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"Here as in Heaven."
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Welcome to GARDEN CHURCH Podcast. We are a community in Southern California dedicated to raising resilient disciples of Jesus Christ.
Ramin Razavi:Alright. Thank you guys. Come on. How about that be filled video? Let's go.
Ramin Razavi:God is moving in generation z and alpha. We had a prophetic word a few years ago that this was gonna be gen zeal, marked by zeal for the Lord. And we saw that beginning to be poured out this weekend and I don't know if you came expecting this, but you are in the flow of a move of God right now. It's the sovereign work of a good, good father who wants to pour his spirit out on all flesh. We've been in the book of Acts, but today today we are pivoting because we are beginning holy week today.
Ramin Razavi:And we are starting the process of riveting our attention on Jesus Christ, the son of God, who entered into a city Jerusalem, who went to the cross on Friday but by the power of God was raised to the newness of life and we are gonna start today by joining Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem that day. And if you were standing around Jerusalem that day, the energy of the air was charged with a fever pitch of anticipation. It would have been like being at a u two concert, that's my generation. Or maybe a Forrest Frank concert or maybe some of you even a Tom Petty concert or maybe a One Direction concert mixed with a political rally and a revival service. That's what was going on in Jerusalem that day.
Ramin Razavi:Lots of energy. But what I wanna preamble this reading of the scripture with is simply this, the way that a king arrives into makes a statement about the way that he intends to rule. And so let's take a look at Matthew chapter 21, Jesus' arrival into Jerusalem as the king. It says as they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethpage on the Mount Of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, go to the village ahead of you and at once you will find a donkey tied there with her colt by her and tie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them and he will send them right away.
Ramin Razavi:This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet. Say to daughter Zion, the people of God, see your king comes to you gentle and riding on a donkey and on a foal colt, the foal of a donkey. The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks over them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.
Ramin Razavi:The crowds that went ahead of them and those that followed him shouted, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heavens. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, who is this? The crowds answered, this is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.
Ramin Razavi:Jesus entered the temple courts and he drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. It is written, he said, my house will be called a house of prayer but you are making it a den of robbers. The blind and the lame came to him at the temple and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.
Ramin Razavi:Do you hear what these children are saying? They asked, yes, Jesus replied. Have you never read? Didn't you read your bible? From the lips of children and infants, you lord have called forth your praise.
Ramin Razavi:And he left them and went out to the city in Bethany where he spent the night. This is the word of the lord. Thanks be to god. Let's pray. Jesus, we ask you now that you open the scriptures to us.
Ramin Razavi:Holy Spirit, we pray that you give us eyes to see Jesus as he actually is. Holy Spirit, I pray that as the word is preached that you would release the kingdom among us, that healing would come, that forgiveness would flow, that empowerment by your presence would fall on us, God. We expect you, we anticipate you, Lord. We wait for you in Jesus name. Amen and amen.
Ramin Razavi:And so Jesus is coming into the town and this moment was epic. If you love epic moments, this is an incredibly epic moment. The palm branches that they're waving signify rebellion and revolution. They've taken off their jackets and they placed them before Jesus on the dirt path and they created a patchwork red carpet if you will and there's dust rising all around him and then if you peered around the hillside and it was about a one mile descent down into the city from where Jesus began to ride the donkey, you would have noticed that this king is coming in a way that you did not expect him to come. And what's so powerful about this is that everyone in the crowd would have been carrying an expectation about who Jesus was gonna be.
Ramin Razavi:There were plenty of people that were carrying a nationalistic or a political or dominionism perspective of Jesus is coming to bring a kingdom and we've got swords ready. We've got an army poised. We are hoping that he brings political rule and reign and puts it back with the nation of Israel over the Romans. You had plenty of people that were religious zealots just waiting for this next religious king to come to fulfill some kind of prophetic ambition that missed the point of what God was really trying to do. And you probably had people in the room who had or the crowd who had just heard about Jesus healing Lazarus and raising him from the dead in fact and were wondering, could this savior, could this messiah do something for me?
Ramin Razavi:I'm desperate right now and I'm wondering if he could do something for me but I don't know if you caught in the midst of the fervor and in the midst of the excitement a question that's hanging in the balance in verse 10. Who is this? Doesn't that strike you as a little bit wild as you observe the text? Because they're all at a fever pitch. They're in a fervor.
