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Mighty God, Prince of Peace – Isaiah 9:1-7

Last week we discussed Christ as our hope. Today we are looking at Christ as our peace. We looked at the “virgin will be with child” prophecy in Isaiah, both its original fulfillment in the destruction of Samaria and Aram by Assyria promised to Ahaz, but also its ultimate fulfillment in the birth of Christ.

In the next Chapter, God warns the people of Judah that they will not be spared the wrath of Assyria. They need to not put their hope in the earthly kingdom, but put their hope in Him. “Do not call conspiracy what they call conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear.” He condemns them for seeking necromancers and mediums.

Then in Isaiah 9, we again hear whispers of the coming messiah. He specifically calls out the area of Zebulon and Naphtali – the first parts of Israel that would have been invaded by Aram. These regions – “Galilee of the gentiles” – are called out as having been in anguish, but God calls them out of their gloom, because a light will dawn.

Matthew calls out this light as the ministry of Jesus, which was centered on the region of Galilee, the area where he did more miracles than anywhere else.

Isaiah promises that this light would bring peace, “as in the day of Midian.” This is a callback to the story of Gideon and his defeat of the Midianites. As in the time of Isaiah, Israel had turned to idols, and as in the time of Isaiah, God used invaders to bring about judgement. But He used Gideon to overthrow those invaders, the Midianites. Gideon, unlike Ahaz, does ask for a sign, and when he gets one (and then another) he recruits an army – from the region of Zebulon & Naphtali. After his whittles down his army to a tiny size, he attacks and routs the Midianites and brings about a peace that Isaiah compares to what is coming, what will make the boots and garb of war fit only for the fire.

And how is that peace going to come about? A child, born. A son, given. The government will be on his shoulders. He will be referred to as Wonderful Counselor – an advisor who is a wonder, a marvel. And as “Mighty God” which is startling in the context of a monotheistic Jewish prophet. All that can be taken from this is that this child to be born is Himself, the creator God. If you were unclear, he follows up with “Father of Eternity” or eternal, everlasting father. Finally, the prince of peace – the peace with God’s and each other given to to us through the reconciliation given to us through the work of Christ.

The greatness and abundance of the kingdom He will bring about, the fulfillment of the promise to David, will never end, achieved by “the zeal of the Lord of hosts.”

This peace promised to Israel is promised to us as well. Charles Spurgeon described this peace:

Look upward, and you will perceive no seat of fiery wrath to shoot devouring flame. Look downward, and you discover no hell, for there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Look back, and sin is blotted out. Look around, and all things work together for good to them that love God. Look beyond, and glory shineth through the veil of the future, like the sun through a morning’s mist. Look outward, and the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field, are at peace with us. Look inward, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keeps our hearts and minds by Christ Jesus.

You can know this peace if you seek after the son who was given, the Mighty God and prince of peace.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, November 6, 2020

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The Alma Will Conceive – Isaiah 7

On the road to Emmaus, Jesus explained to two disciples, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets… what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

Those passages begin with Genesis 3, in which “the seed of the woman” would destroy the serpent but be injured in the process. Another of those key passages is Isaiah, foretelling the virgin birth – but obviously, today’s Jews do not believe that. Why not?

In fact there are many prophecies that the Jews do not think refer to Christ, and many others that they see Christ as having left unfulfilled.

Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 7 came in a specific moment, when the kings of Aram and Israel threatened to conquer Judah and set up their own puppet king, outside the line of David. Isaiah warns Ahaz, king of Judah, but tells him not to worry because the invasion will fail. Not only that, but soon both those kingdoms will be destroyed by Assyria. He tells Ahaz to ask for a sign, but Ahaz refuses – so God gives him one anyway.

That sign is that a particular alma or young woman – Isaiah’s wife, specifically – will bear a son, and while he is still young, the prophecy will be fulfilled. This then is fulfilled in chapter 8, when his wife bears a son who he gives a ridiculously long name.

This is the passage referred to in Matthew 1:23, in which the Greek word used is specifically about chaste/unmarried women. The Hebrew word, though, is generally used to mean any young woman, often but not exclusively a virgin per se. Many Jewish and other scholars see this as a mistranslation.

