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Sugar and Spice – Judges 4:1-16

Deborah was a respected judge in Israel, despite being a woman – in fact, the scripture hardly remarks on that fact. She passes instruction from the Lord to Barak, a warrior. Barak agrees to obey, but asks that Deborah come with him.

Some readings of this passage see this request as one of cowardice – but that is not supported by scripture. In reality, both Deborah and the author of Hebrews give Barak film credit as faithful and bold. In reality, Barak’s request to Deborah is itself a sign of faithfulness, because he sees that she has wisdom and the favor of God.

Deborah’s presence in the Bible is a reminder that cultural distinctions between men and women are not God’s distinctions. The gifts God gave at Pentecost he gave to both men and women, and the gifts He gives today are the same.

Both men and women are called to kindness and gentleness. Both men and women are called to boldness and courage. Some women are gifted in ways society sees as unfeminine, and some men are gifted in ways society sees as unmasculine. But God is bigger than our cultural boxes and how He calls us to serve Him is not dependent on them.

So men, do not fear to be nurturing and kind. Women, do not fear to be bold and courageous. And all of us, let us support our brothers and sisters in their gifts.

– Sermon Notes, Alison Robison, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, August 14, 2022

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A New Heart – Ezekiel 36:26-27

“Once an eater, always an eater.” The world around us is very cynical when it comes to the ability of people to change. It’s not unreasonable, when you look at all the high profile failures and broken trust across the landscape. At the core of this cynicism is a focus on the externals, what other people see, rather than thinking about ourselves and others from the inside out. But that is the core of the work of the Holy Spirit – and that is the kind of work that only the Holy Spirit can do.

We believe in the power of transformation and renewal, but all around us we see decay and oppression and dishonesty and often-justified cynicism.

Calluses are built up to protect our skin, hands and especially feet. We build up calluses emotionally as well, and to some degree that is healthy. We need to be able to “gird ourselves up” and persevere through difficulties. If we felt everything, we would not be able to function.

But the life and words of Christ call us to something higher. We see this perhaps most clearly on the cross, where in the midst of pain, torture and death He has the grace and presence to extend forgiveness to his tormentors.

When we think about being like Christ, though, we tend to think of striving and powering through. But that itself is the opposite of the softness and empathy that we are called to be renewed into.

And that renewal in some ways feels more necessary than ever, with the pandemic accelerating trends in declining church participation and upending our understanding of how and what and who church should be.

We need our heart of stone transformed into a heart of flesh, a soft heart. All the “woke” beliefs and activism will accomplish nothing if they do not spring from a soft heart. We have developed calluses from how we have been hurt, and we need to take the time to mourn that hurt and loss and betrayal. We need God to breath new life into our dry bones.

What are those places of death in our hearts that keep us from experiencing a renewed experience of God? Let us ask God for that gift of renewal, for that heart of flesh.

– Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, July 24, 2022

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The Dance – Genesis 1:26

The Covenant Church has a three-legged stool concept of church planting, balancing strategy, chemistry and spirituality. Some people are more task-oriented and logistics oriented, others are more concerned with interpersonal relationships and others more oriented around communing with God. If any leg of the stool is too long or too short, a church will struggle.

This paradigm echoes the Trinity. Within the unity of God we see the relationality of love. We cannot know who we are fully outside of interaction with the other. The persons of the Trinity are in a dance – the technical term being “Perichoresis.” Western culture has moved to a more radical individualism than where Christianity started and what we are called to.

When we look at the passage of scripture, we see God speaking in the first-person plural – the nouns are plural but the verbs are singular. It covid be argued that this is just the “royal we” but in reality it is more likely that we are seeing an early revelation of the Trinity, along with the “spirit of God hovering above the waters,” and the participation of the person of the Son as described in John 1.

If we see this “us-ness” in the Trinity and the nature of God, and if we are made in the image of that “Us”, then we too are built to be an “us.”

God did not “need” to create, but Creation is a natural outgrowth of this relationality of the Trinity. God Himself is community and creation is the expression of that communality.

What would the church look like if we put the “we” central rather than the “I”? If we considered our actions in the light of how they affect the whole?

We are most ourselves in community. In fact, if we seek after our own personal identity first and foremost, we will come up short. If we seek our identity in community, our individual identity will be clarified and sharpened in a way far beyond we can accomplish at atomized individuals.

The Spirit works through us as a community, bringing different voices, gifts and offerings together. We have a tendency to raise up the individual leader rather than the body, echoing the desire of the Israelites for a (tall) king. But we are called to more.

This unity in diversity is a call on the church to be a light in a broken world, riven by race, class, politics, gender, age and more. When we bring together the body on mission for Christ across those lines, we shine a light into that darkness around us. In a time when disconnection seems to be the word of the day, who is God calling on us to connect with?

– Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, July 17, 2022

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Living Spirit-led – Romans 8:12-15

Tracing the story of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, first we hear of the Holy Spirit coming on Mary and bringing about the incarnation. We see it in the story of Simeon, upon whom the Holy Spirit rested, who was led by the Spirit to see the Christ and prophesy over him. We see the Holy Spirit come down in the form of a dove at Christ’s baptism, and then drive Him into the wilderness to be tempted. Then when He returned, he enters the temple where he inaugurates His ministry with the words of Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me. He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Luke 4:18‭-‬19 CEB

If we look back in our own lives, we can see the story of the Holy Spirit in our own lives, transforming us from and even through our own brokenness.

That is what Paul writes about in Romans 8, as he addresses the two primary competing forces in our lives as Christians, the Holy Spirit and our own flesh or selfishness. Paul here does not mean to set up a gnostic dichotomy between body and spirit. The Greek here for “flesh” is “sarx” as opposed to “soma” or “body,” meaning to misuse the body, living in a way that centers on the self. The CEB translates it as “selfishness” or “self-centered” and that is the true counterpoint to the Holy Spirit and the temptation that pulls us from the Spirit’s guidance.

But the Holy Spirit is our inheritance as children of God – not something we have earned, not something we even could earn. We are often the older son in the parable of the Prodigal Son, lamenting how hard we have worked. But God says to us “all I have is yours.” As Paul writes earlier in the chapter,

So now there isn’t any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.

Romans 8:1‭-‬2 CEB

Paul also writes that “All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters.” We can ask of our Father with the freedom of children.

The Spirit-led life and church is one that overflows and spills over into the lives and neighborhoods around us. The “vampire,” self-focused love will leave us all shriveled and sucked dry. Let us be a people led by the Spirit, a nexus of His grace and goodness and healing in the world around us.

– Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, July 10, 2022

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Growth Requires Rest – Romans 15:14-20

One of the key things you learn as a baker is that you cannot rush the process. The time it takes for dough to rise, the “rest,” can be influenced by all kinds of things, from the type of bread to the weather. The movement of the Holy Spirit can be like this. Rest is needed for growth.

But waiting is hard. We like to stick to our own time lines, but the Spirit does not work like that. The Holy Spirit works in us even when we do not feel it.

But there is a point when you have to stop waiting on the bread – it will start to lose its flavor and even become hollowed out. Likewise, there is a time when we have to stop waiting – when we have to make decisions and act.

The goal for us should not necessarily be for us to guess at when that time is, but to be open to the leading of the Spirit, and aware that His time is not our time. The goal for us is to have that personal relationship with God that enables us to teach each other, as Paul writes in this passage – and to do so in a “somewhat daring way.”

But this also requires an open heart – teaching each other does not mean an argument. But it does mean different perspectives – it must mean differing perspectives, in fact, because how can we teach each other if we are all the same?

The yeast needs to rest for growth to happen. But that rest is only for a time. There comes a time to act and even to speak into others’ lives about the growth we may have experienced during that period of rest.

We see the difficulty of this waiting in the scripture. King Saul did not wait for Samuel to make sacrifices, and that was the final straw that led God to cut his time short. He acted rashly because he was afraid, and that should be a lesson to us not to act out of fear.

As Paul writes, we are filled with the knowledge and goodness that we need in order to teach each other. Let us not let fear hold us back from that.

– Sermon Notes, Uriel Tzec, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, June 26, 2022

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Curse of Babel or Blessing? – Genesis 11:1-9

Listening to the voice of God is a spiritual discipline. Without the guidance of God, all the effort we might put out is just pushing a rope.

The two traditional passages on Pentecost are Acts 2 and this passage about the Tower of Babel, as the coming of the Holy Spirit heals the divisions described in Genesis 11.

This chapter comes after the creation story, then the flood. These first few chapters of Genesis are a high level view of God’s love for creation and humanity, his image-bearers. We see the both freedom and boundaries that He creates. We read the Creation Mandate given to humanity, to explore, prosper, flourish and multiply. This is not only a mandate but a blessing for humanity. God says “Come, let us make man in our own image.” He wants the earth to be full of people who bear his image, perhaps because only through the wide diversity of humanity can God’s true image be displayed.

Then, several chapters later, the people on the plains of Shinar echo that – “Come, let us make bricks” – and to do so in order to build a center of power, a locus of control and a monument to their own greatness. Scripture and history tell us what happens when humanity begins to consolidate power.

But God’s command was not to consolidate and gather, but rather to disperse and explore. So it may be that the “curse of Babel” is not a curse at all, but rather a blessing, the creation of cultures and nations and languages.

