Intro/Outro: Welcome to Garden Church podcast. We are a community in Southern California dedicated to raising resilient disciples of Jesus Christ.
Ramin Razavi: Morning. Isn't the Lord good to meet us as we gather to worship? Well, we are in a series called House of Prayer and we gained that title from Jesus's own words when he said, the distinctive trademark of my house will be that it is a house of prayer. And as a church family, this is something we've been going after for a long time. We we say it really simply, we wanna be a people who host the presence of God.
Believing that it's he himself who has everything that we need. That when he's near, we lack nothing as the psalmist would say. And Jesus' moment of declaring that his house would be a house of prayer is actually really instructive to us as to how we would be people of prayer. If you think about it in Matthew's gospel, what's going on is Jesus is riding into Jerusalem, we call it the triumphal entry and there are hosannas raining down to the son of David. People are laying their cloaks before him and expecting Jesus to ride on that donkey to one of the power centers of town and assert his dominance and authority over the Roman captors and put God's people back on top again.
And so, they're a little bit surprised where the first place that he goes is to the temple. And as Jesus arrives at the temple, he starts to throw the tables aside and he scatters the animals that are there to be exchanged for sacrifice and he stands on the temple courts after purifying the temple, getting rid of all the man made distractions that were at the temple. Sound like our prayer life? And what he says is this, my house will be a house of prayer. A striking display of God's ultimate authority expressed in his son.
First of all, this temple happens to be my house, my father's house and it will be known as a house of prayer. A place of intimate communion with the presence of God. But what he does next might be even more startling. Because scripture tells us that the blind and the lame begin to come to Jesus at the temple Which is not a place you could go if you were blind and lame. You were ceremonially unclean and Jesus doesn't push them off like the religious authorities would have of the day, but Jesus welcomes them in and scripture tells us that as they come in, Jesus begins to heal them which gives us another image of Jesus in prayer.
He's not only the ultimate authority, he's intimately approachable with all of your vulnerability, all of your brokenness, all of your weakness, all of your shame and all of your pain. He's approachable. And in this one moment, Jesus gives us everything we need to understand what it means to be a house of prayer because that's what Peter would say later that God is gonna take human beings and like living stones, he's gonna build them into a house, a temple for himself and they're gonna offer spiritual sacrifices to God in prayer. And the way that we do that is by seeing Jesus rightly. And as we see Jesus rightly, that's what informs, that's what instructs, that's what inspires us to be a house of prayer that Jesus himself builds.
But maybe even more incredible that Jesus himself promises to inhabit when his people become a house of prayer. And as we host his presence, what we see is what Michael Miller preached last week is he himself becomes the host of the house of prayer. And so today what we wanna do is help all of us get a clearer view of Jesus because what I found in twenty six years of learning to pray and walking with Jesus is that seeing Jesus clearly will completely shape the way that I pray and I approach him. And one of the scriptures, one of the parts of the word of God that help us see Jesus so clearly is the letter to the Hebrews and that's gonna be our main teaching text today is Hebrews chapter four verse 14 through 16. That was all just a bit of a introduction.
Make us hungry, water the ground a little bit, water our hearts a little bit for the longing of prayer. So let's stand together for the reading of God's word if you're able, if not, that's fine. But if you're able, it's Hebrews chapter four verse 14. It says, therefore since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the son of God, Let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who was unable to empathize with our weakness.
But we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, Yet he did not sin. Let us then approach or draw near to God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. The letter to the Hebrews written by a pastor who was trying to reignite the hearts of a people who'd once known and loved God passionately.
But because of cultural pressure around them, they weren't completely rejecting Jesus, they were just settling for a very mediocre version of the faith. What we learned in Revelation would be called lukewarm living. And they were sliding back back to the the old system of temple and they were reverting back to their former ways of life and so the writer of Hebrews, he writes this beautiful pastoral letter and he's kinda got two techniques in it. One is, I just want you to see Jesus. If you could see Jesus more clearly, your heart would burn for him again.
