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"Here as in Heaven."
For more information visit : garden.church
You're listening to the Garden Church podcast. We're in a series called Church on Fire, a journey through the book of Acts. This is a story of ordinary people filled with the spirit carrying the presence of Jesus into every corner of
Intro/Outro:The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and in us today. Join us as we step into the call to be people set on fire for his mission.
Ramin Razavi:How are we doing 11AM? Alright. I love that. Well, this morning, we have a privilege of taking the next step in our Church on Fire series. But before we launch into scripture, I wanna pray.
Ramin Razavi:I've just had a sense all day that there's just a lot of heaviness that people are carrying. It's not necessarily bad things, it's the things of life. And I think what the Lord wants to do is to unburden your heart today. To give you the chance to say you're more capable of carrying these things than I am. That's a biblical word called repentance.
Ramin Razavi:Saying I'm done doing it on my own God, I'm ready for you to do it. So I wanna lean into that in prayer before we start reading scripture. Also wanna pray for our lead pastor Darren and the team from Garden, they're in Boise, Idaho today. Woo hoo. There's fall colors in Boise, Idaho.
Ramin Razavi:And they're ministering at River House Church, one of our partner churches. And so let's just let's pray for them as well and that the Lord would move. So Holy Spirit, we welcome you today. And heavenly Father, we're grateful for your love for us. And savior Jesus, we pray now that you'd walk among us.
Ramin Razavi:And you'd begin to now open the padlocks that we keep on our hearts and let us come honestly before you today believing that you who gave your life for us, how much more would you delight to give us all things in your kingdom? And so we pray holy spirit for you to fill us today. We pray for your anointing and your power upon our lead pastor as he's in Boise serving and just pray for the kingdom to come there, kingdom to come here. Lord we wanna see heaven on earth. And we thank you for your blood and your resurrection that make this possible.
Ramin Razavi:We praise one family in the name of Jesus. Amen and amen. Well, the series that we're in is Church on Fire and that is our banner over the book of Acts. And if you're just joining us, the book of Acts is the second volume in a two part series by Luke himself. And what scripture tells us is that Luke wrote his gospel so that we would have confidence or certainty about the things that Jesus did and taught while he was here on planet earth as a human being.
Ramin Razavi:And what he wrote Acts for was to give us confidence and certainty that Jesus is continuing to do and move in powerful ways through the power of the Holy Spirit, through regular ordinary people like us. So that's good news, isn't it? And this is what Acts is about is that the same Jesus that was moving in the gospels is now moving through the church by the power and the person of the Holy Spirit. And so to catch us all up where we've been in Acts, Jesus is alive from the dead, news flash. And he spends forty days talking to his disciples about the kingdom of God.
Ramin Razavi:That's Jesus' primary subject matter. He's telling them about the nature of the kingdom and how they can access its power and its presence here and now. And then in Acts one eight, he kinda makes a banner statement that we came around early in the series. He says, you will receive power and you will become my witnesses to in Jerusalem, in Judea, and Samaria to the ends of earth. You're gonna be witnesses of my life, my death and my resurrection.
Ramin Razavi:I like thinking about it this way. What Jesus said is, I wanna get you close enough to the ignition point of the kingdom coming, which is my resurrection. So that your heart would begin to burn and your life would be consumed with the fire of the holy spirit so that when you walk out into the world, you have the flicker of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in your eyes. That's what it means to be a witness. It's not a evangelistic program, it's not a sign up and assault guys at the mall waiting for their wife to try on jeans, it's not going out with tracks.
Ramin Razavi:Being a witness is this, your heart gets so consumed by love for Jesus that your eyes are full of his light and you can't help but talk about what you've seen and heard in his goodness. And that's what he's saying is I want you to be my witnesses which means you have to first get touched by the power of the holy spirit. And so he says stay here. Don't go anywhere. Do not attempt to do this on your own power and strength.
Ramin Razavi:And so they're praying in the temple courts and the holy spirit comes and they feel the mighty rushing wind. They see the tongues of fire alighting on each one of them. They start to stand up and speak in every known language of people there at the feast of Pentecost declaring the wonders of God and then Peter who was scared of a servant girl stands up and begins to testify saying, you know what? This is what's going down. Joel prophesied the spirit would get poured out on all flesh.