If it was a curse that was reversed at Pentecost, then the unity would have been brought about by a return to a single language. But that is not what happens – instead, the wonders of God are declared in a vast diversity of languages, and unity is built out of that diversity originally created by God.

When under stress and pressed by the world, our inclinations are the same as those in the plain of Shinar, to consolidate and flock together with birds of our feather. But if we allow the Holy Spirit to move, He may well scatter us in order to further His ultimate goals, His glorious plan for us and the world around us.

– Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, June 12, 2022

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Rest Your Body – 1 Kings 19:3-8

We are in a hurry in our culture – the urgency to get where we are going immediately has been built into us from childhood. Getting to school, getting to work, getting to the next thing. Waiting for the oven to preheat or the document to download or the Amazon delivery to arrive  – things that have been getting faster and faster still take too long.

There’s a sickness in that hurry – it leads to burnout and dissatisfaction Ave cynicism. The church is not immune from this – there have never been so many pastors leaving the profession as there are today. Does God have something to say about all this?

In this story, He does, as he takes care of Elijah in very simple, physical ways, while also looking after His emotional state.

This story comes right after the epic showdown at Mount Carmel, when Elijah faced down 450 prophets of Baal and God sends fire from heaven. It’s a major victory, but immediately afterwards we find Elijah on the run, terrified and in deep depression. The same can be true for us – we can experience the very real presence of God in our lives, yet still experience fear, doubt and weariness.

But God sends an angel to minister to him, bringing food and water. He doesn’t send the angel to chew him out or rebuke him, but to provide for him tangibly and physically, preparing him for the 40 days of journey ahead of him. This is a mirror of the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, in which ministering angels come to him after that same 40 day period.

This notion of rest calls back to the Creation story in Genesis, where God rests on the seventh day. Now, God does not get tired such that He needs to rest. But His resting and settling apart the sabbath as Holy is a part of the boundary setting and differentiation throughout creation – sea from sky, water from land, work from rest.

We are particularly bad about those boundaries. But if God Himself can rest, surely we can do the same? Resting itself is an act of worship – a tithe of our time and our sense of work and urgency and control to God. This is part of what it means to be a living sacrifice.

Rest and exercise are both “of some value.” We see this in God ministering to Elijah, and we see it in Jesus’ patterns of ministry, regularly retreating to isolated places to reconnect with His Father and His followers.

As the angel told Elijah, the journey will be long. God will not remove the work from us, but He will give us what we need to accomplish. The lie of the race is that there will not be enough time to accomplish everything we need to. But God will provide all the time we need in order to accomplish all He has for us to do – and no more. We can rest in that.

And we can rest in the words of Christ – “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

– Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood, WA, May 22, 2022

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Living Face to Face – Genesis 33:1-11

This is a continuation of the “Embody” series, examining how we as a church are to embody the love of God for those around us. As the pandemic deconstructed church, we are putting it back together around the essentials, and that embodiment is indeed the deepest essential.

This passage is one of two in the scripture that demonstrates (or embodies) the forgiveness of God. The other is the Prodigal Son, a direct parable of God’s forgiveness. In both stories, a reconciliation occurs, and the offended party runs out to meet the offender and embraces him, weeping. As Jacob says, this forgiveness is “like the face of God.” In reconciling face to face, he sees the face of God and experiences His forgiveness as well.

Likewise, when we extend forgiveness and grace to those around us, we show the face of God to others.

The context of this story is the turmoil, infighting, trickery and other dysfunction that surround the family of Abraham – like something out of a reality show. Though they were God’s chosen people, they were not chosen by merit, but grace. The patriarchs are not the heroes of the Bible – God is the hero of the Bible, and His grace shines through even in the Old Testament. We run into trouble as a church when we see the characters in the Old Testament as heroes in the earthly sense, and then place ourselves (whether as a church, a nation, an ethnicity) at the center of the story as the inheritors of this worldly power and wealth.

The seeds of this story were planted even before Jacob and Esau were born, as the twins wrestled with each other in the womb. Jacob’s very name comes from holding his brother’s heel as he was born, a term that also means “supplanter” or “usurper” – and he lived up to that name, conspiring with his mother to steal Esau’s very birthright as the (barely) firstborn. Esau swears to kill him.

This leads to Jacob fleeing to extended family to find a wife, and a bit of turnabout as his Uncle Laban tricks him into marrying both his daughters and working for him 14 years. Jacob turns that back on him, gaining wealth at Laban’s expense and eventually leaving in the night and taking all his flocks and family. Fleeing from Laban brings Jacob back to Esau in this story.

