The Keys for Freedom
March 19, 2026
(The following was published in the bulletin at St Charles Bible Church – January 28th , 2018, St Charles MN)
A few months ago, our teenagers went to an entertainment center in Rochester to experience “the escape room”. First, the group was divided in two groups, then imprisoned in a locked room, where they had to solve clues to escape. If, in one hour, they were unable to determine the solution to their escape, they were released (unharmed, but disappointed that they couldn’t figure out the escape plan left for them). It was a very bonding experience, and I believe both groups did, in fact, solve their puzzle.
The Bible pictures death and hell being a room like that. Death is visualized in Matthew 16:18 as a prison house or a walled city. Peter wrote that, after His resurrection, Jesus went and made proclamation to the “imprisoned spirits”, to those who were disobedient long ago. (I Peter 3:19-20) In multiple places in our Bible, God refers to the “gates of hell.” To Job, He asks: “Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?” Hezekiah asks, “In the prime of my life must I go through the gates of death and be robbed of the rest of my years?”
All who enter this life also face the certainty of physical death. In some passages, death, and Hades (hell) are personified as enemies of the living (Hosea 13:14; Rev. 6:8), for it is by death that people enter Hades. In our study today (Rev. 1:18), our glorified Jesus says, “I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” In John’s vision in Revelation 6:8, he writes: “I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.”
John MacArthur says (in a sermon): “The keys of Hades and of Death unlock the gates of Hades and death so that those [believers] who would previously have been held securely by death and Hades are now set free to eternal life. Whereas death holds the bodies of men, Hades holds their souls.” To those who accept Jesus, His offer of eternal life thus overcomes the power of Hades and death (1Cor. 15:55). In this sense, death and Hades were “raided” by Jesus Who liberated mankind, who was destined to this fate by the curse (Gen. 3:19). It is because Jesus is the “living One” that He has the keys of Hades and Death. His resurrection “turned the key” in the gates of Hades and death, liberating us to eternal life.
I love the verses in Revelation 20:1-2 that promise: 1“And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. 2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.”
Dear friends, Jesus is on a hostage retrieval mission; mankind has been kidnapped by the kingdom of darkness. Jesus entered the very prison of lost souls to retrieve and pardon anyone and everyone who believed. He alone holds the key to the gates of death and Hades. You and I have escaped the prison block of death and hell because Christ has the only key that will open the gate. “My chains are gone, I’ve been set free!”
Pastor Jim B
’47 / ’56 St Charles MN
Doris Jean H
’44 / ’55 Manheim PA