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Leading & Following – Numbers 11:1-15

This passage raises two important questions: what does it mean to be a good leader? And what does it mean to be a good follower? All of us play both roles in different parts of our lives, and this passage gives us a look at both sides of the equation.

At this point in the story of the Exodus, the Israelites are in the desert, the wilderness of Paran in what is now Saudi Arabia, dependent on manna for food.

They have come out of slavery, but have forgotten the bad parts of that life and now only remember the food. They have received miraculous sustenance but now it has become mundane and they are tired of it. They complain to Moses and Moses in turn complains to God. He is in over his head and wants to give up entirely.

The Bible is an honest book. It does not present “10 Easy Rules for Being a Leader” or even a follower. Instead, we get this story of a bunch of sinful people flailing around in the desert. But even then, there are important lessons we can take.

All of us are leaders in one form or another, whether in our family, work, community or other circumstance. All of it comes with similar challenges that can make our leadership ineffective.

First, the temptation of power is always present, and even the smallest amount of power can be abused.

Second, the responsibility of leadership can feel overwhelming, and it is easy to feel inadequate just like Moses did.

Third, sin can disrupt your leadership. We have seen this all too often in the Christian ministry world. All leaders sin, but there are sins that can entirely undermine your leadership, if they strike at the very foundation of what made you a leader in the first place.

There are also things that can make bring a follower difficult. If we have a lack of trust in our leaders, if we are in the midst of a transition, these and more can make life as a follower difficult.

Fortunately, we have the perfect leader as our example in Christ. First, we are to be servant leaders, willing to do the lowliest task. We are to maintain the highest moral and ethical standards.

We can also learn from Christ how to be a follower. First, we must not follow blindly, but be discerning in who we follow and how we follow. The scriptures are an authority over any Christian leader. Second, we must keep perspective and not lose context the way the Israelites did. And third, we must pray for our leaders, whether in the church, in the workplace, in the government or wherever we find them.

One thing to be careful about as either a leader or a follower is seeing our goal, our Promised Land, as the necessary step before we can really be with God. “Once we get to this point, then we can finally know God.” But in reality, God is with us all throughout the journey.

– Sermon Notes, Dave Lester, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, June 9, 2019

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Suffering Smyrna – Revelation 2:8-11

The letter to the church in Smyrna forces us to wrestle with something we may not want to wrestle with: the fact that following Jesus may itself bring suffering. We prefer the verses about Christ being our peace or his burden being light. That’s true, but so is suffering. Especially today, the problem of human suffering is something that often drives people – especially Western people who are themselves not intimate with suffering – away from the church. See Bart Ehrlman for one example.

Smyrna, today called Izmir, was a large port city about 50 miles north of Ephesus, very loyal to Rome. There was a patriotic ritual of loyalty to Rome involving putting incense into fire and declaring “Caesar is Lord”. This presented a challenge to the Christians at Smyrna, and this letter makes it clear that there would be suffering that would ensue.

Christ here introduces himself as “the first and the last,” a title given to God originally in Isaiah. He adds “who died and came to life” – both titles are there to give confidence to the church. Christ is greater than Caesar and greater than death.

Next comes the evaluation. Smyrna gets no criticism. Instead, he acknowledges their tribulation and their poverty. They may have been poor because the converts there originally came from the poorer classes, or as a result of persecution. Either way, the “health and wealth” gospel was not working for them. But to Jesus, their poverty was in fact wealth. Even in their material poverty, in the midst of the material wealth of Smyrna, it was the church that had the eternal advantage.

Next we hear about the “synagogue of Satan” – which can sound antisemitic to our ears. But recall that everyone involved in this conversation is, in fact, Jewish. It seems that there was a wealthy Jewish community that was making life difficult for the Christians in Smyrna, and here Christ is saying that their group is not, in fact, pointed to the living God, but rather Satan the accuser. This is the same way Christ rebuked Peter treats before – anyone who opposes the work of God is, in effect, on the side of Satan.

Next, Jesus gives counsel. He does not tell them that he will rescue them, but he does tell them not to fear what they are about to suffer. Specifically, they are about to suffer, with many of them thrown into prison. Prison was not the penalty, but rather the holding tank until the penalty, whether death or slavery. They are called to be faithful unto death. Smryna itself means “myrrh” – the incense that releases its aroma only when crushed.