But prophecy is never as straightforward as it seems. Moses was promised the promised land, but not told about the 40 years in the desert. David was promised his family would hold the throne forever, but not told about the Babylonian Captivity or the hundreds of year gap between his kingly line and the birth of Christ, let alone the nature of Christ’s fulfillment of that prophecy.

The prophecies of the Old Testament are often fulfilled by what is called a “dual fulfillment” – a concrete, political fulfillment in the Old Testament, and a universal, spiritual fulfillment in the New.

And it is the latter that matters, because the deeper promise of the prophecy is not the part about the virgin, but the part about “Immanuel”. God with us, in the person of Christ, incarnate and so with us in the

Ultimately, Matthew got it right – the man who called him out of his life as a tax collector, into new life as a servant of God, the man who he desperately wanted to be seen and accepted by his Jewish brothers and sisters – he was born of a virgin, and himself was Immanuel.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, November 29, 2020

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Sanctifying Encouragement – Ephesians 4:29-32

The theme of this last part of the chapter is simply “Words are powerful.” Much like in the book of James, which compares words to a fire that consumes, Paul here warns against “corrupting talk.”

Some versions say “unwholesome” “evil speech” or “hateful speech.” The term in Greek is “sapros” which means to be rotten like old foods or rotted like old wood. In the gospels, Jesus uses it to describe bad fruit versus good fruit.

We can look at this concept of words being like rotted timbers and tie it to Paul’s discussion of his words “building up”, and tie that back to the way Paul describes the church as being built up into a holy temple for the Lord.

We as a people need encouragement. We need it because life is hard. We need it because every discouraging word and thought hits with many times the weight of the positive. We need it because we are lonely, sometimes because we really are alone and isolated and sometimes because we are surrounded by people but without real connection. We need it because we are all fighting sin every day.

In Hebrews 3:13, we’re told to encourage one another daily. As we try to walk worthy of the calling, much of that is our responsibility – the discipline of taking off the old and putting on the new. But at the same time, we know it is Christ in us who started the good work of sanctification and will complete it. It’s easy to see sanctification as these two things, but here Paul talks about another key component of sanctification – one another, living in community, living in encouragement. Part of our sanctification comes from one another as we use our powerful words to build each other up.

And when we use those words to do the opposite, Paul tells us it grieves Holy Spirit. This is a call back to Isaiah 63, one of the rare instances of the term Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. “Yet they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he turned and became their enemy and he himself fought against them.”

The Holy Spirit is not a force, but a person. He rejoices and he is grieved, specifically when one person he is in and is regenerating harms another with their words.

Instead, we must allow the Holy Spirit to “put away” the bitterness, wrath and slander that we tend toward, and to instead build within us kindness and compassion. But not only to those we love, those we are in community with, but those who have wronged us. Christians are those who have been forgiven, and have so learned to forgive others.

We are warned, in fact, that God will not forgive us unless we forgive others. So let us commit to building the kind of community that God has already made possible. A community based on trust, generosity, encouragement, and blessing to the glory of God.

This is the community Jesus died and rose again to create. If you want a piece of this community, all that is asked is that you repent and believe.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, November 22, 2020

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Lies, Anger, Laziness – Ephesians 4:25-28

Paul here is getting to the “application section” of this part, going into specifics of what we should be “taking off” in order to put on Christ. Specifically, don’t lie, don’t be angry, and don’t be lazy.

In each of these, he gives us a negative instruction, then the positive response, and then the reason for it.

The first is to “put away falsehood,” in language that calls back to Zechariah and God’s promise to return to Jerusalem.

This instruction can be confusing when we look at people all across the Old Testament who deceive people constantly and are often commended for it – Rahab, Jael, David, for a few examples. Ultimately, though, this is about motivation – there are rare occasions where a fear of the Lord will make a deception the right thing to do, but clearly deception, broadly speaking, is something God hates. Proverbs is full of clear instruction not to lie, and Revelation puts liars square in the group of people who will be condemned.

It is also about context – Paul is writing about relationships within the body of the church. As John Chrysostom writes,

Will the foot tell a lie, and not report the truth as it is? And what again? If the eye were to spy a serpent or a wild beast, will it lie to the foot? Will it not at once inform it, and the foot thus informed by it refrain from going on? And what again, when neither the foot nor the eye shall know how to distinguish, but all shall depend upon the smelling, as, for example, whether a drug be deadly or not; will the smelling lie to the mouth?

