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"Here as in Heaven."
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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 the world. 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:So good to be together, friends. Love you. Just wanna wanna honor our our lead pastors, Darren and Alex Razan are here today. They they get to come to church today. How about being a church where our pastors just get to attend church?
Ramin Razavi:Well, you're just joining us here at Garden Costa Mesa, we are in a series called Church on Fire. Let's go. And I don't know if you've noticed this, maybe it's just me and a few that I talk to, but as we prepare this series and move towards this series this year, God decided to allow our lived experience to begin to map over the pages of Acts. Anyone else feeling that right now? We would call that a sovereign work of God, not good strategic planning.
Ramin Razavi:We would call that God deciding to draw near and deciding to come close to his church because what we see in the book of Acts, which if you're just joining us, is the second volume in a two part work by Luke himself. And in the first volume, the Gospel of Luke, what he does is shows us what Jesus began to do and to teach as he came into the world to bring salvation to all. But Acts picks right up and says Jesus wasn't finished. Jesus was not finished. In fact, what Acts is is what Jesus continues to do and to teach, except for now it's not through a five foot seven Middle Eastern frame, that's me.
Ramin Razavi:But now it's through the people of God being full of the Holy Spirit to carry the reality of the kingdom everywhere they go. Yeah. And we've been in the midst of this and what we've seen is that on Pentecost, the spirit comes, the gospel is proclaimed and the church is born. And it continues to grow, it's exponential. And we've joked about this, but man, if you don't like big churches, you wouldn't have liked the first church, you wouldn't have liked the early church cause it's at 3,000 on day one.
Ramin Razavi:Then it builds to 5,000. And every subtext in the scripture says, and every day people continue to be adding to their number. Incredible. But if you've been tracking with us the last five weeks, there's a bit of a theme that's emerging. And the theme that's emerging is that there's pressure and opposition against the new work of God.
Ramin Razavi:And it's not lost on us at all as a team that that's the same reality that many of us are living through right now. Anybody else? You feel that as I've continued to say yes to Jesus, to step into what faith and obedience looks like, it feels like I'm being contested with every forward step. It feels like the opposition can be overwhelming. It can feel like the pressure threatens to shut down this faith that God is birthing within me.
Ramin Razavi:And what I wanna offer to you today, just offer to you, is that when we look at Stephen's story in Acts chapter seven today, what we're gonna see is an invitation from the Holy Spirit. That we can be a people by the grace of the Lord and it is by his grace only that this is true. We can be a people that by the grace of the Lord enable the pressure and the opposition that we face to become a pathway for us to know and experience God in a greater way in the midst of the pressure. We can become the kind of people that even though we may be walking very much in what feels like the valley of the shadow of death, God's glory can break into that place. We can be the kind of people that irregardless or irrespective of where we stand, we can have our eyes on Jesus no matter how great the pressure is, no matter how extreme the pain is right now.
Ramin Razavi:We can choose by grace to see an open heaven because Jesus tore the veil, Jesus opened heaven and we can choose to get our eyes on him today. And maybe most staggering of all, we can by the power of the Holy Spirit decide to live faithful, not performative, but faithful and obedient lives to Jesus such that the day that he calls us home, the son of man himself will stand to receive you. This is what Stephen helps us get to. That even in the midst of the pressure, even in the pain, even in the midst of the the trial, Jesus is near. And so holy spirit, we pray right now you would open the scriptures.
Ramin Razavi:We pray you'd reveal Jesus. And we right now, Lord, we lay down all the things we think we're supposed to be managing and controlling and doing and holding together. We lay them at your feet. And we do the one thing we can do which is say we look to you and we trust you, Lord. We pray in Jesus name as one family, amen and amen.
Ramin Razavi:Well, we are in Acts chapter seven and I wanna get us going with a little bit of the context because context matters when you study the scripture, right? That's right. And this context of Stephen's story is this, he got recruited to be a potluck associate because his Greek aunt Cecilia wasn't getting enough stew at mealtime. And so they recruit him to be a potluck associate and we found out as pastor Darren's preached this masterfully is that he didn't stop at just being a potluck associate. He's full of the holy spirit, he's full of wisdom, he's full of the grace of God.
