Palm Leaves and Willow Branches | Creative Church

Leviticus 23. Some of you are all like Leviticus. Blow the dust off that chapter there, OK? Leviticus 23. I was just really back and forth with what I wanted to preach for Palm Sunday. The Lord spoke to me. And so I've never preached this before, but I feel like it's for someone in the room. And it's Leviticus 23. And I'm going to give you several verses today, but I'm going to start with this one. Leviticus 23, verse 40, it says, "And you shall take for yourself branches of palm tree," everybody say palm trees, "and willows." Everybody say willows. So he says, "In one hand, I want you to hold a palm branch." It's Palm Sunday. I want you to hold a palm branch. "In the other hand, I want you to hold a willow." Everybody say a palm branch and a willow. And he says, "I want you to come before me with rejoicing-- with rejoicing. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Anoint me to minister it with clarity. And, Lord, while I preach publicly, would you preach privately? In any area that I fall short, Lord, let your grace be sufficient, Lord.

Let your private sermon fill in all of the voids in my sermon. For you are the-- you are the word, Lord. You and you alone are the word. And we give you thanks in Jesus' name." Everybody said. I guess let me start by saying that God never asks you to come to him with perfect hands. God's not asking us to be perfect. Somebody say thank you, Lord. But he did ask you to come to him with full hands. Everybody say full hands. Not polished hands, not predictable hands. There are some things that we do as Christians that the world does not understand. The world's not going to understand. Coming to the table of the Lord, worshiping, kneeling, singing, weeping, serving. But in one hand, he said, "I want you to take a palm. In the other hand, I want you to take a willow. And I want you to come before me rejoicing." So I'm going to give you three things to write down. This is the first one. God commands rejoicing in both seasons. Everybody say both seasons. He says, "I did not ask you to choose your season. I asked you to choose your response to your season." I mean, if you have lived long enough to realize you don't get to choose your season, you do get to choose your response to the season. But you don't get to choose it.

And the palm speaks of victory. Palm Sunday, palms and scriptures speak of victory. Does anybody ever have victory? All right, victory. And the willow speaks of sorrow, pain, difficulty. Man, we love palm seasons. We love palm trees, especially in Minnesota, because we don't have any. So for us, palm trees remind us of vacation, are going somewhere warm, or are going to like the Bahamas, where my family's from, right? Anybody ever been to the Bahamas? It's where God lives. They call it Paradise, Paradise Island, right there next to Nassau, right? Been there all my life growing up. And so palm trees remind us of warm days, beautiful days, sunny days. And it's kind of like willows behind my house. We have like a retainage pond, and there's a big willow there. And it just looks like it's weeping, right? They call it weeping willows. Anybody know what I'm talking about with a w-- somebody all got spanked with it, growing up with a switch. Anybody, maybe that'll help you remember any, but you weep with the weeping willow, right? Young people are like, what's a switch? Don't worry about it. [LAUGHTER] Oh, help us, Jesus.

And you know, the palm feels like sunlight. The willow feels like the days when the rain just won't stop. And if you live long enough, you'll realize you'll go through both seasons, multiple times. Sometimes it can be the best of times and the worst of times, all at the same time. Has anybody ever gone through great moments and bad moments together? You're like, on one hand, it's the greatest thing. On the other hand, it's like, how can this be happening? And sometimes you're just in a palm season. Everything's going great. I mean, how many of you love the palm seasons? I mean, it's just like, laughter's in your home. Food's on the table. Everybody's healthy. You're like, "Who else needs prayer?" This is amazing, you know, like God feels closed. You just weep when you, you know, you kneel down to pray and you feel His presence and everything's going great. And, you know, you've got the resources you need, all these kind of things. Let's give God praise for Palm seasons. Anybody, maybe you're in one. (congregation applauding) You know, it's a great season. It's a wonderful season, you know. But if you live long enough, you'll discover, you know, that there's also willow seasons, you know, difficult seasons and tears and pain, suffering.

