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Letz Go!!! – Mark 1:16-20

Previously on “Mark”: After hundreds of years of silence God spoke to the people of Israel through John the Baptist, proclaiming the coming of the Messiah. Many people come to the desert to repent. In the midst of this surge of changing hearts, Jesus comes to be baptized and begins His ministry, with a stopover in the wilderness. He opens His ministry with a call to trust Him and believe His words.

Where we pick up the story, Jesus is calling His first disciples. But what does that word, which we throw around a lot, really mean? The concept is more like an apprentice than like a student in a classroom. This is someone learning alongside a master craftsman or a rabbi as they lived and worked together.

Where Jesus diverged from your typical rabbi is that typically disciples were recruited by “inbound” methods, attracting followers on the strength of their skill with their craft or words or theology. Jesus, though, is all about “outbound marketing.” He came directly to those he wanted to call and gave the invitation – “Follow me.”

And the disciples did – they left behind their old lives, their families, their homes, their businesses. They let go of livelihood & security and & a normal daily life to follow Jesus. Now, it’s important to note that this is a unique context – very few of us are specifically called into itinerant preaching ministries. But we are all called to something. And we don’t need to wait for us to hit rock bottom. God is always working, even when we are doing well enough to, say, have hired workers in our fishing business.

But we should consider what we are clinging to and what we are putting ahead of our identity in Christ. Often we put our secular roles first. But first of all, we are followers of Jesus, and we take that identity into our workplaces, our families, our relationships, our hobbies. Mark calls out the specific things that the disciples left, and we have specific things in our lives that we must also subordinate to our own call to be disciples.

Even though we are not called to be wandering preachers, we are called to find our identity in Jesus. Like the disciples, we are called to be followers of Jesus first, and everything else comes second. We should resist the temptation to make our work and our activities the main element of who we are.

Jesus is asking us not to hold anything back. We tend to hold things back and negotiate with God. “Right now, I want to do this thing, and later on I’ll do what I want.” But we should know that God is seeking our good in addition to His glory. We are not on opposing sides here. Jesus did not tell his disciples to drop their nets – He said “follow” and they did a cost-benefit analysis and determined that what He was offering was better than what they had.

Discipleship is a relationship and a journey. Discipleship means turning to Jesus to find our direction and our identity. When we let go of whatever we are clinging to – cynicism, resentment, idols of all kinds – Jesus offers abundance and changed lives.

This is the Kingdom of God, this is what Jesus was proclaiming – and still does, through His body. This is why we are here, this is why we worship and this is why we do what we do.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood WA, September 24, 2023

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The Gospel of Mark: the Way of Jesus – Mark 1:9-15

This gospel was written by John Mark who was a teenager during Jesus’ ministry, not a disciple or apostle. His two names are Hebrew and Latin, which implies that his family may have been important or wealthy – in Acts it’s noted that a church meets in his mother’s home.

This is the same Mark who runs away and loses his clothing in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was also a close friend and disciple of Peter, and it is likely that Peter is the source for most if not all of this gospel.

Mark is also the cause of the split between Barnabas and Paul in Acts. Mark was Barnabas’ cousin, and Barnabas wanted to take him along on their second missionary journey. Paul, though, considered Mark a flake because he had abandoned them in an earlier situation. The dispute became so heated that they ended up parting ways. But later on, Mark and Paul did reconcile – in his final list, Paul instructs Timothy to bring Mark along “because he is helpful to me in my ministry.”

This should be a comfort to us if we have ever messed up or failed someone, or if we have been rejected for ministry whether for good reasons or bad. Mark went through the same thing and ended up with his name on a Gospel.

Maybe for this reason, the gospel also focuses on the theme of the mistakes and ignorance of the disciples as a whole. There is a regular motif of the the disciples urging Jesus towards secular power and material success. This is utterly natural – their culture and ours, our entire species, is focused on upward mobility and the accumulation of power and possessions, especially when looking at those in authority. But Jesus came to turn that upside down – He is powerful and authoritative over both people and the elements of nature, but also humbles Himself among the most lowly in society, and ultimately becomes the Suffering Servant prophesied by Isaiah.

The book of Mark starts with a bang. Rather than starting at the very beginning – of Time in John, of Jesus’ lineage in Matthew or Jesus’ earthly life in Luke, Mark jumps right in at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry with another fulfillment of a prophecy of Isaiah – the “voice crying in the wilderness,” John the Baptist, “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

John was baptizing people in a long Jewish tradition of Baptism – this was not a Christian invention but a way for Jewish people to recommit themselves to the instructions of Yahweh and the looking forward to the promised Messiah. Our practice of Baptism descends directly from this tradition.