This calls to mind Paul’s prayer that Christ remove the thorn in his flesh. Christ answered no: “my grace is sufficient for you.” We love grace, but do we love it when that is all there is?

The letter closes with a promise that they will, ultimately, be rescued from the final suffering.

We aren’t undergoing the same persecution as the Smyrnans, but remember that they were not persecuted because of what they believed, but because of how they lived it out. What would you do if your faith and duty to Christ brought you into conflict with your duty as a patriotic American?

What does it mean to be faithful unto death? First, to be confident in Christ’s sovereignty. You may not have all the answers, but if you have confidence that Christ was what he said he was and did what we are told he did, that is a firm foundation, even in the midst of the suffering that we are promised will come.

Second, being faithful to Christ means being convinced of Christ’s care. Even when it feels like He is silent, or even at against us. Eventually, Jesus will be all any of us have, as we walk through the dark river of death. Seek to make Christ alone enough, because at some point that will be ask we have.

Finally, we should be contented with Christ’s promises. Those promises are relatively simple: life everlasting and immunity from the second death.

One of John’s disciples was Polycarp, who eventually became the bishop of Smyrna. The persecution of the church in Smyrna continued, and Polycarp was eventually captured and given the opportunity to recant. Polycarp replied:

86 years have I have served him, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King and my Savior?

He was then martyred. He would have been a young man when this letter was originally read, and it is likely that these words of Christ in his ears. He knew early on that the plan of Christ includes suffering. We have the same message – are we prepared?

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, June 2, 2019

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Losing Love – Revelation 2:1-7

Jesus sees beyond the superficial and sees the “congenital heart defects” of both people and churches. Here, he specifically looks at the church at Ephesus.

Ephesus was a large city, a quarter million people strong, and a popular site for religious tourism because of the Temple of Diana or Artemis, one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. It was a site of refuge for criminals, vs and once been a port city before the harbor silted in.

The church had a large number of high profile leaders. Paul was there for three years, the longest anywhere, along with Timothy, Aquila, Priscilla, Apollos, Tychicus, John – a “Who’s Who” of the early church. The books of 1 and 2 Timothy were written to Timothy while he was pastoring there.

Ephesus also features prominently in the book of Acts. The teaching of Paul began impacting the sale of silver idols, and so a silversmith named Demetrius stirred up the people to riot against the Apostles. All this to say, it was a prominent, important city and church.

The letter to the Ephesians here has the same format as those that follow. It starts with an introduction, describing Jesus in the context of the vision that John has just had. In this case, Jesus uses the vision of stars and lampstands to explicitly remind the church at Ephesus that, no matter how large, prominent and important it was, that they were a part of something even greater and broader.

Next comes evaluation. It starts with praise for the hard work and perseverance, as well as their discernment. Years before, as described in Acts 20, Paul explicitly warned the elders of the church to care for their flock and to protect them from the false teachers that would emerge, even from within their own body. The seem to have taken the warning seriously based on this praise. They have endured patiently and not grown weary. When considering that this church was essentially founded in the midst of a riot, this endurance is no small thing.

But Jesus goes on. They had abandoned, released, let go, even divorced themselves from the “love they had at first.” Mark Galli, editor of Christianity Today recently described how this sort of thing emerged in his own life:

It may have been as the result of hearing a sermon, or perhaps reading a book. But I distinctly remember thinking that my Christian life was sorely lacking in the love of God. I didn’t have any affection for or yearning to know and love God. I wasn’t angry with him. I didn’t doubt his existence. I wasn’t wrestling with the problem of evil. I was being a faithful Christian as best I knew how. But it occurred to me that I didn’t feel any love for God…

I was living as a practical atheist, meaning my personal relationship with God did not really affect much inside me. I was at the time managing editor of Christianity Today, so naturally I edited and wrote a lot of things that were Christian to the core. But I realized that if I never prayed again, that I could still be a very good editor at a Christian publication, and a very good church member at my local parish. I knew how to get along with others, to manage staff, to work with my superiors, to work with fellow church members, and to write on Christian spirituality. But prayer wasn’t necessary to do all that. These other matters were all learned skills that had more or less become good habits. My personal relationship with God really didn’t make any difference.