Ramin Razavi:So he's performing wonders and signs and miracles and proclaiming that Jesus is alive from the dead. Now, that gets you in trouble in that day. And so the religious authorities are rising up against Steven and they tried to argue and debate him, but he shut them down fast. Like Clayton Kershaw would shut you down in the seventh inning if he came in against you. He shut them down fast.
Ramin Razavi:And so what did they do? They concocted a plot, they hatched a plan and they came up with a bunch of smear campaign against Steven because when speaking the truth doesn't work, you have to throw mud. And so that's what they resorted to doing with Steven. And now he's brought before the Sanhedrin. You gotta picture this.
Ramin Razavi:This is 71 bearded and scowling, well educated religious leaders staring down a 20 year old potluck associate. And they bring some accusations. And the accusations are you're speaking against Moses, you're speaking against the customs of the law, you're speaking against the temple. That's like rolling into Los Angeles being like, let's go San Francisco Giants. Like, this is you're coming against the sacred things right now.
Ramin Razavi:And that's where we pick up the text because what we're gonna see in this text is that Stephen may be standing in the Sanhedrin but his eyes are on Jesus. And through this text, we're gonna see is that Stephen's message reveals that all things have a convergence point in Jesus, but Stephen's proclaims it even more profoundly. And so Acts chapter seven verse one, I promise I am not gonna read all 60 verses. We're gonna move through it. Read it all.
Ramin Razavi:Okay. I don't know. I gotta get back to Onion Beach at some point. Acts seven one, then the high priest, this is Caiaphas who likely presided over Jesus' execution, asked Stephen, are these charges true? Like defend yourself, boy.
Ramin Razavi:To this he replied, brothers and fathers, listen to me. That's not defending yourself. The god of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran. Leave your country and your people, God said, and go to the land that I will show you. And so he begins right away, not by answering the accusations, but by proclaiming what is true.
Ramin Razavi:What a beautiful picture for how we stand right now. Jesus does not need you to defend him. He is capable of defending himself. What he's asking is would you proclaim the truth of who I am and the truth of what I've done? And you gotta see this, but there's some courage involved for Steven here.
Ramin Razavi:I mean, some of us, we get two or three people disagreeing us and we we we kind of fold like a cheap tent. Here he is, 71 members of the Sanhedrin staring him down and he has courage. What did we learn about courage in Acts chapter four? They saw that Peter and John were unschooled and ordinary men, but what did they take note of? Their eyes were on Jesus.
Ramin Razavi:They had been with Jesus. And so what he does is starts proclaiming the truth of God. And I love it. He starts with the God of glory. Just let me drop that in there.
Ramin Razavi:This is the God of glory. This is the God that is infinite. This is the God that has a beginningless past and an endless future. This is the god who, when Solomon dedicated the temple and the glory of god came, which we're gonna talk about in a minute, Solomon himself said, there is no way this house that I built with human hands can contain the one who the heavens can't even stretch to contain. This is the god oh, you're asking me if I violated the customs of Moses.
Ramin Razavi:I'm sorry, we're talking about the god of glory today. And what he does is he takes the plot over and says, I'm not gonna stand here and defend myself against your trumped up charges. What I'm gonna do is proclaim what is actually true. And what he goes on to do is to give a brilliant and a vast panorama of the grace of God over time. And what he begins to do is help them see that what you have assumed as finality and codified into laws and customs and practices and a temple, God was just going to fulfill later through a man named Jesus.
Ramin Razavi:And you've been in an adventure of missing the point because you have tried to make final what God had promised to fulfill at a later time. And because of the hardness of your heart and the stubbornness of your thinking, you have missed that God's chosen one has come among you. And he begins to paint on this massive canvas, this is what god's been doing over time. And he does it by bringing in what I like to think of as as some superior witnesses in the moment. And he says, I know you guys love Abraham.
Ramin Razavi:Joseph is like a hero to you and you think really highly about Moses. So let's work with them. How about that? And what he's gonna do is show them that Abraham revealed purposes of God were over time. Joseph revealed to us how God gets his best work done.
