Latest / Wesley at FSU & TSC / "The Whole Journey" | Palm/Passion Sunday | Sunday Service | April 13, 2025

Transcript

"The Whole Journey" | Palm/Passion Sunday | Sunday Service | April 13, 2025 · Wesley at FSU & TSC

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give a message this morning called the whole journey.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is uh what we call passionslash palm Sunday.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're probably used to Palm Sunday when you were growing up in church and you might have had the palm.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody wave the palms as you walked into the 11 o'clock service?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, pretty fun.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: My daughter, not so excited about doing that this morning.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: But they that's on a Palm Sunday.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, it's also called Passion Sunday, which is because it marks the beginning of Jesus' path toward the cross.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So he comes in on Palm Sunday like Garen read.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Garen, you're done an awesome job, Garen.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: He was a wee bit nervous, but he did a great job.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he comes in riding on a donkey while they're laying down coats and they're waving palm branches at him to declare him as the king of kings, as Hosanna and the highest.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happens on Palm Sunday.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: But as we know, he's going to be mocked with those same terminology come Friday.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's called the king, and then he's mocked as being the king come Friday.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: So this next week, we view it as like, okay, we're getting ready for Easter, or you know, hey, next week's gonna be an awesome big week, or something like that.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is Jesus goes through a huge journey.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: A huge journey from just Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday to Easter.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he literally dies and comes back.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: That would be a pretty big journey in any of our lives.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So what I want to talk about this morning, though, is less about the journey that he takes over this week.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to show you that the journey that he's been taking and he's going to take over this next week actually is a journey that God's been going through with us since the beginning of time.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because the truth is, as everything he's leading to the cross and the resurrection, God's been doing something the whole time.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of this.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we call a crescendo.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Say crescendo.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: You have learned an Italian term, crescendo.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: There are tons of musicians in this space.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody tell me what a crescendo is.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's like louder.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Nathan Reed, I'm disappointed.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: You are sitting in front row.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: You are the musician of all musicians.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the guy goes, I don't know.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this man has never seen a room outside of the practice room, right?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we're actually, it's funny, it's a total aside, but we're we're getting him to go play for this thing uh down in Gainesville of all places uh at the end of April.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we were like, okay, could we do we think we could get Nate to go play for it?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: We really need him to go play, and they were like, I don't know, man, taking a day away from the practice room, that's a lot.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: But he agreed to do it, amen.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: He's bringing his trumpet to Gainesville.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: All I ask is that you just march around Ben Ben Griffin Stadium, right?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like they did, and then you yeah, seven times and play the trumpet, it'll fall down.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: You get the reference?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um this is a crescendo.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: The idea is that you go from soft to loud.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this can happen in music uh over the course of a note or over the course of a phrase, over the course of a melody.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: You would start off soft and you could get really loud.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: You there are different dynamics in music.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's piano and forte, you may have heard of those, soft and loud.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's also pianissimo and fortissimo and pianississimo and fortississimo.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: So there's really, really, really, really, really soft and really, really loud.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the point of a crescendo is that it takes you on a journey.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: It takes you on a journey because it takes you into a place where you might be able to even miss it because it's so soft.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then eventually it takes that same melody or that same note and it puts it straight in front of your face.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot avoid it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a 3D ride, you know?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: At some point, something's gonna jump out at you and it's going to scare you in this way that you can't even avoid it.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: A crescendo does that emotionally to you.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: It takes you on a journey.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is a picture of composer Maurice Ravel.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Say Ravel.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Ravel, and he uh was a composer in the early 1900s, late 1800s, and uh orchestral conductor, or a conductor and composer, uh also brilliant pianist, which is why he's featured next to the piano here.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: But he actually had I think the best example of a crescendo.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in a piece that he premiered in 1928 called Polero.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: A single melody and rhythm that you're gonna start to hear in a second.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is a recording from 1987 Berlin Philharmonic, playing this, and you hear this melody in the flute.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what he does over the course of 15 minutes is he takes you on a journey using the exact same rhythm in the exact same melody over 15 minutes.