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Ask, Seek, Knock in Pursuit of Christ – Matthew 7:7-12

This passage – along with many others like it across the gospels – is a challenge for many of us who have asked, sought, knocked and have not been given what we want. Think of how many things you have prayed for that have not gone the way you hoped or expected. But God does not always answer our prayers the way we expect.

Many of us have been taught false things about prayer. “If you don’t ask, you won’t receive.” “If you use specific words and language, you will receive.” “If you pray hard enough and REALLY believe God will answer your prayer as you desire.”

If you don’t ask, you won’t receive. But what about those who don’t ask and still receive? What about the birds of the air and the flowers of the field? Jesus tells us not to worry, and to trust, which certainly cuts against this false teaching.

“If you use specific words and language, you will receive.” God is not an ATM, and prayer is not a formula. God is a Person, who seeks relationship with us.

“If you pray hard enough and REALLY believe God will answer your prayer as you desire.” God does not want us to grovel. God is inherently good and desires to give things to His children. You don’t HAVE to ask. but God would like us to because that means we’re communicating with Him. God is not an ATM of riches.

Jesus addresses this question towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount, in the context of his teaching on prayer, his teaching on worry, and his teaching on the love of God.

We should ask God questions – the answers may not all come in this life, but we can trust that He will ultimately answer. We should seek Him and His gifts. We can trust that He will give us good gifts, even when we do not understand them when we receive them, even when they are not the gifts that we wanted.

God plants seeds even in the midst of sorrow and challenge. Even if we don’t fully understand how or why He does some things, answers some prayers but does not answer others, we can trust that His gifts are good. We can trust that He wants to hear from us, wants us to ask, seek and knock, because He loves us and gives good gifts to his children.

— Sermon Notes, Amanda Moffat, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, July 6, 2025

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Judge Not – 7:1-5

We are all prone to play the comparison game – in our personal lives, in our professional lives, even in our churches. It’s particularly easy for churches like ours where we really are reacting, even recoiling from the way other churches have behaved and treated people. It’s very easy to judge ourselves as righteous and others as unrighteous, despite what Jesus says here.

It’s challenging, because how do we strive for righteousness if we cannot assess what is righteous and what is not, and compare ourselves to that standard? In fact, Jesus specifically goes on to tell us to assess trees by their fruit, to watch out for false teachers, to not throw our pearls before swine. How do we do those things without judging? If our righteousness is supposed to exceed that of the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, how do we do that without judging?

The Greek word here is krinō, and it can mean simple discernment, but it can also mean condemnation. It is more the latter Jesus is speaking to – when we do make assessments as we must, we should not pair that with condemnation and an overall determination of the worth of the individual in question.

Jesus wants to open our hearts up to each other and to God, to enable us to live to the full. So when he says “by the standard you judge, you will also be judged,” this is a relational issue, not just a set of rules. If we are judgemental and hard hearted, that stance and behavior impacts all our interactions with others. When we are thinking like Ebenezer Scrooge in our hearts, others can sense that and will respond in kind.

The Symptoms of an Ebenezer Scrooge Aura:

  1. Consistently think the worst of people.
  2. Only address people’s mistakes and faults.
  3. We identify a person by their worst moments
  4. We assume the hidden motives of other people
  5. We are harsh with people around the things we ourselves struggle with.
  6. When we play “us” vs “them”

If we have received generous grace, should we not be generous in doling out grace ourselves? This includes having charitable assumptions about the behavior of others, rather than assuming the worst about why other people do the things we do.

One thing about this that is particularly challenging is finding ways to be discerning in how we spend our time and who we engage with and let influence us on one hand, without falling into “us vs them” games and judgemental condemnation of people for differing beliefs and values.

None of this is easy. Condemnation is easier than discernment, just like destruction is easier than creation. It requires letting the Holy Spirit work within us to break down our own internal strongholds, to build up internal edifice of compassionate discernment.