Ramin Razavi:And Moses reveals to us that God has been working on a long arc of salvation, so don't stop with him. In fact, Moses even said that. There's another coming after me. Pay attention to him. And so he's trying to clue us into that.
Ramin Razavi:So let's jump right in with father Abraham, picking up in verse six. It says, god spoke to him in this way, to Abraham. For four hundred years, your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own. They will be enslaved and mistreated by oh, I will punish the nation they serve as slaves. God said, and afterward, they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.
Ramin Razavi:Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision and Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days later after his birth. Later, Isaac became the father of Jacob and Jacob became the father of the 12 patriarchs. So you start with father Abraham with this crowd and you are in a great place. They're at least leaning in right now because he's the foundation of their theological understanding. And he begins by helping them see that it is god who's been the one who's initiated all along.
Ramin Razavi:God came to Abraham. God promised to Abraham. God led and sent Abraham. God is the initiator of the story and if he's the author of the story, he ought to be the one who determines the conclusion as well. And as he tracks with Abraham, what he's doing is revealing that god's purposes have been for relationship.
Ramin Razavi:That's what he's talking about when he talks about covenant. A covenant is a relationship. If I got into a covenant with Alan, it's like, hey, I'll make you rib eye, you make me barbecue. When your roof needs fixed, you can come I'll come help you and I'll come help prop up your tent. Whatever's going on in your life, I've got your back.
Ramin Razavi:And whatever's going on in my life, you've got my back. This is what a covenant is. It's a relational promise predicated upon trusts. It had parties, it had terms, and it had promises. And what God was doing with Abraham was entering into a covenant with the people and what was the purpose of the covenant?
Ramin Razavi:Relationship and worship of God. And he's trying to relay the foundation for them. This is what God has always been after, is making a covenant with his people and he himself is the one who's going to guarantee that covenant. So he gets the conversation started quickly by saying, this has never been about rules. This has never been about laws.
Ramin Razavi:This has never been about customs. In fact, there are no laws, there are no rules, there are no customs and there is definitely not a temple in play when we're talking about father Abraham and he seemed to be tracking just fine with God. He's trying to reorient them to the relational heart of God himself. I'm not gonna read it right now but sometime this week, go to Genesis 15 and see how God cuts the covenant with Abraham. They called it cutting the covenant because back then, they would cut animals in half and the two parties of the covenant would walk through the cut I know it's gross for 10:30 in the morning but that's 10:50.
Ramin Razavi:That's what would happen. But here's the promise in it. Normally, it would be the two people making the covenant. But when God does this with Abraham, God puts Abraham to sleep and then a smoking fire pot and a blazing torch walk through together. What is God saying?
Ramin Razavi:I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. The valley may be dark. The oppression might be great. The suffering may make it seem like it's impossible to get through, but what I'm committing to is I'm covenanting with myself to redeem for myself a people.
Ramin Razavi:And so what God is revealing through Abraham is that he is faithful to his people. He is faithful to love his people. He is faithful to redeem his people. And so he drops that and he moves on to Joseph. Now, was a major major hero.
Ramin Razavi:He's kinda like Mandalorian, like he would've had his own series. They they really loved Joseph during this time. And he picks up in verse nine. He says, because of the patriarchs were jealous And if we've been reading Acts, who else is jealous? The Sanhedrin.
Ramin Razavi:Why? Because God's doing a new thing. Where does the biggest opposition to the new thing God is doing often come from? From those who stewarded the former thing? They're jealous.
Ramin Razavi:The patriarchs were jealous. Why? God's doing a new thing. They sold him as a slave into Egypt, but God was with him and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain goodwill, that's another word for grace, wisdom and grace.
Ramin Razavi:Joseph had it, Stephen's like, who else has it? So pharaoh made him ruler over Egypt and all of his palace. Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering and her ancestors could not find food. When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our forefathers on their first visit. On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was and pharaoh learned about Joseph's family.
Ramin Razavi:After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, 75 and all. Then Joseph went down to Egypt where he and our ancestors died. And so if Abraham is laying the foundation of the purpose of what God is up to through the long arching story of grace, Joseph clues us in to how God does his best work. Joseph was left for dead. Joseph was put in a hole in the ground.
