Tim's Sermon Notes

The mission of Seed Church is to help people know God, experience freedom, discover a purpose and make a difference. Today, we will focus on Knowing God.

Each part of the mission springs from what we value. In this case, it is a result of the value at place on biblical knowledge and prayer – the revelation of God and our response to him.

To understand this relationship we can go to Isaiah 6. It was the year that Uzziah died, who had been king for over 50 years – a time of transition and uncertainty for Israel. For Isaiah, it represents a commissioning of Isaiah for a specific, difficult task.

Isaiah gets a somewhat warped and veiled vision of God, but one that still demonstrated the power and majesty of God – “the foundations of the thresholds shook.”

We sing songs about wanting to see God, but reading this passage may give us pause. Seeing and knowing God is not a small thing – it is a terrifying, all-encompassing, surprising thing.

That is why Isaiah responds the way he does: “I am toast.” Seeing the Lord of Hosts made it clear to him that he was far too sinful to survive the process. He had unclean lips, made unclean by what was in his heart. And of Isaiah said this, consider how we today would stack up. Why don’t we also respond with “woe is me.” It may be because we don’t truly see God, and one of the reasons we seek to know Him better is to better see ourselves as well.

But the response to this recognition of guilt, sin and unclean lips is simple grace. Isaiah’s guilt is atoned for, ultimately through the future sacrifice of Christ. When we take the elements of communion, we also put the coals to our lips as we remember the way we were atoned for.

With his guilt removed, Isaiah hears God’s call. “Who will go for us?” His response this time is the opposite of “woe is me.” Because his sin has been taken away, he immediately leaps forward to take up the task that God has presented.

The task was to preach to Israel despite the fact that they will not listen even after severe punishment. They will not listen, becoming as insensitive to the truth as the idols they worshipped. We all become what we worship.

This hopeless task is much the same as what was given to Jeremiah and Ezekiel – preaching the word of God to the hard-hearted. We even see this in the ministry of Christ, with Isaiah’s message serving as a prophecy, as cited by Matthew, Mark and John – the latter of whom declares that the prophecy itself sprang from Isaiah seeing the glory of Christ.

Paul also cited this passage, warning that many people would remain hard of heart despite the coming of Christ. However, our mission is not the same as that given to Isaiah. We were given the Great Commission, a far more hopeful task following the new covenant.

But the warning here is still applicable. We cannot just coast on the faith of the past. We cannot live a life of faith in neutral. We cannot let our hearts be hardened or our ears closed. We must always continue to seek after God, to receive his revelation through the scriptures and give our response through worship and prayer.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, January 5, 2020

We return again to the first few verses of Hebrews, this time to examine the honors given & due to Christ.

The message of the book of Hebrews is the supremacy of Christ, and that message begins immediately. We have gone through how God brings his full message through the Son, and how Christ is equivalent with His as the creator, upholder and master of all things.

Today, we are looking at what he did for us as incarnate deity – here is where we get to the Christmas story.

First, Christ as God-made-man made purification for sins. The term here is the word we get “catharsis” from – a purification or cleansing. As Hebrews says later, “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”

Christ delivers us from both our discrete sins and from the self-focused philosophy that is inevitable without a focus on something greater than and bigger than ourselves. As covered earlier in the chapter, there is nothing and no one greater than Christ.

We see again in this part as well, because after making purification, He sat down at the right hand of the Father. The imagery comes from Psalm 110, which is one of the most quoted pieces of the Old Testament in the New, everyone from Jesus himself through many epistles. It represents his nearness and intimacy with the Father, and his supremacy over all created things. In summary, “Jesus won.”

The author of Hebrews specifically calls out the superiority of Christ to the angels – there was a trend in this era to venerate angels, and so it was important to explicitly clarify the reality of where they stand in relation to Christ. In our day we have our own angels that we venerate, and must remember clearly where they stand in relationship to Jesus.

All this is why we celebrate Christmas. The baby born in Bethlehem became a man who died for our sins, rose again, ascended into heaven, reigns in heaven as the second person of the Trinity, and will return again. How do we live in light of that?

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, December 15, 2019

Last week at looked at the first verse of Hebrews, in which the author asserts that, while in the past God spoke through the prophets, he has now spoken fully and entirely through Jesus Christ.

He then goes on to list Christ’s qualifications for the role. What makes Christ qualified to be the Lord of All. He is the “heir of all things” bestowed on him by the father. This means all things – visible and invisible, large and small, epic and mundane.

