Sermon On The Mount | The Beatitudes | Ramin Razavi

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"Here as in Heaven."

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Intro/Outro: 00:01

Welcome to Garden Church Podcast. We're taking a break from our Revelation series while our lead pastor, Darren Rounce, is on sabbatical. During this time, we're gonna continue to push into the Garden's mission of creating resilient disciples by working our way through the Sermon on the Mount. Over the next few weeks, we'll have some amazing pastors from all over the world coming to impart their wisdom and insight on what is the most influential and profound sermon ever given. Enjoy.

Jon Rosene: 00:32

Would you welcome pastor Ramin up as we enter our new series? Can I pray for you, brother?

Ramin Razavi: 00:38

New year, brother. Can I pray?

Jon Rosene: 00:40

You gonna pray? You're gonna pray yourself.

Ramin Razavi: 00:42

No. You should always pray

Jon Rosene: 00:42

for me. We thank you for all that you're doing. God, we, I just bless. I mean, I pray that you'd fill

Ramin Razavi: 00:47

in with

Jon Rosene: 00:48

your spirit.

Ramin Razavi: 00:48

Thank you.

Jon Rosene: 00:49

Would you, open our hearts and our ears to all that you're doing? We love you and praise you in Jesus' name.

Ramin Razavi: 00:54

Amen. Amen. Thank you, John. Just a little pro tip. If pastor John offers to pray for you, the answer is yes.

Ramin Razavi: 01:01

You know, before we jump into the message, I I just have a little pastoral encouragement from our team to you. First of all, today is Sunday. I don't know if anyone else need that reminder, but but the last couple weeks have just seemed to merge altogether into one seamless flow of celebration and yuletide bliss and all the things that we do during this season. But I just wanna say well done for getting dressed, and for making it to church this Sunday morning. We're so grateful that you're here.

Ramin Razavi: 01:31

So we're starting a new series today, but we're starting a whole new year together. And some of you may be wondering, as we start a new year, what direction is Garden Church moving in? Do we have some kind of new vision or new revelation? And I hate to disappoint you, but we don't have a new direction. In fact, we are going further in the same direction that the Lord Jesus has led our church on from the very beginning.

Ramin Razavi: 01:56

And if you didn't know it, our church has a mission statement. And our mission statement is to make resilient disciples of Jesus. And inherent in that, in order to make a resilient disciple of Jesus, is the need to be a resilient disciple of Jesus. And so, as we start a new year with our lead pastors Darren and Alex Roundson out on sabbatical, I just wanna define the win for us while they're gone. It is to be and to make resilient disciples.

Ramin Razavi: 02:27

Sound good? And we're gonna be after that until Jesus returns, until the Lord himself returns. And so, to that end, today, we are starting a new sermon series and it's on Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. And as our team came around this season for the church, we felt the Lord speaking a couple specific things. First of all, we heard him speaking unity, and we think he's gonna bring unity through teaching the Sermon on the Mount.

Ramin Razavi: 02:53

But the second thing we sense the Lord asking us to do is to provide kindling for the fire of your heart towards resilient discipleship. Because, in the Sermon on the Mount, here's what we get. We get Jesus' most comprehensive teaching of what it means to live in the present availability of the kingdom of heaven here and now. That's what we receive in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus' most comprehensive teaching of how to live in the present availability of the kingdom of heaven here and now.

Ramin Razavi: 03:26

And over the next 14 weeks, we are gonna walk through Matthew 5 through Matthew 7 together as a church family. Pastor Bill will be preaching. We've got great friends of the garden coming in from around the world, even. We've got reward Sabanda coming in. We've got Megan Marshman coming in.

Ramin Razavi: 03:45

We've got our good friend, Johnny Hughes coming in. We've got pastor Glenn Pacquian from Rock Harbor coming over to teach 1 Sunday. We've got Jordan Verner from Idaho coming and Noah Nickel from Cleveland coming. It's gonna be an incredible time and season in our church's life. And so, our heartbeat during this time as a church family is to expect the Lord to do immeasurably more than any of us could ask or imagine.

Ramin Razavi: 04:09

And that's what pastor Bill prayed as as we sent out the rounds and into their sabbatical. That God would allow these next 3 months to be the greatest garden has ever accepted. And when he prayed that, Darren just laughed out loud because he wants that too. So I wanna pray for us. That's why I was gonna pray.

Ramin Razavi: 04:23

John, come up here with me. Let's pray together. And let's just ask the Lord as we start this new year together to just pour out his blessing Yeah. On the church. Go ahead, man.

Jon Rosene: 04:32

Yeah. Just open up your hands. Yeah. I just feel like the pre service prayer this morning felt like we were gonna step into some deep waters

Ramin Razavi: 04:39

Yeah.

Jon Rosene: 04:39

And a a renewed trust. So, Jesus, I just pray there would be just a a a renewed trust in you. God, that our eyes would be on you. Mhmm. That our hearts would be attuned to you.

Jon Rosene: 04:49

Mhmm. That you would we wouldn't just look at this this series as something to, have in our minds, but that it would transform this community. Yes, lord. Jesus, that your spirit would embolden it, that it would empower us and riches. And those that have felt that they have been far away would come home in this series.