Ramin Razavi:Joseph was sold into slavery. Joseph was falsely accused and then forgotten in a dungeon for another two years. And then God raised Joseph up out of all the circumstance, out of all the impossibility, against all the odds, it's a comeback story of all comeback stories if you like good comeback stories, God raised Joseph up. But it wasn't just that God was raising Joseph up. What did God use Joseph to do?
Ramin Razavi:To bring salvation to many. Who else has done that? Stephen's thinking. You guys, Sanhedrin, conspired against the holy one, Peter would say. You put Jesus in the ground but God raised him from the dead.
Ramin Razavi:Because just like in Joseph's story, how does God do his best work? God does his best work when people give him their worst. He doesn't wait for us to get it together. And just like Jesus, Joseph said to his brothers, what you intended to harm me, God intended for good which is the saving of many people. This is the economy of God, that when humanity brings their worst to God, God brings his best to us.
Ramin Razavi:And what it means in that moment and what it means for us today that no matter how dark and how bleak and how hopeless the situation may sound, it may be that God isn't finishing but that God is just actually getting something new started. And there's a way to know him, there's a way to understand the story, there's a way to get it in your bloodstream that could not happen if you didn't walk through the crushing and the pressing and the suffering. But instead, God's not putting a set period at the end of a sentence. He's saying, I'm not finished yet. I'm not finished yet, so don't give up.
Ramin Razavi:Don't lose heart. Don't lose hope because I'm not finished. I'm a God who takes those that thought they were left for dead and brings salvation to a nation. And so he's Stephen's getting this into their bloodstream. He's getting giving them a new spiritual imagination.
Ramin Razavi:So what's God been about customs, laws, and buildings? Nope. He's been about faithful covenant relationship. What's How does God go about doing that? By some kind of boastful, performative, human oriented plan?
Ramin Razavi:Heck no. He does it by raising up people that thought they were dead and using them to bring his glory into the world. He's like, I'm not finished. I got Moses next. And so as the time drew near for that promise that he spoke Abraham to be fulfilled, he raises up Moses.
Ramin Razavi:And we know the Moses story and if you wanna read it at some point, you can get into it, but it's $3.40 year blocks that he outlines in this text and we're not gonna read all of it this morning. But what he does say is that Moses was born in the nation of Israel during that time. The the the pharaoh, who was for Joseph had turned against the people of Israel and had this cruel edict that the first born children had to be put in baskets and we know the story, we watched the movie. Moses gets rescued by pharaoh's daughter and raises is raised up in pharaoh's house itself. And then Moses goes out one day when he's 40 years old and he notices the way that his people are being oppressed and what does he do?
Ramin Razavi:He rises up in defense of his people, kills an Egyptian. And he goes back to his people thinking they're gonna be like, god's hand's on this guy to deliver us. They're like, you're a murderer, bro. Get out of here. So he does.
Ramin Razavi:Shame, cloaks him, flees to the backside of a desert. He's on the, as they say, the back half of life. He's living the the second half of life and he's resigned himself that I'm just gonna watch over some sheep. I'm hanging out on the backside of the Desert Of Midian. And in verse 30, we pick up.
Ramin Razavi:After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses and in the flames of the burning bush in the desert of Mount Sinai. When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. He went over to get a closer look and he heard the Lord say, this is God speaking from the bush, I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look. Every time we hear that, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, we should think God is continuing to save.
Ramin Razavi:His covenant is going forward. Then the lord said to him, take off your sandals, drop the rainbows on the side for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and now I'm coming down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.
Ramin Razavi:This was the same Moses that they had rejected his words, who made you ruler and judge. He was sent to be their ruler and their deliverer, their redeemer by God himself through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. He led them out of Egypt, performed wonders and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea for forty years in the wilderness. This is the Moses who told the Israelites, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people. I'm not the end of the story, he's saying.
Ramin Razavi:He was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and with our ancestors and he received living words to pass on to us. What Moses' part in this epic sermon is, is to show the Sanhedrin that God's salvation purposes, though amazing and glorious in the past, were only a prelude to what he was gonna accomplish in Jesus. Because they loved the story of Moses. They loved the burning bush, they loved the deliverance, they loved the Red Sea parting, they loved the receiving of the law and the covenant. And he's saying Moses himself is the one that was leaning towards the future and saying there's another prophet coming.