This lack of love itself may have been a result of their dogged opposition to heresy. Did they perhaps get so good at hating what was evil that they forgot to love?

Next, Christ offers counsel – repent, turn, change. There is a threat there, too: if they do not change, their lampstand will be removed.

Then an aside – after calling out their lack of love, they get praised for hating properly. The Nicolaitans were a heresy that said that personal behavior and morality were unimportant. To love well, we must know how and what to hate (note that they hate the works, rather than the people themselves). We must hate threats to our children if we are to love and protect them.

Then it closes with the promise that those who conquer, those who reclaim their first love, they will be restored and eat from the tree of life, a restoration of the cosmic story of Eden.

Some lessons we can take from this. First, love discerns. It seeks the best for others but does so thoughtfully and

Love fades. If it is not kept powered from some other source, like entropy in any system, it will decline. We must go back to the source of love.

Finally, love revives. When we do go back to that source, we can find ourselves revived. Going back to Mark Galli, his prayer was “Lord, help me to want to love you.”

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, May 26, 2019

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Road Map to the Seven Letters – Revelation 1:17-20

A reason to love these chapters, the letters to the churches, is that they are about the lordship of Christ over his churches. That is where we have to start if we are talking about church vitality or other issues of that sort.

One of the things Jesus is doing here is setting up a vision and understanding of himself that shows that he is greater than Caesar, greater than the Roman governors of military – and in our time greater than the media, the culture or a political power.

John had this vision while exiled to the island of Patmos. The first thing he sees are these seven stars and lampstands, representing seven churches sequentially. They were all along a 300 mile route, about equivalent to driving from Lynnwood to Yakima and then back across the mountains to Chehalis.

The lampstands are easy – these are the churches, as Jesus said. The stars are more confusing. Jesus calls them “the angels of the churches”, which the early church fathers interpreted as the Bishops or the pastors of the churches. Others take it more literally – it says angels and must mean angels, heavenly beings, like in the rest of the book, and be some kind of guardian angel. Whatever it means, it is a representation of the church as a whole, because that is who the letters are addressed to.

Each church gets a specific introduction to Jesus that references a piece of John’s vision of Him. Each church is told “I know you,” and each church gets a review of sorts.

There is a mix of commendation and criticism for the churches. Two get no commendation and two get no criticism, and there are some surprises in terms of which churches get which. What would a letter to Seed Church look like?

After the introduction and evaluation for each church comes advice. For five of the seven, the word is relatively straightforward: repent. You are doing what you should not, and must change. Each piece of advice is tailored to each church.

Also tailor-made is the next part, the promise made to each church.

While all of this is tailored to these churches, we must pay attention to all of it, because we don’t necessarily know what stage or situation we are in.

One lesson we can take from this is about handling conflict. Sometimes in a church or friendship or other relationship, one person, A, has a problem with another, B. Assuming it is not something small enough to move past, there are options. A could go directly to B. Usually, though, A will go to C, often under the guise of a “prayer concern”. Then C goes to D and F goes to E and F and so on and so forth. This is typical of any small community, and social media of course has exacerbated it.

This is called “triangulation” can lead to what Jim Van Up calls “Death by Triangulation”. We must be careful about how we “pray” for people.

What we are called to, instead, is healthy confrontation. We see this in these letters – Jesus does not drag other churches into the letters, but rather addresses each honestly ABC directly.

These letters are to seven specific churches, at a specific moment in history, but there is an eighth church. Ours. So as we go through these letters, consider what we can take away from it as that eighth church.

One thing we can take away from it is that Jesus cares about each Christian – individually and as a church. Jesus cares about congregations. “If you love me, you will love the church.” Where does John find Jesus? In the midst of the churches. The only direct, written communication we have from Jesus is to churches. Salvation is a group project. “Do not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.”

Second, we can know that Jesus cares about our busyness. He knows and cares about our service. But he also cares about our holiness. No matter how busy these churches were, Jesus looked at their hearts and called them out on their wrong motives or toleration of sin in their midst. If there is an area of your life where you are tolerating sin that you should not, today would be a good day to confess and repent.