Ramin Razavi:That's exactly what's happening right here and now. And then Peter goes on in the sermon and that's what we're gonna talk about today. But what he's gonna go on to tell us is I want you to have confidence. I want you to have certainty. I want you to have assurance about who this Jesus is because what we're after is not just chasing an experience, salvation is found in a person.
Ramin Razavi:And so what Peter is saying is we've gotta get all the way to the source. You may love the mighty rushing wind and you may be blown away by the tongues of fire and you may love the languages that are being spoken so that people hear the wonders of God in their native tongues. But underneath that, the ignition point for all that is that God sent his son into the world, he died on a cross, he was raised by the power of God, he ascended and is seated at the right hand of the father and he's pouring out the holy spirit and the security and the hope and the peace and the power that you're looking for in life is not found in an experience, it's found in a person who is salvation, his name is Jesus. And so that's what Peter is gonna go about doing and we're gonna look at this sermon. It's in Acts chapter two beginning in verse 22 and I wanna invite you to stand if you are able to stand as we read the word of God.
Ramin Razavi:And as we read this sermon what we're gonna look at are those elements of the full gospel. That Jesus lived, that Jesus died, that Jesus was raised by the power of God, that Jesus ascended and is seated at the right hand of the father and finally there's an invitation for us to come and to receive life from Jesus. Acts two twenty two, fellow Israelites listen to this, that's just a nice warm introduction. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs which God did among you through him as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge and you with the help of wicked men put him to death by nailing him to the cross.
Ramin Razavi:But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. David had said about him, I saw the Lord always before me because he's at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body will also rest in hope because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead. You will not let your holy one see decay.
Ramin Razavi:You have made known to me the paths of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence. Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah and he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead nor did his body see decay.
Ramin Razavi:God has raised this Jesus to life and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the father the promised holy spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend to heaven and yet David said, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make all your enemies a footstool for your feet. Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah.
Ramin Razavi:When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, brothers, what shall we do? Peter replied, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promises for you and your children and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call. With many other words he warned them and he pleaded with them, save yourself from this corrupt generation. Those who accepted his message were baptized and about 3,000 were added to their number that day.
Ramin Razavi:Let it be in our day, thanks be to God, this is the word of the Lord that you may be seated. I just love that, that from the very beginning, the first act of when the Holy Spirit comes is that a sermon gets preached. Now that's good news if you're a preacher, right? Right. And I'm not just saying that but the sermon gets preached.
Ramin Razavi:It's one of the first things that happens in the book of Acts and what's so powerful about that is Peter's sermon has a distinct theme. I don't know if you caught it. It's got a distinct theme, anybody? Wow. Jesus.
Ramin Razavi:You know it's the right church answer most of the time. Jesus. The theme of Peter's sermon. He's going after this theme of Jesus and what's so powerful about preaching is there's two words in Greek that are often described preaching. There's karouso which is the act of proclaiming and then there's kerygma which is the body of proclamation.
Ramin Razavi:And on this first day of the church when the church is born, the holy spirit comes, the gospel is preached and the church is born. What happens is this proclamation goes out and the proclamation of the life of Jesus is the foundation that the church was built on and will always grow from. And so preaching is so essential in the life of the local church because it aligns us to reality as it actually is. It didn't say let's have an open forum and see what kind of ideas exist out there. It said let's have someone full of the holy spirit proclaim truth into the world because the world desperately needs truth.
Ramin Razavi:Here is the thing, every single one of you today is living from a reference point in life. That is what you believe to be true. The sad thing is many of us don't know what that is. We're just trying to figure it out. We're trying to do life.
Ramin Razavi:We're trying to protect ourselves, provide for ourselves, achieve for ourselves, succeed in the ways that we think we need to succeed in life and we find that our life is slipping away instead of being built up. And the reason for that is you have the wrong reference point. Self is not a viable reference point for human thriving. It never has been and it never will be. There is one viable reference point for human thriving.
Ramin Razavi:He is the Lord Jesus Christ. The source of all life, the author of life himself, the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre says it this way, before we can ask the question how we should live in the world, we have to ask the previous question of what story or what stories am I a part of? And this first sermon is Peter saying to anyone who had ears that would hear, Jesus is the author of life and your life begins to take on meaning, purpose and wholeness when you begin to build it on the firm foundation of his life, his death, his resurrection and his ascension. And so what we're gonna do for the next few minutes is look through those five elements of what I would call the full and complete gospel.