Not only will he receive all things ultimately, but he also created all things to begin with, and sustains them going forward. See John 1 and 1 Corinthians 8 for more.

Next, he is himself the radiance of the glory of God. Again, this echoes John 1.

He has exact imprint of the father, like a stamped coin or a footprint. He is the imprint of God’s character and nature. “all the fullness of deity dwells bodily” in Christ. Jesus deserves our worship.

Finally, he upholds all things by the word of his power. “Upholds” here means to bear, to carry or to bring, with the implication of bringing something to a goal or conclusion.

All this is a lot. This is why religions have, since the 1st Century when Hebrews was written, attempted to dilute Jesus. From Arians to Islam to Mormonism – or even within otherwise orthodox Christianity, who overlay Jesus over a sinful culture, whether the barbarism of slavery or the consumerism and greed of today.

This Christmas, let us remember, honor and praise Jesus for who He is.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, December 8, 2019

The book of Hebrews appears to be a sermon, unlike the rest of the epistles, which are letters. Timed out, it would take about 45 minutes, which is not an unheard of length for a sermon.

The book opens with a euphonous, alliterative opening, with a parallelism that highlights the new thing God has done and the new way he has spoken. Long ago, he spoke in bits and pieces across time to the prophets. But there was a time, not long before this was written, when God spoke all at once, through the incarnate Son of God.

Those many ways were amazing – everything from pillars of fire to poetry to apocalyptic visions to laws and regulations to thunderous voices to whispers in the dead of night. But they were not complete.

We also know that God also speaks through creation. The heavens declare His glory and the world around us His might. His power and divine nature is made clear by creation – but again, the message is not complete.

His message was not made complete until the coming of Christ. When He came, all of history and human existence changed. The breadth and depth of God’s love and the majesty of His plan for the salvation of the world were made clear through the very life of His Son – and His death and resurrection.

Jesus revealed the nature of God in a way that could not be accomplished in any other way. The truth has been revealed “in Son.” It is personal and close, unlike anything else. This is why we celebrate the incarnation with the vigor that we do at Christmastime.

The book of Hebrews focuses on this notion of God speaking throughout the book. Through the prophets, through Christ, God has spoken. But are we listening? This is the question the preacher of Hebrews raises over and over of his listeners. We should also consider the same.

It is easy, especially at this season to hear without listening – after all, we have heard all these stories before, we have heard these sermons before (maybe from more highly skilled preachers). But the question is not whether we have heard it, but whether we have done anything about it.

If it was important for the Christians of the 1st Century to listen, how much more important is it for us to do so, in this age of information overload?

And once we have listened to what God has said through Christ, we must answer the same question that Jesus himself asked of His disciples at Caesarea Philippi. “Who do you say that I am?”

If we answer that question the way that we should, then there becomes a new stage of God’s message. Christ’s life in us becomes the message of God manifested in us, both personally and as the corporate body of Christ.

– Sermon notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, December 1, 2019

God’s grace is the greatest teacher. It is the existence of this grace that drove all of the initial instructions that Paul urged Titus to pass on.

The grace of God brings salvation for all people, but it also instructs us. Any time we learn a skill, we must learn both to unlearn our bad habits or incorrect instincts, and to learn the proper truths and techniques.

And so we are called to renounce our own ungodliness and turn aside from our desires that do not line up with the mind of God. There is a strain of Christianity that skips this part, depending entirely on grace to cover sin and this not worrying about changing behavior. Paul here clearly speaks against that.

On the positive side, the grace of God also teaches virtues – Paul cites three here that would have been understood culturally as virtues. First, sensible-minded self control. Second, an uprightness and righteousness. Third, a godly life pointed towards God.

This training by grace never ends. Some circumstances change, some stay the same, but there is never a point where we outgrow the instructions of grace nor where we enter a setting where they do not apply, either in time of life or the surrounding culture.

Not only does grace instruct, but like any great teacher, it inspires. Paul specifically calls out the Second Coming as the ultimate hope, subsuming all the cares and trials of the culture and world and even our physical existence. Jesus Christ himself is our blessed hope, for both our current moment and for the future.

Then Paul moves from the future to the current moment, and from the personal to the corporate, speaking to the full people of God, set apart together for his glory. It is not an individual process, but rather a team effort to carry out the good works that God calls us to, and calls us to live out zealously.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, November 24, 2019

Paul here addresses slaves. This sort of discussion is fraught today, both because of our country’s shameful history with slavery and because of the 40 million people still enslaved around the world today.