Anybody's ever been in a willow? You might be in one now, I mean real pain. Like, I've gone through things in my life that like it takes, takes like the breeze out of wind. Things that you go through that take like the wet out of water, you just feel numb. Anybody, I'm the only one who's been through anything like that, anybody know what I'm talking about? Like you just feel like you lose all sense of feeling. And your heart, you have to guard it. 'Cause it can become callous. Scripture say guard your heart. Guard it, protect it. For out of it flows, all the issues of life. Like, I've gone through things in my life that, I mean, they're so painful. If I start talking about it, I'll go to weeping. Sometimes you go through things and God just doesn't fix it. You just, you learn to live with a scar. Not a wound. Any scarred people in the room? You're almost, you, like if you've ever lost a child or a loved one, you're like, it's like you're an amputee. It's like you live, but you're not the same. Like I've gone through things in my life where it's like, like I've gone to God and said, like that hurt, you know? And you let it happen. Anybody, can we relate?

I'm sorry we're not shouting, I'm just being, this is grown people talk. Anybody can handle, like I'm talking pain. I'm talking pain where there's no words. And I'm like, you let it happen. You, I asked you to stop it and you didn't stop it. And you let it happen. And in those moments, I've had to learn. I've had to learn when I don't like his acts. I've had to learn to trust his ways. You know, the scriptures say to Israel, he showed his acts, but in the Moses, he showed his ways. There's something about knowing a person. You're like, no. I don't like what you let happen, but I know, I know, I know your ways. Anybody know about ways? Is that terminology still work? Like grandma would say, it's not that I don't like them, it's that I don't like their ways. Anybody ever heard that term? I don't know if young people still talk like that, but I saw I grew up. So God, when God lets things happen and I go, I don't like your acts, but I trust your ways. And I know if you let it happen. But somehow, I can't even explain how, but somehow, that must be for my good. I don't know.

Some things are questions for heaven. You know, how many of you want to have peace? You know, the only way to have peace that passes all understanding is to give up your right to understand. Amen. I've had to learn with God the moment I surrender understanding He gives me peace. He's like, can you just trust me? Amen. acts, can you trust my ways? I have to do this with some of my sons right now. My older sons, I'm like, I need you to do this. They don't like the fact that I'm making them do it. But they trust my ways. They don't like the acts. But they trust my ways and they go, if Dad's making us do this, it must be for our good. So you've got to get to that place where you trust God's ways because there will be moments in life when you're not going to agree with the acts. Take your son Isaac to the mountain. Take him, the God he's my miracle, you gave him to me. If you walk with God long enough, he will ask you for what he gave you. To see if you love it or you love the one who gave it to you because what is the blessing without the blessing, what's the healing without the healer, what's the provision without the provider, what's the deliverance without the deliver, what is it to have the things of God if you don't have him? So when you want to know him, he takes you through something because God's teaching methods are incredible. The word must be lived out. It has to go from logos, which is unapplied text to Ramah, which is text cut to the continuity of your own specificities.

Word that is tailor made for you. So every time you want to know him, how many of you want to know him? He goes, "Okay. Do you want to know me as a healer?" Come, let's walk through sickness. Come, give me your hymn. Come on, keep your eyes on me. Come on. Do you want to know me as a provider? Come on, let's walk through lack. Come on, give me your hymn. Keep your eyes on me. You laugh at Peter. Keep your eyes on me. Don't look at the storm. Don't look at what you don't have. Look at me. Don't look at the doctor's report. Look at me. Keep your eyes on me. If you keep your eyes on me, I'll help you walk on top of stuff that other people sink in. Keep your eyes on me, looking unto me, looking at Jesus. This is how you survive. This is how you get to 60 and you're not bitter, 70 and not bitter. This is how you survive life, as you keep your eyes on Jesus, and He walks you through the storms. He walks you through them. You're going to go through them. You're going to go through them.

