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Grace is not Fair – Matthew 20:1-16

Kids are finely attuned to fairness, at least insofar as unfairness impacts them directly. As adults, we really don’t lose that feeling. Sibling rivalry, group project, new friends, as well as deeper and more meaningful social and economic inequities. At the end of the day, much of our feelings on this topic are driven by comparison.

And this parable brings it home, with maybe the most relatable frustrations in all of scripture. Why should someone get the same amount for a fraction of the effort and output? It’s really and truly unfair.

But the focus on fairness, as this story shows, is misguided. At the end of the day, God does not want an economic, transactional relationship with us. We can’t compare ourselves to others, because God’s love for them is just as infinite for them as it is for us. The relationship He wants with us is not about an exchange of services or a reward for merit. It is the love of a father for His children.

In Jesus’ day he was addressing leaders like the Pharisees who saw themselves as more meritorious and more deserving than others. He pushed against the ethnocentrism and elitism of groups like this and warned his disciples against reconstituting the same systems themselves.

And we must continue to push against that envy and comparison in our spiritual lives. Whenever we see ourselves as superior to or more deserving of others, we need to remember that we are just as broken and needy as anyone else. Our heritage, our works, our service, our Bible reading, our Sunday school teaching, none of that is the cause of God’s love for us (in fact, they are the result!).

We will not earn God’s blessings or rewards. I Christ’s love and power we are lifted up to new life.

Finally, one other thing to consider – these workers were not sitting at home lounging when they were hired. They were out in the marketplace seeking work, failing all day until rescued at the eleventh hour. The landowner sees them and has compassion, giving them both meaning and the living wage they need.

Sometimes we are the strongest, most skilled and most well-connected people chosen first. When that’s the case, we must look out for those still waiting in the marketplace, and seek to join in the Landowner’s work of justice and compassion.

And sometimes we are the ones still standing at the marketplace, burning daylight while accomplishing nothing in growing frustration and desperation. In those moments, we can rest in the knowledge that at the end of the day God’s love for us is not one iota changed, our value to Him remains immeasurable.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, September 13, 2026

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Who is the Greatest? – Mark 10:35-45

James & John here make a request that directly cuts across warnings that Jesus has given elsewhere, like in Luke 14 where he specifically tells his disciples not to take the places of honor at banquets – with very practical advice that actually is about how to get to those places of honor.

So Jesus goes deeper here. In the economy of the world, greatness is climbing, but in the Gospel economy, greatness is descending.

All of us have areas where we want to get the glory, whether work, sports, volunteering, hobbies. We want everything to be going “up and to the right” whether money, career, capabilities, popularity. But the upside down kingdom of God has something else to say – blessed are the poor, the weak, the mourning. We must lose our lives to live and love those that we hate. Greatness only comes from being the least. Service is the only true power.

Sometimes we see this more like a savings account or policy – we just defer our power and glory until heaven, when we’ll finally get what we deserve. But looking at it this way does not actually put us into the posture of submission and service and humility that Jesus calls us to. Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven is about sacrificial love, not about deferred gratification.

And so when Jesus hears this question, His first thoughts are for the ultimate sacrifice that He is headed for. His trajectory is the opposite of what these Sons of Thunder are looking for.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have a clear metaphor in the salmon, which swims hard against the current in order to sacrifice itself to bring about new life.

The salmon does not get to see that new life, and sometimes that’s what it feels like for us. We look around us and we see the bad guys win, we see the powerful abuse that power, we see the oppression of the weak.

The temptation is to fight and to respond to the World in kind. But Jesus calls us to slow down and find compassion, find places to serve, to give of ourselves to those around us.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, September 6, 2026

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“The Kingdom is Like ______” – Matthew 13:31-46

Jesus often used parables to convey the “vibe” of the Kingdom of Heaven, and to articulate the culture and economy that the people of God are called to. His stories contextualize the nature of God’s kingdom in ways that can be absorbed at a basic level.

The first stories are about exponential growth. First, a tiny seed growing into a mighty tree – a small thing changing over time to become a shelter for birds and creatures. Likewise, the yeast in bread works through the dough to raise it into the fluffy nourishing goodness of bread.

The next stories are about incredible value – a treasure buried in a field that is worth more than the field itself, the perfect pearl worth more than all the goods of a merchant. It’s the kind of value that turns radical behavior into the only logical option.