So the Gospel of Mark begins with this core notion of confession and repentance, as scores of people come out into the middle of nowhere to listen to a wild man urge them to stop doing what they are doing. This is the beginning of revival, revival that will find its culmination in the person of Christ and the Church as His body.

But it starts here, as John baptizes Jesus now as a sign of repentance but as a signal that things are about to change. The heavens are rent open and glimpses of eternity shine through, the Spirit descends like a dove, the Father speaks audibly, and the Son rises from the water to begin His work.

And, of course, that work starts with 40 days alone, enduring both physical and spiritual oppression, before returning to civilization in the wake of John’s imprisonmentsaying, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!”

As in those days, God is calling us back. Whether back after Covid, back after a time of wandering, back after outright rejecting the gospel.

But the church in America today is not providing the experience we see John leading in the wilderness. We cannot preach the good news until we have experienced it, we cannot lead others to the living water in the desert until we have drunk from it ourselves.

Are you ready to return? Are you ready to trust the gospel and live it out in love and service, following in the footsteps of your savior as told to us by Mark?

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood, WA, September 10, 2023

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Vashti the Prophet – Esther 1:15-20

The Old Testament is full of prophets speaking “truth to power”, advocating for the marginalized and oppressed. Today we’re going to look at one of those prophets that often go overlooked – Queen Vashti of the Persian Empire.

Queen Vashti’s refusal is prophetic because it reveals the injustices of patriarchy in the Persian kingdom. Her denial threatens not only King Xerxes, but the entire Persian Empire and its family structures, revealing the fragility of masculinity and its systems. What unfolds are the layers and manifestations of toxic masculinity: rape culture, victim-blaming, and patriarchal protection.

Bianca Mabute-Louie, Inheritance Magazine

King Xerxes is having a drunken, debauched gathering of nobles while his wife Vashti is having an “alt-party” – he demands that she come and appear to them, but she refuses. She asserts her own autonomy and control over her own body. In response, not only the king but all the nobles explicitly see this as a challenge to not just the king but the entire system of patriarchy that is at the heart of the empire. And so this goes from a simple issue of the king’s harem to a decree to all the lands of the empire codifying the patriarchy and enforcing the idea that husbands rule their households just as the king rules the empire.

We see images of Christ in this story – Jesus’ truth offended those in power, and He was killed for not going along with the systems of oppression that were embedded in His culture.

And we are called to the same thing in our day! At the expense of our own reputation, at the expense of church growth, at the expense of any earthly benefit, we are called to advocate for the oppressed, whether by government, economic systems or sin.

One of the things this means is putting aside our preconceived notions about what roles are appropriate for what people, about what men and women do, what leaders do, what strength looks like and what weakness looks like. Often we put aside the true gifts we are given in favor of who we think we are supposed to be, with expectations and assumptions built by our culture, our family of origin, even our churches. But Christ calls us to be who He made us.

This is particularly true of how women have been treated in the church, where leadership is often seen in the same way that the Persian nobles saw it. But in reality, both men and women are made in the image of God, and God is described in feminine and maternal terms all across the scriptures. God as father and God as mother are both metaphors that speak to the transcendental truths of a God that is far beyond us.

So let women come into the fullness of what God has called you to be. Let men do the same, even when counter-cultural. Let us look within ourselves and see where we have assumptions and expectations that put others in the role of serving us, where we take the role of Xerxes to the women in our life, or others who we see as less than us in anyway. God is doing a work in us and will continue to sanctify and forgive as we seek to serve Him and the others in our lives.

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

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Jesus Napped – Ecclesiastes 4:5-6

The Kohelet here writes about a balanced approach to rest, both noting that laziness is wrong and self-defeating but that rest itself is vital.

We see rest throughout scriptures, starting in Genesis where God Himself models rest in the creation of the universe, to Exodus where God promises to bring Moses rest by way of His own presence, to the gospels where we see Jesus napping on a boat while the a storm rose up.

There are a few principles we can use when we look to build an intentional practice of rest. First, we should set aside time to do things other than those that are designed to “move the needle” or “get ahead” whether in our career or school goals or earning the approval of others. For some, mowing the lawn may be a restful activity, for others it is an extension of anxiety about social approval. Grocery shopping can be a peaceful activity or it can be work depending on how you are coming to it.

At the same time, we should understand that the presence of anxiety does not mean we are not being restful. Rest itself means priorizing our mental and emotional health – so it can encompass getting counseling or even medication. Just as we go to the doctor while still trusting in God for physical healing, we can do the same for our mental, behavioral and brain health.

