Get Excited and Praise Jesus!

Get Excited and Praise Jesus!                                         Kelly Durant  3-25-18  (4-1-12)

Luke 19 ³⁵And they brought him to Jesus: and they cast their garments upon the colt, and they set Jesus thereon. ³⁶And as he went, they spread their clothes in the way. ³⁷And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen; ³⁸Saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. ³⁹And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. ⁴⁰And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.

2. Have you ever noticed how popular “America’s Got Talent” is? The reality is God made you and me with an insatiable appetite to be entertained and to want to cheer someone on! People love saying, “Wow, did you see that?” We all like to get “oo-ed and awe-ed”! Or people in the sports arena, they love to be able to yell and cheer on the winner! Goooooooal! It is our human nature to want to get excited over the amazing skills of others!

Today is Palm Sunday and Jesus just got on a colt and he is riding down from the Mount of Olives into the city. And what is happening? The people are recognizing the honor due Jesus. They are taking off their coats and laying them down in honor of Him! And they are yelling and praising Him! He is the star turning heads!

What really got people questioning things was what people were yelling, “Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest”. That was what the angels praised when Jesus was born! Remember that? It’s as if people had gone crazy shouting for Jesus!

3. Let’s think about this for a minute. Do you think the people of the city had ever done this to honor a Roman Patriarch coming into the city? Or to honor one of the High Priests or Pharisees with their usual sour and condescending attitude! I doubt it! This was a first time event! Something like this had never happened before! It was honor of the first degree! And whom were the people honoring? Who were they shouting, “Hosanna in the highest!” to?

A humble looking man sitting on a colt! People were excited saying, “Wow, that is Jesus the King!” Jesus was not in a polished chariot, not on a large white horse, not surrounded by the usual pomp and procession of the wealthy. I think some people must have been very confused!  What’s all the loud noise about, all the praising and cheering? So much yelling for a man on a little donkey!?  What is up with that?!

4. But Jesus at that moment, passing by all those people, was in His face shining the bright light of God’s glory! I bet it was like a mass hysteria like Holy Spirit goose bumps, or God-bumps as they are called. Are you familiar with God-bumps?

It is when something strange or unexplainable happens and you know God is close by! Maybe like when you were delayed out the door by some wrong number leaving work and it turns out that the car in front of you crashes and you realize you would have been that car had it not been for the 30 second delay of the phone call?! God-bumps you get when you perceive a divine presence is near! Something supernatural is happening! Those in Jerusalem felt God-bumps on that day! It was scary but felt good! No one can deny the presence of God!

Can you imagine Jesus smiling and waving at the crowd and at the same time, as if by some mysterious, mystical power, all people just wanted to praise the Lord out loud when they saw Him! Have you ever been around a few thousand people yelling at the same time? It was a shocking sight and sound, it’s impacting and it was eye-opening! And all of these thousands of people of Jerusalem were praising God! It was as the noise of an entire stadium cheering Jesus on!

5. What a strange feeling and occurrence! Imagine, all the townspeople lined up to see this one man parade (well, he did have the disciples behind Him)!  The people imagined they were going to see some super type of man, but no one is very handsome on a short humble ugly donkey, yet a supernatural divine charisma did not leave them disappointed! When they looked at Him and they suddenly felt overwhelmed with these powerful emotions that make them feel like jumping up and down and praising God!

Have you ever felt overcome with good emotions? Try to recall, maybe like the time you first prayed to accept Jesus in your life. Or maybe the first time you felt the Holy Spirit touched you in some way. Or recall that feeling of an unexplained divine presence that protected you from death, all of these feelings that make you want to just praise God for his goodness! This was what people the people were intensely feeling. It was unexplainable! It is supernatural! It was like a force overtook them and they just wanted to shout and praise!

If you want to experience Jesus glory, you must praise Him, not just on a Palm Sunday, but every day! Praise Jesus and see what happens! Praising Him connects you to His Spirit!