Ramin Razavi:They're excited for his coming and what it tells us is that it's possible to be caught up in the fervor surrounding Jesus and not actually see him as he is. Yeah. And if it was possible then, could it be possible now? Yes. That we're caught up in the fervor of everything God is doing but we're not actually seeing Jesus as Jesus is.
Ramin Razavi:And the glory of that day, and I believe the glory of today is this, is that Jesus longs by the spirit to reveal himself to us as he actually is. So that we can know him as he is, we can trust him as he is, and we can worship him as he is, not as we imagine him to be, but as he is. And what we will see in this text is this, Jesus reveals himself in four beautiful ways. And all of those ways massively disappoint the expectations of the people that day. But they do that because Jesus chose love.
Ramin Razavi:And if Jesus would have fulfilled the expectations, he would have failed his purpose and so he's willing to disappoint the expectations of the crowd so that he can fulfill the purpose of God and bring salvation to all of us today. That's his heart. And so let's look at the four things that scripture reveals about Jesus as he comes in. They are these if you are a big note taker. Number one is that he is a resolute king who's coming to fulfill every promise that God has ever made.
Ramin Razavi:He's a resolute king. The second thing is he's a humble king who's redefining power as sacrificial love and authority as the willingness to serve other people. He's a humble king. The third is that he's a healing king who's removing every barrier from the presence of God and welcoming the hurting and the broken to find healing in him. And the last is that he is a glorious king.
Ramin Razavi:Glorious king who wants to call forth praise from his people but not ordinary praise, it's the kind of praise that puts the enemy under our feet and defeats the powers of darkness. So that's where we're going today. So let's look at Jesus, the resolute king. I love the way scripture records it. It says that Jesus came in verse four to fulfill what the prophet had said.
Ramin Razavi:Say that with me, to fulfill what the prophet had said. And Jesus has been coming to this moment for quite some time. If you catch Jesus on the outskirts of Caesarea Philippi in Matthew 16, he's just revealed by the power of living God and it's an epic moment and and Jesus says on this confession that I am the Christ, the son of the living God, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna build my church. Right?
Ramin Razavi:I'm gonna build my church and the gates of hell are not gonna overcome it and they get out of that epic moment and the moment turns just for maybe six hours and Peter is now rebuking Jesus because Jesus said, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm taking a 100 mile journey from Caesarea Philippi all the way to Jerusalem and when I get to Jerusalem, I'm gonna be betrayed, I'm gonna be crucified, I am going to die and then I'm gonna raise from the dead. And Peter says, no way. No way. So for 100 miles now, Jesus has been on a journey.
Ramin Razavi:From Caesarea Philippi all the way to Jerusalem, and as he's on this 100 mile journey, he continues to tell the disciples that he is going to be handed over, crucified, killed and raised from the dead and they go from rebuking him to eventually obeying him and getting the donkey. So Jesus has been coming and what Jesus is doing in his his coming is that he is fulfilling every one of the promises of God. What an incredible picture. And if we catch Jesus on the other side of the resurrection in in Luke chapter 24, the scriptures tell us that Jesus himself revealed to disciples on the road after his resurrection how every one of the law and the prophets actually testified or spoke about him. So Jesus wasn't only coming around this time in the Middle East coming into Jerusalem, but Jesus has been coming since the very first pages of Genesis because in Genesis, he was the word of God.
Ramin Razavi:In Exodus, he was the Passover lamb. In Leviticus, he was the temple where the people met with God. In Numbers, he was the ever present guide. In Deuteronomy, he was the prophet greater than Moses. In Joshua, he was the conquering warrior.
Ramin Razavi:In Judges, he was the broken savior. In Ruth, he was the kingsman redeemer. In Samuel, he was the pure hearted shepherd. In first Kings, he was the righteous ruler. In Chronicles, he was the restorer of the kingdom.
Ramin Razavi:In Ezra, he was the faithful scribe. In Nehemiah, he was the rebuilder of the wall. In Esther, he was the advocate. In Job, he was the living redeemer. In the Psalms, he's the one who hears our cries.
