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His Face Shine on You – Numbers 6:22-27

The concept of light is seen very early in the Bible – almost immediately, as God separates light and darkness, order and chaos. He does this in our lives today as well.

This passage is still used today as a Priestly Benediction – the Aaronic priests were instructed to bless the people with this same benediction, and both Christians and Jews still use these words in blessing today. (In fact, Gene Roddenberry used this as the model for the Vulcan “live long and prosper.”

The Ketef Hinnom scrolls, discovered in 1979 are the oldest biblical texts found, dating from 600 BC, and contain this blessing.

The structure here includes a preface and a postscript, opening with the instructions to the priests about how to use the words. The blessing specifically references Yahweh, the Covenant Name of God, pointing back to the promise made to Abraham, and to the love and mercy of God, in contrast with Elohim, the term for God that speaks more to His strength and justice. The pronoun used here is the second person singular, not plural, like your might expect, a reminder that this covenant relationship is not only a corporate thing, but intensely personal between each person and their Creator.

The blessing itself grows progressively, with each line being longer than the one before, a growing tide of blessing that builds on itself. The term “bless” here is barak which also means “kneel” and is an intimate picture of a father kneeling to comfort a child. The term “keep” is “shamar” which can also mean to watch and guard.

This concept is continued in the next verse, where the face – in fact, the plural “faces,” possibly a reference to the Trinity – shines on us. His face becomes the illumination to our lives, His guidance the direction for our actions. But that comes in the midst of Him being gracious to us, “to bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior”. This is the grace made ultimate on the cross and offered to each of us through that work of sacrifice.

The next verse returns to the Face of God, which turns to us, in contrast to turning away. This combined with the kneeling imagery creates an intimate picture of our relationship with God, going beyond the transactional concept that we often think about in relation to how we interact with God.

The blessing then closes with the concept of shalom, nor merely the absence of conflict but the restoration of relationships and the making whole and complete what was broken – personally, societally, environmentally, restoration in all things.

Lord, help us to receive this blessing, pass this blessing on and play a part in bringing this blessing to pass.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, February 5, 2023

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A Dark World – John 17:14-18

Should we ever intentionally enter dark spaces? There are many places in this world that do not glorify God and that are built in fact to do the very opposite. The scriptures regularly warn against friendship with and coming under the influence of evil people, across both the Old and New Testament.

But we need to be careful not to turn these warnings into excuses to ignore the call of the Holy Spirit or the example of Jesus Christ. In this passage, Jesus explicitly tells the Father that He is sending the disciples into the world. He asks that they go deep into the darkness of the world, but remain protected.

We are called into unfamiliar territory and places where we face rejection and even temptation. We need to be careful with that last one in particular because we still need to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit and not put ourselves in places that are setting us up to fail.

At the same time, we are not called to live inside a holy huddle – we are not called to stay in our own homes and interact only with our own families and possibly a few people we know we agree with. We are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation, and we cannot do that from within our own room.

We have the message that those around us can be given forgiveness and favor. What do we do with that privilege? Jesus models intimate conversations and soft words that span ideological and political perspectives.

Where is the Spirit leading you? Take some time to be in two-way conversation with God and see where He leads you. You may experience rejection and temptation so put on your armor of God. The darkest rooms are the ones most in need of light.

Let us pray for one another as Christ did, and encourage each other as we bring the message of Christ’s forgiveness and favor into a dark world.

— Sermon Notes, Alison Robison, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, January 29, 2023

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Pause and Recount – Isaiah 63:7-9

Today is the day when we’re supposed to make New Year’s Resolutions. But more often than not, these don’t work out. We try to will ourselves into new habits and new ways of living. Hopefully this comes from reflecting on the year and wanting to make things better. As Christians, though, we believe in transformation and not just willful habit change. We believe in the grace-filled power of God, while recognizing our own depravity and inability to simply will ourselves into righteousness. This only comes in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

This is what we are supposed to be reflecting on during the time of Advent, but it can easily become subsumed in the business and consumerism of the season, and even the forced joy of Christmas itself.

But our passage today speaks into the fullness of the human experience, and how God enters into that experience. “In all their distress he too was distressed.” God in His mercy lifts and carries His people, treating them “compassionately and with deep affection.” Is a memory of the blessings God has brought in the past.