It is easy for us as Christians to weaponize our understanding of right and wrong, but Jesus here calls us to a more nuanced response. We cannot be blind to sin or hurt, but must respond to it with grace, patience and creativity.

May Jesus equip us in this challenging task and may we be a force for His love in all of our interactions.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, June 22, 2025

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The Lord’s Prayer – Matthew 6:5-15

Our engagement with scripture is highly dependent on our own context as well as the context of the scriptures themselves.

Jesus starts his discussion of prayer by addressing some of that context. He is not speaking into a blank slate, but rather into a context where assumptions have already been made and wrong understandings are already in place. First, he attacks public piety, prayer done in public to increase our own reputation and prestige. Today, we aren’t likely standing outside the church praying loudly, but we certainly do the equivalent on social media, bolstering our own “personal brand”. When we do that, Jesus says we’ve already gotten our own rewards. But we can trust God to hear us and take care of us.

The second lie Jesus takes on is the idea that we need to pray in a particular way to get through to God. The Hellenistic influence is clear here, as the pagan practice of long rambling prayers to distracted, fickle deities was apparently being copied by the Jewish community. But God is not distant, He is near and already knows what we need before we open our mouths.

Then Jesus walks us through step by step how to pray. He starts off simply – we pray to our Father in heaven. Not Caesar or Zeus, not the gods of the stock market or political power. Now, you may argue that we don’t do that – but what if every tab refresh is its own little prayer? Who are we really seeking?

Next, “hallowed be your name.” This is a weird thing to say in English – we never say things like this except in this prayer. The closest we come is Halloween or the “Deathly Hallows” – maybe it would be better known as “let your name be known as holy.”

Next, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Put another way, “God please show up!” We want to see God work His will in our lives, in our struggles, in our relationships.

From there “give us today our daily bread.” It’s a simple prayer, asking for just enough, calling back to the days in Exodus when God sent manna daily, but only for the day. It’s entirely counter-cultural and was in Jesus’ time as well. Why ask for so little from a God who is so rich? But by asking for only what we need, perhaps God works in us to give us more than we know.

Next, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” This is a prayer about obligations and relationships. Relationships themselves are a network of obligations between people – and God’s covenants with his people are mutual obligations. We fail to meet these obligations all the time, and others fail to meet theirs to us. This prayer extends the grace of God to both ourselves and to others.

Finally, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” We will be tempted to deviate from the Jesus Way, from the instructions Jesus has been giving during the Sermon on the Mount. And we will be assailed by the real spiritual forces of evil that seek to keep us from relationship with God.

And then instead of what we expect, the doxological “for yours is the kingdom, etc” Jesus ends in a way that is perhaps unexpected. He goes back to these questions of obligations and the inevitable hurt that comes with living in relationships the way Jesus is calling. If we forgive those hurts, then we too will be forgiven. If we refuse to forgive, though, we will find our own forgiveness hard to come by.

It comes back to relationships – with God and others. Prayer is not a mechanism for building our reputation or fire seeking material gain, but for entering into relationship with God and seeking to tools to engage in Holy relationships with others.

— Sermon Notes, Tim Hsieh, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, June 1, 2025

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Creative Resistance – Matthew 5:38-48

Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is set against the backdrops of hostile authority. On the one hand, the Jewish religious leaders are oppressive & hypocritical, coming in for direct attacks and opposition from Jesus, while on the other hand the entire nation is occupied by the Empire of Rome, extracting exorbitant taxes and brutally crushing and sign of dissention.

This is why the Jewish people, even Jesus’ disciples, were looking for a messiah who would take on these oppressors and lead the people of God in revolution. But Jesus here makes it very clear that He is doing things very differently.

In the NFL, it’s well known that the penalty flag tends to go to the retaliator rather than the instigator. The same is often true in life – but Jesus’ call here goes beyond that. Jesus is calling us to avoid being defined by our enemies. Our actions should spring from love of God and love of others rather than in kind, giving hatred for hatred and violence for violence.