Ramin Razavi: 05:06

Yes, lord.

Jon Rosene: 05:07

That sons and daughters would come home.

Ramin Razavi: 05:08

Yes, Lord.

Jon Rosene: 05:10

Jesus, take into their deeper waters.

Ramin Razavi: 05:12

Yes, God.

Jon Rosene: 05:12

We bless you. Fill us with your spirit, Jesus.

Ramin Razavi: 05:14

Yes, Lord. Amen. Amen. Amen. And when John Razeem prays for you twice, in a short period of time, that's really good.

Ramin Razavi: 05:22

Alright. Well, let's jump into the text. We're going to be in Matthew 5 today, verses 1 through 12. That's going to be our primary teaching text. It is what we have often called the Beatitudes.

Ramin Razavi: 05:34

It is the intro to this Sermon on the Mount, the way that Jesus orients us to living in the Kingdom of Heaven here and now. Matthew chapter 5 verse 1. Now, when Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to Him and He began to teach them. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Ramin Razavi: 06:00

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Ramin Razavi: 06:23

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. And blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven. For in the same way, they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Ramin Razavi: 06:51

The word of the Lord. And, so, the context of this moment is important for us to understand. So, Jesus has moved out of his private life and he's begun his public ministry. And, we see that at the beginning of the gospel of Matthew. Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist.

Ramin Razavi: 07:09

And scripture tells us when he comes out of the water, the Holy Spirit rests on him and immediately leads him somewhere. And it's not where we'd expect because the first place the Holy Spirit leads Jesus is into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. And he goes into the wilderness, and, oftentimes, the wilderness or the original Greek word for it is the eramos. We think of it as a place of weakness or desolation, but we learn through reading the gospels that the wilderness is actually a place of strength. It's where Jesus is strengthened for what is coming next as he learns to depend on the power and the presence of his father and not on the temptations of the devil.

Ramin Razavi: 07:47

And some of us for this message, this is all we need to hear is 2024 was a year of wilderness, and God is taking us out of surviving wilderness and into stewarding his abundance this year. And for some of us, that's all we need today, but I'm gonna keep going because there's more than some of us here today. So, Jesus has moved out of the wilderness, and he begins to proclaim the kingdom of God. And this is Jesus' main message. All throughout the gospels, the deepest and simple message of Jesus is the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven is near.

Ramin Razavi: 08:20

What he's saying is is that God's presence, his reign and rule is now presently available to anyone who puts their faith in me. God's presence and his reign and his rule are now available to anyone who puts their faith in me. So Jesus begins to proclaim the kingdom of heaven. He begins to do miracles and heal people, cast out demons and heal the sick. And he also begins to call his disciples.

Ramin Razavi: 08:49

We see this in Matthew 4, he calls Peter and his brother Andrew. He calls James and John. And he says, come follow me. And they begin to follow him. And we see at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus, this intersection between Jesus who is a powerful healer and Jesus who is a teacher.

Ramin Razavi: 09:07

And, we see it summarized in Matthew chapter 4, verse 23. It says, Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people. Theologian, Dallas Willard, summarized that idea with this thought. He said, Jesus did three things in his own ministry, proclaimed the availability of the kingdom of God to everyone, regardless of their standing in life, teach what it was like, and manifest its presence in events that could not be explained in a natural way. If you ever wanted a summary statement on what was the ministry of Jesus, This is the summary statement of what Jesus's ministry was all about.

Ramin Razavi: 09:51

And that's so important for us because I think that we have to gain a spiritual imagination that our formation into the image of Jesus is equal parts dynamic encounter with God and long obedience to his commands. It's Those things are not in contradiction in the mind and heart of God. That we would be a people who would wait for and expect and pray for and long for dynamic power encounters with God because that's where transformation also often happens. But, equally, put an emphasis on hearing, understanding, and obeying Jesus. Believe the same believing the same power of Jesus that heals the sick and raises the dead, empowers our obedience to Jesus in every area of our lives.

Ramin Razavi: 10:40

And that's what Jesus is doing in giving the Sermon on the Mount. It's as though he was saying like, hey, crowds, you've seen me proclaim that God's kingdom is at hand. You've seen me heal the sick and cast out demons and raise the dead. You've seen the miraculous power. But when I teach, what I want to do is help you to understand how to live in the power of God here and now.

Ramin Razavi: 11:08

This is what the Sermon on the Mount is all about. It's the invitation from Jesus to know how to live, how to move into a way of being in the world where you can begin to experience the power of heaven here and now in what might feel like your regular, ordinary, everyday life. This is the invitation of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. And so, Jesus has got this crowd following him now. And scripture tells us in Matthew 5 that he goes up on a hillside.

Ramin Razavi: 11:41

And if we read a lot of scripture, we know that the high places or the mountains are often places of revelation where God is speaking to his people. And that is true all through scripture, whether it was Mount Zion or Mount Gilead or Mount Carmel or Mount Ararat or Mount Pisgah or Mount Sinai or the Mount of Olives. These are the places where God often speaks to his people is on the mountaintops. And Jesus draws this crowd up to the mountain and part of it would have simply been functional. If you're trying to speak to a crowd of 1,000 without any amplification, it helps to get a little lift and a little bit of elevation so that they can hear you.