Ramin Razavi:In Proverbs, he is wisdom personified and that's just a little bit of how Jesus has been coming. And why that matters so much for us today is that I could guarantee that every single one of us in this room have been conditioned by disappointment at some point because the people that we longed for most to be there for us did not come, did not show up, did not make their way to us. And what Jesus wants to reveal today in the nature of being a resolute king is that Jesus will not disappoint you. Jesus will not leave you or forsake you because he was left and he was forsaken and he embodies the love of God to pursue you. I will never forget when I was a senior in high school, I was an athlete, I It was track and field not football, surprise.
Ramin Razavi:And my dad my dad worked really long hours. He was an engineer and he my dad passed a few years ago so I get emotional telling this story. And he wasn't always able to come to my track meets. But I will never forget my senior year, it was a regional meet in Oak Harbor, Ohio and I was running the 3,200 meters and I was warming up just normal warm up and I'll never forget looking into the infield and my dad somehow had gotten into the infield. It's not that he just made it to the meat, it's that he made it into the infield.
Ramin Razavi:And if you knew my dad, he was like a Persian James born. He got everything, he got everywhere he wanted to be. And I'll never forget my dad from the infield. He had he had a camcorder on his shoulder, the small of a size appliance, small appliance and he's recording the video and in his Persian accent he's like, come on, Ramin, you can do it. You can do it.
Ramin Razavi:He showed up for me. That moment marked my life. My dad showed up for me. And there's so many of us in this room that people have not shown up for us. They have not come through when it felt like it mattered the most to us.
Ramin Razavi:And what Jesus is saying in being a resolute king, he said, do do you see how I've been pursuing you? Since the moment of your birth, I have been pursuing you in love and maybe you have not always known him but he's always loved you. And here is the power of the gospel. Jesus did not die on the cross. This is John Stott's thought.
Ramin Razavi:Jesus did not die on the cross so that God could love you. Jesus died on the cross because God has loved you with an everlasting love and has pursued you through the cross so that he could embrace you in forgiveness, mercy and love. And this resolute king coming came to fulfill every promise God has ever made. So what that means is that by the mercy of God, you can be forgiven today by trusting in the name of Jesus. Your sins can be washed away.
Ramin Razavi:That by the mercy of God, you can be filled with the holy spirit. You were made for more as the conference t shirts like to say. We have been made for life to the full that by the mercy of God, you can find an identity that does not shift and change with your successes and drop with your failures. You can stand on a firm foundation and have an identity as a beloved child of God. This is what Paul would write in Romans chapter eight.
Ramin Razavi:He says, we've not received the spirit that makes us slaves again to fear. Hallelujah. But we've received the spirit of adoption and that spirit, it preaches to our spirit because we need it to preach. And what it preaches is that you are a child of God. That if you would ever share in any of the sufferings of Christ, you get to share the glories of Christ.
Ramin Razavi:This is what the resolute king came to give. A kingdom built on love, his mercy, and his pursuit of his children. But he was also a humble king. You see this in the royal energy of the moment. There's a lot of royal energy here because kings would ride into town, they would come in with their war horses and their chariots and they would come to announce their rule in the reign and they would come to extract from the people what they needed to establish and build the kingdom in that place and so there's a royal energy to this but it's quizzical and it's paradoxical, isn't it?
Ramin Razavi:I mean, I always like to imagine the the little donkey, this was El Burrito, like this was a baby donkey. For my native Spanish speakers in the room, El Burrito, like the little guy. And I always get this picture, had to bring its mama with it because it hadn't been written before and was scared. I know. If you like animals, you're like, oh.
Ramin Razavi:We're trying to get one but Slav couldn't find one for the No, just kidding. We're not that kind of church. But they placed the blankets on the the little guy and and at some point, the son of man lift lifted up a leg and was like, okay, he's gonna hold me, you know. And you gotta imagine, it's like, we're coming to usher in the kingdom riding the donkey. But what's so incredible is there was a military code of that day and the military code said this, that you could not have a horse higher than the king.
Ramin Razavi:The king had to have the tallest horse because it's all about perspective. He had to look up at the king because it set a trajectory for how the king would treat you. He was above you and he came to pronounce to you what he needed from you so that you could serve his purposes. And so here comes the son of man and he's riding in low. So pretty much every eye is looking down on the son of man which is sending a message to the crowd.