Why did Jesus tell Parables? First, He sought to reveal and conceal the Kingdom at the same time. Not everyone in his audience had open hearts, and so in an effort not to “cast pearls before pigs,” he shrouded some truths behind stories, explaining the specifics in more detail to those who were in direct relationship with Him.

Along today lives, the parables invite engagement and response, drawing more people into those relationships that would uncover more truths.

And along those lines, parables make profound truths accessible – anyone with a garden or farm, anyone who baked bread or so bought and sold goods could relate to the tales he told

And finally, his parables fulfilled prophecy. Psalm 78:2 promises “I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter hidden things, things from of old.”

So what are we prepared to sell to gain the kingdom? Where do we see the seeds planted and the dough rising? Where do we need patience as the kingdom grows from tiny actions and powerless people?

We live in a “go big or go home” culture, but the biggest things start very small, hidden from sight. Jesus calls us to a kingdom built on insignificant and hidden, a kingdom that nonetheless rises to the heights of eternity.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, August 9, 2026

Image by Gemini.

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The Invitation – John 1:34-51

When we are excited about something – a new movie, new restaurant, a new book – we tell other people about our excitement and invite other people to join us. We want whatever we are experiencing that is good and excellent or awesome to be shared with others. When we love something, we want others to love that thing. That is at the core of what it means to witness or evangelize.

In this passage, Jesus is calling some of the first disciples, and doing so in a way that seems chaotic from an outside perspective. Why is Jesus extending this invitation to these people? Why are they accepting?

This story comes at the beginning of John, and has analogous chapters in the other gospels with slightly different telling. This part comes after the theological opening to the gospel of John , the “Word was God,” etc. Then it starts the narrative with John the Baptist who is pointing people to the coming of the messiah. He is putting his ego aside and pointing his own disciples directly to Jesus.

In First Century Judaism, pupils would typically seek out their rabbis, rather than the other way around. It’s like seminary students seeking out specific professors – and the rabbis would be selective, only taking the elite.

So Jesus is being counter-cultural in two ways – he is reaching out directly, and being far less selective, in the world’s eyes, taking blue collar fishermen as well as the more experienced disciples coming over from John.

This story shows how Jesus operates relationally, in an intensely personal manner. He brings in his disciples through a chain of witness. The “come and see” leads directly to a “follow me.” Jesus could have done things differently, using his power to bring thousands to him all at once. But instead, he works one person at a time. John points a pair of people to him, and then Andrew brings in his brother. Then Jesus directly approaches Philip who brings in Nathanael – going personal relationship by personal relationship.

This relational interaction is to some degree in tension with the crescendo of titles we get in the passage. John calls him the Lamb of God; Andrew calls him Rabbi and then Messiah. Nathanael calls him the Son of God and King of Israel. Jesus calls himself the Son of Man, a callback to the prophecies of Daniel, and evokes the image of Jacob’s Ladder in Genesis 28, setting up Jesus as that ultimate bridge between earth and Heaven.

We come together because we believe this, because we are looking ahead to a future that is greater than today, and to the work that God does in our lives today. We experience the good work of Jesus, and we can call others to come and see what He has done in our lives.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, August 2, 2026

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One Spirit to Bind Them All – Corinthians 12:1-11

When the Spirit is at work, the unheard are heard, the gifts previously overlooked become front and center and the

Sometimes church can feel like the (movie version) of the Council of Elrond, with arguing, disputing, power struggles, ambition and a little bit of racism. But Frodo stepping forward quieted the debate, because him taking the ring is clearly counter to his own desires – he is trustworthy because his desires are not for power. He is able to step in with authority, ironically because he does not seek that authority.

This is largely what Paul is trying to convey to the church in Corinth, populated by many former pagans who came from a chaotic, ecstatic tradition, who had a tendency to bring that style into their new community.

But Paul’s point is that the work of the Holy Spirit is the real thing, the genuine article, and thus there needs to be a level of trust and harmony in our interactions. The way evil often works is to use the chaos and activity of community to fracture relationships, driving a wedge between people who should be working shoulder to shoulder. Things fall apart.

But the work of the Spirit is to bring things together, bringing the diversity of the church together in the unity of God. We see this in Pentecost, as many languages come together in a unity of faith. The Spirit works to glorify Christ by bringing together people who should never, by worldly standards, work together in fellowship.