But the other tactic he uses is warning. Isn't it great when you have honest people in your life? He's like, if you keep going this way, it's too destruction. And so, it's this one two master class of pastoral leadership. See Jesus clearly and be aware of where your rebellion will take you.
And in this passage particularly, this is such a powerful vision of Jesus. And what he does here is he gives us two revelations of Jesus and then makes two appeals to us for how we can experience more of his presence in our life. And those two revelations are those two things we've already mentioned today. One is that Jesus is ultimate authority. And because he's the ultimate authority, we can experience his presence by holding fast to him and persevering in our life of prayer.
We experience his presence in that. The second thing that we're gonna see as we look into the text is that Jesus is intimately approachable. Which means we experience more of his presence as we come to Jesus in our vulnerability, our weakness and our pain. So let's jump in, let's walk through this together. The first is that Jesus is seen in ultimate authority.
I love the way the pastor writes this. He says, therefore since we have a great high priest. And high priests during that time weren't normally thought of as great by the people because they were appointees of the Roman government who were in collusion with the authorities and extracting money and sacrificial penalties and trying to create systems for people and all of this was just kind of a a way of saying that the the ways of God had been perverted in the day. And so, one would have thought like a great high priest because that word has to do with majesty, it has to do with purity which means you can actually trust the priest. And I don't know if for some of us today that that may be the beginning point of a life of prayer.
You can trust God. He is not the person that failed you. He is not the person that gave you spiritual direction that was not based in the word of God but was based in a feeling, based in a moment, based on a word. You built your life on it, it didn't hold up. He is not that.
He is trustworthy and true. And he can rekindle trust in you when you see him as the great high priest. Now a priest was someone during that time that served as one who interceded between man and God. And a priest during that time, a high priest especially was a really busy person because their job was to offer sacrifices for all of the sins of the people. That's why scripture tells us that a high priest day after day, again and again, had to offer the blood of lambs and goats and bulls for the sacrifices of the people.
And it uses that terminology just to inject that picture that they were always working. Constantly needing to offer sacrifices and if you wanna have just a heavenly ascending time with Jesus today or this week, read Leviticus 16 and you'll get all nine steps for the day of atonement of what the high priest had to do. He had to offer a sacrifice of a bull for he and his family. He had to cleanse the tabernacle, the ark, all of the different intricate steps and well, he did it. He wore bells on the edge of the tassel of his garment because it might be not the proper cleansing sacrifice and in light of that, he would be stricken dead and they just needed to know if he stopped moving in there so they could eventually find a way to get his body out.
So this high priest was a busy person. But what scripture says of Jesus is it said, when Jesus came as a high priest, he did not offer the blood of bulls or goats. It said that he offered his own precious blood. And he didn't do it day after day because scripture tells us that by one sacrifice, Jesus has made perfect those who are gonna be continually made holy. And it said after he offered the blood sacrifice, what did Jesus do?
It says, he sat down. You don't sit down as a priest until the work is finished. He sat down and what does he do? He lives to intercede to the father. I don't know if that's the picture you get when you pull into your quiet time space with your cup of coffee at o dark thirty.
But you're praying to a high priest who conquered sin in the grave, whose blood tore the veil and he's speaking to the father on your behalf. So you might come with Lord, good morning and Jesus is in the father's ear, he's saying good morning. Lord, I need you, they need you. Jesus takes our prayers as our priest and he just amplifies our prayers to God. That's his role.
He lives forever to make intercession for those who believe in him so he can completely save us. I love that verse. Not partially save us, not just get us out of the bad jam that we were in, but cause the life of Christ to be imaged in us, replicated in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. You have a great high priest over the house of God who is listening and waiting for you to bring the cries of your heart to him so that he can move in power by the person of the holy spirit. This is what it is to pray.