Ramin Razavi: 12:21

And Jesus then begins to sit down, scripture says, and he teaches. And for someone to sit when they taught at that time was a sign of their authority. So Jesus is effectively saying, my kingdom is here and now I wanna teach you or instruct you how to live in a way where you will experience the power and the presence of my kingdom in your life. And he begins with what we just read, these beatitudes. And he uses the word blessed.

Ramin Razavi: 12:52

And I don't know how often you use the word blessed. Sometimes the word blessed in the church setting, can seem a little cliche. I don't know if you have any friends that overuse the word blessed and and and you kind of are tired of the word blessed or maybe you went home to grandma's house for the holidays, and she's got the needlepoint on the wall, and it's got the beatitudes, and it's got, like, a little cherubim and some flowers, and maybe no one else experienced that growing up. But that's what I experienced growing up. But the word blessed that Jesus gives us today has a whole lot more horsepower than our English word blessed.

Ramin Razavi: 13:27

In fact, in the Greek, the word is makarios. And the definition of makarios is to be supremely blessed, to be favored or fortunate, to flourish or thrive. To oh, it's a way of being in the world that leads us to know God and experience the life of his kingdom here and now. For some reason, this morning, when I was going over the sermon, I I couldn't help but think of the congruence between the word Makarios and my latest passion, which is hot honey. Does anyone else love hot honey?

Ramin Razavi: 13:57

And and the reason that I I saw the connection, it's very silly and it's very deep. And so if you're with me, come with me on this. But, like, you can put hot honey on anything. Like, I accidentally put it on yogurt the other day because I thought it was my regular honey, and it took my Greek yogurt to a whole another stratosphere. That's a pro tip.

Ramin Razavi: 14:14

You can thank me for that later. But what Jesus is trying to say is that the kingdom of God is is like this hot honey that overlays on any situation. The kingdom of God is not something disconnected from your job, from your family life, from your neighborhood, from your parenting, from your marriage, from your finances. The kingdom of God is not something that you leave your present experience in order to have an experience with and then return to. The present reality of the kingdom of God is trying to break into or coat or saturate every aspect of your everyday life.

Ramin Razavi: 14:49

And so, Jesus starts the Sermon on the Mount with these statements, these proclamations of blessing. And there's a rhythm to them. Isn't there? There's an invitation. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit.

Ramin Razavi: 15:02

And it's always followed by a promise, for yours will be the kingdom of heaven. And he keeps this rhythm through the whole thing, that this is the invitation to know the blessing of God, the supreme blessing of God, the invitation to the way of being that lets you experience the kingdom here and now. But then, Jesus follows the invitation with, if you were to receive this invitation, I also want to offer you a promise. Now, there's a second aspect to the pattern of the beatitudes that we have to get before we jump into them. And that is is that they are all interconnected.

Ramin Razavi: 15:40

The ancient church taught them as though they were an archipelago of islands connected by bridges. And they said that what would happen is is that when you begin with poverty of spirit, spiritual bankruptcy, knowing that you can't do it on your own, coming to God with utter desperation and need, which a lot of us are coming to the new year with. He says that that condition is what acclimates you and prepares you for the next experience, which is to mourn. And so these are all a flow. They're all connected.

Ramin Razavi: 16:12

And when I was learning the beatitudes and growing in the Lord, I was living in Colorado. So I didn't necessarily associate archipelagos of islands, but what I did see was interconnected mountain peaks. And, 1 night, I was sitting at, my favorite restaurant in Boulder. It was called Sherpa's Adventures. It's a Himalayan and Nepalese restaurant on Walnut Street.

Ramin Razavi: 16:34

Try it. Get the Sherpa Stew with yak. Trust me. It's amazing. And I was sitting there at the restaurant and the owner of the restaurant, Pemba Sherpa, came out to talk.

Ramin Razavi: 16:43

Now, this restaurant was wild because these guys, during the climbing season, would go lead expeditions up things like Everest and Kilimanjaro. And during the non climbing season, they had an amazing restaurant. Now, they were terrible waiters, but they were great mountain guides. And so, I was sitting there talking to Pemba and he was explaining to me the way that you ascend Mount Everest. And the way that you ascend Mount Everest is through a sequence of different camps.

Ramin Razavi: 17:08

You start at base camp, and I literally brought this today because I thought it was so fun. This is the note I wrote as I sat there and talked to him. This is like 20 years ago. You start at base camp, you go to the Khumbu icefall, then you go to the Western Cone, the Lahotsi face, the South Cole, the Hillary step, and eventually, you get to the summit, 29,032 feet of elevation. And in my mind, you just kind of keep going up, right?

Ramin Razavi: 17:32

That's what would make sense. You just ascend the mountain. Like, that's why you're here. That's why you play paid, like, half a $1,000,000 to do this. That's why you've got the Sherpas carrying all the gear so you you can go up there and plant your flag and be like, hey.

