Isaiah 22

In the last part of this chapter, Isaiah wrote about Eliakim, who was going to become the chief royal steward: “I will clothe him with your robe and fasten your sash around him and hand your authority over to him. He will be a father to those who live in Jerusalem and to the people of Judah. I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.” (vs 21-22)

These words immediately rang in my mind, and I remembered that this very thing was written of Jesus in the book of Revelation: “To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.” (Rev 3:7)

This made me think about all the doors God has open and shut in my life. I have experienced both ends of the spectrum—open doors that I would have rather had shut and shut doors that I would have rather had opened. And as I faced each one of those doors in its time, it was hard to surrender my will and my plans to the reality I saw before me.

Yet, as I think back over my life and I ponder how I would have open and shut the doors differently at the time (had I been in control of God), I sometimes shudder to think where I would be now. I can look back over my life and, in many cases, see the then-unfathomable wisdom of God in both the open and shut doors.

I like this image of God as the doorkeeper, and I like the fact that nobody else can change the position of a door He has set. If He has opened it, it is open, and nobody can shut it. If He has shut it, it is shut, and nobody can open it. Ultimately, nobody else can take you out of God’s will for you.

The passage in Revelation I quoted above goes on in the next verse to say this: “See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut.” (Rev 3:8) Do you know where this door is? John gives its location in the very next chapter: “After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven.” (Rev 4:1)

In this world, God opens and shuts doors in our lives according to His will for us. And His ultimate will for us is that we would come to the place where we choose to walk through the door—His door!—that always stands open in heaven. In helping to bring us to that point (if possible), He will open and shut doors as necessary in our lives. True happiness in this world comes in accepting the doors as they are.

I want to close today with Bible commentator F.B. Meyer’s glorious little statement on this verse: “Down a long corridor of closed doors we may sometimes have to pass. It seems heartbreaking to see doors labeled Friendship, Love, and Home shut against us; but beyond them there is the one unclosed door through which we shall enter into our true life. Oh, do not lose heart and hope in useless weeping over the closed doors of the past! Follow Him, who has the keys.”

Indeed.