Ramin Razavi:That Jesus lived, that Jesus died, that Jesus was resurrected by the power of God and that Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, this position of authority and that he invites us to repent and to turn to him to receive the life that we were designed to live. So let's start off, his life. Verse 22, it says Jesus was accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs which God did among you. He's saying God put his power on exhibition through Jesus. It's as though he was saying that the moment Jesus showed up, he started lighting fires and making waves.
Ramin Razavi:If you would have been around Jesus during that time, your first response would have been, this guy is crazy. He's a wild man. He's casting out demons. He's confronting religious authorities. He's feeding the hungry.
Ramin Razavi:He's performing miracles. He's turning the Sea Of Galilee into a dance floor. He is calling down provision from heaven. He's got power and authority that we've never seen before. This is no ordinary man.
Ramin Razavi:And what God was doing as scripture says through miracles, wonders and signs, miracles are an extension of the power of God, the kingdom of God on earth. And what do they do? They make you wonder. They fill you with awe and amazement that something new is here. That God's kingdom is at hand.
Ramin Razavi:And what do they provide? Signs. So you don't look at the sign itself, you look past the sign to what it's pointing towards and you see the revelation of Jesus and you see the revelation of his kingdom. And he's saying, God put all this on display for you so that you could clue in, so you could have eyes to see that God's kingdom has come near and you can receive life from this kingdom. Jesus wasted absolutely no time doing this.
Ramin Razavi:In fact, he did it when he was a baby getting dedicated at the temple. Luke chapter two verse 25. It says, now there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation or salvation of Israel and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the holy spirit that he would not die before he had seen the lord's messiah.
Ramin Razavi:Moved by the spirit, he went into the temple courts when the parents of Jesus brought in the child Jesus to do for him what was custom of the law required. Simeon took him in his arms and praised God saying, sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the sight of all nations. A light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel. I don't know if any of you when you dedicated your baby last weekend somebody's like, I have seen the salvation of the Lord. Jesus himself is salvation that's what Simeon is saying.
Ramin Razavi:And I have seen salvation because I have seen this promised baby that has been born unto a virgin and is carrying the redemption of the world in his six pounds twelve ounce body and he is coming to bring salvation to God's people. My eyes have seen his salvation. I am in awe and wonder of God. And that's the question that comes with the life of Jesus. Are you in awe of Jesus?
Ramin Razavi:Or has your heart gotten calloused because of repetition? Have you lost touch with the fact that the miracle worker walks among us today? Have you lost calibration to the fact that the kingdom of heaven is open? That he has loosed the chains of the grave, That resurrection life is possible. That miracles are breaking out.
Ramin Razavi:That's what happened as soon as Jesus started to walk around Galilee in that day. In Luke chapter four what ends up happening is he drives out an impure spirit. In verse 36 it says, all the people were amazed and said with what words is he doing this? News about him spread through the whole area. Then again in Luke chapter five he heals a man with leprosy and it says news about him spread all the more so that crowds of people came to hear him and he healed their sicknesses.
Ramin Razavi:And then again in Luke chapter seven, he raises a widow's son and guess what? They were all filled with awe and praise God, a great prophet has appeared among us. God has come to help his people. Salvation has drawn near. This news about Jesus, it spread like wildfire throughout Judea and the surrounding countryside.
Ramin Razavi:See what made them gasp in amazement, we often just yawn at. And maybe what God needs to do to begin in your heart is to awaken you again to the privilege and the glory that it is to stare into the face of Christ and to not be consumed by holy fire. The reality that God has drawn near. If you flip the page in Acts two forty two, we love Acts two forty two because they're together, they're fellowshipping, they have a common meal and they're sharing lawnmowers and it's all going marvelously well. They didn't have lawnmowers, it's just a bad joke.
Ramin Razavi:But what does it say that they were filled with awe? Awe is one of the primary trademarks of the church and let me just say this, that our witness depends on us being a people filled with awe and wonder. The degree of awe and wonder that we live with in our daily lives depicts to the world whether our God is in the grave or he's ascended to the right hand of the father. And if our lives are just mundane, if our lives are are captured by a cycle of boredom, if we read the scriptures and we are not knocked back by looking at this wild man that casts out demons and heals people and calls dead people out of the ground again. We are not reading the right bible or we're reading the right bible with the wrong lens.
Ramin Razavi:We've gotta allow the holy spirits to stir awe and wonder in us again. And let me just say this, God is a mystery beyond your knowledge. You gotta let God wreck your paradigms once in a while. You know why? Because that's what the Apostle Paul did who wrote the seminal work of theology, the book of Romans.