John, think prayer rooms might grow this week, I hope. Lord let it be. This is what it is to pray. And it says that he ascended. He's an ascended high priest and I got permission from pastor Darren to say this because he's been saying a lot in Revelation, where is Jesus?
Anybody know? Right here, exactly. Way to go. Listen to Revelation series. In the middle of the church, right?
He's among the lampstands. But where else is Jesus in scripture? Seated at the right hand of God. And how did this all work out? Well, Philippians chapter two gives us this picture and we've gotta get this in our bloodstream.
It says, take the same mindset as Jesus who being in the very nature God did not consider his equality with God something to be grasped or held onto. But he made himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant and being made in human likeness and being found as an appearance as a man, what did he do? He humbled himself and he became obedient even to death on a cross. Therefore, what did God do? God the father exalted him to the highest place and gave him a name that's above every name that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow above the earth, on the earth and under the earth and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord to the glory of God the father.
See, this is how Jesus purchased the avenue through which we can pray. By descending and ascending again in glory. And so we draw near to this throne of grace. We approach a God of ultimate authority, an ascended high priest. And I love the way the text tells us how we do that.
It's in verse 15 and in verse 14, you notice that it's always in the plural. We have this. We have this together. And this unity is such an important aspect of being a people of prayer. The great church father Ignatius, he spoke of this and he said, seek to come together more closely to give thanks to God.
For when you are together closely, the powers of Satan are cast down and his destructive powers are brought low by your agreement in the faith. Unity among God's people creates an increase in the presence of God among them. This is what Jesus prayed in John 17. He said, father, I pray that they would be one. Just like I am in you and you are in me, may they be brought to complete unity.
See Jesus understood that when our hearts lay down the competitiveness that we're prone to, the comparison that we're prone to, The envy that we're prone to. Our hearts begin to beat in sync with one another and as our hearts as God's people be in sync with one another, they begin to catch the heartbeat of the father. Because scripture doesn't say that you like Ramin are built being built into a holy temple belonging to God to give your praise. It says, no, we together are being built together. Which means there's a revelation of Jesus that I don't get that's complete unless I hear from Slav, unless I hear from John and Lydia.
I don't get it all unless I hear and I see the Lord through your eyes. We are built as a church, as a family together. And as we live in unity with one another, that creates a landing pad for more of God's presence. If we say we wanna be a people who wanna host God's presence, one of the first things we ought to ask ourselves is, am I carrying unforgiveness or resentment towards anyone in my spiritual family? And what steps do I need to take to reconcile that?
You will experience an outpouring of the holy spirit as you walk in obedience to Christ through forgiveness and reconciliation. Unity creates a landing pad for God's spirit among us. So don't miss the we. That's just a little side note. But we hold firmly to this faith that we profess.
And this has a lot to do with understanding God's love, to hold firmly to it. I love the way that the Psalmist says it in Psalm 63. It says, my soul clings to you and your right up hand upholds me. Just think about that like my soul clings to you as you see my massive weight lifting arms. It's it's kinda like, I know it's a joke.
It's just this little grip like I got two fingers and your right hand upholds me, it's like Dwayne the Rock Johnson arm, know, just holding on. It has to do with trusting his love. That's why when Jesus would speak of prayer, he said ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. Because which of you or if you're a father, if your son asks for a fish is gonna give him a serpent or if he asks for a piece of bread is gonna give him a rock. And if you though though you're evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?
So asking is part of the economy of holding fast to God. It's part of the economy of being a house of prayer is learning to ask the father trusting in the goodness of his heart, trusting in the purity of his love for us. But the hold fast word, had There's there's something in it, right? Hold fast. Sounds like you're in a fight a little bit, doesn't it?
Like a struggle. You don't have to hold fast if it's easy to hold on to. You don't have to hold fast if the grip doesn't tend to slip in certain moments in certain circumstances. So Jesus helps us with that. There's a parable that he tells in Luke chapter 18 that talks about what it means to hold fast to God in prayer in order to experience more of his presence.
