Palm Sunday is a great day to offer up songs of praise that acknowledge Jesus Christ as the blessed One who is able to Save all who come to Him in faith! This is the day that kicks off Holy Week where remember all that Jesus went through to provide us salvation, but just as it happened 2000 years ago we take this time to worship Him for being the Almighty King of kings! Here is the set list for this Sunday (3/28/21) at Eagleville Bible Church:
(Click the song title to take you directly to that song info)
- Our God Saves, (YouTube link)
- Graves into Gardens, (YouTube link)
- Hosanna, (YouTube link)
- Lead Me to the Cross, (YouTube link)
- Shout Hosanna, (YouTube link)
Our God Saves
Key Scriptures
- Ps 102:22,
- Ps 17:6,
- Ps 89:15,
- Ps 146:5,
- Ps 18:46,
Do you know that God is the Savior of the world? Have you experienced this to be true in your own life? It is true, and it is the best news ever! God saves us!
Ok, so that sounds great but what does that mean and why should I care? Well, this means that apparently we are people who need saved from something. The thing that we need saved from is our natural bent toward doing things outside of God’s design for us – sin. The Bible tells us that we have all gone astray, we are all sinners (which means that we miss the mark set by God) and that we are utterly helpless on our own to pay the penalty for those sins in a way to completely appease our Holy God. This is why we need saved, because there is a penalty to pay for the sins we commit and unfortunately that penalty is an eternity in a place called hell if we do not accept the solution to the problem we have given by the Father God Himself, namely Jesus Christ!
God knew that we could not adequately pay for the sin problem we all have, so He sent His Son to us in order to accomplish this for us. As I write this post we are a week away from Good Friday, the day that we celebrate the payment Jesus made on behalf of humanity on the Cross to pay the penalty for our sins. Jesus lived a perfect life, free of sin, and died the death that we all deserved in order to provide the salvation that we all need. Thank You Lord!
So, now all we have to do in order to receive this salvation is to believe with the heart and confess with the mouth that Jesus Christ is the Lord of our life (see Rom 10:9). We must believe the Gospel (the Good News that Jesus is God and that He came to this earth, lived a perfect life, died a death we deserved, was buried, and was raised from the dead), ask God to forgive our sins, repent (which means to turn our lives from the sinful patterns we have and start following God’s ways), and ask God to fill us with His Spirit to guide us through this life!
When you take this step of faith, then is when you will truly understand the experiential reality of God’s salvation that will and can never be understood academically! Our God truly does transform us and save us!
Graves Into Gardens
Key Scriptures
- Isa 61:3,
- Eph 2:5,
- Ps 30:11,
- Ps 106:9,
- Eze 37:1-10,
- John 15:15,
- Isa 46:9,
- Galatians 2:20
When we think of the Cross of Christ and the death that He endured for our salvation, we are tempted to think of that day as the darkest day in all of history. And yes, while it was a very dark day for humanity, it was also the single greatest day in all of history (save the resurrection three days later!)! The grave that everyone seen as the end to hope and salvation, turned into the garden from which all hope and seeds of salvation spring from! Our resurrected Savior came up out of that grave! He is alive and is now producing wonderful transforming power to all who call upon His name for salvation!
When we realize our need for Christ, it is then that we call upon Him to deliver us from our destruction and despair. The Bible tells us that when we do, He answers us and provides the deliverance we need. This act of calling upon God is actually us dying to ourselves and allowing Him to live through us! Our graves (the moment we die to ourselves) end up turning into gardens of fruit that are produced for the glory of the One who delivered us! It is Him at work in us that produces the fruitful harvest of love, joy, peace , patience, and so on! God turns our graves into gardens that produce fruit for His glory, Hallelujah!
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20 (NIV)
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Hosanna
Key Scriptures
- Mark 11:10,
- Ps 51:10,
- Isa 55:6,
- 2 Cor 4:18,
This song has such a wonderful message of hope and the call to pray for revival! We need a widespread revival to break out in our land! We are seeing things take place in our day that is so opposed to God and His ways, and if we expect anything good for the following generations then we need to be the generation that rises up right now and seeks God for the only hope we have, namely a Spiritual Awakening that causes a revival in all of our hearts!