Ramin Razavi: 17:43

Hey. I made it. But what Pemba explained to me is that when you climb Everest, more important than your crampons and your ice axe is the acclimation of your body to the increased rarefied air. And he said, so when we climb Everest, the way that you have to do it is you start at the base camp, you go to Kumba Icefall, but then you have to go back down to base camp. And as a Westerner, we're like, what are you talking about?

Ramin Razavi: 18:09

Like, that's inefficient. I paid you 100 of 1,000 of dollars. We're going straight there. He's like, if you went straight from base camp to the summit of Everest, you would die of a cerebral edema because you are not acclimated to that rarefied air. And what Jesus is trying to teach in the beatitudes is something so similar.

Ramin Razavi: 18:28

Is that when we begin our journey with him by being poor in spirit, humility. We don't ever leave humility when we advance to the place of being able to be resilient enough to be persecuted for our faith. No. We keep going back down to humility because it acclimates us for the strength that we need to be persecuted for our faith. And so in the kingdom of heaven, how do we ascend the hill of the Lord?

Ramin Razavi: 18:51

By descending through humility. And who do we see doing that more than anyone else? Our blessed Lord himself, who in the very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself a servant, taking on human nature, being made a slave, even obedient to death on the cross. And so the beatitudes are not only an invitation to know the way for the kingdom, they are an invitation to imitate the life of Christ. And so let's jump into them.

Ramin Razavi: 19:24

Let's start with blessed are the poor in spirit. That's the the framing that we need before we start to understand how these all work together. The poor in spirit. This simply means those who are spiritually bankrupt. Those who are lowly or powerless, who have a need for God and actually acknowledge it.

Ramin Razavi: 19:46

See, that's the thing. We all have a deep need for God. It's just that some of us have a bunch of veneers up and aren't willing to acknowledge it. Now, you have to imagine that when Jesus spoke this, he got a ton of quizzical glances from the people in the crowd around him. Because they've just seen a revolution begin.

Ramin Razavi: 20:06

They've seen healings and they've seen a new kingdom proclaimed. They see what they believe is gonna be the rival to the Roman Empire coming to tear down the oppression of the dictators and set up the new kingdom of God. And the first thing out of his mouth is blessed are the spiritually bankrupt, the humiliated, the broken, the poor, and the needy. They're like, that doesn't sound like a good recruitment strategy. But Jesus had something in mind.

Ramin Razavi: 20:37

See, humility and dependence upon God are the trailhead for the ancient pathway that leads to the heart of God. Humility and dependence upon God are the trailhead of the ancient pathway that leads directly to the heart of God. And we can choose voluntary humility. Did you know that? You can humble yourself before the Lord.

Ramin Razavi: 21:03

You can develop a rhythm of life where you seek God and you begin seeking God by acknowledging your deep need for him. And if you need help gaining vocabulary for that, pray the Psalms. They're loaded with language that helps you acknowledge before the Lord, I have nothing besides you, God. You are all that I need, God. You're the only one who can satisfy me, God.

Ramin Razavi: 21:28

You are my light and my salvation. You alone keep my lamp burning. You help me move through the darkness. You alone are the one God who can strengthen my weak humanity. And this is the way that we enter into the kingdom of heaven, is by bowing low, by acknowledging our need for God.

Ramin Razavi: 21:49

Jesus was not short on teaching on this. And for the sake of time, I only wanna highlight one today because it's so powerful in Luke chapter 18. He says, to some who are confident of their own righteousness, no need to raise your hand if that's you, and look down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable. 2 men went up to the temple to pray. 1 a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

Ramin Razavi: 22:14

This Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank you that I am not like the other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. That's bold. I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all I get because pastor John gives great giving talks. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but he beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Ramin Razavi: 22:38

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted. And so the invitation here from Jesus, and maybe this is the invitation for you today that you wanna respond to, is to acknowledge that you have felt spiritually bankrupt. That you have felt that you have nothing meaningful to bring to God. That you have felt benched or sidelined or disqualified in some way.

Ramin Razavi: 23:11

And what God's been trying to say to you is that's the beginning point. And instead of keeping that feeling to yourself, keeping that thought to yourself and allowing what you're feeling to keep you from me, realize that that has always been, from the beginning of time, the invitation to know me, to trust me, to believe in me. Blessed are the poor in spirit. And what is the promise? Yours is the kingdom of heaven.

Ramin Razavi: 23:40

Now. You have access to the reality and the riches of God here and now. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now, connected to that, in this climb up the mountain, is blessed are those who mourn. Because once we get an understanding of our need and our desperation for God, we become so much more acutely aware of our own sin and brokenness and the sin and the brokenness in the world around us.

Ramin Razavi: 24:10

In fact, we could think about it this way is when Jesus said blessed are those who mourn, he's saying those who mourn are all who suffer, who find themselves in desperate circumstances, who sense their own helplessness and their own vulnerability. This is similar to what Paul's speaking to in Romans chapter 8 when he says that all of creation is groaning as in the pains of childbirth, longing to be clothed as the true children of God. And we also, inwardly, we're all groaning. We're all mourning. We're all grieving over the brokenness that we feel in our own life.