This can be countercultural, as even in the church we absorb much of society’s pressure to work hard and get ahead. But we are called, even commanded, to prioritize rest.

Not only that, but we are promised that the small patches of rest we are able to scratch out for ourselves here on earth will find their fulfillment in the ultimate rest offered us when we meet our creator face to face.

— Sermon Notes, Alison Robison, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, July 2, 2023

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Competition – Ecclesiastes 4:4-16

Competiton is a natural state of humanity, and isn’t necessarily even a bad thing. Good runners get better when competing against other good runners. But as followers of Jesus, we cannot let competition get in the way of the command to love our neighbor.

Even outside of our specific religious commands, though, Ecclesiastes describes how this focus on competition can turn into a life alone and isolated from one another. We see this in the story of the childless man who nonetheless works himself to death in isolation. We see this in the story of the arrogant king who will take no advice.

That story calls back to the beginning of the chapter, which laments the oppression and evil of the world, to the extent that the Kohelet calls the dead and unborn better off than the living.

As a church, we have a different priority than competition with others, both corporately and individually. Our purpose is to love God and love others, and that toil is never wasted.

— Sermon Notes, Alison Robison, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, June 25, 2023

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Get Up and Go – Acts 8:26-40

The story here is a story of two people in the the margins of empire, outsiders like immigrants and minorities today. One of these is Philip, one of the seven deacons set up to manage the food ministry for widows and orphans. When his fellow deacon and marginalized person, Stephen, moves from managing the ministry to teaching, he was killed, which scattered the church, including Philip.

Philip went up to Samaria, where he had incredible success in ministry. But God sent an angel who instructed him to get up, leave all the success that he had been having, and head out on a road into the wilderness.

That’s where we meet our second character, the Ethiopian eunuch. Like describes him in remarkable detail compared to most biblical characters, which must be for a reason. This person is about as different as it is possible to be from Philip. He’s from outside the empire, he’s dark-skinned, he’s a sexual/gender minority – but he is also a very powerful person in an important nation, wealthy enough to be driven in a chariot and read his own personal scroll of scripture. Despite all this, he is coming from worship in a place that he cannot even fully engage in because he is both a gentile and a eunuch.

Phillip’s last job was running a soup kitchen – again, these people are about as different as it is possible to be. But God tells him to go and “glue himself” to the chariot, where he finds a wide opening for the gospel. “What is this scripture about?”

And Philip takes that opportunity, and the eunuch in turn takes the opportunity to be baptized immediately – after which God transports Philip elsewhere, his job accomplished.

God is still calling us to participate in these sorts of activities, but there are reasons we resist. We like to be competent and do things in areas we understand. But Philip glued himself to the chariot of a foreign eunuch-treasurer just like Jesus glued himself to the flesh of humanity. Philip got up and went, heading into the wilderness, just as Jesus came to earth.

Where and to whom is God sending you?

— Sermon Notes, Tim Hseih, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, June 4, 2023

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Renewal – 2 Corinthians 5:17

The resurrection rocked the cosmos, offering new life to all of humanity.

Just as the beloved Lazarus has been resurrected into new life, when we accept Jesus as our Lord and savior we are no longer the same person we used to be. We are made new in Christ and our old self is gone. We are no longer slaves to sin but are free to live a new life for Christ.

Our passage is situated in Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, which was a wealthy, cosmopolitan city and ancient Greece known for commerce and trade. It was also a center for the worship of Aphrodite and sexual immorality was prevalent in the city that at this time was under the Roman Empire. Paul is addressing some issues in the church at the time. First there were false teachers challenging Paul’s authority as a legitimate apostle. They were introducing an “alt gospel” that emphasized intellectualism and rhetoric.

Paul fights this by pointing towards his own suffering and the immense power that is found at the cross for salvation even– and maybe especially–for the weak and the foolish. Secondly, there were divisions and conflicts within the church which reflected the cultural context of factionalism and social caste. Paul urges the church to set these aside and pursue reconciliation. Finally, Paul uses the idea of new creation along with the concept of citizenship to accentuate the new society in Christ as summa exemplar. In Roman society, citizenship was highly value and conveyed many rights and privileges. Paul uses the language of citizenship in Second Corinthians to describe the status of believers in Christ. He says that believers are citizens of the new kingdom with a new identity and new set of values.

If we zoom out, the Bible is the greatest love story ever told. It’s a story of God’s plan to renew and restore the whole creation, not simply individual, isolated souls.