We see this in diversity of people and in diversity of gifts – given, as Paul writes, for the common good. There are different kinds of gifts, but all from the same Spirit, and all for the same ultimate purpose.

Paul is contrasting this to paganism, where there are many spirits, but each individual centers their own experience to the exclusion of all others. The church, by contrast, needs humble, trustworthy authority to ensure all people and all their gifts are honored.

Each of us only has a limited perspective – we are a single puzzle piece, maybe a part of the a leaf – all we know is the color green. But the Spirit can see the whole picture, and sees the brilliant blue of the sky and the deep brown of the trunk, and the different shades of green as the light hits many different leaves. When the Spirit is at work, we get a glimpse of that full picture.

And so when we make rules and roles that are based only in our own experience, based only on our own desires, we miss the entire picture.

No one person, no one group, no one church has all the answers. No one church can reach all people the way they need to be reached, can love each person the way they need to be loved. We, as a church and as individuals, are a part of a great mosaic, with a role in our community to do God’s work alongside many others.

A healthy, Spirit-led church is one where a wide diversity of gifts are given their place, even at the expense of efficiency. These moments of pause where we listen to those not often heard are opportunities for the Spirit to speak into our community.

And so we should seek out our own gifts and the gifts of others, and work to see them all used for the good of others and the glory of God.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, July 19, 2026

Images created by Gemini.

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Spirit-filled Service – Acts 6:1-7

We see in this story that even in what sounds like a utopian community, a fellowship of love in the midst of persecution, humans are still humans, and conflict still arises. Specifically, the Greek Christians, and the widows in particular, feel like they are getting short-changed in comparison to the Hebraic Christians. All of these are still Jewish, but there is a sharp distinction between those who grew up as part of the diaspora, spread all across the Greek-speaking world and living largely within that culture, and those who grew up and come from the culture of the land of Israel, with more traditional Jewish culture, Semitic languages (Hebrew & Aramaic), as well as more of a resistance and resentment of the outside world which has so often oppressed the people of God.

In a world that also has a mix of cultures and complex, overlapping layers of power and oppression, this story gives us a lot to think about and apply in our own lives and communities.

This story is part of Acts, often called the fifth gospel, or as one half of “Luke-Acts” since both were written by Luke. You can consider Acts “the gospel of the Holy Spirit” like Luke and the others are “the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” It is tempting to make the story about the humans in the story, the apostles and pastors and disciples, but in reality the main character of the book is the Holy Spirit – it is the Holy Spirit who moves through the church to grow its numbers and to spread the knowledge of God across the world.

All of this is in answer to Jesus’ promise before He ascends:

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth

Acts 1:8

This power is still promised to us today, it is not only something that happened in the past, but is live and active in our lives today. Likewise, so is the call to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth. Like a pebble in a pond, the truth ripples outward. That is a call that goes all the way back to the beginning, when God called on humanity to “be fruitful and multiply” – now revolutionized from a basic biological impulse to a multiplication of life as it was meant to be lived, the God-centered life made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit.

But what we see here is that the place where the pebble drops is also where the messiness of humanity and life in this fallen world starts to show their impact. “The center cannot hold.” It is hard for the center to let the ripples go, to let control go as the power spreads from those at the start to those in the fringes, to those at the “ends of the earth.”

When we have a scarcity mentality, we fear that as that power expands it means there is less is it for us. But the Holy Spirit is eternal and infinite – the same beneath the ocean as in the desert, the same in the center as the farthest reaches. The Holy Spirit is the very definition of abundance, and speaks into each person’s life, each church’s life, each people’s life in its own way. When the church becomes ethnocentric, that’s where the danger comes in – when we conflate our people group, our nation, our culture, our government with the church, things break. When the people of God seek a king, despite the warnings of prophets, bad things happen.

Sometimes the work of the Holy Spirit seems mystical or fantastical. But in reality, the work of the Spirit is practical and real. In this story, we see that the result of being Spirit-filled is that these leaders are all gifted administrators.

Oftentimes you’ll hear this passage preached as being about delegation. Sometimes pastors will even use this passage to boost their own profile or to get themselves out of practical ministry and service. There’s some truth to that, but it misses the broader point that the goal of the church is to love all people.

In this case, we see that the Hebraic Jews have a blind spot, and they address that by empowering Hellenistic Jews to facilitate and ensure the proper care of that part of the church.

