Tim's Sermon Notes

“It isn’t the mountains ahead that wear you out, it’s the pebble in your shoe.” At the end of his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul addresses many of the pebbles in in the shoe of the Church. These exhortations also apply to us at Seed Church as we set out on the exciting process of bringing on a new pastor and ministering with him.

Paul starts out taking about the leaders in the church, not just those who stand in front, but those who labor and those who care. This does not mean those who are put in place because they are wealthy, but because they work and teach.

We are to care for, love and esteem these people – and the best way to make life easy for church leaders is to live at peace with each other.

Leaders are like bus drivers, with a dozen things to be paying attention to at the same time and a bunch of unruly people in the back. It’s easy to be a backseat driver, easy to second guess decisions, easy to squabble amongst ourselves. But don’t – instead, love, defend, appreciate and support.

Then Paul goes on to our corporate responsibility to not just our leaders, but the idle, faint-hearted, the weak. Paul walked through much of these issues earlier in the epistle. Some had stopped working to just wait fit Christ’s return. Others were hurt and mourning, others were simply weak, whether spiritually or physically.

There are different ways to address each of these, but we are always called to be patient with them (and we are all of them, at some point). Patient here means long-suffering, with a long fuse. We should be able to endure much, partly because others ensure much from us.

Then comes a difficult passage – “do not repay evil with evil.” Much evil was being done to the church, and even within the church at times. But we are called to do good, not just ourselves but to all. Many of the issues in society today, racism in particular, have been exacerbated because the church did not do good to all.

The church is called to be a family, a circle of love. We can’t exclude the leaders from our circle of love. We can’t exclude the weak and struggling from our circle of love. We can’t even exclude those who do evil to us from that circle!

Love is the proper response when we have a pebble in our shoe as we walk the Way following Christ. We’re at a new stage of our journey at Seed, so let’s be sure we are supporting our leaders, old and new, loving the weak and even our enemies as we move forward.

-Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, June 28, 2020

“Your attitude determines your altitude.” It’s a pithy catch phrase, but this passage provides a particularly challenging directive right along these lines. It’s one of the most difficult commands in scripture, because it is about how we think, not just what we say and do. Our attitude must be like Christ’s, because as Christians we are “little Christs”.

Verses 1 to 3 are a great map of what a healthy church looks like, and a great prayer for parents to pray over their children. We are to unify, as churches, families, married couples, on knowing Christ and making him known.

This is counter cultural – our culture tells us that we should live for our own truth, to center ourselves, our opinions, our preferences. But we are called to humility. As CS Lewis wrote, “humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” We are to put others first and to see others as more important. As Jesus said in Mark 9, “if anyone would be first, he must be last and be the servant of all.” Peter writes in 1 Peter 5, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

Is we manage this humility, unify around the service of Christ, and live together with charity and affection, the outcomes would be amazing. Very few people struggle with too much humility – some are more ostentatious about their humility, but that is so frequently a firm of pride.

We live in a very divisive time, and so many areas are polarized. It’s getting harder and harder for pastors in particular. But we are called as churches to be a place of unity and grace.

This is, ultimately, an impossible passage, because salvation is impossible apart from the miraculous work of God. But that’s exactly what we are offered and exactly what we should always be striving for. And a church that is unified in Christ is unstoppable.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, June 21, 2020

Psalm 107 is an answer to the call in psalm 106 for God to save His people. We meet four groups along the way – wanderers in the desert, prisoners in chains, fools who got themselves in a mess, and sailors at sea.

Each one calls to God, and each one God saves. We are shown by this Psalm. God is good. God is faithful. We celebrate this weekly by observing communion.

God is a God who saves. Paul tells us that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, just as we see in this Psalm. There is foreshadowing of Christ’s salvation even in this passage. The wanderers in the desert seek water, and we know that Christ is the eternal source of living water.

As Augustine wrote, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

Note, though, that each of these groups is in trouble because of their own choices. The wanderers went out perhaps unprepared, the prisoners rebelled, the fools were foolish, the sailors went out into the chaotic sea. Each of them was responsible for their own predicament – it would be easy to let each of them endure the consequences of their action. But each of us is ultimately the same in that way – we all make choices that put us into trouble and distress, and God offers His help to all of us.

We have a God who saves, and a God who listens. We can take all our anxieties and fears before the King of the Universe and leave them there. We don’t carry it anymore, but give it to the Lord who is good, whose love endures forever.