That’s when he gets the news that Esau is advancing with 400 men, and so Jacob’s reaction is yet another scheme, stacking children and flocks ahead of him in order of importance to him, in order to be able to flee if things go south.

This preparation to flee calls back to the time he wrestled with God (or the angel of God, or something), when his hip is struck, likely to prevent Jacob, whose nature (like many of us) is to respond to problems by running. Again, Jacob is in a place when he cannot run, but has to reconcile.

Reconciliation, to one another and between us and God, is the role of us as the church today. But the next step of this story – when Jacob bails on his brother entirely and goes in a different direction – reminds us that reconciliation is not easy, and is not a quick fix.

But it is still what we are called to, both individually and as a church. We are called to put aside our worldly reactions she striving, and live face to face in the grace and forgiveness of God.

– Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, May 8, 2022

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Your Mission Profile – Matthew 28:16-20

Matthew’s account of the resurrection & Jesus’ ministry afterwards is very terse and brief, only a few verses. He zeroes directly into the question “what is our mission in the light of the resurrection?”

In the last few verses of his gospel, Matthew tells us a few things. The disciples meet Jesus and worship him – but some doubted. This was not a purely emotional reaction of a bunch of credulous rubes, but an interaction with a true thing that took time to process and understand – and God has patience with us as we do that.

Then the story moves immediately to the Great Commission – but we should carefully consider the premise that Jesus begins with before we come to the instructions themselves. “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.” What is there in existence that Jesus does not rule? Nothing. As Americans, we have difficulty with the concept of authority, but Jesus is clear about the situation here. And this authority is the context of the Great Commission – it’s not merely an idea or a suggestion, it is a command. It is a job description for the job of “Christian.”

But there is context at the end of the command as well – “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” He is with us in this process.

Something to note, though, is the nature of this command. The instruction here is not to be a disciple, but to make disciples – the instructions here are being given to those who are disciples. We are disciples, and our task is to make more disciples. Too often, we see our purpose as Christians to be about our internal spiritual life or Bible reading our personal morality or our systematic belief structure. All of these things are good and important. But Jesus is clear here that the purpose of all of it is to make disciples.

Within that, there are three subordinate commands – go, baptize, teach. We are to “go.” We are not to live in a “holy huddle” but to live outward focused. We are to baptize – to preach the gospel and usher others into the saving relationship with Christ. And we are to teach the instruction of Christ to those who have been saved.

We can study the Bible all we want – we can even train others to study the Bible. But unless that study is turning us into people who represent Christ well, we are not doing what Christ instructs.

Studies show that all of us have 8-15 people in our lives we are uniquely qualified to minister to, some Christians and some not, but we all have someone.

We live in the era of the Resurrection, and in this era we have a mission to fulfill. How is your life designed to make disciples?

– Sermon Notes, Jeff Sickles, Snohomish Evangelical Free Church, Snohomish, WA, April 24, 2022

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Blessed are Those Who Have Not Seen & Yet Have Believed – John 20:26-31

Whatever the state of your life, whatever difficulties and hardships, whatever sins beset you, whatever challenges you face – if you believe in Jesus Christ, Jesus in this passage calls you blessed. Blessed even beyond those disciples who stood with him bodily.

This is the entire purpose of John’s gospel – “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” This is where we place our hope, not in earthly trends or capabilities or politicians.

We see here in this passage also one of the clearest statements of Christ’s divinity in the whole New Testament, as Thomas throws himself at the feet of Jesus. It seems clear that Thomas was kept from that first meeting with the risen Christ so that he could serve as a stand-in for all of us who doubt, for all of us who protect ourselves with cynicism, fear and hardness of heart.

In John 11, as Jesus stands at the tomb of Lazarus, he promises Martha that he is “the resurrection and the life.” Martha responds with the same words John writes here.

The first thing Jesus says when he appears to his disciples is “peace be with you.” The second thing he does is provide identification, by way of his hands and feet. Just as when he was walking on the water, his disciples initially thought he was a ghost, but he responded in both that case and his first appearance after his resurrection with “it is I.”

The wounds that serve as his identification also serve as a sign of his peace, and the peace with God that he made possible through his death on the cross, the propitiation provided as foretold through the Passover Lamb.

The third thing Jesus provided to his disciples and to us is liberation from fear. We see how this plays out in Acts 5, where the disciples have gone from locked away in their houses from fear to rejoicing in the opportunity to suffer for the name of the risen Christ. We are offered that same liberation.

As we go out from this Easter Sunday, back into our routines, let us keep in mind that we are blessed, for we believe without having seen, and we have a glorious future.

– Sermon Notes, Rick Mitchell, Island Baptist, Camano Island, WA, April 17, 2022