Ramin Razavi:I gotta keep my eyes on the horizon. And I I love how the book of Hebrews captures this. It says that Moses preferred disgrace for the sake of Christ. Moses saw Jesus. He preferred disgrace for the sake of Christ than the treasures of Egypt.
Ramin Razavi:He was looking ahead to the reward. And Hebrews would say this about every person in the old testament who lived by faith. They don't receive what was promised now. Just like us, we're all looking ahead to the reward. And so Moses speaks to the Sanhedrin that day.
Ramin Razavi:He's one of the better witnesses that Stephen's like, come on Moses, need a little help right here. Why don't you help the Sanhedrin understand that God is working on a long arc of salvation? So don't begin to put finality and conclusions to things that god is still working to fulfill that he is going to fulfill through Jesus himself. So he's painted the picture now. He said Abraham sets the tone, sets the foundation.
Ramin Razavi:He's a covenantal god of love who's promised to himself to redeem and to love a people in faithfulness. He is a god who, through Joseph, has displayed the way he gets his best work done which is taking things and people that were left for dead, raising them in power and releasing salvation through their life. And now he's saying that Moses who you've accused me of breaking his customs was the one who pointed forward and said there's another coming. There is another coming. In this last piece, he begins to give us a rather scathing analysis of their tendency to reject the work of god as a people.
Ramin Razavi:And he starts that in verse 39. He says, but our ancestors refused to obey him, Moses. Instead they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. They told Aaron, make us gods who will go before us as for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him. That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf and they brought sacrifices to it and revealed in what reveled in what their own hands had made.
Ramin Razavi:But God turned away from them and gave them over the worship of the sun and the moon and the stars. This agrees what was written in the book of the prophets. And so what he does in this last section of the message is he shows three ways that they have consistently rejected God and those are rebellion, idolatry and placing limits on what God can do. Rebellion, idolatry and placing limits on what God can do. The first one is rebellion.
Ramin Razavi:He says that you guys are standing in the assembly and that that's the same word that they would use for the church, the ekklesia. He's saying you stand in the church but your heart's still enslaved. You stand in the church, you worship but your heart is still enslaved. And the rebellion that he talks about, he unpacks the scriptures unpack in Numbers in a deeper way and it says that rebellion was unbelief because what the people had chosen was the comfortable captivity of slavery instead of the work required to trust god for freedom. And that's where a lot of us sit.
Ramin Razavi:We have chosen the comfortable captivity of slavery instead of being willing to do the work of obedience required for God to set us free. And he said, that's why you've missed what God's doing. Your heart is in rebellion to the maker. The second thing he says is your heart's an idol factory. And it just happened to be this silly gold cow that you guys produced and the reason you did it, I love the way that he picks it up, is he's like, you guys did this because you didn't You said you didn't know where Moses was.
Ramin Razavi:That's a bold faced lie. How many women are in the women bible study in here? Yeah, come on with it. You guys know Moses told him what he was doing, right? He said, I'm gonna go attend to the presence of God on the top of the mountain.
Ramin Razavi:Y'all stay here, don't come up too far, you're gonna get incinerated. But I'm gonna come back down, it's gonna be glorious. But you guys hang out real quick, right? Exodus 19, that's the Ramin Living translation. But here's the thing, here's the thing.
Ramin Razavi:They did not know what Moses was doing, they just valued progress over attending to the presence of God. Moses was taking too long. Waiting on the Lord, receiving from the Lord, being ministered to by the Lord and ministering to the Lord. And the people were like, we don't got time for this. We've got places to go, we've got objectives to finish, we've got goals to meet, we've got progress to make.
Ramin Razavi:And this is what happens when we live in rebellion, we begin to be people who value progress over presence. Wow. That's so good. And he's just unpacking this. He's like, I'm just gonna leave that there for you guys.