Ramin Razavi: 24:45

And the brokenness and the death and the loss and the pain that we see in the world all around us. Now, the thing is, is we have to decide what do we do with our mourning. Because I believe one of the deepest causes of so many of the pathologies and the addictions, and the deconstruction, and the distancing from God that we see in our generation is unprocessed wounding, trauma, grief, and mourning. I even feel like, especially, and I wanna speak to men for a minute, I feel like the reason so many of us men struggle to, like, go to bed on time is that we don't know how to process the disappointments of our day. So we watch something or we drink something or we eat something else.

Ramin Razavi: 25:27

We we're just trying to somehow cope with the mourning and the grief that we feel in our everyday life. But, Jesus said, remember the word, Makarios, how blessed are you when you mourn because you can receive something from me, comfort. And how do we do that? It's by giving Jesus access to the pain that we're carrying. This is what happens in Psalm 73, when the worship leader is going to church and he says, surely, God is Israel good to Israel.

Ramin Razavi: 25:57

Surely, God is good to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, I lost my foothold. My feet started to slip because I envied the prosperity of the wicked, and I longed for the life that the people who were not following God had. And he said, in the middle of all this, I came into the sanctuary of God and I realized that I have everything I need in God. And so, he begins this beautiful comforting statement.

Ramin Razavi: 26:21

He says, so whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you because you are the strength of my heart, and you are my portion forever. I've experienced your comfort or your consolation, God. And so the invitation here is to not be someone who settles for a medicated life or a distance life or a life that is somehow coping constantly with the trauma and the pain and the brokenness and the disappointment you feel. But it's a life that's bringing that all honestly before God, believing that the one who is the prince of peace, the one who promised you that if I leave, I'm not gonna leave you like an orphan, but I'm gonna come to you as a counselor, and I'm gonna lead you into my comfort and then into my peace.

Ramin Razavi: 27:04

See, this is the invitation of Jesus. It's not to be a people who don't mourn over the brokenness and the grief and the pain and the disappointment that sin causes in our lives and in the world. But it's to be a people who bring all of those emotions honestly before the only one who can turn our mourning into dancing. And who can take off the sackcloth and clothe us with joy. And who can sing a new song over us.

Ramin Razavi: 27:29

And we can believe that, yes, the anger or the torment may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning. And this is the differentiation between a hopeful idea in God and following Jesus. As we take our honest grief and our honest mourning and our honest pain before God and allow him to transform it into joy. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Jesus continues, blessed are the meek.

Ramin Razavi: 28:00

When we mourn and we realize the suffering that we experience and those around us experience, it does something to us if we're honest with it before God. It softens our hearts. And meekness is not passive weakness. It's not passivity at all. But meekness is strength directed and under control.

Ramin Razavi: 28:22

Meekness is the idea of being soft or pliable. And as we grow further with God, as we continue to ascend this mountain with the Lord, our hearts ought to be growing softer and softer and softer with God. Being meek has nothing to do with not having capacity or having capability, but it has to do with being someone who responds to even the most gentle impulses from God himself. And this often is the byproduct of being someone who's gone through the dark corridors of grief, mourning, disappointment, pain and loss. We see this in the life of Moses.

Ramin Razavi: 29:01

Moses, in Numbers chapter 12 verse 3 says a statement that I think saying the statement should disqualify him from. But he says, I he was the meekest man to ever live on the earth. We'll let God sort that out with Moses. But it made it into numbers. And so, he says, I'm the meekest man that's ever lived on the earth.

Ramin Razavi: 29:18

But why why is Moses so meek? Because he was abandoned as a child. He was raised in the pharaoh's household. When he raised up to power, what did he eventually do? Committed murder.

Ramin Razavi: 29:29

Spent most of his adult life on the backside of a desert thinking that God had forgotten him and there was no further purpose for his life before God shows up in a burning bush. And he says, I can't be the guy to talk to pharaoh. I've got a speech impediment. He's like, don't worry. I'm gonna do the talking.

Ramin Razavi: 29:42

I'm gonna do the miracle working. You're gonna lead the people through the Red Sea. See see, suffering and brokenness and having to wait, delayed expectation for what we most long for in life, it creates a softness in our heart where we realize we're not the ones steering the ship anymore. And now, we become the people that get to What's the promise? Inherit the earth.

Ramin Razavi: 30:04

Whoo. I don't know what your New Year's resolution is but I think I just found mine. I wanna inherit the earth. Why does why do these two ideas connect? Because people who are meek are trustworthy to God.

Ramin Razavi: 30:18

People who are proud and believe that they are driving the ship, and they are the ones in charge, and they have the ideas, and they have the strategies, and they can solve everything too. God's not gonna trust them with the things that are most valuable to him because he has to know that when I whisper, you move. When I tell you to slow down, you slow down. When I tell you to pick up the pace, you're gonna pick up the pace. You're not gonna be stuck in a pattern of thinking where you've already formed the architecture of your life and you're just looking for me to be the engine to fuel your design.