Third, these letters tell us that Jesus cares about our trials, and about our triumph. The churches are constantly called to overcome. Jesus does not give up on us.

The same Jesus who walked among those seven lampstands walks among our churches now. Is he encouraged by what he sees?

– Sermon Notes, Revelation 1:17-20, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, May 19, 2019

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You Can’t Overestimate Jesus

Often in our lives we want to “speak to the manager” or whoever is in charge. This passage in Revelation is an opportunity to hear directly from the man (or Son of Man) in charge.

John is writing, as described in this passage, to seven churches in Asia Minor – but he’s it writing to eight churches. The reason each of these “job reviews” are made public is so that that we can learn and apply the lessons in our own church, the eighth church.

John wrote from Patmos, an island off the coast of Asia Minor, and these seven churches are along a major route on the mainland, in order the way they are listed here. John was in some sort of exile here, possibly working in the mines there as a punishment. Tradition holds that he e in a cave when this vision occurred.

He writes that he was “in the spirit on the Lord’s day,” which is a challenge for us. Do we prepare ourselves for worship and fellowship? In Judaism, the sabbath begins on Friday night, so the people are well prepared for the synagogue the next day. Are we prepared, or do we stay up to all hours and only try to get into the right mindset once we arrive on Sunday morning?

John’s exile itself raises another question and challenge. Church today can be very focused on comfort and entertainment. How would we handle it if we were threatened with imprisonment or death for showing up on Sundays?

John introduces himself not as a leader, authority or even Apostle. Instead, he calls himself “brother” and “partner”. This itself is another challenge, to avoid the word “they” in favor of “us” when discussing the church. We need each other and are all in this together. Salvation is a group project – we are saved individually, but called to corporate sanctification.

We move on to this vision of churches as lampstands, with Christ going amongst them. This is a vision we can see and imagine of the churches in our area – Jesus is in the midst of them and that’s the opinion that matters.

The description of Jesus is intense and symbolic, calling back to a similar description in Daniel. It’s difficult to picture (and looks weird when someone tries to illustrate it), but it indicates both the deity and humanity of Christ. He is dressed in a way that calls to mind the High Priest, with eyes of flame indicating his penetrating gaze (which we will see more of in the letters to the churches), legs of bronze indicating stability, hair of white indicating wisdom, and a mouth like a sword – words that cleave, which again we will see more of shortly.

Taken as a whole, we are reminded of the lordship of Christ. In the moment, it would be a reminder that Jesus was greater tag Caesar or any of his soldiers. Today it is a reminder that Jesus is greater and has a greater call on our allegiance than any political party or movement. From the lordship of Christ flow all our other roles and allegiances. We seek to be good citizens, employees, parents because we seek to follow Christ in all these these roles.

The true impact of this lordship comes into clearer focus when we see John’s response. Remember, this is the “disciple Jesus loved” who leaned back on him at meals, but his response is not “hey, friend, how have you been?” Instead, he falls at Jesus’ feet in worship.

Jesus, though, lays his hand upon John and tells him not to be afraid. Then he tells him why he needs not fear: Jesus is the first and last, the one who defeated death and hell and holds the keys to it all. Christ-centered Christians recognize his Lordship and submit to it even in the face of persecution.

The overall summary of this chapter is “you can’t overestimate Jesus.” The rest of the book, while confusing and controversial in the specifics, overall points to Jesus. The broad theme of Revelation is simply “Jesus wins”. The details are up for debate, but not the ultimate outcome.

It is easy to make our faith a “Jesus overlay” we put on top of the important things in life. But Jesus wants to be at the center of our world. He is the first and the last.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, May 12, 2019

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Remember, Ask, Persevere – Psalm 126

This Psalm was part of a series of “songs of ascent” which may have been sung by the priests as they ascended to the temple in procession.

It begins with a memory of what God did for the people of Israel. It probably refers to the return from Babylonian Captivity, but could mean the Exodus or even what has happened in our own lives – or what has happened in the life of our church. It is good to think back on the good things that God has done for us.

But there is a danger that this remembrance does not degrade into nostalgia. In this case, the excitement and exuberance of the people had faded. There was struggle and sin and defeats.