You're going to hold a palm in one hand and you're going to hold a willow in the other. He goes, "You come in here and you learn to rejoice with both." With both. Because I got everybody in here, if you're honest enough, you've got a testimony, but then you got something you're going to God about. I promise you, if we dig deep enough, there's a willow and sometimes you can't even explain it. Sometimes I just feel like God's got a sermon for me to hear. I'm only one that needs it, I guess. Just help me God. Be like everybody else, I guess. It's just like, "How can it be? What is my response? It's the best of times and worst of times." All at the same time, "Do I mourn or do I rejoice?" He's like, "You come in here with all of it and you rejoice. You learn to praise me. You learn to trust my ways." It's like, I said it last service. Come on, guys. When Jesus fed the multitude, what did He tell the disciples? He said with all the food that was left over, did He say, "Leave it or what He say do?" He said, "Gather it up." How many baskets did they have? Come on, Sunday school. 12 baskets. And then what happened after that? They gathered the 12 baskets and then they got on the boat and what happened? They got in a storm. And now they think they're gonna die.

They go wake up, somebody go wake up Jesus. He's asleep. And then they woke them up. They said, "Carras thou not that we perish?" It just, this is people. This is people. They woke up, first of all, you can't sink when the Lord is on board. That's the sermon right there. You also just have to hear the first commandment, which was, "We're going to the other side." So you don't have to know, you don't have to worry about how it's gonna end. You just have to reflect back on how it started. Because if He said, "You are going to the other side." I don't care what storm, what wind, what turmoil, what difficulty, what trauma. If He said it, if He's alpha, yeah, we can go down that path, you know, the whole thing. But they get in this storm, they think they're gonna die. And they wake up the Savior and they say, they're not like, "What do you think we should do?" They judge His heart, carest thou not? Is it funny how when we get in trauma, we judge the Lord's heart, that do you not care? And He wakes up and He's like, "Oh ye of little faith." And the part of the faith, see, He's trying to teach them. Because all while they're in the storm, what's at their feet? What's at their feet? The 12 baskets. See what God does, God always leaves you a leftover. The 12 baskets were left over, that when you go through this miracle, He always leaves you a leftover to take with you into the next storm. That when you're in that storm, you can look around and go, "Well the same God that just fed 15,000 people, how clearly He cares, they're literally surrounded by miracles." This is how you build your faith.

As you look at what God brought you from in the last storm, and you realize that the same God that delivered me from that storm will deliver me from this storm, and deliver me from the next storm, and the next storm, and you begin to build a resume, a faithfulness in your life, that when you, my wife and I have a notebook in our room, and in that notebook is things that we used to pray about, that we're not praying about anymore, because God answered all of the prayers. So when we get in a storm, we pull His resume, see because you'll forget, they forgot, they forgot with it at their feet, they forgot. I'm telling you, you'll forget if you don't have a resume of God's faithfulness, and when you just sit down, because when that comes at you, when that storm comes at you, it's all you can see, and if you don't pull the resume, go, "Well, look here, remember, remember in 2000," and we went through that, and we thought we weren't going to make it. Remember when we were building the church and COVID hit, and we thought we were going to have to close the church. Remember when the doctor told us that we wouldn't have kids, and we have eight kids. Remember when God healed, Alexander and Nicholas and Isabella and Penelope and Victoria and Liliana and Augustine, and remember when I just went to the doctor, and they had a assists on my pain... they said that it's gone because God's a healer, remember that, remember that. You have to have a resume of God's faithfulness in your life because when storms come, it's all you can see. Even the disciples couldn't recognize God in a storm. All they could recognize was his voice. When you can't recognize his acts, trust his ways. I trust your ways. I'm not going to be offended. It's like the woman whose daughter needed healing. As she went to Jesus and said, "Jesus healed my daughter," and Jesus said, "It's not for me to give the King's bread to dogs." It's hard.