The next instruction is to not sin in our anger. This is a direct reference to Psalm 4, in which David preaches to his enemies. It also echoes James, who asserts “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” There are two different words here, one being anger, in which we must not sin, and “para-anger” or resentment, which we should not let last the day.

This one is a very present temptation, abs can feel overwhelming. We need the power of Christ to change us. Spurgeon said, “only in salvation from sin is there salvation from wrath.”

Next, do not steal, or more broadly, we must not be lazy. But more than that, at must work diligently – in order to be generous. That is the purpose of our diligence and hard work.

Paul in here also gives a parenthetical – all these (perhaps anger in particular) are things we do to avoid giving the devil a foothold, in our lives, in our relationships and in our church. Each of these could be seen as small, mundane instructions, but they are the armor and defense against the attacks against us.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, November 15, 2020

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Off With the Soiled Clothes – Ephesians 4:17-24

This passage matches up well with Colossians 3,hitting many of the same themes likely around the same time in Paul’s life. Both passages call the members of the church first to stop behaving as nonbelievers – referred to as “Gentiles” which is notable since the church itself was full of Gentiles! But as he makes clear elsewhere the gentiles of the church have been “grafted in” – and the Jews in the church are certainly not exempt from behaving like those in the culture around them.

What does that look like? A hardened heart, calloused to sin, but instead seeking the impure and wicked. Even greedy for it!

Paul specifically is serving against antinomianism, the idea that one we are saved we no longer have to worry about following the law. There were those in the church at Ephesus and other congregations who pushed the idea, and Paul here and elsewhere objects to it emphatically.

“That is not how you learned Christ” – not just “about” Christ, but Christ Himself in relationship. There is a difference between learning about someone, and learning them themselves. Though Paul does not assume that this is true of everyone there.

They learned to put off the old self, through Paul’s teaching in person and his letter to the Romans that would likely have circulated by now. The language is the same as changing out of old clothes, from soiled or otherwise dirty clothing into the clothes that are worthy and appropriate for their status as children of God. You can reference the letter to Sardis in Revelation, where some have soiled their white garments – or you can look to Lazarus, raised from the dead and taking off the old grave clothes right away.

Or you can look at the prodigal son – and like the prodigal son, we have to recognize when we are at the pig sty that life is better in our father’s house – where he will put a new robe on us and celebrate.

We are all called to this kind of repentance, and the more we become like Christ, the more we see in our lives that does not line up and needs repentance.

We also need to change ourselves at the mental level – not just responding to a feeling of guilt, but a fundamental renewing of how we think about ourselves, others and God.

This conviction of sin may feel like a heavy load, but it is a part of God’s grace, showing us the path to oneness with Him.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, November 8, 2020

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Truthing in Love – Ephesians 4:15-16

Paul here is wrapping up a section on unity. It’s actually a continuation of the earlier discussion of spiritual warfare, because the unity of the church is both one of our strongest weapons against and the greatest targets of the spiritual forces of darkness Paul warned about.

The big idea here is that God has placed every person here at Seed Church and every person He’s going to put here in the future, so that we come together with all of these diverse gifts in order to function properly. Just like our body is designed to work when all the parts are functioning properly.

The most well known part of these verses is “speak the truth in love.” This is often said just before someone speaks something that may or may not be truth, but almost certainly is not in love. The word in Greek itself is actually a verb form of the word that means truth. So the language here its more like “truthing”. We should be truthing in love – this goes fast beyond the words we speak.

This discussion of truth may remind us of the conversation between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, when the latter famously asked “what is truth?” Jesus himself, though embodies the truth – as he said to Pilate, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Elsewhere he asserts “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

We reject, or should reject, the world’s notion that truth is relative, and that we seek “my truth.” We are given other believers, teachers, who are there to help us towards the truth. The challenges of truth, though, are twofold: we don’t know it, and we don’t believe it.

Our response to the first of those must be to immerse ourselves in the truth of the scriptures. As John MacArthur wrote “Make sure Satan has to climb over a lot of scripture to get to you.” And it is important to do this both corporately and individually. This is a team sport. And it is vital that we know the truth of God in order to have a relationship with Him. As Amy Hartley writes, “The modern church is producing passionate people with empty heads who love the Jesus they don’t know very well.”