So let's go over there to Luke chapter 18. I love it when the authors of scripture Luke in this case give a little preamble. This preamble helps me out a lot here in Luke 18 as you're turning there. It says then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. Anybody else like I'm in for this one.
Anyone else prone to giving up? Just me. It's hard to pray sometimes when you're seeking the Lord and you're asking him and you feel like you're 47 times in and you're asking for the same leadership or the same guidance or the same thing you're not seeing it happen. And so for us, this becomes so important for us to be a people of prayer and we sometimes think that like God's presence comes when we get the answer to the prayer and we see the glory and we're on the Mount Aintop. But let me just share this with you.
If you've ever done any mountaineering or backpacking, the life of the mountain is found on the hillsides, not the top. That's where all the trees are, that's where all the life is and it's the same in the life of prayer. Like, is glorified when he answers it. Like trust me, you're not gonna need any help lifting your hands. You can raise all the hallelujahs in the world.
Like I raise the hallelujahs. The Lord answered my prayer. But let me tell you where his presence is sweetest and where his voice can be the clearest and where his intimacy can be the nearest is as we wait on the Lord. As his presence becomes our oxygen. As his love becomes our supply.
As his friendship becomes our portion. This is what he wants for us. And so Jesus gives us this story. He said in a certain town, there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, grant me justice against my adversary.
For some time he refused but finally he said to himself, even though I don't fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually come and attack me. So Jesus is using arrogant judges and persistently aggressive widows to get the point across. And the Lord said, listen to what the unjust just says just says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?
I tell you he will quick see that they get justice and quickly. However, when the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth? So Jesus is equating faith with the willingness to keep going back on those well worn paths to God. Regardless of how many times you've come before. He said, I see that as faith And that doesn't usually feel like faith, does it?
Can feel like insanity, right? That's how the world defines insanity, doing the same thing and expecting different results. Jesus saying, that's actually faith. To continue to ask, to continue to seek, to continue to knock, believing not that God is an unjust judge but that he is the good father who longs to give good gifts to his children. And so you can imagine this widow waking up every morning thinking like, just went yesterday, the guy is no good.
He's not gonna help me. He doesn't care about God and people. Okay, I'm going back again. And for some of us, there is an intimacy and an encounter and a hosting of the presence of Jesus that he longs to give us if we would persevere in our prayers. Persevere and not give up.
Why? It's predicated on our view of Jesus as the ultimate authority and the one who is good and loves us. So this is the first invitation to be a people that see Jesus in his ultimate authority who draw near to him and hold fast in our persevering prayer. The next thing we wanna see about Jesus is that Jesus is intimately approachable. We see this in verse 15 back into our text in Hebrews.
It says for we do not have a high priest who was unable to empathize with our weaknesses. But we have one who's been tempted in every way just as we are yet he did not sin. So let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. They use a double negative here because it's a way of rhetorically just getting the point across. We do not have a high priest who's unable to empathize or sympathize.
Which is a way of saying you better believe that our high priest cares, can relate to you and is waiting for you to come in the same weakness that he knew and that he himself experienced. And sometimes people argue, they're like, hey, Jesus' temptations probably weren't real legit temptations because he is after all lamb of God, blameless one, spotless one, holy, mighty, glorious, we sing it all the time. Like what do you mean he was tempted? But did you ever think about this? That Jesus had the power to take, to do, to move, to shift anything at any time that he had ever wanted.
Think of you with unlimited power, how would you do? So think about the the self control, the restraint that Jesus had to exercise. Not just the fleshly things but the the times when the idiotic people would just not understand him. I mean, you gotta admit admit there are moments that he's like, I've had enough. Whatever that is.
The self control. I mean, who's been misunderstood this week, right? Like it just gets you constant for him and he didn't sin. This is so important for us to understand that Jesus is not a priest who's unable to empathize but who knows weakness in a way that we could never even understand apart from the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself when he's coming near the end of his life, he goes to the Garden Of Gethsemane and scripture tells us three times he knelt on the ground and he prayed the same prayer.