This will only happen when we call upon Hosanna to come and save us! This term of praise was used of the crowds who gathered on the road when Jesus was on a colt on His way to Jerusalem. We call this the Triumphal Entry of Christ, and it came a week before His death and resurrection. As He made His way to Jerusalem the crowds shouted Hosanna, which means “save us, we pray!”.
Can you imagine if we would see crowds of people in our day gathering in the streets to shout out Hosanna to the Lord God? I want to see that, and I am asking God to do a work of reviving this world so that we will see His salvation in our days! We need God to be our Hosanna for sure!
This starts when each of us cries out to God as the bridge of this song directs us to, “Heal my heart and make it clean,…show me how to love like You have loved me,…break my heart for what breaks Your’s, everything I have for Your Kingdom’s cause..”. We see this same sort of prayer when David cried out to God in Ps 51 and said,
“Create in me a clean heart God and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”.
Ps 51:10
When we have a generation of people praying these things, that is when we will have Jesus answer the call of Hosanna and provide true, lasting revival in our land! May that day be today!
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Lead Me to the Cross
Key Scriptures
- Phil 3:8,
- Gal 2:20,
- Heb 4:15,
- Mark 16:6,
The week leading up to the Cross must have been such a trying week for Christ. He knew what laid ahead of Him, and the Bible says that He endured it for the joy that was set before Him (See Heb 12:2), disregarding its shame! I believe that this will benefit each of us too as His followers!
Each of us will find ourselves facing our “crosses” at some point or another, and when we do may we have the same courage to face them in faith for the joy set before us when we endure the trial and come to the other side not having shrunk back in fear or given into temptation! Jesus gave us a great example of this when we see Him grieving with the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, asking Him to take the cup from Him. Even through droplets of blood coming out of his pores, Jesus said, “Not my Will but Yours be done Father.”. In essence He said, “Father, Lead me to the Cross.”.
See, it is much easier to face the cross ahead of us when we know that the Father is with us the entire time. There is comfort in knowing that because He is with us, we are able to go through very difficult things and come out stronger than we were before. The key though is to completely empty ourselves before God and to allow Him to strengthen us by His grace and presence. I will leave you with the prayer that we sing in the chorus of this song:
“Bring me to my knees, Lord I lay me down. Rid me of myself for I belong to You. O’ lead me to the cross.”
Lead me to the Cross chorus
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Shout Hosanna
Key Scriptures
- Mark 11:10,
- Isa 60:1,
- Matt 1:21,
- Mark 16:6,
- 1 Cor 6:14,
- Rom 8:11,
As I stated above (here) the term Hosanna is a cry for God to save us with His mighty power, and the reason I love this song so much is because it reveals how God has saved us in a way that promotes praise!
In the first verse we sing, “Come see what love has done, amazing! He bought us with His blood, our Savior. The cross has overcome, we worship You!” This is why we shout Hosanna, because we know that God is powerful to save! He has provided everything necessary for our salvation and deliverance through Jesus Christ! That is why we worship Him, because He has answered our declaration, “Hosanna”.
Every time we are tempted, Hosanna! Every time we have relational struggles, Hosanna! Every time we need a physical touch of healing, Hosanna! He is the God who saves, so why wouldn’t we cry out to Him at all times to deliver us from whatever trials we are facing.
So, because we have received the answer to our call for God to be our Hosanna we now have the privilege to live Spirit filled lives that are full of God’s power! The bridge of this song declares, “The same power that rolled the stone away is the same power alive in us today…”. Have you considered lately that God Himself has taken up residence in your heart and has provided power to you to overcome everything and anything you are facing? This happened because at some point or another you called out, “Jesus, save me!” and He answered. So, are you experiencing that power in your life? If not, maybe you might go back to step one and call upon Him to save you. If you are, then praise God and continue to allow yourself to be emptied and filled by the Spirit daily! It is awesome when God is our Hosanna!
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.
Romans 8:11 (NIV)
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Summary Statement
As we live our lives we need to constantly be aware of our need for God to save us as we are being led to our many “crosses” and seeking God to revive us each day! As we receive His delivering power in our lives, then it is only fitting to reply with a Shout to Hosanna in praise for turning our Graves into Gardens cultivating Spirit-led, fruitful lives for His glory!
God bless you!