Ramin Razavi:This king is not coming with chariots and war horses and battle axes and ramparts. This king is coming in sacrifice. This king is coming in a different posture. And what we see on Palm Sunday is only the prelude for the next four days because over the next four days, Jesus just keeps getting lower and lower and lower and lower. On John In John 13, he takes off his outer robe and he puts on a towel and he begins to wash the feet of the disciples.
Ramin Razavi:And then he makes his way to the Garden Of Gethsemane and scripture says that he kneels in prayer and begins to cry out to the father, if there's any other way, take this cup not my will but your will be done. And then he's falsely accused, He's arrested. He's beaten. His beard is plucked out of his face. He is mocked.
Ramin Razavi:He is arrested again second time and now he's brought before the Roman authorities. Jesus is scourged. Jesus is beaten. The flesh on his back is hanging off. His bones are all exposed, the prophet would have recorded.
Ramin Razavi:Jesus is paraded to an ugly instrument of death called the cross. He's pinned on the cross by savage nails. He breathes his last, he dies, he descends all the way to shale. He just kept kept getting lower and lower and lower and lower and then God counted to three and breathed. And the spirit of God filled him again and Jesus rose from the realm of the dead and he came back into the world to say that because I was willing to go to the lowest place, it has been disarmed for all of you.
Ramin Razavi:It no longer has power and authority. And so a king that enters the city on a donkey says that I'm not coming for a military conquest, I've gotta get to the cross. The cross is my throne. I've gotta be enthroned on the cross and descend into the grave so I can dismantle the power of death once and for all. You better believe I've got a kingdom coming but it's not the one you think of, it's one that goes for eternity because I'm conquering the grave.
Ramin Razavi:This is the kind of humble king that we serve. I love the way that Jesus said it in Mark ten forty two through 45 when all the disciples were jockeying for position. Can I sit at your right and your left hand? I mean, what a question. And he's like, yeah, no, that's been reserved for people.
Ramin Razavi:We've got reserved seating signs you know. And and and then he says, but you know how the rulers of the gentiles, they lord authority over each other. He's like, not so with you. He said, because not even the son of man. The son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life for a ransom of many.
Ramin Razavi:Here's why this matters so much for us today. If Jesus ride rode a donkey on that day, we become a army of sanctified donkey riders in this world. If Jesus put on the towel and began to wash feet, we become an almighty squad of holy foot washers here to serve the world around us. If Jesus took up his cross, then we become a crew of cross carriers to the world who are saying, I am willing to live in a pot a pattern, sorry, a pattern of sacrificial love to the world around me. Our king sets the tone for how we follow him.
Ramin Razavi:Eugene Peterson was famous for saying that we cannot follow Jesus any way that we would like. Our following of Jesus has to be consonant with his leading of us. And the king that we're following rode a donkey and kept getting lower and lower and lower so that the power of God could lift him above every power and principality. And if we are going to follow Jesus into the victory of resurrection life, it will come through the death to self and the emergence of the life of God that he only can breathe in us. He is a humble king who redefines power as sacrificial love and greatness greatness as the willingness to serve others.
Ramin Razavi:The third picture we get of Jesus is that Jesus is a healing king. Sometimes when we look at Palm Sunday, we stop after he's ridden into town and different versions of the synoptic gospels, thanks brother. Sometimes people just feel led of the Lord to to put cash on the stage, it's it's not a tip, don't worry, that's not how we roll. But what it is is for needs in the room so maybe God has some people in the room he he wants to meet your needs today. That's what that is just to give, thank you brother.
Ramin Razavi:But Jesus is a healing king and sometimes when we're looking at this story of the triumphal entry, we we stop with Jesus just coming in into Jerusalem but Matthew records that in the same beat, Jesus went straight to the temple courts. Now, he's not specific if that was that day later, other synoptic gospels place it on the next day. Matthew's not trying to get in an argument with Mark or Luke about when exactly it happened, but we know it did happen. And in coming to the temple, Jesus is making a profound statement that this place is his house. I love that what scripture records, he says that he comes into the temple courts and this is the the moment that Jesus begins to take out the the false worship that was going on in the temple.