Ramin Razavi:And then he gets into this last part and it has to do with the temple. And it has to do with the fact that our ancestors, verse 44, had the tabernacle and the covenant of the law with them in the wilderness. And he goes on to describe, they received the tabernacle under Joshua, they carried it with him and God drove out the people before them. And David wanted to build a house for the dwelling place of God, but Solomon, his son, actually built it. However, the most high does not live in houses built by human hands.
Ramin Razavi:He quotes Isaiah, heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. What kind of house are you gonna build for me, says the Lord, or where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all of these things? Stop limiting what God can do is what he's saying. If you get into the story of Solomon, Solomon himself in first Kings, when he's dedicating the temple and the glory of the Lord fills the temple, Solomon says these words.
Ramin Razavi:He's like, I've built I've built the best house I can for you, God, but there's no way you can live in a house built by human hands because you can't even live in the heavens. The heavens can't contain you. And he's saying, stop limiting where God's presence is gonna be. Didn't you read Habakkuk? Because Habakkuk said that in the future, the glory of the Lord is gonna fill the earth like the waters fill the sea.
Ramin Razavi:That's what God is about. Didn't you remember that when Jesus was crucified, the curtain, the veil at the temple tore and it didn't tear from the bottom to the top like some human might tear it. It tore from the top to the bottom because God's presence was gonna flood the earth. Didn't you read Ezekiel? The the rivers of living water were flowing from the temple to find the driest and the hardest places to make them teem with newness of life.
Ramin Razavi:Haven't you read the scriptures is what Stephen is saying? Haven't you guys studied the scriptures? Don't you know the story? And now Stephen gets direct. You know how it is when you just can't hold back anymore.
Ramin Razavi:And Stephen gets direct and he comes directly at them and he says, you stiff necked people. And that that word stiff necked, I love it. It literally means to have calcified nape of the neck which means that you can't look forward no matter how hard you try. You guys are missing it because you're so stuck in the past that you can't see the new thing God is doing. You stiff necked people, your ears are still uncircumcised and your hearts are uncircumcised.
Ramin Razavi:What he's saying is that you may may have all the outward appearance of religiosity but the inward disposition of your heart is hard, it is not a pliable disposition that is ready to move and be shaped by the person of the Holy Spirit. You are just like your ancestors, you always resist the Holy Spirit. What an indictment. You're at cross purposes with the will of God. Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute?
Ramin Razavi:They even killed those who predicted the coming of the righteous one. This is Jesus and now you have betrayed and you murdered him. You have received the law that was given through the angels but you did not obey it. You were not compliant to the thing that God was wanting to do among you. So Stephen turns and now begins to directly implicate them.
Ramin Razavi:And what's so powerful in this moment is that the story of God is coming into full focus for Stephen in this moment. When pastor Darren and I write sermons, we take, what, twenty hours plus a week? Maybe a little less for you because you're an expert. But we take twenty twenty I take twenty hours a week to write a sermon. I can guarantee you, Steven had never written this sermon before.
Ramin Razavi:Steven is, what do we know? Full of the holy spirit. What did the holy spirit promise through Jesus? That when you're brought before the tribunals and the courts, I will give you the words to say. What did the holy spirit reveal?
Ramin Razavi:The holy Spirit takes everything that belongs to Jesus and makes it known to us. Here's the promise for us. When you step into these moments of pressure in life, whatever they may be, God promises in the pressure to enable you to see the full scope of what he is doing in the moment. Such that you don't lose heart. Such that you don't lose faith.
Ramin Razavi:Such that you step into the challenge by grace, this is the grace of God, and are able to see that he is painting your story of salvation on a canvas that's bigger than you can understand. But what you can know is that he's with you in it. What you can know is that what you need in the moment will be given to you. And there are so many of us in this room that could stand to testify to this right now. You could stand right now and testify and say, I stepped into the pressure.
Ramin Razavi:I stepped in with courage. I had been with Jesus. I was in in the moment and I got my eyes up on Jesus. And when I got my eyes up on Jesus, he revealed to me not the whole plot, not how it's all gonna end, but he revealed to me that he works for the good and for his glory in all circumstances. And I trusted him and I walked through it with him and the fire did not set me ablaze.