They sought for a return of their fortunes from the Lord, likening it to an out-of-season flood through the dry streambeds and wadis of the Negeb Valley in the south of Israel.

The psalm then shifts again, painting an agricultural picture. Sowing and reaping was a core concept among the people of that age, and the idea that we reap what we sow is a metaphorical sense is a theme that is repeated throughout scripture. We generally get out what we put in.

This reminds us that we cannot just sit around waiting for God’s blessing. We have to go out and do the hard work of sowing and reaping. God can bring miraculous blessings, but God also has processes. The seasons will change, the rains will come and, if it is planted, the harvest will be there.

All this reminds us in our own lives, and the life of this church, of ways that God gives joy. First, we should remember the great works of God that he has done in the past. We do this weekly here through the sacrament of communion, as we remember the greatest thing God has done for us.

Second, we should ask. We should pray for the good things we need and desire. We should pray for ourselves, for church leadership and volunteers and each other. We should pray for God’s blessing to be poured out onto this body.

And finally, we should persevere. This agricultural metaphor brings to mind Christ’s teaching on evangelism. Much of what we share lands on rocky ground or thorny ground, but we are called to persevere. We are called as a church to persevere through the seasons that we are in, whether winter or summer or somewhere in between. You can’t just skip from one to the other – the only way out is through.

What is God calling you to do in reaction to all this, both as a member of this church and as an individual? James 5:7-8 and Galatians 6:7-10 be remind us that we must do the hard work in order to see the glory that God has for us in the future. That glory will be more than what we have, because we always reap more than we sow – otherwise our economy would collapse and we would all starve to death.

Revelation 18:21 reminds us of the ultimate glory ahead of us – God will dwell with man and we will be his people. The goal isn’t that we go off to heaven, but rather that heaven comes to us.

1 Corinthians 15:15, finally, reminds us that when we labor for the Lord, our labor is not in vain.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, April 28, 2019

 
Psalm 126

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Perspectives on the Resurrection

Humanity’s greatest foe was conquered by a carpenter from Nazareth.

In Kendrick Lamar’s song “How Much Does a Dollar Cost” he tells the story is meeting a transient asking him for a dollar while he was getting gas. He dismisses the man as a druggie and a bum, but then it turns out to be Jesus Christ. It is so easy to miss Jesus when he appears in our mundane circumstances, in an unexpected place.

Different people have different perspectives on Easter. Even the gospels have different perspectives.

In Matthew, we hear about Mary Magdelene and Mary the mother of James and John visiting the tomb, but not before an earthquake strikes and the stone rolls away. The women are met by an angel sitting on the stone who tells them not to be afraid (despite the guards lying on the ground like dead men) and that Jesus had risen. He sends them off to tell the disciples, and they run off with a comingling of both “fear and great joy.” They meet Jesus himself on the way and worship him as God. They grab his feet – he is not a spirit or a ghost, but a man bodily resurrected.

In Mark, chapter 16, the perspective is similar, but with an additional woman mentioned, Salome. Like in Matthew, they came to bring spices and oils to anoint the body. This wasn’t about mummifucation, but rather to offset the odor, and as an act of respect and piety. As in Matthew, they are met by an angel who tells them what has happened and what to do. Here, the angel is within the tomb rather than on the rock.

In Luke 24, we get a similar story, but in this case with two angels. It may be that there was one on the stone and one in the tomb itself. They ask “why do you seek the living among the dead?” In this recounting, we also hear that a woman named Joanna who had been healed by Jesus was within the group, and possibly other women as well. Here we get the story of what happens when they tell the disciples – they dismiss the story of the angel and Jesus, and, like Kendrick Lamar, almost miss Jesus.

John is written latest, and gives us more of the story. When Mary Magdelene tells the disciples, Peter and John run to the tomb (and John makes it clear that he got there first). They see the empty tomb and the folded linens (!) and believed.

What do we do about these differences? Consider a football game, and different people sitting in different places around the field. They will each tell slightly different stories about the game, and those stories will also be different based on who they are told to. The big picture – the big picture, the teams and the score will be the same, but the perspectives will be very different.