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: So he starts with this lovely melody, it's super soft.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's actually, you can barely hear it, a snare drum.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he plays the same thing over and over again for 15 minutes.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: The poor snare drummer.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: The same exact pattern, you'll start to hear it more.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: You hear it now?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's moved to what instrument?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: The clarinet.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he takes it and moves it from the flute to the clarinet, and he's going to do that again and again and again, over and over and over again, slowly adding to the volume.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, conductors often tell the instrumentalists when they're playing this, you know, hey, don't play too loud, even in the loudest parts, because the full orchestra is going to create the volume.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: You see how they stack on top of each other.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: What's fascinating to me is it's the exact same melody, the exact same rhythm, over and over and over and over again, and yet it takes you on a journey.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: He never once modulates, that's the uh uh musical term for changing keys or going up or something.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: He develops it a little bit here.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can hear just a slight change to the melody, but that's all he does for 15 minutes.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of the story of the crescendo in our own lives, the journey.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: See, in the beginning, there was nothing.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: There was nothing, and God does the only thing God can do, which is create.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so God takes the waters and the darkness, it says, and separates the waters from the darkness.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then God creates the heavens and the earth, and then God creates the things on the ground, both the things in the air and the things in the water, and then the creepy, crawly things, it says, on the earth.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And as he continues to create, he then goes and creates you and me in what he calls the Imago Dei, the image of God.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: We are made in the image of God, and in that moment, the love of God is poured out upon the world.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: In that moment, and so you can hear this melody that's happening in the total world, where the love of God is being poured out on even us, even then.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Over and over again, the same melody.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we all know this story.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not long after that, Adam and Eve choose a different path.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: They choose a way that is not God's path, and then God actually throws them out of the garden where they were.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: But there's this continuous promise from God that someday they're gonna be restored to that garden.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so then some ways, them being expelled is a way in which the love of God is being poured out on them, asking them to behave and follow in ways that God had invited them to behave.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as time goes on, a man named Abram comes about.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Abram is identified as God, as somebody worthy of leading the new nation and building a new people.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is, is him and his wife Sarai, they can't get pregnant.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so Abram and Sarai, they they they try literally everything to try to get pregnant.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Until God says, if you'll just trust in me, I will give you generations more numerous than the stars.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've seen the stars, there was a pink moon last night.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Did you see that?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you've seen the stars, it's kind of overwhelming.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: You ever been on a cruise ship and gone where there's no light pollution and look up late at night?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Holy cow.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Stars upon stars.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So finally they do have a child and multiple children, and then generations after generations after generations.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that nation ends up being named after one of Abraham's children named Israel.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that group, that nation, are the people that God has poured his love out on, continually trying to take them back to the garden, trying to take them back to where they had been.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: But that nation, you probably know the story, they got caught up in uh slavery in a one of the most powerful nations in the world, Egypt, led by a real nice guy named Pharaoh.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then a man who had actually left Egypt and been out in the wilderness and tending a flock, he gets called by God in all things a burning bush, and he's told, Hey, go back and rescue my people.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Rescue my people.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things God says to Moses is he says, Hey, I have heard the cries of my people, and I am here to rescue them.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there is that continued phrase, that continued melody of God pouring out his love, his compassion, his mercy on his own people, the people who had run away from him.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Moses then goes into Egypt and he collects them and they leave and then they travel around in the wilderness for 40 years.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when they're in the wilderness, that's just the fancy word for desert in Hebrew language.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: So they're in the desert, wandering around, waiting for what they called the promised land.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: God had promised them a land, but he was gonna wait, make them wait an entire generation for it.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: So as they're wandering out in the wilderness, they're trying to find food to eat.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't know, the last time you've been in the desert, but there's not a lot of food there.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: So they start begging God for food.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he, because he's a God who pours out his love on his people, he offers them a thing called manna.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: They would collect this in the mornings, they would kind of keep it over the course of time, and then they would they would eat it, and there was only certain times that they could collect this manna.