Ramin Razavi:They call it the Everest of theology. And you know what he says in the middle of it? I love this. He's writing Romans and I get this picture in my mind that he kinda fell down on the ground and he's got the pen still and he says it's, oh the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his thoughts.
Ramin Razavi:His paths are beyond tracing out. He's like, who's ever known the mind of the Lord? Who's ever been his counselor because from him and to him and through him are all things to him be the glory forever and ever. I am lost in the endless mystery of God and I could not be more at home. Amen.
Ramin Razavi:We've gotta get back to a place where we're filled with awe and wonder of the glory of God. Jesus lived that should fill us with awe. Point number two, Jesus died. And the way that Peter talks about it is he said that this went on by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge. And it's gripped by two realities here.
Ramin Razavi:One is divine determination and the other is human responsibility. And what we have to understand in this is that Jesus did not die so that God could love us. Jesus died because of how much God loves us. His dying did not make it possible for God to love you. God so loved you that he sent Jesus to you and this was all by his planning, his purpose, his predestination, his foreknowledge.
Ramin Razavi:God did not have to come up with a plan b when Adam rebelled. He already foresaw the rebellion and had planned before the foundations of the world that his son would be the rescue mission. This is how thoughtful and how loving our father is. We see this played out in the gospel of John in John chapter 10. Jesus says it this way and I love it.
Ramin Razavi:He says the reason my father loves me is that I lay down my life only to take it up again. No one takes it from me but I lay it down on my own accord. He said, I have authority to lay it down again and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my father. So Jesus saying this move towards the cross, this is not because Judas had a great idea and the Romans got on board.
Ramin Razavi:He's saying they are all pawns in an eternal plan to bring healing and redemption to humanity again. And I love how he amplifies it in John chapter 19. He's now been brought before Pilate. He's already been flogged which would take someone to the inch of their life. He's got a crown of thorns that's been beaten into his head and in verse eight, when Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid.
Ramin Razavi:What did Pilate see that maybe we don't see? He's standing before a battered man and this guy's got legions of soldiers at his disposal and he's afraid. He went back inside the palace. Where do you come from? He asked Jesus.
Ramin Razavi:Good question. But Jesus gave him no answer. Do you refuse to speak to me? Pilate said. Don't you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?
Ramin Razavi:Oh man, Pilate. Oh man, Pilate. Jesus answered, you would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin. See, what you can tell about the love of God is this, is it's not a huge deal if you're in a position of needing to sacrifice and you really don't have any other option.
Ramin Razavi:But we're talking about the author of life who by the snap of his finger can command a legion of angel armies to swoop in and to change the situation. He holds that back because of love. He holds that back because he had his face as scripture said, set like flint on the cross to accomplish the purpose for which he had come into the world. And if these New Testament pictures aren't enough, I'm just gonna throw this slide up quickly. These are the promises that Jesus fulfilled from the Old Testament about what the Messiah would do.
Ramin Razavi:And this is just a short list of over 300 of them that exist if you wanna know what it meant that God ordained this before the foundations of the world. And then in second, first Peter chapter one, he says, for you know that it was not with perishable things. Like silver or gold that you got redeemed from the empty way of life that was handed down to you from your forefathers. But it was the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen, say it with me, before the creation of the world but was now revealed in these last times for your sake. This is love.
Ramin Razavi:Jesus died and Jesus' death is a declaration that God loves you. John would write it this way, this is how God showed his love among us that he sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. And so the first question is are we in awe of the life of Jesus? The second question is are you gripped by the love of Jesus that led him to a predetermined, divinely inspired death?
Ramin Razavi:Because the father knew this was the only way to redeem us back from the grip of sin was that if the son would die. And we get our picture of Jesus on the cross and we see his wounds and we see the mockery that was happening beneath him and we see his body where the scripture says you could have counted his bones as he hung on the cross. And in that moment, what does he say? Father, forgive them. Father, forgive them.
Ramin Razavi:And we are so often caught in moments in life where we are desperately searching for some sense of value or worth in the life in life. Can I just point to the cross and say God made a statement about your value to him? He made a final statement and if you believe in him, he transfers not only the sin off of your life but he transfers onto your life what the New Testament calls the spirit of adoption. Because now you've received a spirit that doesn't make you a slave any longer to fear but you've received the spirit of adoption and by him you can cry out Abba Father, Daddy God. And if you're an heir of God then you become a co heir with Christ that if you had to suffer for a little while you get to look forward to glory.