But we also have to believe it. How do we even pin that down? Feelings can be a good indicator. Feelings are not a good indicator of truth, but they are often a good indicator of what we actually believe. Often what they tell us we believe in is ourselves. It is very difficult to give up control, even to God.

Augustine wrote “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” This is what we want, but there is a part of us that does not believe this, that fights against it and will leave us ineffective. This is why we must constantly go back to the scriptures to bolster our belief. As the father with a dying child said to Jesus – “I believe; help my unbelief!”

How then do I live that out? It starts with how we see those around us. God is love, and so we should look at everyone around us as someone God loves. This is the truth that is in love. To remove the love from this is to remove the truth itself.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul warns that any speech or worship without love is functionally meaningless. No one can hear your truth unless it is soaked, immersed in love. And he also tells us what that love looks like: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Here in Ephesians, this truth-in-love concept leads directly to the metaphor of the church as a body, with every part having a distinct function, the diversity of its members all necessary for the body to function at intended.

We are fortunate to go to a church where people are doing this, in many ways, in service, in prayer, in giving. Be encouraged by this.

We are to embody truth in love. We need to know it, believe it, proclaim it and express it in our service.

-Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, November 1, 2020

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Giving Gifts to the Captives – Ephesians 4:4-14

To review: in chapter 1, Paul describes the greatness of the gift of salvation the Ephesians had been given. In chapter 2, he applies this to the reconciliation between peoples. Then in chapter 3, it is applied to the spiritual realm. Now in chapter 4 we are moving into the imperatives that come with this salvation.

Specifically, the imperatives revolve around the unity Christ creates for us within the diversity of the gifts he has given us.

We are given gifts in the same way that the talents were given in the parable of the talents – they are given so that we can invest them in order for a return for the kingdom. This is true of both our spiritual gifts, as Paul discusses elsewhere

One of the trickiest parts of this passage is the reference to Psalm 68, which originally was about the Lord’s anointed king ascending the mountain of Zion and taking captives and receiving gifts, though Paul changes that there to giving gifts. It then goes into a complicated discussion of Jesus ascending and descending – possibly just to the earth, possibly into the grave, and possibly to hell itself, though the term here used is not “gehenna”.

Then he goes into roles of people specifically given gifts, including the apostles and prophets who speak to us through the scriptures, and the evangelists, pastors and teachers who speak to us today. (Or you can see them all as current roles, either way is fine.) All of this comes together to “equip the saints” and build up the church, corporately, into a body capable of impacting the world as Christ’s hands and feet.

And individually it means building the members of the church into spiritual maturity, the “stature of the fullness of Christ,” not tossed around like kids in a ship deck when storms hit the church – storms that often come from people actively harming the church whether just from faulty doctrine or purposefully scheming against the church.

We need to be discipling each other, both seeking out more mature Christians to learn from and giving our time to disciple others when appropriate. We need to be seeking and using our spiritual gifts. Those online gift tests are fine, but the real way to learn what your gifts are is to jump in and serve, learning from experience and the voice of others what gifts you have been given that you can then give back in turn.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, October 25, 2020

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Unity – Ephesians 4:1-6

Last week we talked about the prayer of Paul for the Ephesians, that they would be strengthened in their faith and better know the love of God. Today, we look at what Paul specifically called the Ephesians to do and be.

It begins with a “therefore,” which calls back to all the context Paul created in chapters 1-3.

“Walk in a manner worthy of the grace you received,” Paul urges – though we know that we are not ourselves worthy of that grace, but our walk should put effort towards being so.

Paul uses forms of the word “call” numerous times in this passage – and that word is also the root of the Greek word for “church” – “the called out ones.”

The word walk here means “going about” suggesting everyday life, going here and there. The word worthy here means either “of equal weight” or corresponding appropriately.

So how do we do this, walk in a worthy manner? Paul spells it out in the next verse: humility, gentleness and patience. Note that there is nothing here about agreeing with each other – in some ways, that would actually be easier.

Humility is considering others before ourselves, following in the way of Christ in how he went to the cross for us. It also means recognizing that we are not as smart, holy or strong as we think we are. We aren’t even as humble as we think we are.

Gentleness is being mild and temperate, living in a way that only uses anger when and where appropriate.