But this passage comes in the midst of a song of lament, possibly sung by the exiles in the midst of the ruins of the temple. Sadness and lament is entirely appropriate because it is an honest recounting of what has happened. God has been good in the past and continues to be good today, but let us not ignore the trauma and tragedy that nonetheless is real. He seeks honest worship.

We can’t force ourselves into this, but God will bring it to us, just as He has in the past both on a cosmic scale and on a personal one. God is good, all the time.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, January 1, 2023

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Nontraditional Family – Matthew 1:18-25

Today we look at the story of Joseph, and his response to God’s plan. Those of us who have had children that have gotten older often miss the times when our children would jump into our arms, triggering our parental instincts and desires to protect and provide. We promise to keep our children safe, but ultimately we know that we don’t have full control, we can’t be with them every second. For that matter, we ourselves are sinful people, and at times we ourselves will hurt the ones we love.

Consider these feelings and instincts in the person of Joseph, within his patriarchal cultural contact. All his plans and hopes and expectations, gone in a moment.

We hear this story all the time, and may associate the Holy Family with the cozy Western peppermint mocha-style of Christmas. But the reality is not particularly cozy.

Joseph’s world would have been completely upended, and he likely felt hurt and upset. A natural response would be a desire for revenge, but even though he has lost face and felt hurt, he did not want to cause more pain or expose Mary to public disgrace. He would let her go away quietly and live the rest of her life as best she could.

While we may not have gone through that, we have certainly gone through our own dark night of the soul. Loss, disruption, betrayal, our world upended and our future thrown into doubt.

But it is into this darkness and storm, that God speaks the words of the angel to Joseph – God is with us.

And so when he woke up, he did as instructed. Most of us would rather avoid these situations, and the pain and emotions that go along with stuck disruption. But Joseph engages with it, living with the fact that he is no longer in control, and that his life was not going to be what he expected. Joseph is faithful, listens to the voice of the Lord and obeys. We have the same opportunity in our lives.

And when we do this, we have new possibilities. Even amid the challenges that come in that difficult situations, God acts. He did things in the middle of a chaotic, oppressive tax accounting scheme. He did things with a family seeking refuge from political violence. When we ourselves are fearful, anxious, greedy, jealous, vindictive, hurt – God is with us.

The bonds within the Holy Family were not the traditional bonds – the child was not conceived in the traditional way, and the parents did not even come together physically. This is something adoptive families, blended families, broken families can all look to.

And all of us can find hope in the promise that God is with us.

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood, WA, December 18, 2022

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Are You the One? – Matthew 11:2-11

Waiting and longing are difficult parts of life. We all have longings and desires, and when those desires are put off, it is hard. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” The best example for many of us is our longing to be married when we were single. We have a hole that needs to be filled, but have to wait for that to happen, and the waiting is painful.

This was the state of the people of Israel, which we can see in the persons of Simeon and of Anna, waiting and longing for the redemption of Israel for decades.

John the Baptist is in a similar situation in this passage. His whole life, from before he was even born, was bent towards preparing the way for the messiah. He preaches about his coming, calls the people to repentance to prepare, even baptizes Jesus Himself. But now he finds himself in prison, hearing about Jesus’ ministry – and it doesn’t sound like what he expected.

John had been preaching a strict message of repentance, a firm and strong word. It jived with the expectations of the people for a strong military leader who would lead them against the Romans. But John hears about Jesus’ ministry – eating and drinking, sermons of love and joy, healings. John may have expected something very different, and so he sends disciples to demand of Jesus whether He really is who John has been hoping and longing for.

And Jesus answers by pointing to the prophecies of Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.

Isaiah 61:1

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

Isaiah 35:5-6

Jesus makes the point here that His ministry must look very different than John’s – John is a prophet, the greatest of prophets, but Jesus is the fulfillment of all that prophecy. He is here to turn everything upside down – when He came, everything changed.

Today, we live in that change, we live in that kingdom where the least are greatest abs the greatest are least.

But we can still feel like John at times, both in specific circumstances and in our broader faith journey. Like John, we wonder if this really is the place we are to be, we may even wonder if Jesus is who we think He is.

Like John, we should look around us for what work Christ is doing in the world – because he is always at work, healing and loving and bringing the good news of His Kingdom.

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 11, 2022

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Fire and Fruit – Matthew 3:1-12

We are introduced to John the Baptist in this passage, and he comes onto the scene with one very clear message – repent! This message is not quite the one we think of at the time of Christmas, but it’s hard to miss this clear, hard message from a hard man. John serves as a bridge from the prophets of the Old Testament to the gospel of the New Testament. Elsewhere, Matthew describes John as a second Elijah.