We all have different perspectives on the Resurrection, and those can shift. Does our perspective put us at risk of missing Jesus, like the disciples nearly did?

Christianity is not just fire insurance. We become representatives of Christ and his kingdom today, in the here and now.

We all have access to the power that raised Jesus from the dead. It doesn’t matter what we have done in the past – all we have to do is believe. Without Christ we are dead in our sins, but his power of forgiveness gives us new life, just as Jesus himself rose from the grave.

As Philip Yancey wrote,

There are two ways to look at human history… One way is to focus on the wars and violence… and tragedy and death. From such a point of view, Easter seems a fairy-tale exception… There is another way to look at the world. If I take Easter as the starting point, the one incontrovertible fact about how God treats those whom he loves, then human history becomes the contradiction and Easter a preview of ultimate reality. Hope then flows like lava beneath the crust of daily life.

– Sermon Notes, Dave Lester, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, April 21, 2019

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The Triumphal Entry

As Jesus made his way back to Jerusalem, he returned to Bethany where the combination of Lazarus and Jesus stirred up the people even more. This disturbed the Pharisees who were already on edge about Jesus’ popularity. This was a key decision point where the Pharisees determined to kill Jesus, which Jesus knew. Nevertheless, he pressed on to Jerusalem for the Passover, even though this would be a clear death sentence. As he came into the city, he goes through a little rigamarole to make sure he had a donkey and its colt to ride on. This was notable, because donkeys are notoriously gentle and skittish, which combines to be stubbornness. That he could ride a donkey through a crowd of shouting people tells us something about him. But why did Jesus pick a donkey colt? There are a couple reasons. One is to indicate what kind of king he was. “Jesus didn’t come in a humvee or a Ferrari – Jesus came in a sensible sedan.” Second, the colt itself is like the transportation version of the spotless lamb that would feature so heavily in the upcoming passover feast. Regardless of the method of locomotion, the people responded to him as king, laying their garments down on the path ahead of him just as they would have when Israel had its own independent king. This terrified the Pharisees, who worried they would lose their place and power, not to mention that the people themselves would suffer and die if an uprising in Jerusalem occurred. The people welcoming Jesus were not without guilt either, as they turned on Jesus when it became clear that he was not the temporal, material, political Savior that they wanted. Peter specifically called them out for this at Pentecost. What can we take away from this? We can learn from the reactions of the Pharisees, the crowd and the disciples. Looking at the Pharisees, do we view everything from the lens of how we can benefit? Is following Jesus too hard or too dangerous? Looking at the crowds, who had the outward appearance of praising Jesus, there was no heart change. When it turned out that Jesus wasn’t who they wanted him to be, they turned on him hard and fast. But we can also look at the disciples, who did not abandon Jesus even when many did because he said weird things about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, nor did they run away when Jesus told them that he was going to Jerusalem to die. They showed an imperfect but still wonderful example of following Jesus. Like the disciples, we keep Jesus’ commandments because we love him. In turn, our love for him enables us to better serve him. If we try to keep Jesus’ commandments without loving him, we will burn out or turn away. But if we seek to love and follow Jesus, we have his help and love in turn as we go along the journey. -Aaron James, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, April 14, 2019 John 12:9-19 Something went wrong with the bible. Please make sure that you are requesting a valid passage! If this problem presits please contact joshuawiecorek@outlook.com
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Glory in the Church

There is a saying: “two men looked out of prison bars; one saw the mud, the other the stars.” The scriptures are very honest about the mud and muck of life, but it also calls us to look beyond that. This passage in Ephesians is a clear call to raise our gaze and look to the hope of God.

The church in Ephesus was a small group surrounded by a wealthy civilization with well-articulated philosophies and religions. And yet this shall group went on to conquer the Roman empire – much as was promised in this passage. 

The book of Ephesians was a circular letter to Asia Minor that may not have even been meant for that church in particular, though it was certainly sent there. In the book he addresses the division between Jew and Gentile, and how that division was bridged by Christ, and how corporately we all together are the Temple of God, with Christ as the cornerstone.

The Ephesians certainly understood the concept of a temple, being the home of one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World, the Temple of Artemis, where Paul got himself into some trouble with some silversmiths.