6. For you to feel just a little bit of what all the people of Jerusalem felt, you are going to have to do what the disciples did and that is praise and bless Jesus as king, wish his peace on others and give the glory to God for Him!

Praising Jesus is a must for everything living and even non-living, like the stones! If we do not praise, as Jesus said, the stones will even cry out! And who did not praise on that Palm day? The self-righteous, self-satisfied, dead-spiritually, controlling, demonic Pharisees! They were not praising Him but rebuking Him and were considered by Jesus, according to this context, to be more dead and harder than the stones!  Consider these verses on praising God which is synonymous to praising Jesus as Jesus says, “I am my Father are One”,  

Psalm 118:26 Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord: we have blessed you out of the house of the Lord. (A prophetic passage of Jesus entering into Jerusalem)

Psalm 69:34

Let the heaven and earth praise him, the seas, and everything that moveth therein.

Psalm 22:23

Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. (We are the seed of Israel by adoption and by the acceptance of Jesus)

Psalm 109:30 I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.  (This applies to all multitudes, the ones in Jerusalem and in every gathering)

Hebrews 13:15 By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. (Amen, give thanks to Him always!)

How many times have you been sick, or not had the rent money, or felt like dying due to some big problem and you praised God all day and God solved the problem? I can tell you at least a few dozen times in my life I praised God on the 1^st day of the month with no rent money and he supplied by a miracle! A stranger that showed up! There is power in praise! Praise Him always through the good and bad.

7. The benefits of praising Jesus are the following (repeat):

You practice humility as you exalt Jesus

You forget about your worries and troubles  

You get clean & ecstatic inside attracting God’s Holy Spirit  

You experience the glory of God, similar to what it is like in heaven  

You get engulfed in the love & unity of those praising around you

You cause your body to heal of illness by releasing good chemicals

    

8. Los beneficios de alabar a Jesús son los siguientes:

-Practicas la humildad mientras que exaltas a Jesús

-Se olvida de sus preocupaciones y problemas

-Se siente limpio &  extático por dentro atrayendo el Espíritu Santo de Dios

-Se experimenta la gloria de Dios, similar a lo que están en el cielo

-Se olvida de si envuelto el amor & la unidad de los que están alabando a tu alrededor

-Se induce a su cuerpo a curarse de las enfermedades por sustancias o químicas buenas

9. What about those who do not praise Jesus:

-They disrespect the pull of the Holy Spirit, which is unforgivable blasphemy

-They become like the Pharisees, dry, angry, and murderous

-They become self-focused, obsessed with material, or earthly things

-Their spirit becomes arrogant and God and everyone becomes their enemy

-They become depressed and their body becomes sick

10. ¿Qué pasa con aquellos que no alaban a Jesús:

-Ellos le faltan el respeto al Espíritu Santo, lo cual es blasfemia imperdonable

-Ellos se vuelvan como los fariseos, secos, enojados y sanguinario

-Ellos se vuelvan ego-céntrico, obsesionados con lo material, o las cosas terrenales

-Su espíritu se vuelve arrogante y Dios y todo el mundo les tienen por su enemigo

-Ellos se vuelvan  depresivos, y su cuerpo se vuelve enfermizo

11. So let’s praise Jesus more, amen? Only he is worthy to be praised, right? Only He can do the miracles and heal and provide! Only He gave his life as a sacrifice to ransom the souls of all people in the entire world. Only He can make us feel love and the glorious power of God in heaven!  If we don’t praise Him the rocks will praise Him! His creation cannot deny his glory, it bursts forth in shouting! Let’s finish by reading the final Psalm together…

Psalm 150: 1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power.2 Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness.3 Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp.4 Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs 5 Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals. 6 Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.

Praise Jesus today! Don’t be indifferent to a love that came to sacrifice all to save your soul! Get filled with heavenly bliss that comes from praises!

The Supremacy of Christ : Colossians 1

The Supremacy of Christ                                     Kelly Durant (3-15-08)

A study in Colossians

 

Funny cartoon: Most everyone knows the song by Frank Sinatra, “I Did It My Way”.