Ramin Razavi:This is love. God demonstrates his love for you through the cross. Are we gripped by the love of God shown through Christ on the cross? Peter keeps going because the story doesn't end there. We got a little something we call Easter around here coming up next.
Ramin Razavi:And it has, it transitions with two of my favorite words in any passage of the New Testament, but God. And anytime you hear a but God in the New Testament, you better put a helmet on because what but God signifies is and I know it could be funny but two t's, I know that's funny. But it's not, it's just one t. But God signifies this. It looked like everything was was literally going to hell and God turned the story around.
Ramin Razavi:But God, I I like to use the word because I'm a sports guy, it's the ultimate comeback story. Like you're looking at nothing but darkness and God says hold on. Count to three. I've got something else in mind. But God is a signifier that unless God says the story is over, it's not over yet.
Ramin Razavi:It's never too late, it's never too far, it's never, you've never gone too long because God can redeem any story. And so what the next movement of the gospel is is this, is that resurrection life comes and the question that I have for you, do you actually know the resurrection life of Christ? Or are you trying to grind out some kind of Christian obedience in your own strength because that sucks and it's impossible. And you will wear yourself out, you will exhaust yourself and you will find yourself burned out before Tuesday if that's the way you're trying to live. And so Peter gives us this picture of resurrection life.
Ramin Razavi:But God raised Jesus from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. Keyword here is the agony of death. That's the same word that they would use to describe the pains of giving birth to a child. That God is liberating Christ from this kind of agony. What he's saying is is that the tomb becomes a form of a womb And now Christ is being born again into the world as new creation.
Ramin Razavi:This is what Paul was writing about in first Corinthians chapter 15. He said, Christ is the first fruits from among the dead just like the grain was sown into the ground. So Christ is coming back up out of the ground and if he's the first fruits, guess who the rest of the harvest are. That's us. That's the church.
Ramin Razavi:That's those who trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I don't know if you know this about the gospel, but when Jesus returns on that day and the angels sound the trumpet through the skies, it says that the dead in Christ are raised in the sky and the imperishable is clothed the perishables clothed imperishable and the mortal with the immortal and we get a whole new body, we get a whole new existence, a whole new reality of the radiance of the glory of God. And in that day it says, where o death is your victory and where o death is your sting? This is the resurrection we await. This is what we're hoping in is that Jesus returns and he remakes all things and brings the kingdom of heaven and it's fullness on the earth.
Ramin Razavi:And he said, Jesus was the firstborn of that when he came out of the grave. He testified that that is reality and that's happening. And the second thing that it says is it was impossible for the grave to keep hold of him. I love this idea. Hebrews chapter two verse 14 gives us a little deeper look into what Peter was talking about.
Ramin Razavi:It says, since the children, he's speaking of us, have flesh and blood, he too, Jesus shared in their humanity so that by his death, he might break the power. And I did a little study on that phrase, break the power. It means to reduce to nothing. It means to render idle. It means to inactivate, to render inoperative, to cause a person or a thing to have no further efficacy.
Ramin Razavi:I like that one. To deprive a force, to cause to cease, to put an end to, to annul, to abolish and to be utterly done away with. So Jesus did those things to death. And so you get this picture that as Jesus is being betrayed and as Jesus is being led to this mockery of a trial and as Jesus is standing before Pilate, you get this picture that the powers and the principalities of the world are thinking like, I think we've got him. We've got this guy like he has been rebuking us, he's been casting us out, he has been silencing us, he has been shutting down our dominion of darkness.
Ramin Razavi:And when Jesus breathes his last and he is taken off the tomb and put into the grave, the grave thinks they're receiving a Galilean carpenter. They got a whole lot more. They got the author of life. They got the ancient of days. They got the one who dwells in unapproachable light.
Ramin Razavi:They got the image of the invisible God and the first born over all creation. They got the radiance of the glory of God in the exact representation of his being. And in the grave, Jesus preaches it says in scripture, I don't know what the content was, I'm pretty sure it was him himself and he preaches and he unleashes in the grave a firestorm of love, glory and power from God to the point that the grave cannot contain him anymore and he's raised into resurrection life. As the early church fathers said, Jesus once and for all destroyed death through the dazzling of divinity. The power was too great for the grave to hold Jesus.