I'm telling you, walking with God, there's going to be hard moments as she chose in that moment to be unoffended. I'm telling you, you may get mad at me, but offense is a choice. It's a choice. It's a choice. She chose to not be offended. She said, for she said, "So move God, so move the heart of the Lord." She said, "But Lord, even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the master's table." Because she was unfinnable, she got her miracle. She didn't need the loaf. See if you take a crumb from a loaf and you send it to a chemist, and you say, "What's in the crumb?" Whatever is in the loaf is in the crumb. She said, "I don't need the whole loaf." She just said, "If there's healing in the loaf, there's healing in the crumb." If there's provision in the loaf, then there's provision in the crumb. You've got to get to that place in your life where you see, healing's in your humility. It's in your humility. You will eat if you'll humble yourself. You'll be healed if you'll humble. Remember the man with leprosy? They told him, he said, "Go down there and wash the general." He didn't want to wash. He had to take off all of his armor and his titles to get in the water and wash to get healed. He didn't want to do it, and his servant told him. He said, "If the prophet asked you to do a hard thing, you would have done it." If he'd asked you to conquer a city, you would have done it, but because he asked you to humble yourself, you're going to perish with leprosy because of your pride. Healing's in your humility.

Let's all pray it now. Lord, let me humble myself that I may live in healing. Let pride never keep me from my miracle. Give God praise now, if you believe it. Come on. I'm almost done. Listen to me. Write this down. God does not change when your season does. Malachi 3 and 6. I'm the Lord, I do not change. Hebrews 13 and 5, "I'll never leave you and I will never forsake you." It almost sounds like I'll never leave you nor forsake you. It sounds like I'll never leave you nor leave you, but if you study that verse, it says what it means is I'll never leave you physically or abandon you emotionally because some of you have people who are still in your home, but they have left you emotionally. I'm not an absentee father. You don't have to leave home to be absent. You can be laying in bed with someone and be gone. God says I'll never do that to you. I will never, I will never be present physically and spiritually and not be present emotionally. My Lord, thank You, Jesus. Your children are watching how you handle pressure. They're watching how you handle palm seasons, they're watching how you handle willow seasons. Do you listen to me, guys? Do not get casual with God. When things are really good, I've been pastoring over two decades. I've watched people. I've watched people.

People are closer to Jesus in willow seasons. Now, I'm saying most. I mean, preaching on prayer don't make people pray. You know what makes people pray? Trouble. People go, oh, pastor, I'm going through. I say, oh, you've got to have prayer life. You have a real prayer life. If you've got teenagers, you've got a prayer life. Come on, mom. Come on, dad. You've got young adults. You've got prayer life. Come on. Yeah. I'm not attacking young adults. I'm just telling you, as a parent, your decisions make us pray. [LAUGHTER] But they're watching. When you go through willow, do you just complain? Or do you trust the Lord? Amen. I've got a few things in my life that I was like, I just-- I don't know, sometimes your faith is loud. And then sometimes your faith is just quiet. He's like, I don't want to say anything. Because I don't want to-- I don't think my mouth can line up with the heart of God yet.

I just-- life's taught me in moments to shut up. I'm even ahead to tell yourself to shut up. Just shut up, Jonathan. That's enough for you. Come on. This has grown people conversation. I'm just telling you, you just need to shut up. You don't need to say anything else. Come on. Anybody ever told yourself? Because you're just like, I'm going to turn around, mess this whole thing up. I want to complain. I want to vent. I want to whine. I want to speak doubt. I don't know if your heart's ever wanted to speak doubt. Mine has. And I've worn and find people who would agree with my doubt. And if you didn't, I got angry at you. I'm just telling you the truth. It's like, this is your flesh. It's wicked. And I've had to sometimes pull myself away so that I could change the story I told myself. It's like the woman with the issue of blood. Everybody around her was leave Jesus alone. You're not even supposed to be here. But the Bible says she told herself.

It actually says, she said within herself, if I may but touch the hem of his garment, I may be mayhold. And she got healed because of the story she told herself. What sermon are you preaching to you? Sometimes you've got to preach to yourself. I've had to preach myself into joy, into encouragement. I've had-- anybody's ever had to preach a sermon to yourself? Come on, come on. You've just got to preach a sermon to yourself and say, look, this is enough for this. I'm not doing this anymore. Like, this is-- you've got to go if you've got to go by yourself and change the story you tell yourself. Because you're going to go through good days. You're going to go through bad days. You're going to have moments of plenty, moments of lack. You're going to have moments when it's wonderful, moments when it's not wonderful. But Psalms 30 and 5 says, weeping may endure for the night. But joy comes in the morning. I've never seen a storm that stayed. You have times of peace. You have times of war. You have times of good days and bad days. But I have never seen a storm that stayed. So I'm not going to leave you with the willows. Let me leave you with this. Go to Revelation 7 and 9. This is the last thing. Revelation 7 and 9.