But it was fraught in Paul’s day as well. Jesus made it clear that he was here to bring freedom, and Paul’s other letters make it clear that there is no distinction between slaves and masters. But in the social order of the ancient world, slavery was assumed as a part of life, and if Christians had been openly supporting a slave revolt, the empire would have crushed it. As in previous verses, Paul is instructing about how to live out the truth of Christ and His kingdom without scaring the pagans around them that they were out to destroy civilization. Ultimately, the goal of Christianity was to sow the seeds that would overturn the whole rotten edifice.

So there is a huge difference between what the people Paul was writing to were dealing with and what we deal with in our own, voluntary situations, but there are lessons we can take.

Elsewhere, Paul had other messages for slaves. In Philemon, Paul commends an escaped slave to his master as a brother in Christ – someone who could have been executed under the law. In 1 Corinthians, he encourages them to gain their freedom if possible.

Here, though, he encourages submission – doing what they are instructed, and doing it with a good heart. Elsewhere, he tells slaves to work as if for Christ. He specifically instructs slaves not to steal, suggesting that, not surprisingly, this was a real temptation.

The Old Testament has a couple prominent stories of slaves who refrained from taking advantage of their masters and who worked for their true Master, in the stories of Joseph and Daniel. Both of them were faithful both in their secular and spiritual responsibilities, and both were used to demonstrate the glory of God.

Paul calls the slaves of Crete to do much the same, so that they too can “adorn the doctrine of God.”

What does this all mean for us today? It certainly does not mean we should be passive in the face of injustice. Like Christ, we are here to bring freedom to the captives and liberty to those in bondage.

But we are all slaves to one extent – in Romans, we are reminded that we are all slaves to either sin or Christ. Even if we rebel, ultimately we are submitting to one master or another.

The early Christian preacher John Chrysostom had this to say about this passage:

If they see their slave, who has been taught the philosophy of Christ, displaying more self-command than their own philosophers, and serving with all meekness and good will, he will in every way admire the power of the Gospel. For the Greeks judge not of doctrines by the doctrine itself, but they make the life and conduct the test of the doctrines.

This remains true today, so let our life and conduct prove out the truth of the doctrines we hold to.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, November 17, 2019

What we are changed by is more “caught than taught” – usually what we learn that truly impacts us is not what is purposefully spoken but rather what is picked up almost incidentally from those around us.

Today’s question is, who are you influencing?

Paul in this passage is specifically addressing women, and specifically in the context of the first century household. There is, however, much to learn from this despite the fact that we live in a much more egalitarian and much more dispersed and fragmented society.

The older women, Paul writes, have a special opportunity to minister to the younger women. They are called to be “reverent in their behavior” – this sentence both calls back to the behavior expected of the older men (“sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness“) but also uses this religious term that calls back to the idea of a sacrifice being fit for the altar of God.

Paul specifically warns against the stereotypical behavior that older women were known for in society, both slander and alcohol dependence. These stereotypes continue to bedevil us today, and the temptation to both of them are very real.

They are called to train the younger women – but the term translated “train” comes from the same root word translated as “self-controlled” and “sober-minded” earlier. Older women are to encourage, guide and support younger women in the path towards self-control and clear thinking.

In context, this means helping them become “husband-lovers” (philandros) and “children-lovers” (philoteknos), both of which can be difficult at different times.

Then in verse 5, it goes into the specifics of how this plays out, with self-control, purity, diligence, kindness, and keeping harmony within the home.

That harmony in particular is called out so that the “word of God may not be reviled.” In a world where any disruption anywhere within the system was seen as a threat to civilization itself, special emphasis was put on ensuring that the health of the household and importance that God puts on family was visible from the outside in.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, November 10, 2019

How should a church run in a place like Crete? Paul here gives instruction to Titus about how to help these intergenerational congregations scattered across the island live for Christ. He hits on men and women, both older and younger, and eventually goes into other life situations as well. Regardless of our situation, how does the gospel shape our lives?

For Titus, as a teacher, he has the responsibility to teach healthy doctrine, countering the false teaching that was upsetting households. The fruit of that healthy gospel doctrine is the behavior that Paul goes on to encourage Titus to commend his congregation to.