Ramin Razavi: 30:49

Instead, you're saying, you are the author. You are the fuel. You are the energy behind it. And, I'm gonna follow and submit to you. This is what meekness is.

Ramin Razavi: 30:58

It speaks of softness. It speaks of pliability. It speaks of our ability to be moved and shaped by God. And it often comes as a result of our waiting, our suffering, our longing. Because in that process, we begin to distill the difference between our will and the will of God.

Ramin Razavi: 31:15

And when we become meek people, we become the kind of people who God can entrust with His most valuable realities, the earth. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Jesus moves on from this and he says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. This is so beautiful because once we have gone through the corridors of being poor in spirit, of mourning our sin and disappointment, pain and the sin, the disappointment, the pain of the world, and we become people who are meek and who have let go of control and trying to drive everything forward. We are now at the place where we hunger and thirst for God more than anything else in our lives.

Ramin Razavi: 31:58

He becomes our singular desire. It's what Jesus talks about in Matthew 6. He says, seek first the kingdom of heaven and his righteousness and everything else will be given unto you. See, this speaks of the cultivation of godly ambition. I love this.

Ramin Razavi: 32:17

Because I'm naturally an ambitious person. And this speaks of the cultivation of godly ambition. It's as DL Moody said, the greatest failure in life is not necessarily failing at something. It's succeeding at the wrong things. And what Jesus is trying to orient us to here is the idea that the deepest longing and pursuit in our hearts needs to be the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Ramin Razavi: 32:46

This is about cultivating intentionality and beginning to understand righteousness not just from a positional standpoint, which we just celebrate every week in communion that we're positionally made right with God through the sanctifying work of Christ on the cross and the resurrection of Christ, we are positionally righteous. This speaks of experiential righteousness. It would begin to experience the the fruit of living in right relationship with God himself. I will never forget when I was a college student. I had just come to know Jesus maybe 2 weeks before this moment.

Ramin Razavi: 33:21

And I was sitting in the basement of a dilapidated church building in Ohio. And a itinerant preacher came through and had this gathering and we thought there'd be, like, couple hundred people packed in the room. There's, like, 12 of us. And he begins to speak this message out of the the book of Isaiah and he highlighted the scripture Isaiah 26:8. And that scripture says, yes, Lord, walking in the way of your truth, we wait eagerly for you.

Ramin Razavi: 33:47

For your name and your renown, your glory, are the desire of our souls. And it was a message that set my heart on fire. And here's the reason why. Up until that point in my life, the way I understood the gospel was that Jesus had died for me, so I needed to live for him. There was some kind of an exchange or reciprocity that he was expecting, and that was the right thing to do, so I was gonna live for him because he died for me.

Ramin Razavi: 34:13

But this message set my heart on fire, and here's why. It gave me a vision of living for the glory of God. And I don't know if that's the vision that you wake up with every morning. That's the vision that God captured my heart with. And what it was was that there was one thing that when this earth and this world go and the new heaven and the new earth come, there is one thing that I can invest my life in now that does not have an expiration date.

Ramin Razavi: 34:37

And that is the glory of God. Because as we've just studied in Revelation, what's happening in heaven and what we will join in forever is a never ending crescendo of glory and worship and praise to the God of the universe. And what this invitation is, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, is to stop seeing holiness, consecration, and purity as a line that you have to somehow navigate in life and say, okay, I've got to stay on the right side of this so that I'm righteous. I'm in the right place with God. And instead, seeing it the way that psalmist writes it in Psalm 119, when he said, because you set my heart free, I'm gonna run-in the path of your commands.

Ramin Razavi: 35:17

So my motivation is how pure can I be? My motivation is how consecrated to the Lord can I be? How righteous can I be? And people like, oh, you're getting legalistic. I'm not legalistic.

Ramin Razavi: 35:29

I'm just in love. I've got love for my Lord. I wanna glorify His name. I want every aspect, every fiber of my being to be a praise anthem to Jesus. That's the that's what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Ramin Razavi: 35:44

To say, God, it's it's it's in how I wake up in the morning. It's in how I treat my family. It's in the way that I drive. I'm serious. It's in the way that I don't take the shortcuts in at work even though they're so easy to take and no one would ever notice and it would benefit me.

Ramin Razavi: 36:01

I'm not gonna do it because I'm hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I don't care if anybody sees it. A hunger and thirst for righteousness is not unto man. It's unto the glory of God. And it recalibrates how we think about things like purity and consecration and holiness.

Ramin Razavi: 36:18

And it's not a a standard that we have to keep. It's a path we get to run-in because he set our hearts free. So I don't want to just know about righteousness. I want to experience righteousness. I want to live in righteousness.

Ramin Razavi: 36:33

I want to know what it means. Like, Paul says, I want to know Christ, not only in the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, but also in the righteousness that I get from Jesus himself. I wanna experience that. And he says, and what's the result of it? I love the result of hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

Ramin Razavi: 36:49

You are filled. Some of us are wondering why we are always dissatisfied in life. It's not because you can't get what you're aiming for. It's because you're aiming for the wrong things. And so you find yourself chronically dissatisfied because you have tried to extract life from something that is unable to give you life.