John lived apart from the culture and away from the population centers – he set the pattern later picked up by the Desert Fathers of the early church as well as the broader monastic orders. John serves as the model, establishing himself away from the rest of the world but serving as a magnet for people seeking the truth being shared – truth about sin and repentance.

How do we talk about sin and repentance? Some talk about it in the context of judgement, others in terms of broken relationship with God, others in a more postmodern way, addressing our behavior in relation to our own personal beliefs.

John’s role was to call for paths to be made straight, to point Jesus out to people in a way that was clear, insisting that his listeners reorient themselves around the coming Messiah. John’s whole identity was as a witness to the person of Christ. He spent a lot of time insisting he was not the Christ, but pointed the way to Him.

Carl Ellis describes a matrix of righteousness, addressing the personal and social working out of both piety and justice. As evangelicals, we tend to live in the personal piety quadrant nearly all the time, while other traditions may live more in the social quadrants. The challenge is to seek righteousness in a holistic way.

This was the challenge laid out by John the Baptist, looking ahead to Jesus who will make all things new. Some of that new-making, though, will be destructive, an axe at the root of the tree. These processes can be painful, but “joy comes in the morning.”

As a church we have felt like we have been in a time of wilderness. As a society, as well. And so our responsibility is to, as John instructs, produce fruit in keeping with repentance – to emulate John, speaking the truth that clears the way for the truth of Christ’s love to enter all situations.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 4, 2022

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Hope – Isaiah 2:1-6

Christianity is sometimes accused of being naive, the hope offered dismissed as a false hope or crutch in the midst of a hurting world. But in reality, life in Christ is lived in the tension of “now but not yet.” Christ has come, but will come again.

We see this in the Old Testament prophets at well, as they proclaim the coming kingdom and the promise of ultimate peace, but also prophesy judgement and captivity. In this passage, Isaiah proclaims the hope of the mountain of God in the midst of the Assyrian Empire conquering the kingdom of Israel and going into exile.

The mountain of God is identified with the Temple Mount, even though it is not the highest in the region. The imagery is of the mountain rising above all others, and of the peoples of the world’s streaming towards it like rivers. The law of God, the life-giving teachings of God, go out from the mountain, and God Himself judges between the nations and settles disputes.

This justice brought by God is itself a prerequisite for the peace promised in the second half of verse four – you cannot have peace without justice.

That’s the vision we seek to live out as a church, a diverse group of people, like all the nations streaming to the temple to receive life. It is easier to work as a homogeneous group, but we seek out brothers and sisters different than ourselves because that is the picture of God’s kingdom we are promised here.

And so we walk together in the light and hope of God. When people are fighting, we walk as ambassadors of peace. When people are selfish, we walk in generosity. When people are in conflict, we walk as reconcilers. Let us walk in the light of the Lord.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, November 27, 2022

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The Wonder of the Torah – Psalm 119:17-20

Eugene Peterson who created The Message paraphrase version of the Bible also wrote a book called Eat This Book, referencing John’s actions in Revelation 10 when he eats the scroll an angel gives him. The argument is that we are often too analytical and systematic about our study of scripture, when we should be consuming it like food. “He put away his notebook and pencil. He picked up his knife and fork. He ate the book.”

We should be consuming scripture for sustenance, sucking the marrow out of it, absorbing all the bitterness) nutrients and tasting every nuance. We should be chewing the cud of scripture!

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.

That’s what the psalmist expresses here, deeply desiring the instruction and laws of God. This is not natural! We typically react against rules and constraint, but the psalmist sees wonder in the Torah of God – not only the words, but the living ethos of life with God.

We see this attitude also in Psalm 1:

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.

We know we should seek God’s word in this way, but often this is a struggle for us.

It is notable that the psalmist calls himself a stranger or immigrant in the land, out of place, unrooted, in a transitional state. Where do our roots come from, then? This is what drives the deep desire for God’s commandments our dependence on God’s word like a tree depends on the streams of water.

Let us feel that need, that wonder deeply into our bones. Let us consume the scripture not as a textbook or instruction manual but as the transformational word of God.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, November 13, 2022

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To God be the Glory – Luke 5:17-26

Wonder is a key to transformation, faith and worship. Understanding ourselves in proper context to God will lead us to a childlike faith and out of the day-to-day grind of earthly life.