Jesus is calling us to creative resistance – he reimagines the traditional “eye-for-an-eye” responses to evil as nonviolent, subversive resistance that follows the Kingdom Way.

The eye-for-an-eye concept is found in the Torah, but also in law codes across the ancient world, including the Code of Hammurabi. The original intent of the concept was to enforce proportional enforcement of the laws, putting a ceiling on punishment to prevent an accelerating cycle of violence. It’s a very transactional, systemic method of ensuring proportional retribution. Jesus, though, is calling us to something even greater.

When Jesus describes the strike on the cheek, he’s describing a specific circumstance, where someone in power, very likely a Roman soldier who had the right to strike a Jewish person, or a master with the right to strike a slave, would backhand someone and be immune to legal ramifications. Corey Farr writes:

Then, one day, like so many other days, your master backhands you. He expects you to cower and whimper and slink off back to your duties. Maybe he expects you to get on your knees and beg forgiveness. But instead, you look him in the eyes and turn your head to put your left cheek forward. You’ve already insulted him by failing to break down, so he has the right (in his mind) to slap you again.

But he can’t slap you with his left hand, because that is unclean for both of you. And he can’t backhand, because your right cheek is away from him. To strike again, his only option is to slap you with the palm of his hand. And this was not the way to slap a slave. This was reserved for equals. If he chooses to slap you again, he is forced to upgrade your status. He has to bump you up to a higher class citizen in order to get his revenge.

This “victory” may seem small, but it isn’t. You have asserted your humanity and reminded the master you are not an object to be owned and controlled.

Likewise, the “go an extra mile” and “give up your cloak” are subversive responses that undermine the power structure at play, that appeals to the humanity of your enemy, providing a path for them to turn from their own wickedness, the truest form of love.

Jesus ultimately turned the Empire upside down, but He did it through these regular ongoing acts of love. We must follow Christ and His Church as we fight oppression ourselves, singing songs of hope in the darkness, loving out those songs in our daily lives.

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, May 18, 2025

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On a Mission to Bless – John 17:13-26

No matter what is happening, in your life, in the country, don’t go to the left or the right – but go vertical. God promises that all things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to his purpose.

This passage is the longest prayer of Jesus recorded. It’s a glimpse into His heart, and we can see ourselves within this. Jesus explicitly prayed for us, those who would come after. He knew what we would go through and asked that we would receive the fullness of joy.

We are called, also, to be on a mission. That joy and that mission are deeply connected. We are called to stop living for ourselves and start living for other selves. What was the last time you were made uncomfortable by what God has called you to do. God has not called us to be comfortable, but joyful. Pressing beyond our fears, when wrapped up in the passions God has given you, that brings joy.

Jesus saved us for a mission – He saved us from something for something. We’ll make plenty of mistakes, but God has grace and will even make use of them.

God called Abraham away from everyone and everything he knew, in order to bless him and make him a blessing to the world. Just like this, God blesses us in order to bless others – even when it is challenging or uncomfortable. We should be making room for others in our lives rather than expecting them to adapt or make room for us.

Jesus emptied Himself so that He could be glorified in the way that had been prepared for Him. Likewise we have a mission and a path prepared for us. Jesus has already prayed for us that the glory will rest on us. We don’t need to be afraid of the world – the world should be afraid of us. We can stand in love, loving others into the kingdom of God. Love covers everything.

God is already at work in the world around us, even in the chaos. In fact, the world itself was created out of chaos. We should guard our hearts and not let that chaos scare us off of our mission. We have been given authority as heirs with Christ, and we can walk through that chaos with confidence.

When on a mission, we everything begins with prayer. Prayer is the key that unlocks the door to the work of God. When was the last time you prayed for your coworkers, your neighbors or others beyond yourself?