On day there were 2 bums (homeless) getting warm by a fire they had made in the back alley in a lonely street downtown, and one proudly said to the other, “You know I am a self-made man, I did everything my way.”  The other replied, “Well, doing it my way has gotten me nowhere, next time I am going to do it Frank Sinatra’s way!”

How do we as Christians want to do it? We want to live life Jesus’ way! If not, we are doomed to lament in some dark lonely place!     John 14:6

6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

The way we think and the things we believe about God and others make us who we are! They determine our future, fate, and everything!

In the New Testament there are many references to Christians being followers of “the Way” and this is referring to the way of life of the Christian.

What is in focus today is “The way” of the ones from the city of Colossi. Paul writes his letter to them already knowing how they the think and where they are wrong. They were Gnostics and they had let those beliefs corrupt the true message of the power of Christ.

What was their problem? Their culture and old “ways” had changed the way they understood the faith. Verses 15-20 are actually a hymn, maybe one Paul wrote to help them to sing their doctrine so they get it right. The Salvation Army has many hymns with their doctrine too.

Col 1:15

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

Firstborn: What does Paul mean by this? The Gnostics believed there was a heavenly world where the angels were and when they heard of Jesus, they thought Jesus must only be another angel that came to our world. The people of Colossian did not believe Jesus was superior!?

Firstborn does not necessarily mean born first from God amongst all the angels. This cannot be because Jesus had always been with God, and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity. Firstborn means in the Jewish culture the firstborn who had all the rights to inherent all the power from the Father.

Go to Col 1:18

18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. In Jesus case He was the firstborn back from the dead too and that gave Him all authority over all creation! He has supremacy over all those that are dead so he can raise them up or not according to those who worship and honor with a holy life His Majesty.

 

Again, let’s see how Paul corrects their misguided beliefs, their cultural way of seeing things that Jesus is not just another ordinary angel.

Jesus is superior over everything, or “all things!”

Col 1:16-17

16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.

Paul makes it clear Jesus created seen and unseen worlds, and controls them all; He is over “all things”. Paul says “all things” in almost every verse!

Why is it so important to look at this? It is because we may not fully see the power of Jesus. I can tell you each of you are influenced by your culture, your world, in many ways.

Let me tell you a little bit of my testimony. When I was 20 and in the University of Oklahoma it was time in the American culture when many gurus from India were influencing youth away from the churches giving seminars and teaching transcendental meditation, and other oriental philosophies. This influence of the early 1970s corrupted me as I started believing that Buddha, Krishna, Confucius, and all the old wise teachers were all equal as they all contributed wisdom from God.

Can you see it? The problem was I had become like the other youth around me who were agnostic because I put Jesus in the same mix as a wise teacher. Just think, I had grown up in the Baptist church too! My faith was corrupted and it took the conviction o the Holy Ghost of the Word shared to me by a friend to wake me up from my religion of works and prideful false spirituality!   

What the Word declares to you and me today is:

There is no allowance for the cultural compromise of Jesus authority, either He is supreme and “all things” or you are not a Christian!

Col 1:19-20

For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, 20 and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.

All of us are condemned to eternal separation from God unless we find peace and reconciliation through the blood of His cross which brings

forgiveness and a new relationship with God. Only Jesus has the authority to connect us to God and mend our broken communication with Him.

Col 1:21

21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled Col 1:22-23

2 in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight --  23 if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.

What is the condition here to be to not be alienated, or like a foreigner to God?

To continue to be holy, blameless, strong in the faith, never moved away from hope!

I want to ask you to ask God today, Have I been influenced by my own culture to the point that I may not be worshipping and adoring Jesus as the Supreme One over all things?

Is Jesus really “all things” to you? He created you, do you honor Him?

Do you feel alienated from God? You can be reconciled today. It is all by faith…just approach Him in prayer and confess your sins, be holy, be blameless today: let His blood, being what God gave you by grace be the restitution to clean you! It works! You will notice a new way to live and it will give you wisdom, peace, and eternal life