False humility is the flip side of arrogance. Both mean that we are failing to give God the glory for what He has done and the gifts that He has given. God may need to work in us to properly orient our outlook and behavior in one direction or the other.

But what do those two truths have in common, and how do they connect to this story of the man lowered through the roof?

The story starts with the earthly enemies of Christ watching him for anything they can use against Him. But Jesus was doing what he so often did, healing the sick.

We would prefer to see ourselves in Jesus in this passage, but so often we are the Pharisees, knowingly or unknowingly putting barriers between Jesus and the people seeking Him.

In reality, we should be seeking to be the friends in this story, loving others with a creative intensity that drives us to seek their good by any means. But the best good did not come from them, but from the infinite power of God through Jesus Christ. God doesn’t need us – and yet we matter to Him and he invites us into what He is doing.

There is a tension and even a paradox here. God’s work is not about us – and yet at the same time, God’s work is about us, transforming us into the person He has already proclaimed us.

Within the church community, we play both the role of the friends and the man on the cot at different times. We cannot be too proud or protective of ourselves to be the one who needs others to lower us down to Jesus. We cannot be too afraid to step into the unknown and the difficult – the possibilities of failure open up broader opportunities as well. God wants us in this vulnerable position so He can do “unimaginable things” that will give Him the glory.

God has put people in all of our lives who will lower us in a cot. Anything we accomplish is bolstered by the people and opportunities God has placed around us to glorify himself through the work He and they do through us.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, November 6, 2022

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Wonder: Who is Like Our God? – Exodus 15:11-13

Advent starts in about a month, which is a preview of the birth of Christ, so we’re going to do a preview of that preview during November called “Wonder”.

Children are the best examples we have of wonder. Everything is new and exciting and they have not yet become disappointed or jaded. They have an openness and vulnerability that we would all like to emulate. When do we lose that? When did the what-ifs become no-we-can’ts? When did curiosity give way to caution? There are obviously good reasons we do this, but it’s still a tragedy, and we should seek not to throw the baby off wonder out with the bathwater of irresponsibility as we mature. As children of God, we should have a childlike wonder for Him and the World he made.

The passage comes from the song of Moses after the passage through the sea – Moses has led the people of Israel out of Egypt, pursued by Pharaoh’s army, trapped between the water and the chariots. What a conflicting time that must have been – on one hand rejoicing at the freedom gained and justice done, on the other hand terrified at the doom bearing down upon them.

But we know the story – God rescued the Israelites miraculously, leading them through the sea, and destroying the army that pursued them. That is the context for this song of relief and rejoicing and wonder.

In our lives, we have also experienced these moments of salvation – job offers at the right moment, just the amount of money needed arriving in the mail, other such rescues. But like the Israelites, we often forget. So let’s reconsider the wonder we should hold at these events.

Wonder is a catalyst for praise and worship. In this story, we see Moses’ song of rescue lead into Miriam leading corporate worship and the spontaneous dancing and playing of musical instruments. Much like David’s dancing before the Ark of God, when we are overcome with wonder it naturally leads to a joyful overflowing of worship.

Second, wonder activates covenant. Even when we have wandered, when we see the wonder of God’s goodness and creation, that re-engages our covenant relationship with God. That wonder itself is a core piece of that relationship. We are saved through faith, but too often we see “faith” as meaning “knowledge” and knowledge becomes the focus of our walk with God. And while that’s a part of it, wonder is unavoidably the core of our relationship with a God as mighty as ours.

That recognition of the greatness of God can also open us up to possibilities and transformation. The mystery of God is core to our relationship with Him, just as mystery is key to love. Our own smallness and the massiveness of the universe and its Maker, opens us up to the changes that God seeks in us.

But often these mountaintop experiences give way to the wilderness and the desert. We can easily follow the pattern of the Israelites, losing our wonder and going right back into “adulting” and the cares of daily life, and the griping that often comes with that. We hold onto the things we have done in the past, instead of being open to the new things God may have for us.

This is why we gather, to come together in worship and wonder, to refresh after our weeks in the desert. But we need to be sure to come in the childlike wonder that Jesus explicitly calls us to.

As we prepare ourselves for Advent, let us do so with that openness, wonder and vulnerability of a child.

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, October 30, 2022