Ramin Razavi:Scripture says that he begins to overthrow all the money exchangers which they would have been trying to get everybody to change their currency into the tyrian currency which was backed by traders who got the appropriate amount of silver and gold into the currency. And scripture says that he overturned all the animals and the doves and released them and the reason he did that is he was trying to undo this religious system that had provided a barrier for people getting into the presence of God. Because if you were coming to Jerusalem at that time at the Passover, you would have had to make sacrifice and you weren't probably gonna come all the way from Bethlehem with your animals. You were gonna make your way to the temple courts and the temple was arranged like this. You had the outer courts, the courts of the Gentiles and then that moved closer into the court of women and from the court of women, you made your way into the court of Israel and then you had the sanctuary and you had the holy of holies in the center of it all.
Ramin Razavi:And out on those furthest reaches was where all this commerce was going on. And so Jesus comes in and he begins to tear things apart. I love the way scripture said it. He overturns the tables and the benches selling doves, he drives out all who are buying and selling there, that's the animals and he says, it is written, my house will be called a house of prayer but you are making it a den of robbers. And what Jesus is trying to do here is undo a system.
Ramin Razavi:He's trying to undo a system that provided complexity, intentional barriers, lucrative income for some, and Jesus is trying to undo a system and make a statement that the system is over and the savior is here. What he's trying to make a statement about is that this system has actually created barriers for the people who are most in need from getting into the presence of God. Now I'm not gonna say that necessarily but could that be true sometimes in our church today? We're the barriers that we have created both in our own lives and as a community that keep people who are actually most in need from being able to get into the presence of God. Because we don't have money changers outside, we we don't have any animal swap going on out there.
Ramin Razavi:Thank you very much. There's a fairgrounds but we're not associated with that. But but the reality of our day is that we have so many mental categories that we fit people into. We fit experiences into. And sometimes without even knowing it, our unspoken biases create barriers from for the people who need to experience Jesus the most.
Ramin Razavi:And what Jesus was doing on this day, and I have a strong sense what Jesus wants to do today is release healing to people who are willing to come in desperation into his presence. Because there was not a Instagram campaign that went out and said, hey, guess what? Possible Messiah, possible savior of the world hanging out at the temple right now, anybody wanna come and receive healing? What they would have noticed and seen at that moment, the blind and the lame, were that the system's getting torn down. So what was embedded deep in their heart?
Ramin Razavi:A hunger for God. A hunger for God. There wasn't an altar call. There there wasn't a demonstrated invitation moment at all. There was just a hunger of God in the heart of desperate people to get into the presence of the one that they believe could change their life.
Ramin Razavi:And I I honestly believe today there are some of you in this room who are going to receive healing from Jesus today. And as I prayed into this and I thought about it, I I think there will be physical healings today, specifically believe that Jesus wants to lift the cloud of depression from some people today. And I was thinking about the prophet Isaiah chapter 35 that prophesied this moment that was gonna be a signal fire for anyone paying attention that this person was actually the messiah. What Isaiah 35 says, be strong and do not fear. How about receiving that healing from God today?
Ramin Razavi:Healing from fear that cripples your life. Be strong and do not fear. Your God will come and he will come with vengeance, with divine retribution. He will come to save you. Then then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Ramin Razavi:Then will the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool and the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals lay, grass and reeds will grow, papyrus will grow. Life is coming to the things that you considered completely dead and hopeless.
Ramin Razavi:And a highway will be there, a way to God. It will be called the way of holiness and it will be for all those who walk in that way. And why can you walk in it? Because Jesus came and he provided he is the way. It's not because you strived or tried or ran hard or efforted your way there, it's because he created a way.
Ramin Razavi:There's a highway. The unclean will not journey on it. Wicked fools, so don't don't bring any wicked fools, will not go about it. No lion will be there or any ravenous beast, they will not be found there but only the redeemed will walk there and those the lord has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing, everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Ramin Razavi:And some of you today, God wants to take this heavy heavy I get this picture of like a bandana that you've just worn as as as a downcast spirit and he wants to lift that and he wants to crown you today with everlasting joy and I love this, gladness and joy will overtake them. It's not just kinda sliding in, it's it's gonna overtake you today. Gladness and joy will overtake them and sorrow and sighing will flee away. Jesus longs to heal his children. And I don't have time to do a full theology of healing but I'll just simply say this for today.