Charles Spurgeon wrote many years ago, “In all your troubles through this year, look to God and be saved.” We have many troubles through this year – but we can look to God.

We should also be thankful for the many times God has brought us through our troubles. Our gratitude should erupt our is us in humble worship – give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. We have a reason to sing and worship and tell the stories of God’s faithfulness.

-Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, June 7, 2020

Right now society seems like it is on fire, between disease, police killings, riots, looting – but as Christians we are called to serve as a bucket brigade, each doing our small part to put out the fires.

Paul’s words here to the Philippians can help us understand how to do that. It starts with his exhortation to conduct our lives in a way that’s worthy of the gospel. The term “conduct” here comes from the same root as “politics” – it is about how we live in community with others. Our interactions with others should point those people to Christ.

Paul doesn’t know whether he will be able to join them in person (sound familiar?), but wants up know that they are united, like a troop of soldiers or an athletic team. This means a giving up of our personal ambitions in support of the team. As Christians, we sometimes think we’re playing singles when we are supposed to be playing doubles.

Paul continues using picturesque language, urging the Philippians not to be alarmed in the way that a horse can be spooked. Even though they are being persecuted, the ill intentions of their oppressors will be turned back on them.

But that does not mean that such oppression will not come. In fact, Paul writes that suffering is set before us as a task in the same vein as believing. We cannot get one without the other, and in fact each one feeds into the other.

We are not called to go out of our way to seek out suffering, but if we are living a life the way we are called to, we will experience suffering, for the sake of Christ.

That means we are also called to tenacity, and to a unity within that tenacity, supporting each other within the church, and ultimately supported by the power of God.

Today is a good day to recommit ourselves both to the work of God and to our brothers and sisters who we serve with.

-Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, May 31

Paul tells the church at Philippi that the problems he had run into – most specifically his imprisonment, probably in Rome – is being used for good. He calls out directly the influence that he has been able to have in the imperial guard.

Paul adopted the perspective we should all take, even when we cannot see the specifics of what God is doing. “When you can’t see His hand, trust Heart.” There’s not a perfect comparison between COVID19 and Paul’s imprisonment, but we can certainly apply the same perspective of “Christ-colored glasses.”

Paul goes on to write about another challenge, that a set of Christians were preaching Christ with wrong motives, in fact trying to show up Paul, possibly some who had been with the church at Rome for a long time and resented Paul rolling in and speaking like an authority. Paul’s response to these people also was “Christ-colored”. As long as there is no false teaching or mistreatment, Paul says to celebrate the work of God, even if done through those who disagree with us or who act with wrong motives.

We are called to address all our issues and conflicts with that perspective. This is especially true within the church. We should approach all relationships with the same open hands and God-centered view.

We prefer the love that occurs among friends we have chosen. But we are called to love even those who we have not chosen, even those we may not get along with. The church is explicitly a place for us to exercise those muscles and to love even those wet may not have natural affection for, or may outright dislike.

Paul also puts this perspective towards the very questions of life and death. He wanted his entire life to both be centered on Christ and to center others on Him. And not just his life, but ultimately his death. “To live is Christ and to die is gain.”

How we live determines what death means. Money, power, pleasure, fame are all things that “to live is” could mean, but in each case death means a loss of all of it. Some Christians live as it that verse was flipped – “to live is gain, to die is Christ.” Life is whatever we want it to be, and Jesus is just a life insurance policy.

But that’s not what we are called to – we are called to live for Christ, and are promised that our death will mean even more of Him.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, May 24, 2020

Shared experiences bind people together across time and space. The COVID19 pandemic creates a globally shared experience, while here in Philippians, we read of experiences we share with the early church and the church in Philippi in particular.

The prayer that Paul prayed for them applies to us as well. He begins with love, the central truth of God, who is Himself love. Specifically, Paul asks for love bounded by knowledge and discernment, like a river that rises, with cliffs on either side, channeling it where it needs to go. Love must have boundaries – but it must still be love. It is easy to err on either side of that, but Paul prays that the Philippians will indeed learn to love and love well.

Likewise, if you want to know what to pray for your spouse, children, parents or self, that their love grows in knowledge and discernment is a great place to stay because it is a lifelong journey. We are all facing the need to apply our love intelligently as we approach all the various circumstances we run into. As it says in Frozen 2, we are called to “do the next right thing”. The difficulty can be knowing what that right thing is. “There are two sides to every issue, but there are two sides to fly paper, too.”