Ramin Razavi:The streams did not sweep me away and he is the holy one of God. And it's not because I've read it or someone told me, it's because I've seen him and he's good. And that's a testimony that we carry as this church. And so he releases this and we we go from a courtroom scene. So if you were hanging out in the time to kill or you were hanging out in a, you know, whatever courtroom movie you like, A Few Good Men, when the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him and the courtroom turns into a riot.
Ramin Razavi:And Stephen is full of the holy spirit. He looks up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Look, he said, I see heaven open and the son of man standing at the right hand of God. At this, they covered their ears and they yelled at the top of their voices and they all rushed at him and they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, witnesses laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul.
Ramin Razavi:While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then he fell on his knees and cried out, Lord, do not hold the sin against them. Does that sound familiar? And when he had said this he fell asleep. In the midst of the pressure Stephen intently looks to heaven.
Ramin Razavi:And when he intently looks to heaven, god takes a moment that feels like the shadow of death and his glory breaks in. The god who said let light shine into the darkness is is making his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of god and it is found in the face of Jesus. And he sees Jesus, he's not sitting. If you're a student of the scripture you know that the ascended Jesus is often depicted sitting at the right hand of God. But Jesus stands when he has work to do.
Ramin Razavi:And the work that he's doing is twofold. He's one being an advocate for his boy, Stephen. He says, I see your suffering. I see what you're going through and I'm interceding right now for holy spirit power. I'm interceding for faith to hold the course.
Ramin Razavi:I'm interceding for those boulders to not be felt one instant. I'm interceding that you're gonna just fall asleep and join me in glory. But he's also standing because when Jesus stands in scripture, it's because he's the ultimate judge. And he's just giving a little nod to Stephen of saying, I've seen your faithfulness. Don't worry, I'm gonna sort it all out in the end.
Ramin Razavi:Leave vengeance for the Lord. I'll take care of this for you. But I think maybe the most profound thing is that he is standing to receive Stephen. Jesus himself had said this would happen. He said in Matthew chapter 10, if anyone choose to acknowledge me before men, I'm gonna acknowledge him before my father in heaven.
Ramin Razavi:Again, in John chapter 12, talking about suffering, he says, when a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it produces much seed. Whoever wants to follow me must serve me, and whoever serves me, my father will honor the one who serves me. And so Jesus interprets Stephen's faithful obedience through the pain and through the suffering, through unimaginable circumstances and Jesus interprets it as faithfulness. And so Jesus rises up. And I don't know what picture you have in your mind of this, but for me it just kind of breaks the circuits, it kind of expands the imagination beyond what words can even go.
Ramin Razavi:But it's something to the effect of a room, a theater of heaven that's filled with angels and creatures and and holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, endless praise and worship. And in a moment, the son of man himself stands, the lamb of God stands and the heavens get silent for a minute and he says Stephen's coming home. He's been faithful to the end. The suffering has been unimaginable but Stephen is coming home. He's been faithful to the end.
Ramin Razavi:Come on people, come on heavens. Let's get up for Stephen. He's coming home, we need to welcome this son of heaven home again. I don't know what picture of reward you need to live a life of faithfulness, but that's the one Stephen had. Yeah.
Ramin Razavi:The heavens standing to receive a faithful and obedient son who suffered well, who suffered well. And Stephen dies, glory of God comes And the Sanhedrin must have been thinking in the subplot like, okay, we've done what we needed to do. We've put to death this potluck associate, anybody got the location of the other potluck associates? We'll just take care of them, we'll put them to death, we'll stamp out this little thing called the people of the way, the move of Jesus. But pastor Darren's gonna lean into it next week.
Ramin Razavi:What happens next? Oh, they scatter. And guess what? Everywhere they go, they carry what they have. And what do they have?
Ramin Razavi:Jesus. And through what is marked by suffering comes the glory of God filling the world. And now they're getting in on what Acts one eight was all about. You will receive power. And what are you gonna do?
Ramin Razavi:Be my witness. To where? Jerusalem. Okay. Time to go.
Ramin Razavi:Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. God is painting his story of redemption on a canvas that's far greater than any of us can see. And today, he invites us to lift our eyes to Jesus regardless of the circumstance we're in and receive from him the hope from heaven that keeps faith alive even under pressure. Let's stand.
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