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: The same thing happened with water when they needed water.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: God gave them a way to get water as they wandered in the wilderness and they learned what it took to be a people that God had defined them to be.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then they get to the promised land, and there are other people in the promised land.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's a little concern about how they're going to take over this land.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is all through Joshua's book.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then they finally enter into the promised land, and God gives them the thing that they need a space to call their own, a place where they could grow into the nation and the people that they could be.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: God pours out his grace upon them.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to hear the overwhelming narrative of the story is that they were enslaved, and then God came and through his abundant love rescued them, just as he had promised to do.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: So over the course of time, John goes proclaiming this, baptizing people, and finally that baby is born.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: He comes forth, he takes leadership, and he's born in the most humble of places, right?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: In a major, but this is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he's born to the people as a rescue for them, as a way in which God's going to pour out his love on the people.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: He walks around teaching everybody how to be more like God, how to follow in the ways that the Israelites had fallen away from, how to follow in the way that God has designed for them.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: He starts pushing them toward that way.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: He's pretty honest about it, to be honest with you.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he's so honest about it that he starts to get in some trouble.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: He has some people that follow him, he has some people that don't like him, he has legal and religious scholars and experts who don't like anything that he's teaching.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they call him all kinds of heinous names.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: But he continues the same story that God's been doing since the beginning: a story of rescue, a story of love.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, Jesus finds himself entering into a city on the back of a donkey as people wave things at him, lay down a journey for him into Jerusalem, into the temple, and they proclaim the things that we say all the time.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, Jesus knows what's coming.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think, if we're being honest, I don't think the disciples understood.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they knew it at all.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty easy to hear a melody repeated over and over again.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Especially as it gets louder and louder and louder.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think the disciples got it.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think the people following him really paid attention to the pattern that they kept hearing.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do you hear the snare drum?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's still going.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how he keeps it going.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: I the disciples didn't get it.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, on on the Thursday night, he sat with them at the table.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he gave them bread and the cup.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: They still didn't get it.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then they put him on this fake trial after one of his own disciples gave him away for money.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: They took him to trial, they put him out into the public square, they put him on his knees, they took a cat of nine tails, and they whipped him time after time after time.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Scars on the back of his body, bleeding profusely.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then they took him and they gave him this big piece of wood.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was so big that he would have to hold it and carry it up a hill for his own execution.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as they're giving him this piece, it's so big, it's so heavy that he literally falls down as he's going forth.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: But see, that God's been doing this narrative the whole time.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: God's been trying to say, I'm going to pour my love out on you.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I will rescue you from even yourself.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the love, the Lord Himself falls down.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: It takes another person, a guy named Simon, who picks up the cross and carries it up the hill.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then they place the cross right there on the top of a hill with one on either side.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: They take the Lord, the King of Kings, Hosanna.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: They take a nail and they put it in his left hand, and then they take a nail and they put it in his right hand.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they nail him to this side of the cross and this side of the cross.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then they take his knees and they bend them to put his feet into the bottom of the cross.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't end up dying, by the way, from the blood here.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: He ends up dying because he cannot hold his body up.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: He can no longer breathe.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, Hosanna and the Highest, is now dying what they call a criminal's death.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I just can't help but think that God is sitting there saying this is always, this has always been the plan.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: This has always been where we were going to go because I was always going to rescue you.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: My love was always going to be poured out upon you.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy because even in the hardest of times, Jesus is hanging there on the cross.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he's quoting the Psalms.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you can hear the melody getting louder and louder and louder and louder.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna blow your ears away in a second.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Louder and louder and louder as God continues to give the same message that He's been giving for ages.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: That He loves you, that He's willing to die for you, that He will rescue you.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: If only you would hear crescendo in your life.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: If only you would hear.