For men, there are instructions regardless of their age. Older men are to live up to many of the same things as the more formally installed elders. They are to be sober-minded – and quite literally temperate in matters of alcohol. They are to be dignified – not a stuffed shirt with no sense of humor, but someone who behaves in a way that encourages others to treat them with honor. And they are to be self-controlled. All this, as implied in the later verses about women, is in part to set proper examples for the younger men of the Church.

The young men, then, are to be self controlled. This word references the same term applied to both older men and younger women, and has the implications of both guarding & safekeeping, and of wisdom.

And circling back to Titus, as one of those young men, he is to show integrity and dignity, living to both show the gospel to outsiders and to defend the overall honor of the church.

This understanding of honor and shame is important in understanding the context of the New Testament. The culture in that time and place was very focused on honor and shame, and there were times when Christians were called to gain honor in the culture – but also times when victory was won in shame, following the model of the cross. This is one of the reasons the gospel itself was (and is!) so scandalous.

So, the older men are to be examples to the younger, and everyone is to be an example for the world around. No one is irrelevant in God’s kingdom, and everyone has a role in the community of faith, ultimately to bring glory to God.

Next week, we’ll continue to dig into these instructions, looking into the instructions directed at women.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, November 3, 2019

Churches all need leadership. Paul has been setting out the requirements for that leadership to enable Titus to make good decisions. In the lay section, he walked through the “opium ground” of the household vs the negative qualities to be avoided. In these passages, Paul walks through the positive qualities.

Each of those qualities are those that start from the inside and work their way out.

First, they are to be hospitable. This specifically means loving strangers, “philoxenos.” This was vital to the early church, because traveling pastors and missionaries were often moving from town to town and needed a place to stay. Likewise, an elder’s home needed to be open for hosting services and other needs within the church.

Second, they must love what is good. This is a companion to the term hospitable, “philagathos” – balancing a love of those we do not know with a love of what we know is good.

Then there are a series of characteristics that boil down to “balance.” First, self control. Do they remain sane in the face of adversity, or do they lose control of their own mind and emotions when faced with adversity?

Next, they are to be upright – both in their own behavior and the judgements they offer. This refers to the horizontal relationships between brothers. They are to be holy in their vertical relationship with God. And they must be, again, disciplined and self-controlled – the internal relationship must be right as well.

They are not only to believe the word of God, but cling to it tightly, in order that he can both teach and correct.

Note that none of these descriptions have anything up do with the elder’s position in society, class or wealth or background or ethnicity.

The reason for these high – though not unattainable – qualifications is that the congregation needs to have trust in its leaders. Constant second-guessing of a church’s leadership is self-defeating and unhealthy. Where there is frustration and friction, leaders must be open to conversation and even correction as they seek that right horizontal relationship with their fellow believers.

On the side of the laypeople, we must keep the balance between submission to authority and discernment.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, October 20, 2019

Church leadership is different than any other kind of leadership. Paul here describes some important aspects of those differences.

The specific situation here was on the island of Crete, the ancient seat of the Minoan civilization, the original home of the sea people who became the Philistines. There were probably 25-50 villages where Titus would be seeking to appoint elders.

Three words are used to describe the leaders in this passage. “Elders”, or presbuteros, originally just meaning “old person,” was the term used to describe the members of the Jewish Sanhedrin. Then “overseers”, or episkopos, any curator, guardian, or superintendent. And finally, “steward” or oikonomos, a reminder that the leaders are taking care of the church for God, and it is not their own.

The leadership of any of these people begins at home. Home is a key proving ground (Though not necessarily required – single people like Paul himself are clearly not disqualified). Are they faithful to their spouse? Are their children faithful (a better translation than “believers”)? Are they the same person at home that they are at church?

But not only within the home, but also without. They must be morally upright in a way that means any accusations will find no purchase. Paul cites “above reproach” twice, once in relationship to family life and once in regards to arrogance, temper, etc.

That list of negative qualities includes many that are typical of earthly leaders. Powerful people are often arrogant, frequently have bad tempers, often greedy for gain (which is often how and why they became leaders in the first place). Alcohol is also a clear temptation, both in those days and ours, to those in power. Violence in a direct way is less common these days (usually!) but consider the indirect methods of violence available to us.

These qualities are certainly necessary for pastors within the church. But any leaders in the church – and, in fact, all believers – are called to the same standard. We are all overseers of something, whether or children, our work responsibilities, or anything along those lines.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, October 13, 2019