Widows are part of the “core four” of the vulnerable in scripture – widows, orphans, immigrants and the poor. The scriptures are replete with commands to care for each of these groups. And so the work of the Holy Spirit here is intensely practical and administrative, finding ways to better serve and love the people we are instructed to care for.

Perhaps the most notable part of this story is what happened immediately afterwards to Stephen, the first name on the list of deacons there to serve so that the Apostles could devote their time to preaching. Stephen becomes the first martyr for preaching! Apparently he could manage both preaching and waiting on tables! Then Philip, also in that list, is led by the Spirit to preach to the Ethiopian eunuch, accidentally starting the Coptic Church!

These men followed the command to “seek first the Kingdom of God,” and much else was added to them. That same promise, that same power is offered to us, and so let us also listen for the complaints that rise up, the people being overlooked, the needs going unmet. There is abundance available to us!

-Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, July 12, 2026

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Fire in the Desert – Isaiah 63:11-14 & Exodus 13:20-22

We’ve been exploring the Holy Spirit as person of the Trinity and member of the three-in-one Godhead. But where do we see this in the Old Testament, or was it purely an innovation of the early church?

But in the story of the Exodus, we do get a look at what the prophet Isaiah calls “the Holy Spirit.” The people of Israel have just come out of bondage, which should be a good thing, but it also means that they are leaving the world they knew and entering the unknown. This is something we all relate to, as we are constantly in transition from one thing to another, whether jobs or relationships or just phases of life. Like the Israelites, we need the Holy Spirit to go before us and lead us into that unknown.

In the narrative, the people of Israel have gone through the experience of Passover and are fleeing Egypt. But God did not lead them on the shortest path – this is often the case with God. He very often leads us in directions that seem entirely illogical and difficult. But that leading is part of the relationship – if it were just a simple if-then statement, we wouldn’t need the Holy Spirit, but just a piece of paper with a decision tree.

And so the Holy Spirit led them in the form of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. The Spirit provided direction, shade and light even as it led God’s people into an unknown land.

Hundreds of years later, the prophet Isaiah (possibly the third one using that name) used this as an example, likely following the exile of many of the people into Mesopotamia. The Israelites would be asking questions about where God is and what He is doing in the midst of all the turmoil. And so Isaiah points them back to the work of the Holy Spirit in the past, as a promise of what He will do in their context – and in ours.

And so we see what the Spirit offers. He offers personal guidance and protection in real-time. This guidance is step by step and unconventional – we don’t get the entire story all at once, just the next right thing that we are called to do and be. We are incapable of seeing the full picture, spread across space and time and billions of souls. But the Holy Spirit sees and leads us in a way we can trust.

And finally, the Holy Spirit is an unfailing and ongoing presence that provides us not only with guidance but enlightenment, protection and peace.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood, WA, June 21, 2026

Images by Gemini.

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A Spirit-filled Mosaic – Exodus 3:1-12

We state that we believe in the Trinity, but in practice we often neglect the Holy Spirit, demoting a full person of the Godhead to the status of an impersonal force. Even our language is inadequate to this task, calling this active, personal deity “it.”

But the Holy Spirit is the real presence of God at work. We see this in the story of Pentecost, when the church erupted out of a scared group of blue collar men and women. This is the same presence we can experience today. Anne Lamott writes:

It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.

We are here to ask and learn, as communities and as individuals, are here to learn what it means to be Spirit-filled, and how to be open to the work of the Holy Spirit. This search is of a piece with the deconstruction many of us are going through, taking apart the human structures that make up church in the wake of failure, betrayal and hurt that many of us have experienced. We are seeking to strip away the accretion of man-made structures that have not up and to come as we are to God as He is, in the person of the Holy Spirit.

Today’s scripture is the “origin story” of Moses, whet he fist encountered the living God. The people of Israel have moved into Egypt, a relationship that started well but over the years had degraded into slavery and infanticide. We see this people group described in two ways in the story – the Israelites, when describing them as the people of the covenant God made with Israel, or the Hebrews, when describing them as the ethnic community being oppressed by Egypt.

Moses was one of these Hebrews, who escaped the campaign of infanticide and was adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh, raised in the royal court Egypt. As the original “third culture kid” Moses is caught between two worlds, which boils over when he kills an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, only to find himself rejected by those people as well. And so he flees into the wilderness, marries into a community of itinerant herdsmen and lives as a refugee for many years.