Ramin Razavi:This is the power of resurrection life. Do you know it or not? You know right now if you do or not. You know right now. If you are living this life on your own strength and power or you actually know the resurrection life of Christ.
Ramin Razavi:Jesus wants you to know his resurrection life. This is what Paul talks about in Galatians two twenty. There is this terrible theology out there that the Christian life is Jesus died for me so I live for him. That is so unbiblical. You know what the You know what a proper theology of the Christian life is?
Ramin Razavi:Jesus died for me and I died too. That's what Paul says in Galatians two twenty. For I have been crucified. I've been crucified. So how do I know resurrection life?
Ramin Razavi:With by a 10 step plan or by trying harder or by being really disciplined or by doing all my practices? No. I know it because I die to myself. I've been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the body I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and he gave himself to me.
Ramin Razavi:Resurrection life is available today. How? By repenting. Embracing the joy of repentance. Say God I'm done doing this on my own.
Ramin Razavi:I want you to clothe me in the resurrection of Christ. I want you to clothe me with the power of heaven. I want you to fill my heart with your love and I want you to overwhelm my senses with your peace. I need to know a joy that doesn't have a limit and I need to know a hope that does not run out. I need to know unconquerable strength in this life and I need to live with courage in this life and I can't produce that on my own.
Ramin Razavi:I need to tap my heart into the ancient of days who is the source of eternal life, who said he would pour out the spirit so I'm thirsty God. I repent today God. I turn my life to you today God. That is how we know resurrection life. So he's resurrected from the dead and then he ascends.
Ramin Razavi:And this covers all the way from, you could consider it verse 25 all the way to what I wanna read here, verse 33. It says that he's exalted to the right hand of God and he has received from the father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear, what they were seeing on the day of Pentecost. And in the subtext here, Peter had quoted Psalm 16 saying this is what Jesus saw. Anytime you see a prophetic Psalm like this and it's in the first person, David may have been writing it but Jesus' voice is speaking it to him. So it's Jesus who's saying how did I get through the grave?
Ramin Razavi:Well I got through the grave because I saw the Lord always before me. My heart's glad, my tongue rejoices, my body's gonna rest in hope. He's not gonna abandon me and he sure didn't. He made known to me the paths of life and he filled me with joy in his presence. And just in the same way that he applied Psalm 16 to the resurrection, he applied Psalm one ten to the ascension.
Ramin Razavi:And he's saying that what David said is I The Lord said to my Lord. So God the father said to God the son, sit at my right hand and I'm gonna make everything a footstool for you. I love that picture. You get to tread on things. This is like language from Psalm 91.
Ramin Razavi:Don't you love Psalm 91? If you make the Lord your refuge in the most higher dwelling place, he's gonna give you authority to tread and trample on the serpent and the great snake. Isn't that awesome? Anybody else wanna trample on serpents and great snakes? I do, all day long.
Ramin Razavi:Crush their heads, thank you Lord. We have authority. That's what this is. I know it sounds funny but it's not funny. We have authority.
Ramin Razavi:You can pray the blood of Jesus over your house. You can pray. You can pray the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus and the ascension of Jesus over your life every single morning. I pray those things over my life every morning, over my family every single morning and say, Lord, I'm coming into the place of authority today. Why?
Ramin Razavi:Because I have authority? No, I have no authority. You have all authority in heaven on earth and I'm coming into alignment with you. And when I come into alignment with you, guess what happens? I get to extend your authority into the world around me.
Ramin Razavi:This is how this works. That's why in Psalm 91, we love it because it's like, oh God you're my refuge. Oh God you're my dwelling place. I get in a cozy tent with you God. And I I love that stuff personally.
Ramin Razavi:I I Very intimate guy. I really love that kind of stuff. I really do. I love it. But here's the beautiful thing about scripture.
Ramin Razavi:The security that you're searching for comes from living in intimacy with the one who has ultimate authority. That's right. So you're looking for security. If you're living through life and you're like totally insecure all the time, you don't know what people think of you, you're obsessed with your image, you were almost too obsessed with your image to come to church today, you're constantly thinking about yourself, you're always thinking about yourself. If you're to be honest, you're the only person you actually ever think about.