Ramin Razavi:Any healing that you experience this side of heaven which will ultimately be when Jesus returns the full healing of both our bodies, our minds, our souls, the land, all of creation is gonna be healed with Jesus. Any healing you receive before Jesus comes back not on a donkey but he's coming back on a war horse the second time around is an extension of his love for you. It's an extension of his love for you. So if you've tripped up over whether or not God can heal today, just ask yourself a better question, does God love today? Because what God loves to do is to heal his children.
Ramin Razavi:He longs to heal his children. He longs to set you free from anxiety and depression. He longs to set you free from sickness. He longs to set you free from disease. He is a healing God and he has come near in Jesus.
Ramin Razavi:He is a God who heals. Now this healing that he performed that day would have been pretty observable because it was of blind people and it was of paraplegics or lame as the scripture actually says. So this wasn't like I had a headache tested. Okay. I feel better.
Ramin Razavi:I mean that you you can, you know, can't see that. I saw a blind man just a few days ago, he was crossing PCH with his cape. I was like, bro, you are brave or really good with that. Got all the way across, it's amazing. And these were people that previously did not have ambulatory function.
Ramin Razavi:So this is gonna cause a ruckus. So if you thought the triumphal entry was good, it that was just the beginning of the amplitude of praise that was getting turned up on this day because now Jesus is healing and what this last picture gives us is the revelation that Jesus is a glorious king who calls forth praise that puts an end to his enemies. And so as Jesus is healing, all of the children in the temple courts and I love this because we just had a youth conference here. So if you would have been here for the youth conference, this entire area was flooded with youth just losing their minds in worship to Jesus. So I don't I don't know what picture you get when Jesus is healing and the blind and the lame are seeing and walking again and the children start to shout out in the temple courts, Hosanna to the son of David but it was rocking that day.
Ramin Razavi:Hosanna to the son of David. These kids are going for it in praise to God himself. But the authorities of the temple did not appreciate this. It says the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things Jesus did and the children shouting in the temple courts, Hosanna to the son of David, Psalm eighteen one eighteen again, and they were indignant, they were frustrated, they did not want this to be going down. And they asked Jesus a question, do you hear what these children are saying?
Ramin Razavi:They asked him which is not really a question, is it? It's a statement. Like they shouldn't be doing they know better. But I mean, all the parents of the room, you know kids are just gonna say it. Right?
Ramin Razavi:You ever try to tell your like four year old a secret? I did that once, that didn't work out too well. And these kids are seeing the the presence of God, they're seeing God in front of them and they have eyes to see it. And all they can do is pour out praise, Hosanna to the son of David, Hosanna to the son of David. And I I love Jesus' reply.
Ramin Razavi:He's like, yes. Yes. I do hear it. But haven't you guys read scripture? And then he quotes Psalm eight and I wanna take us to Psalm eight.
Ramin Razavi:Anytime Jesus quotes something, it's great to get a context of what the full thing he was quoting is. And he says, Lord our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory in the heavens and through the praise of children and infants, you have established a stronghold against your enemies to silence the foe and the avenger. This is what Jesus' response is carrying, that you've called forth praise from children and the result of that praise is it establishes a stronghold. And I I like the k j v version, a bulwark.
Ramin Razavi:Does anybody have the k j v? It's a stronghold or a bulwark that silences or vanquishes your enemies. So what Jesus is saying is that seeing him rightly and worshiping him in his glory calls forth a kind of pure praise that gives us victory over the enemy. And why this happens and what Jesus is even saying in this text specifically is that it is perfect praise. That's in the language that he's using.
Ramin Razavi:This is perfect praise. Now did they have the right instrumentation? Did they have the right sacrifices? No. He just dismantled that.
Ramin Razavi:What did these kids have? They had pure hearts. What does Jesus receive as perfect praise? Praise that comes from pure hearts. And what's the result of that perfect praise that Jesus receives from pure hearts?
Ramin Razavi:It defeats the power of the enemy. And here's how this works. When you are worshiping God in spirit and in truth, you are as closely aligned with reality as you could actually be. Eugene Peterson used to say that worship is the means by which we interrupt our preoccupations with our self and attend to the presence of God. So when we are worshiping God, we are living in the most accurate alignment to reality as it is as it possibly can be.