But why does it matter that we make wise, right choices? Verse 10 tells us – in order that we may be pure and blameless. The word for “pure” here means “tested by sunlight” like a piece of clothing being looked at in the light.

Similarly, we ourselves are going to have a moment of testing when we come before the throne of God.

So pray that we grow in love, pray we make wise choices and pray for growth of character.

Paul did not tell this to the Philippians purely for theoretical purposes. We know from later in the letter that there were real conflicts between members of the church. Love isn’t theoretical, it must be practical to be real. And that means it is messy and complicated – and that’s why we turn to prayer, just like Paul did.

We can also consider this goal of helping other people love well in our own behavior. Do our actions help people love better, in knowledge and discernment? Or do they somehow lead them to sin and unkindness? We cannot be responsible for the actions of others, but we should always be seeking to be the kinds of people who make others better.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, May 17, 2020

Paul starts off this letter making it clear that the letter is going up be about Christ, and that all believers are unified in Him.

The next section is Paul expressing his thankfulness for the Philippians. Ancient letters often started with a note of gratefulness for the recipients, but Paul’s gratitude goes so deep.

Some of this is the bond between Paul and the Philippians, driven by the partnership they have had together in both spiritual and material things over the past years, even as he has not been in Philippi for some years.

All this works together with the grace of God to bubble over in the joy that permeates this letter. Paul yearns for the Philippians with “all his guts.” It’s a reminder that church is about more than the worship or the teaching, but it’s about the connections between people, the love of Christ working its way out and through and among the people of His church. People are not God’s Plan B, but the primary mechanism by which He accomplishes His will. We are brought together to learn to love in real life – not always easy, but if eternal worth.

This also means there is value to building true relationships within the church, not merely acquaintances who we say hi to on Sunday. Once of the silver linings of this quarantine is that we are learning not to take our relationships and interactions with people for granted.

The church of the Philippians was started by a ragtag group, starting with people as varied as the businesswoman Lydia and the rough-and-tumble jailer who nearly committed suicide. God used his sovereign plan to bring His message to people who would never have heard of except for the twisting, turning, entirely unpredictable path that Paul’s journey took.

We can take encouragement from this, as our own paths are plenty twisty in these difficult times.

Getting back on track! More notes to come.

The overall theme of the epistle to Titus is that Christians should maintain good works, and much of the book is devoted to the disguising of organization and behavior to that end.

That overall message us emphasized here at the end of the letter, both in direct words and in the glimpse we get of Paul and his ministry.

Four people are mentioned here. Zenas and Apollos arrived in Crete with the letter, and Paul asks Titus to help them on their way. Meanwhile, Tychicus and Artemas would be arriving in Crete at some point, and once they arrived it would free up Titus to meet Paul in Nicopolis up in mainland Greece.

Artemas we don’t know much about, but Tychicus is mentioned throughout the New Testament, including in Ephesians, where he is called “beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord.” He may be taking over for Titus so he can go north.

Paul had decided to spend the winter there – note that he himself decided, rather than receiving word from the Holy Spirit or some other revelation. While the latter two are seen throughout Paul’s life, much of the result church was built on the wisdom and decisions of the apostles, guided more subtly by the spirit than we sometimes imagine.

The other pair, Zenas and Apollos, are similar, in that we know more about one than the other. Zenas is a lawyer, probably a Roman jurist, but he is only mentioned here. Apollos is well known, having a major role in the book of Acts where he shows up speaking eloquently but needing training, which is provided by Priscilla and Aquila. He went on to pastor at Corinth as well.

Titus was supposed to help them on their way, a common request in the epistles. It is a very practical good deed, a direct example of the hospitality Paul has earlier called on Titus to encourage.

These small, practical actions are examples of what Paul then tells Titus to impress upon the believers in Crete: devote themselves to good works, especially addressing the urgent needs that would inevitably arise. The church is not there to serve every need, but to strategically and carefully address those of the most urgency and important.

But there are plenty of these. There are always needs to meet, and that is a key role of the Church. We are not just here to learn and fellowship, but also to serve – to “not be unfruitful.”

And we also learn from this passage something about how this is to be done – in community. The believers traveling all came in pairs, and Paul wanted Titus to join him. Paul always worked in a team, and is there with others who also sent their greetings.

We are the same, both working and growing together in community, and supported and prayed for by many others around the country and world – so let’s act like it!

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, March 8, 2020