Patience is “long suffering” with a long view of birth the world around us and even our own desires. It ties perhaps the most directly to the next phrase “bearing with one another.” That’s not something we have to worry about doing if there was nothing to bear with, but in real life something always comes up.

We will always have disagreements and conflicts and frustrations with each other. When we do, though, we are called to approach each other in a way that builds each other up – the Greek word suggests holding someone up physically.

That bearing up is itself supposed to be a reflection of our eagerness to maintain our unity in the spirit. This narrows our unity – we can’t have unity in the spirit with those who do not have the same spirit.

What does that unity mean? We are united in one body, one spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism – but that does not mean we are all in agreement over the secondary issues of the faith.

We are unified in one church, one body of Christ across all racial, ethnic, linguistic even denominational lines. There is one spirit that ministers to all of us. There is one Lord we all serve. There is one baptism, the baptism of the heart that is the salvation offered by that Lord who gave up his life for us.

We should be praying for this sort of unity, and for the humility, gentleness and patience, because it is through this unity that we stand against the powers and principalities, both our spiritual and physical enemies. Because it is beautiful to God. In Psalm 133 we read…

Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!

It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes!

It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the LORD has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.

Psalm 133

Unity is the blessing of God, while disunity is the goal of the devil. Unity will build us corporately up into a mighty force for God in our community and world, while disunity will destroy our church. Let us seek it diligently.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, October 18, 2020

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Prayer for the Impossible – Ephesians 3:14-21

This is the second time in the book of Ephesians that Paul just breaks in the middle of a passage and prays for people.

As a church, we are praying for opportunities to share the gospel as well as for wisdom and direction. We take cues from Paul in that we should be ready to drop everything and enter into prayer.

In that first prayer, in chapter 1, he prays that the Ephesians will experience the wisdom, knowledge, hope, presence and power of God. It often does not feel like we have access to any of these, but that’s part of why Paul is praying that they would grow in all of it.

In this part, Paul is after something similar. Paul opens with very universal language. He goes to his knees in prayer, rather than following Jewish tradition and standing. He speaks of the father, Pater, giving his name to the family, patria, and to every family in the world, not only the family of Abraham.

He asks that Christ would dwell in their hearts, much like the language from earlier in the letter when he wrote that believers are being built together as a dwelling place for God.

And that dwelling of Christ, his being deeply rooted in us, is what gives us the strength to comprehend the “breadth and length and height and depth” – something so vast that it surpasses our knowledge and understanding. The love of God is bigger than we or the world could possibly understand.

It also means that we can’t look to the world for its understanding of love. When we love in our marriages, family, friendships, we have to look to the example of Christ and be powered by the strength of Christ. It is for this, and for some dim understanding of Christ’s love, that Paul prays for here. Knowledge of that which is beyond knowledge.

And Paul prays to the one with power beyond power, able to do the impossible, and so worthy of being asked for the impossible.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, October 11, 2020

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The Gospel & Manifold Wisdom – Ephesians 3:7-13

Paul ended the passage we looked at last week talking about the mystery of the gospel, and that’s where he picks up in today’s passage. The mystery means that it was not something that could be reasoned out alone, but requires revelation, which Paul received from Christ.

But what is “this gospel” that Paul is talking about. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul gives his most succinct recounting of the gospel: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”

If this is true, it means that we owe Christ everything – it crashes into how we approach our finances, career, family, politics, identity, everything about us. What he did for us means that we owe him everything.

And the gospel is not something we ever outgrow. No matter how long we have been Christians, the gospel is relevant – it is the fuel for our ongoing sanctification, and it is the core of the mission we have been given to reach the nations. This is what Paul is talking about here.

He goes on to put himself into this context, as the “most least” of all the saints – if “leaster” was a word, he would have used that. This is the context through which we are to communicate the gospel – deeply felt humility. It is in that humility that he brings the “unsearchable riches of Christ” and manifold wisdom of God” to the world and even to the “rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.”

Paul is talking about the evil, supernatural forces arrayed against him, us and the gospel. As the church, we are how God’s manifold wisdom is reflected to those forces.

So we need to understand the gospel – both as our shield, in understanding the love Christ has for us, and as our sword, the power of God for salvation.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, October 4, 2020