Ramin Razavi: 37:11

And instead, Jesus says, why don't you start hunger and thirsting after righteousness, the ways of the kingdom, and your heart will be filled like Psalm 60 2 says that you'll be satisfied as with richest of food. Psalm 63, that is actually. Now I love how brilliant Jesus says. Because right after he says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the very next beatitude connects so beautifully. He says, so blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.

Ramin Razavi: 37:40

Why does Jesus put this next? I think this is why. As soon as we become the kind of people that are like, oh, I'm hungering and thirsting after righteousness, Ines, I just wanna share with as a prayer request. Could you pray for me as I hunger and thirst after righteousness? What starts to escalate in our life, self righteousness?

Ramin Razavi: 37:55

It's almost impossible not to. And he said, so, hey, guess what, guys? As soon as you begin to be the kind of person that hungers and thirsts after righteousness, Mercy. Mercy. Be merciful to people.

Ramin Razavi: 38:08

Why? Because how do you think you were treated? Mercifully. Mercy is love in action. It's god demonstrating his god has always been merciful.

Ramin Razavi: 38:20

We don't have time for all the scriptures that I had for this. But Psalm 103, like, dive into that. Dive into Exodus when god announces his name. He is god. Lord, I am who I am merciful, compassionate, gracious, forgiving sins.

Ramin Razavi: 38:32

That's who he is. That's his nature. But mercy is that love in action. And he said, so blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. This is an invitation from God to stockpile your own mercy account.

Ramin Razavi: 38:49

So, we could think of it this way, like, which of us would love to receive more mercy from God? I think most of us would. And he said, so, how do you access that? You become a person who is merciful. Jesus gave another brilliant teaching on this in Matthew chapter 18.

Ramin Razavi: 39:05

He tells a story about 2 servants. And 1 servant, was owed about $1,000,000 from his friend, and he couldn't pay him back. And so, he went to him and he said, hey, don't throw me in prison. I have a wife and kids. It's not gonna be good.

Ramin Razavi: 39:20

I'm never gonna get out. They're gonna starve or be sold into slavery. And the guy's like, oh, I forgive you of your debt, man. I've totally forgive you. And then that servant goes and finds his pal who owes him, like, lunch.

Ramin Razavi: 39:30

And he's like, bro, you owe me lunch. And he's like, I don't have it. Can you be patient with me? He's like, forget it. In jail right now.

Ramin Razavi: 39:36

The friends go find the king. And they're like, hey, homeboy, who you forgave, like, $1,000,000 is is holding Jimmy accountable for lunch money. The king goes and finds him and he says this, then the master called the servant in, you wicked servant, he said. I canceled all the debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?

Ramin Razavi: 39:58

In his anger, the master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. I don't need to give any commentary to that. Go be merciful. Jesus continues.

Ramin Razavi: 40:19

He says, blessed are the pure in heart. The pure in heart speaks of unmixed being unmixed with anything else. It speaks, not just of the heart, as in the muscle that circulates blood, but the heart as the center of our being. Our spiritual center determining our actions, choices, and attitudes towards God and others. Purity speaks of a singular substance.

Ramin Razavi: 40:43

When you have the purest diamond or the purest water, you're taking out things. You're not adding things into something to make it more pure. You're taking things out of something to make it more pure. A few years ago, God called me to a psalm that I walk and I pray this psalm every morning. It's Psalm 24.

Ramin Razavi: 41:01

It says, Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? And who may stand in his holy place? Only one who has clean hands and a pure heart who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false God, they will receive blessing from the Lord and victory or vindication from God their savior. Such is a generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, oh, God of Jacob. Do you see the connection?

Ramin Razavi: 41:26

Purity in heart leads to a revelation of God. It's how we learn how to see God. Where does scripture tell us that Jesus lives? In our in our hearts? This is what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4.

Ramin Razavi: 41:42

He said, The same God who said, Let light shine of the darkness, made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. The way that we see Jesus predominantly in this life, he may give you a theophany. If he does, please share it with us. We'd love to know how he physically showed up to you. But the way we predominantly encounter Jesus in this life is through the eyes of our heart.

Ramin Razavi: 42:10

And the way that our eyes of our heart get to see Jesus is by becoming pure. By becoming unmixed. By removing the impurities, so that we can have a purer gaze on the beautiful face of our savior. Blessed are the pure in heart for that's how we get to see God. Jesus continues and he speaks of blessed are the peacemakers.

Ramin Razavi: 42:32

And now he's moving from a lot of these inward postures and attitudes to outward work. Peacemaking is a kind of labor that imitates Jesus. It's uniting the divided and it's reconciling the alienated. Ephesians 2 speaks for to this at length. It talks about how Jesus reconciled us in peace both back to God and to one another.

Ramin Razavi: 42:57

And so, a peacemaker is not passively accepting the divisions in brokenness that we see in the world around us, but is actively moving to bring peace wherever you see a deficit of God's shalom in the world. The question we carry is where can I bring your peace? Where can I bring your reconciling love? How can I help bring the presence of Heaven into the spaces God that You've called me to inhabit as I begin a new year? It says, blessed are the peacemakers because you're gonna be called sons or sons and daughters or children of God.