I read this, and it blessed me. So I'm going to read it to you. I want my band to come to the stage. Come to the stage, guys. We'll end with this. Revelation 7 and 9. He says, after this, I saw a great multitude. This is the vision of heaven. I'm going to be, you know, heaven's our home. Come on, heaven's our home. Have you believed heaven's a real place? Heaven's a real place. I've been getting my kids-- we've been-- we talk about heaven a lot. We talk about eternity a lot. Most people don't. But I've been getting them to talk about what-- that decision you're wanting to make. How's that going to matter in eternity? How's it going to matter? How's it going to affect eternity? Heaven's real. And so these scriptures that I read to you in Leviticus, it says, come in with, in one hand, come in with a palm and then come in with a willow. And I want you to come into my presence rejoicing. This is how we handle it as believers. We have good days, we have bad days, good seasons, bad seasons, and he says, come in to me and you hold them both up and you rejoice. The good and the bad. Come on, church.

When it's good, when it's really good, you might be in a good season right now. Don't get casual with God, rejoice. And don't let anybody make you ashamed of your palm season. When it's good, let's let it be good. Come on. If you woke up today and there was no pain, praise God. Yeah. If you didn't hurt yourself sleeping last night, praise God. I looked at my five-year-olds the other day and I went in there to wake them up and the way they were sleeping. They were sideways and I thought if I woke up like that, I would check myself into the ER. And they were just fine. When it's good, let's let it be good. And if you're in a willow season, if you're in a willow season, hold on. You've never seen a storm that stayed. Never. It's good. Come on. We don't have 12 months of winter. It may be long. I know you feel like it's never going to end, but I promise you, we've been made north for the night, but joy comes. Joy comes, listen to me, joy comes in the morning. Put my verse up. Revelations, here it is. It says, and there was a great multitude standing before them and in their hands. This is us in heaven. This is a picture of us in heaven. I mean, if you're going with me.

Okay. This is a picture in their hands. When I read it, it said they were holding on branches. And the Lord, when I read it, He looked at me and He said, "What's missing?" I said, "There's no willow us. There's no willow us." I'm telling you, there's a day coming where there's no more mourning, no more weeping, no more sickness, no more sadness, no more pain, no more suffering. No more anxiety. No more depression. There is a day coming where there will be no willow. It will just be a palm. How many of you believe heaven is our home? I'm telling you, there is coming a day. And I was writing it last night. I just kept thinking about that song, that little old song, when we all get to heaven. Anybody remember that song? Sing it for me, Skyward. Sing that little song. When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be. When we all see Jesus, we will sing and shout. I know some people, I know some of you grew up, and you're like, "We don't sing. We don't clap. We don't lift our hands. We don't raise our hand if there's a question." Listen to me, I don't know what you think heaven's going to be like. But I'm telling you, it's going to be a celebration, like you have never seen. When mothers hold babies, they lost. When you see loved ones that have gone on, you see the saints of the ages, and then all of a sudden your eyes behold, the altogether lovely, the lily of the valley, the bright,

and morning star, the ferris of 10,000, and you see his nail print hails, and you see the fire in his eyes, and he calls your name. It's going to be a party. I'm going to come and slide on my stomach. I'm just going to run and slide. When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing. Come on, church. When we are... singing... What are we going to do here, but we'll sing... and shout! Come on, lift those hands, sing a tune, come on! When we are... Get to heaven. What a day of rejoicing love will be... Do you want to see us? Come on! When we are... singing... We will sing... and shout! One more time! One more time! Come on, man! Everything we've got! When we are... Get to heaven. What a day of rejoicing love will be... What are we singing? When we are... singing... We will sing... and shout! We will be doing...

Now lift those hands, lift those hands, lift the palm and the willow. Lord, we bring it to you. You