When you’re on a mission to bless, you need to adapt. God sets divine appointments for us to touch the world. Be sensitive to those around you – talk less, listen more. Listen with care. Get over yourself.

We are blessed so we can bless. We are even hurt so we can bless, because our healing can bring healing to others.

As we consider the facets of mission together, individually and collectively let us discern what we have been called to do. In whatever form, we’ve been called to bring the hope of the gospel.

It starts with yourself – forgiving yourself, then forgiving others, living in love for those around us, on a mission to bless.

— Sermon Notes, Ieisha Hawley, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, May 4, 2025

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Questions at the Tomb – John 20:1-29

Things have been changing in ways that are hard. For many of us it is harder and harder to be optimistic about the future.

This is what Mary Magdalene was facing at the beginning of this chapter. Jesus has died, life as she knew it is over. She comes to anoint the body, having been delayed by the Sabbath already. Then she finds the empty tomb but does not immediately realize why. She tells the disciples who (after footrace) confirm that the body is gone, but they don’t understand either. And so Mary is standing outside the empty tomb, confused and sad.

Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’ disciples. Luke 8 puts her on an equivalent footing with the Twelve male disciples, with the caveat that she and other women supported the ministry of Jesus materially. Jesus cast seven demons out of her, healing her in a way that gained her undying loyalty, bringing her to this moment of grief and confusion.

Lingering at the tomb, Mary is asked three questions. The other disciples have gone away but she stays there with her own questions, sitting in her grief and weeping. First, the angel asks “Why are you crying?” Then Jesus asks again “Really, why are you crying?”

As ever, Jesus pushes deeper – what is the state of your heart? Mary is desperate – she asks him, thinking he is the gardener, where they took the body? She is about to go sling it over her back and carry him back to his rightful resting place.

Jesus also asks her “Who is it you’re looking for?” Where are you seeking your solace, where are you seeking your meaning? In the Old Testament, the people were looking for a king, seeking the strength and power they saw leading the peoples around them – something that feels all to familiar in this current era. But Jesus comes to tell us that this material, temporal power is unimportant. What we should be looking for is exactly what – and who – May is seeking. And like her, He stands right in front of us.

He cuts through the grief and confusion with a single word, the name he called out of oppression, the name he loves. In that instant she sees Him for Who He is and cries out in Aramaic, her heart language, “Rabboni!”

Jesus, especially in these last chapters, is deeply compassionate and vulnerable. As we look around the church today, that compassion is seen as weakness, that vulnerability is seen as a flaw.

But Jesus came to turn our understanding of these things upside down. Wealth impoverishes, the last are first, the poor in spirit will inherit the kingdom of heaven, we must die in order to live.

This is the world Mary thought was lost, but that Jesus resurrected with a word, with the love and compassion bound up in just the simple statement of her name.

Many of us may feel similar grief and confusion. We may have lost hope, lingering outside an empty tomb that seems like it still stinks of death. But standing before us is Jesus, asking “Why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, April 20, 2025

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Spam and the Finest Wine – John 12:1-8

The gospel of John is in part built around seven signs of Jesus’ divine identity, starting with water into wine and culminating with the resurrection of Lazarus. Each of these signs is followed by a reaction from the religious leaders.

  • Turning water into wine (John 2:1-11)
  • Healing a royal official’s son (John 4:46-54)7
  • Healing at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-15)
  • Feeding the 5,000 (John 6:1-15)
  • Walking on water (John 6:16-21)
  • Healing a man born blind (John 9:1-12)
  • Raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1-45)

The final sign is the story of Lazarus – Jesus goes to Bethany despite the threats to his life by the Pharisees, doubts from his followers and the stench of death, raises Lazarus from the dead.

In this story we have a counterpoint to that stench of death, with the fragrant nard that Mary anoints his feet with.

A variation of this story is told in each gospel, but the details of each are very different – different places, different people’s houses, different parts of Jesus anointed and different objections and objectors.