In contrast, though, the Christian temple is not a breathtaking stone building, but rather a unity of Jew and gentile, man and woman, rich and poor, slave and free, weak and strong.

Because of this, Paul calls on us not to lose heart. We have the very power of God within acs behind us, according to the riches of the glory of the Father, strengthened by the power by the Spirit so that Christ may live in our hearts. The entire Trinity is at work here.

This is the only passage in the Bible that directly describes Jesus living in our hearts, but the concept is driven throughout – in Galatians, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ in me.”

The Greek word for “dwell” here means to stay in the place that is your home – Christ is not a guest at your heart’s hotel, but rather it is to be His home. All the rooms and locked closets are his, all the TVs and computers and all. Christ’s lordship touches all aspects of life, which is all to be rooted and founded in love. 

That love is what brought their church together. It was not the personality of the pastor or the technology or the quality of the band. Rather, we come together as a church because salvation is a group project. We are saved individually, but we only learn to love when we are in relationship with one another. We need each other, and we need each other most acutely where we want it the least.

Many years later, Jesus himself wrote a letter to the Ephesians. Much of it was encouraging, but Christ called them out for having abandoned the love that first brought them together.

The purpose of all of this, per verse 19, is that we are filled with the fullness of God. The question then becomes, how big is your God? Many of us struggle with an image of God that is too small, and many then reject His because He didn’t behave like the small version of God we have in our minds.

Paul’s vision of God here, is able to do far more than we can ask, more than we can think or even imagine – again, according to the power within us. And to Him belongs the glory in the church.

The glory in the church looks like perseverance, especially for us as we work through transition.

What can we take from this prayer? It can guide our own prayers. We should pray for a Christ-centered life for ourselves dvd others. We should pray for a love-filled church, and pray for a God-sized faith. And as Paul has just reminded us, that size is pretty big.

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

Ephesians 2:14-21

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Do Not Grow Weary of Doing Good – Galatians 6:7-10

This passage brings to mind Jonathan Edwards, considered the greatest theological mind America had ever produced. He famously set down 70 resolutions for himself that

Paul’s letter to the Galatians is an emotional defense of justification by faith alone and the work of the Holy Spirit. In this section, his primary concern is that we do not give up. He gives two guarantees to strengthen our resolve. First, that we will reap what sow, and second, we will reap in due season. If we plant wheat, we get barley. If we eat unhealthily, we reap unhealthy results. In parenting, if we sow a lack of discipline, we will reap undisciplined children. In relationships, if we sow kindness and time, we will reap friendship. Paul is applying this principle to our moral behavior overall.

In chapter 5, he outlines more directly what we will reap if we sow to the flesh & self: dissention, rivalries, etc. On the other hand, reaping to the spirit means we reap the fruit of the spirit: love, kindness, patience, etc.

The second promise is that we will reap in due season. This is a promise for those who are sowing to the spirit – promising us that the spirit of God will produce fruit in our lives. This fruit of the spirit then itself produces good works. 

Then Paul goes on to call on us not to grow weary of doing good. But how can we tell if we are growing weary? Six possible signs: first, if you are high in criticism but low in participation. Criticism is not itself bad, but without participation in the life of the Body, it is a sign that you have grown weary of doing good. 

If you are embittered by others’ failures, and letting other people’s behavior make you bitter or turn you away from service in the body, that is another time. It is a given that we are going to hurt each other – this is why the New Testament is full of calls to forgive each other.

If you resent those who serve less than you, that is another sign. If you evaluate church in terms of “Me”, behaving like a consumer seeking the “most for your money” then you certainly have grown weary.

If you neglect giving, whether time or money, that can be another sign.

Last, if you have abandoned your neighbors and the world around you because Jesus and truth are unpopular, then that is definite sign that you are growing weary of doing good.

So what can we do about it? In verse 10, we are given guidance: as we are given opportunities, we are to do good – and it starts here within the church.

There is a real danger that we grow weary but do not honestly grapple with it or get help.

Our righteousness and sanctification all come from our union with Christ and the grace of God, but we are still called to persevere and not to grow weary.

– Sermon Notes, Sean Harrelson, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, February 3, 2019

Galatians 6:7-10

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