Ramin Razavi:That's why the scriptures that teach us to worship the New Testament are always in the imperative tense which means it's a command, which means you're not waiting till you get the feelings on board before you start lifting the praise. You start lifting the praise and then allow the holy spirit to get your emotions in line with reality as it is. Rejoice in who? My circumstances? No.
Ramin Razavi:There's not a lot going on in my circumstances I wanna rejoice in today. I rejoice in the lord who came from heaven to earth and rose from the grave. That's why in the book of Habakkuk when it says, hey man, I'm looking around and there's absolutely no figs on the trees, there's no cattle in the stall, all the sheep have run out of the pen, there's no fruit on the vine and there are no crops in the fields and yet I will be joyful in the Lord. I will rejoice in God my savior. Why?
Ramin Razavi:Because through worship, he's made my feet like the feet of the deer and he enables me to go on the high places. So what worship does, it does not move the challenge out of your way. It enables you by the transforming power of the holy spirit to become the kind of person who can scale the mountains of life with joy in your heart because you are living from a place of praise. This is what Jesus empowers us to live like by the power of the holy spirit and that's why I love this moment so much. These kids are standing in the very temple courts lifting an anthem of praise to Jesus which he is receiving and the authorities are powerless to do anything against it.
Ramin Razavi:And when you choose to lift a song of praise to God, even in what feels like your darkest night, the spirit of God breaks in and gives you a fixed and a firm foundation to stand on. And it is true for my life and I can imagine it's true for so many of you that your strongest songs of hope were born on your darkest days because that is where you met the mercy of God. And so as we move to response today, we can all go ahead and stand. Our heart is just to create space for you to come and receive from Jesus. He is the one who ministers to us.
Ramin Razavi:He is the one who heals. He is the one who reveals his glory to us. If you already feel led to respond respond and just want to come to the altar, you can freely do that. Our prayer team, you guys can come on up as well just to be ready to receive people. If you're new to Garden Church, part of our culture is we believe Jesus wants to actually minister the things we just talked about in scripture into our lived experience right here and right now.
Ramin Razavi:He wants to appropriate to us and experience everything that he made possible through his death and his resurrection. And so when we come to receive prayer, we simply open our hands and somebody from our prayer team will come and place a hand on your shoulder and they're not the ones ministering to you, Jesus is ministering to you. And they simply are gonna companion what God is already doing by his spirit in your heart. But as we close, I just wanna go back to that psalm that we began the service with, Psalm 24 because it's a welcoming psalm and we've we've seen through the scripture today these four beautiful images of Jesus. These four pictures of the kind of king that he is resolute to come in love and humble to serve.
Ramin Razavi:Healing in every way, wanting to pour out his love in the form of healing and longing to call forth praise from us today that will give us victory over the darkness that we feel. But we have to let him in. He rode into Jerusalem that day but we have to let him into our hearts. And Psalm 24 is very much a picture as we've looked at already at the beginning of worship of Jesus coming into the town but Psalm 24 is also a picture of Jesus ascending the Hill Of Calvary, the one with clean hands and the one with a pure heart and calling us to lift up our heads, to open up our gates to let the king of glory in. And so let's just open our hands and prepare to receive from Jesus.
Ramin Razavi:Lord, you say that the earth is yours and everything in it. The world and all who live in it. For you founded it upon the waters and you created it upon the seas. And who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Only he who has clean hands and a pure heart, who doesn't lift his soul up to an idol or swear by what is false.
Ramin Razavi:He will receive blessing from the Lord and victory from God his savior, such as a generation who seek your face, oh God of Jacob. And so now lord, I I pray that with a vision of you as the one on the cross ascending the hill, I pray now lord that by the holy spirit, we would lift up our heads ancient gates. We would be lifted up in our in our hearts. We'd open the gates of our hearts that the king of glory might come in. And who is this king of glory?
Ramin Razavi:He is the lord strong and mighty. He is the lord mighty in battle. Who is this king of glory? So we lift up our heads, we open the gates of our hearts right now to you Jesus. Would the king of glory come in, the lord almighty.
Ramin Razavi:Jesus, you are the only king of glory.
Intro/Outro:Thank you for listening. For more information, please visit us online at garden.church.