Zeroing in on this story, though, we have Mary, anointing Jesus’ feet in gratitude for raising her brother from the dead, while also, unknowingly, preparing Jesus for his own burial. It also calls ahead to Jesus washing the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, a story only in John. It may even be that Jesus was inspired by Mary in this action.

All of this demonstrates the humility Jesus modeled and calls us to – “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”

Mary’s act, in some ways a contrast, is extraordinarily lavish – the perfume she uses, we are told, is worth a year’s wages. It gives us an insight into the economics of the region and era, and also confirms that Judas’ objection is reasonable, as far as it goes.

Judas is tapping into a biblical truth about care for the poor. Think of all the meals and shelter that could be provided by a year’s wages. But of course, we know from the passage that Judas was really just a grifter – in reality, he just wanted access to the money for himself.

It is easy for us to use scripture to seek things that benefit ourselves – ironically, this very passage is used in exactly this way, with people pretending to biblical values but only for their own ends. “The poor you will always have with you” is not a license to ignore the hundreds of scriptures calling us to care for the poor. It is specifically in contrast to the unique opportunity Mary has to lavishly serve her messiah in the flesh. We know from Matthew 25 how we are to do the same thing today – “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

The lavishness of Mary’s action also echoes the lavishness of Jesus’ own sacrifice. Mary gave something priceless for Jesus’ dirty feet – Jesus gave his own priceless life for our dirty souls. We are called to do the same for the weak and poor and oppressed all around us. And not the bare minimum, but the best – spam cooked in the finest wine.

This is the core of Jesus’ command – “love each other as I have loved you.” We can be soft hearted and compassionate, we can serve and give regardless of what is happening in the world – because Jesus went before us and built us a firm foundation with his example and his sacrifice.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, April 6, 2025

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Feminized Jesus vs. the Fox – Luke 13:31-35

Jesus has been out teaching and healing when he gets a warning from an unexpected source – some Pharisees warn him that Herod wants to kill him.

But Jesus’ response is to slam Herod as a fox – crafty, sly and evocative of another animal, the serpent, both at the ear of Jesus in the wilderness and Adam and Eve in the Garden. It takes the word of God and twists it, incapable of creating anything on its own. Just like the devil in the wilderness, the Pharisees here are in fact seeking to take Jesus off his mission.

Jesus responds here with the same level of vehemence that he did to Satan himself, slamming both Herod and his center of earthly part harshly as murderers.

And yet he immediately follows this glimpse of his wrath with a deep and evocative picture of his mercy and empathy, painted in a way that is overtly feminized and maternal.

This is a harsh rebuke to the spirit of the age, which seeks a masculine Jesus and calls empathy a sin. Today both Christian and secular leaders speak of empathy as weakness and idolize the strength of the Herods of our current day. The church is called to reject the foxes of today with the same vehemence that Jesus did, but to love others with the same love.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, March 16, 2025

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A People of Yes and No – Matthew 5:33-37

In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is walking through a set of case studies on the thesis that he is the fulfillment of the Law. This section addresses oaths. In this case, he does not directly quote a specific passage though there are many that say relevant, similar things:

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. (Exod. 20:7)

Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. (Lev. 19:12)

When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said. (Num. 30:2)

If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not be slow to pay it. (Deut. 23:21)

What had happened in the previous years is that the inclination to avoid dishonoring God’s name had led to a game of finding loopholes, swearing by different things – heaven, earth, heads, gold – in order to give people an “out” if they end up breaking the oath. But Jesus says, no, that’s not how this works – it’s all connected to God, it’s all a statement of either truth or falsehood.

Jesus is calling us to be a people worthy of trust. It’s a sad fact that the people who protest the most about their honesty and integrity tend to be the ones who are least trustworthy.

We have also all seen how trust has eroded across our culture. Media, political leaders, religious leaders have all made assertions and promises that have ultimately been lies.