Father, if there's any other way take this cup from me. Yet not my will be done but your will be done. Struggling in prayer to the point of blood coming out because of the exertion that he was showing. Hebrews will tell us later that during his days on earth, Jesus would cry out to the father in reverence submission with cries and tears before the father. Jesus had no problem displaying his weakness and his vulnerability and his fragility to the people around him.
That is because if you want to be a person who experiences more of God's presence in your life, humility is the pathway and portal to encounter. This is what Peter who is a great authority on weakness, isn't he? Peter who when Jesus said I'm going to the cross said it will never be Lord and Jesus is like you are Satan, get in line with me. Or Peter when Malchus shows up in the garden as part of the troop to take Jesus breaks out the sword and does a little Jean Claude Van Damme move and takes off Malchus's ear and Jesus heals him back up. Peter who denies Jesus three times, Peter knew the depth of brokenness and that's why in first Peter five, he writes these words.
He says, God opposes the proud. You think he knew what that meant? And God gives more grace, his empowering presence to the humble. And he says so in light of that, humble yourself under God's mighty hand and God will lift you up. You'll experience his lifting presence, his resurrection presence in your life.
And you and I are given invitations to this every single day. Every single day just an opportunity to empty ourselves to say, I can't do this in my own strength. An opportunity to lay aside our own agenda, our own preferences, an invitation to acknowledge before God and each other, our weaknesses, our fragility and our vulnerability and allow the Lord himself to be our strength. This is why the Psalms help us so much in prayer. Psalm one thirty says, Lord have mercy on me.
Let your ears be attentive to my cry. Hear my voice. Do you ever feel like you have to pray that way? Lord have mercy on me. Let your ears be attentive to my cry and hear my voice.
It's like, do you remember me? And he says, if you oh lord kept a record of sins, who could stand but with you there is forgiveness, therefore you are feared. And so what do we do? We wait in hope for the Lord. My whole being waits for the Lord and in his word, I put my hope for with the Lord is unfailing love and with the Lord is full redemption.
And it is in our weakness, our vulnerability and our fragility that we become spaces where the holy spirit fills us. If you've longed to know more of the touch of the holy spirit in your life, let me encourage you to lay your all honest and your broken prayers before God. He does not need your eloquence. He does not need your theologically, you know, six point o prayers. I'm just trying to say something.
Think about it this way. When he says we approach his throne of grace with confidence, that does not mean intensity. Confidence does not does not mean fervency. In fact, the word itself connotates something we have to understand. The confidence by which we approach the throne of grace has more to do with the concept of authorization to be there.
You come into the grace and mercy of God not because you willed yourself to him, not because you prayed yourself to him, but because you confessed yourself to him. And you said, can't Lord. I can't hold it together anymore. And I'm coming to your throne and I'm not coming to your throne because I've prayed a certain prayer or I've shown up at the right things or I've got the vocabulary. I'm coming to your throne because when I look at the right hand of your throne, there's a lamb that was slain before the foundations of the world and his blood has torn the veil so that we can come into the presence of God and approach the throne of grace authorized as the beloved to be in the presence of our holy father.
With confidence we draw near. And we draw near to find, receive mercy and to find grace. And mercy is this picture of his forgiveness, his loving kindness, the Hebrew word has said. His good, good mercy towards his children. And finding grace has to do with the empowerment that we receive in the holy spirit.
The ability to overcome temptation, to fight sin, to image Christ to the world, to be filled with the life of Jesus himself. And we find that at at God's throne. And pastor Darren's done a masterful job in revelation of helping us see the throne, right? I mean this thing's glorious images in revelation of the throne. Sea of glass before it.