Ramin Razavi: 43:34

Because when you're a peacemaker, you begin to take on the vocation of Jesus Himself who is the Prince of Peace. He continues from there and He says, so blessed are you and this is the one that gets a little hot, who are persecuted. See, our association with Jesus will always come with a cost. And if you're paying attention to this, like the very first beatitude, the promise is yours is the kingdom of heaven And he's landing this. He's saying, so also yours is the kingdom of heaven when you are persecuted.

Ramin Razavi: 44:06

And the reality is is that when we begin to live in this way, we become a contradiction to the rest of the world around us. The philosopher and theologian G. K. Chesterton said that it is the paradox of history that every generation will be convicted by the saints who contradict it the most. Think about that for a minute.

Ramin Razavi: 44:30

What the world is longing for is not a church that assimilates into the ways of the culture. What the culture is longing for is a people who are living this way. Poor and not arrogant, not judgmental. Merciful, mourning, hungering after the things of God, peacemaking in the world around us. And it will contradict the world in a radical way, but that contradiction that the world sees will be full.

Ramin Razavi: 44:56

A radical way. But that contradiction that the world sees will be full of promise. That the same kingdom of heaven that has rescued us, the same Jesus that has healed us and rescued us is available to them as well. And that's why Jesus amplifies this last beatitude. He says it again, blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of your association to me.

Ramin Razavi: 45:22

Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven. For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. And, the promise of reward just rings in the atmosphere as Jesus closes this first part of the Sermon on the Mount. And what we've seen through this teaching of Jesus is that the reward is not only that Jesus appoints some of us to receive blessing if we accept the invitations into his kingdom, but that Jesus Himself is the one who gives the blessing. And if we go all the way in with Him, we will find that Jesus Himself is the blessing.

Ramin Razavi: 46:05

To know Him is the blessing. And to walk this road is not only to walk a road of Jesus' teaching, but it's to follow in His way. If you think about every single one of these, who had the poorest spirit of all? Jesus himself, the king of heaven born into a manger, poor in spirit. Who mourned as they saw the crowds harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd and rode into Jerusalem and looked back and said, if only these people would have turned to me, tears falling down his face as hallelujahs and hosannas rose up from the crowds.

Ramin Razavi: 46:46

Jesus mourned more deeply than any of us. And who was meek that as the hands of the executioners began to pin Him to a cross, the one who had charge of angel armies did not say, send a fleet of angels right now, but allowed the crucifixion to go forward knowing that it was for the love of the father and the redemption of humanity. And has there ever been a heart that hungered after the righteousness of God more than the son of righteousness himself? Has there ever been a more merciful one who said, I don't condemn you, daughter. Go leave your life of sin.

Ramin Razavi: 47:24

Has there ever been one with a more burning, pure heart for the ways and the love of God than Jesus Himself? Has there ever been a greater peacemaker in the world who reconciled the gap between us and the Father so that we could all come home again and be welcome in His presence? Has there ever been one who was more persecuted unjustly? No. When we follow Jesus in the way of the beatitudes, we are not only imitating his life, we are encountering him.

Ramin Razavi: 47:56

That's the invitation of the beatitudes. So let's stand together as a church family. We wanna enter into a time of just responding to the ways that the Lord is speaking to us this morning. And as we've heard through the word of God and the voice of the Holy Spirit, there There are many invitations today to come and acknowledge our poverty of spirit, to come and mourn before the Lord and receive His comfort, to come and ask God to purify our hearts, to come and ask God to help us hunger and thirst for Him. We've heard them already.

Ramin Razavi: 48:35

But what we wanna do now is just create space for you to respond. Specifically, if you sense that one of these invitations you've heard from the beatitudes is for you today and you simply wanna respond to the Lord and say, Lord, I wanna respond to the invitation that I've heard from you to take on this heart posture. And equally, we wanna invite you today if you want to come and receive one of these promises from God. Every promise of God is yes and amen through Jesus Christ. And he is willing to to give to you today what you need the most.

Ramin Razavi: 49:18

And so our prayer team is here. I'm gonna pray. And if you sense the Lord stirring in your heart and you want to come and respond to one of these invitations, come on forward and our prayer team will minister to you in the power of the spirit. Let's all open our hands and receive from the Lord. Lord Jesus, thank you for your beautiful heart.

Ramin Razavi: 49:38

Thank you for sharing it with us. Thank you that the trailhead, the beginning point of this is not strength. It's not capability. It's brokenness and meekness and need for You, dependence on You. And so, Lord, we just throw ourselves at Your feet this morning.

Ramin Razavi: 49:57

And we say, Lord, we need You more. We want You more. We long for more of Your mercy. We hunger for more of your righteousness. We ask you to purify our hearts, oh lord.

Ramin Razavi: 50:11

We ask you to strengthen us for the journey, oh lord. We respond to your invitation, lord. We receive your promises this morning as your children. Amen and amen.

Intro/Outro: 50:25

Thank you for listening. For more information, please visit us at garden dot church.