Jesus wants us to be something greater, a community held together by covenant loyalty. We are called to be a renewing agent among each other and in the world. We are not here to carefully navigate a set of arbitrary rules in order to make life easier for ourselves. It’s ultimately about our heart, not about checking the right boxes that let us behave like we wanted to in the first place.

Instead, Jesus just wants us to say yes or no and then follow through. There are no words so meaningless that we can be dishonest without care. There is not a special category of statements that really have to be true, and so all the rest can be lies or ignored.

Jesus wants us to be a people of integrity and truth, a people of Yes and No. Our words reflect on ourselves, our fellow believers, and ultimately Christ Himself. Let us live and speak in a way that reflects the truth and Faithfulness that He embodies.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood, WA, March 2, 2025

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Little Tiny Murder Pins – Matthew 5:21-26

One of the key concepts we need to understand is that God, above all, wants a relationship with us. We follow God and His precepts not so we will have all the answers to having a good life, not to rack up heaven points, not so we can earn anything, but so that we can have an intimate, real time relationship with the God of the universe.

That is much of the point in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Previously, we discussed how Jesus explained how He sought to fulfill the Law, not abolish it. In fact, we must be holier than the holy people: “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus is emphasizing a deeper kind of righteousness than what the Scribes and Pharisees focused on – a righteousness at the heart level, not merely checking boxes or avoiding specific, circumscribed actions. As the prophet Ezekiel wrote: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.”

Elsewhere, Jesus addresses this concept again with the rich young ruler. He was insecure and was seeking the next material task he could complete in order to seal the deal with God. That man followed all the earthly rules as well as anyone could but Jesus pushes him towards dependence and towards relationship with him.

Back to the Sermon, this is the beginning of a pattern of antitheses – “you have heard it said… but I tell you…” He addresses Anger, Adultery, Divorce, Oaths, Retaliation and Loving Enemies. We’ll start with anger this week.

He starts with the basics. Murder, Jesus notes, is wrong. So far, so good. But anger, expressed as evil words and actions, is of a kind with murder. Our frustration and fury may not lead us to kill, but it’s the same reaction, just spread out across many in our lives. Not a single event, but little tiny murder pins spread all across our lives.

Our anger, if not addressed, festers inside and acts as a barrier to relationships with others and with God. Unattended anger can effectively “kill” relationships.

Jesus is not only concerned with external acts but with our hearts – but He also gives us practical ways to head off these heart issues in our daily life. When we have conflict, we should prioritize addressing that conflict over any other form of worship. Our vertical relationship with God is intimately connected to our horizontal relationships with others, and if we have hardened ourselves to the one we cannot but be hardened to the other.

Second, Jesus instructs us to keep short accounts – to remove the barriers between us and others, to seek reconciliation when we are in conflict, rather than pressing our rights. He does this in the context of courts, debts and lawsuits but the principles are applicable across contexts and relationships.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law, and the ultimate goal of the Law is to facilitate relationships with God and others. But that standard remains unattainable – which means we need to refer back to the Beatitudes, and Jesus’ words: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

But what about righteous anger? Does Jesus mean we shouldn’t come to church and worship when we are angry at injustice? Isn’t Jesus just talking about individual relationships? What about Jesus’ cleansing of the temple?

But ultimately, Jesus is talking broadly about matters of the heart. We can experience inappropriate anger in interpersonal relationships, but we can also experience that same anger even on behalf of good things, even when angry on behalf of the vulnerable. We cannot let ourselves behave sinfully even under the color of good things. We must again refer back to the Beatitudes to understand how to be compassionate even as we struggle for commission and righteousness in our society. How do we channel our righteous anger into righteous compassion rather than unrighteous resentment?

There are not simple answers for this, but if we seek that real time relationship with God and continue to refer back to the Beatitudes, we’ll at least be on the right track.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, February 16, 2025