Ramin Razavi:And I know that because that was me. I still remember in college when I came to Christ having the first real thought about someone else other than myself. I can remember that. And what I wanna share with you today is that Jesus takes you out of insecurity and puts you into his security when you have intimacy with him because he's the one with all the authority. And so when you're intimate with the one with all the authority, you don't really have to worry about what everyone else thinks about you so much.
Ramin Razavi:He gives you identity. And that's why when Peter brings this thing to a close, the summit of this sermon, what he says, I want you to be assured. I want you to be confident. I want you to be secure in the fact that God has made Jesus Lord and Christ. If he was saying it today, he might have said something like this, God has made Jesus a king who saves.
Ramin Razavi:He's got all the power and all the authority and he's able to save you. And so the scripture goes on and maybe you're feeling this today. We've prayed people would feel this today. It says when the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, brothers, what shall we do? Now cut to the heart is far more than just an emotional response to something though it may feel that way.
Ramin Razavi:I like to think of cut to the heart as this, it is the crystallization of your discontent with the current life you're living. And maybe you've been there before, maybe you're there right now. You're like, I have been doing this my own way and it's not working. That's being cut to the heart. That's God who is the ultimate heart surgeon getting past all the fluff and all your layers and all your veneers and all your masks and speaking to your heart and saying I have more for you, I have better for you And I want you to get clear with the fact that it's not gonna come by continuing to try to find life on your own, it's gotta come through turning to me.
Ramin Razavi:So they were cut to the heart and then they say, what shall we do? And Peter replies, he says, here's here's what I want you to do. I want you to repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the Holy Spirit. This promise is for you and for your children, for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord your God will call. I want you to repent and be baptized.
Ramin Razavi:Here's the thing, repenting is not just changing your mind, it's a reorientation of your whole being back to Jesus. Seeing based on what I've just heard about who you are Lord, the only thing I can do is turn my whole being back to you and to say that you can have it all. I'm not gonna try to do this on my own any longer. I'm not gonna try to prop up a life that isn't working at all on my own strength. I'm gonna give up the idols.
Ramin Razavi:I'm gonna confess the sin. I'm gonna bring it all to you because I know that if I bring it all to you, what does scripture say I receive? I receive forgiveness. Do you realize that the crushing burden of the sin, the shame and the fear that you live with can be removed by simply turning to Jesus? And he's not standing at a distance waiting for you to get that all figured out before he calls you home.
Ramin Razavi:He's simply saying, would you come to me and let me carry that off of you? So let's stand as we begin to respond. And he goes on, he says, I want you to repent but I also want you to be baptized. Being baptized is this invitation to be clothed in the new life that Christ offers us. That's what Paul will say in Romans chapter six, he says don't you know that if you're baptized, you're buried with Christ and you're raised to the newness of life and we will be doing baptisms on November 16 but a prelude to baptism is simply confessing to Jesus that you believe in him and you want his life today.
Ramin Razavi:And so if you're thinking about it this way, if you have come into today and what you're carrying is heaviness that you cannot manage on your own. What you're carrying today is the weight of sin or shame or a cycle of brokenness that you continue to find yourself living in. The response that God invites you today to is to repent, to turn to Jesus. And the crazy thing about so many expressions of the faith is we think, we actually think that we have to fix this before we turn to Jesus. And I love the way that Luke's gospel says it.
Ramin Razavi:He says, don't you know that heaven rejoices more over one heart that repents than over 99 who may not have needed to? Like, do you do we get that? Repentance is a joy because it leads to freedom. Trying to carry it all and manage it all and solve it all on your own, there's a word for that. It's called slavery.
Ramin Razavi:And Jesus went to the cross, he died on the cross, he went to the grave to destroy the slavery to sin that we were born into and to give you the glorious freedom of being called a child of the living God. And so father in heaven we turn to you right now And we repent God of all of the ways that we have done this on our own. And we allow you now Holy Spirit to draw us with cords of love back to the center of your heart. All striving will cease. All of our attempts to carry it on our own we lay at your altar now God and we say as you promised Lord, pour out your holy spirit.
Ramin Razavi:Thank you that you are ascended at the right hand of the father, that you are still actively mediating our salvation, that you are pouring out the spirit now on dry hearts. You are reviving us right now, Lord. And we open ourselves to you, we repent and we turn to you, Lord, for times of refreshing to come. Come Holy Spirit, fill us oh Lord. Cover us with your love.
Ramin Razavi:May every sin be washed away. May every weary heart be restored. May the life of God flow. Thank you.
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