As a church, we participate in this renewal of ourselves, reach other, our communities and our world.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, May 21, 2023

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Living in the Resurrection – Be Relevant – Acts 17:16-28

In this passage we see Paul actively waiting – exploring the city of Athens and engaging with the culture. He started, as was his custom, at the synagogue, beginning at the religious center that was closest to his starting point, where religion is a matter of ethnicity and nationality. From there, he goes to the marketplace, a center of both material commerce and intellectual commerce.

We see in this Paul’s versatility – he can move between these two worlds and go back and forth between these cultural contexts in order to meet people where they are at and speak in their language.

From there, he is taken to the Areopagus, aka the Hill of Ares, aka Mars Hill if you ever wondered where that came from. The name was both a place and a ruling council that met there.

Note that Paul starts his Sermon by finding common ground, rather than by highlighting their divisions abs differences. Some might react against his use of something pagan in order to talk about God, but Paul does not shy away from it.

We have a tendency to be anthropocentric in how we look at the world and the Greek gods were examples of that. Paul worked to get them to look beyond their own humanity, including that humanity reflected in these invented deities. Paul specifically uses their own poetry to point out that God does not come from us, but we come from God.

How does this impact us? We also are called to engage the marketplace. We are not supposed to build our own fortress to hide away in and create our own culture, but we are to be out in the mix of the society that we live in. And we don’t always need to do it in the same way Paul did, by standing up in a public place and talking. God goes before us in the person of the Holy Spirit and all we have to do is be open to that He is doing. We don’t have to have it all put together, we just have to engage.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, May 14, 2023

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Living in the Resurrection: Be Restored – Revelation 21:1-5

Imagine if God were a God who, like many of us, threw things away when they were imperfect. Instead, God is a God who restores. We see that in this passage clearly – He does not replace the Heavens and the Earth, but restores them – He makes them new.

We even see this in the story of The Fall – the punishment for disobedience was death, but Good rewrote the narrative to create space for redemption and restoration.

And we are not just passively waiting for this restoration and for these new heavens and new earth. The kingdom of God is like a river, always moving towards the ultimate destination, but in the way the river brings life and restoration to the land it passes through. So hop into a kayak and get out on the river!

When the Holy Spirit moves, restoration happens in unexpected ways. Where are the broken places and relationships in your life that need restoration? Some will be restored along the way, but some will be restored in eternity.

This means – don’t give up. Not on yourself, not on others, not on relationships and especially not on the good you do in the world around us.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, May 7, 2023

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Be Reconciled – Ephesians 2:11-22

Reconciliation is not simply the speaking of magic words “I’m sorry” and “you’re forgiven”, but is a process that takes time, that takes into account the context of the relationship and the damage done to it. Today we’re going to look at what the resurrection of Christ means to this process of reconciliation.

Renew Church is built on Reconciliation, Restoration and Relevance. The resurrection of Christ sits at the center of these. Though there is mourning, pain, chaos and suffering, the resurrection is the promise that joy comes in the morning and that the banquet of God is belt prepared for us.

Looking at this passage, it comes right after a section (Ephesians 2:1-10) focused on the vertical relationship between us and God. We are dead in our sins – BUT because of His great love for us, He made us alive in Christ.

In this section, Paul addresses the horizontal relationship between people, specifically addressing the relationship between Jewish and gentile Christians. Many of the former were seeking to impose their cultural and ritualistic requirements onto these new converts who had no history or heritage of following God.

To think about this, let’s go back to the gospels, and the story of Jesus clearing the temple after the Triumphal Entry. The temple’s outer courts were called the Court of the Gentiles, and there are stones archeologists have found warning gentiles not to go past certain points on pain of death. It was filled with people selling animals for sacrifice at high prices as well as money changers changing Greek and Roman coins into the temple currency, again at exploitative rates. The practices were explicitly taking advantage of the poor and the foreigners. This is what drove Jesus to the extremes He went to in that situation, stating “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

The term used here for “nations” is ethonos which is the same team Paul uses to for gentiles, while the term “house” was oikos, which means “household” and which Paul uses in verse 19 of our passage to describe how God has folded gentile Christians into the people of God, into His household, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.”

We ourselves need to look at how we also put barriers up for those who are unlike us to come near to God, as Jewish Christians did in Paul’s time. Our own cultural practices and expectations can cordon us off from each other. But in the power of the resurrection, our role is to be agents of reconciliation. We keep short accounts, we understand the systemic barriers of hostility that divide is, we champion and empower those in our own “court of the gentiles” and overturn the tables that keep people from God. We are to seek to reconcile and worship with “all the nations,” building relationships across cultural boundaries, taking risks and opening yourself up to other experiences and perspectives. Let’s be people of reconciliation and be part of bringing people together under one family banner.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, April 30, 2023