powerful things that we can do to open all these doors.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a passage from from very early on in Arcana Celestia or Secrets of Heaven that talks about the enemy at the door or sin at the door.
SPEAKER_00: And it just says this simple thing, which is just so powerful.
SPEAKER_00: That love to the Lord and the neighbor is the thing that will open the doors that appear to be shut.
SPEAKER_00: This is the quote directly.
SPEAKER_00: The only thing that will put to flight the devil and his crew from the door is love to the Lord and love to the neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: And isn't that what we're trying to do as we go through life?
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to find new ways to serve the Lord and to serve the neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: Because it is from turning from self to things that are higher than us, to the neighbor, and to the Lord, that we learn new things and we experience new and beautiful things.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's really likened to sort of a breakthrough experience.
SPEAKER_00: Think of the most glorious door or the most glorious gates that you've ever entered through.
SPEAKER_00: And you found them, and they've been swung open, and you're now able to experience something that you weren't able to experience before.
SPEAKER_00: And it's from that recognition that this is what I can do for my neighbor, this is what I can do in service to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's a powerful thing.
SPEAKER_00: There is a post-lude piece right after this service, an organ piece, that you can really think of as the gates being flung open.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very powerful piece which has this sort of grand entrance feel to it.
SPEAKER_00: And think of it as the Lord opening doors to you that had been shut.
SPEAKER_00: And they're open to you because you found a way to go and close that door first, pray to the Lord in secret for help.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get a breakthrough.
SPEAKER_00: You find that door, and these doors are swung open, and there's this incredible experience of seeing a new vista.
SPEAKER_00: See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's fair to say that the teachings of the new church and her doctrines are that open door.
SPEAKER_00: And I may have hinted at it at the beginning of the sermon that there's a little bit of unease.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you think about our experience of doors, we like to have our door shut at night.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want critters coming in and things like that.
SPEAKER_00: There's a security to that.
SPEAKER_00: But the way that the scriptures end, both in terms of this invitation, see, I step before you an open door, and the twelve gates to the holy city all being open and never being shut.
SPEAKER_00: What is the significance of this?
SPEAKER_00: And why can this why is it that this door isn't shut or can't be shut?
SPEAKER_00: It's because this is coming directly from the Lord, this open door.
SPEAKER_00: And this invitation gives us a clear line of vision to a world of unending opportunities.
SPEAKER_00: And the point is, there is no one that can take those opportunities away from us.
SPEAKER_00: No one can shut the door, and that is a very, very powerful thing.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why the Lord sets this open door before us.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.