You got the flying creatures all around. You got the elders laying their crowns down before the throne. You got the choirs of the saints singing, holy holy holy is the lord god almighty. You've got the lamb slain before the foundations of the world. You've got all things centered around the throne of God.
Hallelujah. But you know what else is so beautiful? Jesus has another throne. And in John chapter 12 when he was at the last days of the feast, a group of Greeks came up to his followers and said, we wanna see Jesus. Because remember prayer has everything today was to do with seeing him rightly.
And Jesus responded to what we wanna see Jesus by saying, now is the hour for the son of man to be glorified, literally enthroned. Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies he says, it remains a single seed. But if the kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it produces many seeds. He's speaking of the cross. Christ is thrown in the heavens but Christ is equally enthroned on his cross.
And so when we approach the throne of grace, we are coming at the same time to one who is ultimate authority seated in the heavens, but we're also coming to the one who suffered, died, bled and gave his life for us. And this is the picture I wanna land us with if the the band wants to come back out, we'll we'll land here in Luke 23. There's a beautiful picture of coming before this throne of grace. It says two other men, both criminals were also led out with him Jesus to be executed. When they came to the place called The Skull, they were crucified, they crucified him there along with the criminals, one on his right and the other on his left.
Jesus said, father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. The people stood watching him and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, he saved others, let him save himself if he is God's Messiah, the chosen one. The soldiers also came up and mocked him.
They offered him wine vinegar and said, if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. And there was written notice above him which read, this is the king of the Jews. One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him. Aren't you the Messiah? Save yourself and us.
But the other criminal rebuked him, don't you fear God, he said. Since you under the same sentence, we are punished justly for we are getting what our deeds deserve but this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Now this prayer remember me, this is the prayer of weakness. This is the prayer of vulnerability.
This is the prayer of saying God I need you. Incline your ear to me for I am weak. Extend your hand to me to hold me Lord because I cannot hold myself together. Give me your help oh Lord because my body fails me and my mind is run out of ideas. Remember me lord because I feel forgotten by everyone else around me.
Remember me lord because it's been a long time since I felt like you've answered one of my prayers. Remember me lord because if I think about why I'm here on this cross, I know that I deserve this but somehow you don't and you're with me in this and somehow that speaks a better word. Remember me god because against all hope you are hope. See this is where we experience him. This is where we find help.
This is where God brings paradise into pain. This is where the one who holds the stars and carries the world and the universe in the crease of his hand reaches for you right now and says do not fear for I am with you. Do not anxiously look about you for I am your God. I will help you. I will strengthen you and I will uphold you by my mighty right hand.
And Jesus hears this simple prayer and he answers, wow, what an invitation. These are the prayers Jesus answers. Remember me, Jesus answers. Truly I tell you, I tell you the truth, you will be with me in paradise. You will know my presence in a way you cannot even imagine.
It's so beautiful about that word paradise is if get underneath it, it it could also be translated the garden. Jesus remember me. Oh, I will. I'll see you in the garden this afternoon. What a promise of heaven coming to earth.
What a promise that in the midst of your pain and your brokenness and your need and your fragility that Jesus is a simple prayer away. Remember me Lord. And his answer is the same today as it was on that hillside. You can experience paradise here and now. Let's stand.
Holy Spirit, we invite you to come. We thank you Lord for revealing Jesus to us in his beauty, in his suffering. We thank you Lord for his priestly ministry that he lives to intercede for us so that we can be saved completely. And we now come to the throne of grace. I pray for my brothers and sisters that any who need to come to the throne of grace today to receive mercy and to find grace in their time of need would come freely right now.
As we respond to you, the giver of life, holy spirit, would you give life now, resurrection with power would you come as we look to you. The the man of sorrows, the lamb of God, the resurrected king, we glorify you Jesus. Would you come and minister to us as your children? Thank you Lord. If you wanna receive prayer for any anything at all come forward our our teams here.
Let's just allow Jesus to minister to us now.
Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening. For more information, please visit us online at garden.church.