And that is where God meets him, and where his origin story begins.

God calls to him, repeating his name in a pattern we see throughout scripture, calling from a fire that burns but does not consume. He calls to him to put off his sandals because he stands on Holy ground.

This combination of protection and awe, of safe and holy, is key to understanding the nature of God. The fire burns but does not consume, the ground is holy but we are called to stand upon it.

This is how the Holy Spirit approaches all of us, and the safety God provides to each person means that that each person is accepted in their diversity and identity, and the community of faith is made up of an infinite combination of holy, safe relationships between believers and the Holy Spirit.

We see this play out directly centuries later at Pentecost, when fire again burns but does not consume, and deity again calls frightened refugees into His service, again empowering men and women to spread His message. This was promised by the prophet Joel:

I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

As we as a church move forward, whatever changes come, this should be our focus and our goal. We are called to be a place that is safe and holy, a place where people between identities, like Moses can come and find their new identity in God.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood, WA, June 7, 2026

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Unlearn What You Have Learned – Genesis 2:15-18

One of the main things we need to unlearn from our western culture is the “radical individualism” – spirituality is not meant to be an individual sport. We are meant to live and love God in relationship with Him and with each other.

This starts from the beginning, when God refers to Himself in the plural – this may be the royal we, it may be a declaration to the angelic court, or it may even be an early preview of the Trinity. Either way, it’s an immediate indication of the vital nature of relationship at the core of our being, at the core of the Imago Dei.

We are also built to be in relationship in regards to our relationship with creation. It is within the context of Adam’s role as caretaker of creation that God identifies his need for a helper and partner. In fact, Adam being alone is the first thing God identifies in His creation as “not good,” before even the Fall.

So, together, Man and Woman shared the Stewardship of creation, shared the relationship with God – “walking in the Garden in the cool of the day.”

This communality is core to who we are, though many aspects of western culture push against that. Much of this is driven by positive concepts like the rights and dignity of the individual, but if we lose the communal and relational aspects of our life and faith.

And so we seek to value those things that draw us together, even things that may seem frivolous or even secular. From extended greeting time to potlucks to fun group activities, the things that draw us together in the faith are important and God-honoring.

May we experience God’s love more fully as a part of this community.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, April 19, 2026

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Walk, Don’t Run – John 20:1-18

This morning we gather at the tomb not as passive observers but active participants along with the disciples John, Peter and Mary. We are invited to linger in the story, to engage with the sorrow, the uncertainty and the joy.

This passage opens with a race between Peter and John, aka “The Disciple Jesus Loved” (which John wants you to be sure to know that he won). He does, though, wait for Peter to go in in deference to his elder. The two responses here illustrate different faithful responses to the risen Christ. John sees and believes, while Peter enters into the tomb to investigate and examine the evidence. John represents the eager willingness to believe, while Peter shows judicious, even forensic examination. They believed, but the scripture tells us that they did not yet fully understand before they left the scene.

The story of Peter and John, though, is bookended by the experience of Mary Magdalene, who has been a consistent presence through the Crucifixion and into all the stories of the empty tomb. She was there before the disciples had their race, and she stayed after they left. She sits in her sorrow and loss, remaining at the scene to grapple with her grief and uncertainty. Mary’s story goes beyond belief, whether eager and willing or careful and forensic. She does not merely believe, but she loves and lives in relationship with Jesus, and so feels the loss deeply. And it is in the midst of this lament that Jesus enters in.

And when he does, He engages on a heart level, speaking her name, Mariam, in Aramaic rather than the Greek that is used elsewhere in the story, in her “heart language.” And Mary responds in kind, crying out “Rabboni,” again in Aramaic and depicting a close relationship with a teacher and mentor.

And he tells her that everything has changed – in Luke, he asks, “why do you search for the living among the dead?” Don’t cling to the old life, but embrace the new. Don’t live in Friday, because Sunday has come

Easter is not an invitation to run faster, but to linger in our uncertainty and sorrow, to encounter the truth and love of a relationship with our glorious, risen savior. It is a chance to understand what dead things we are clinging to that fracture our relationships. It is an invitation not to examine faith but to embrace life.

And it is an invitation to tell others, just as Jesus instructs Mary to do. She takes the title of the first apostle, not because she was fast, not because she was authoritative, but because she missed Jesus and sat before the tomb and cried. Let us take her as our example of resurrection faith.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, April 5, 2026