Tag: New Testament

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A Dark World – John 17:14-18

Should we ever intentionally enter dark spaces? There are many places in this world that do not glorify God and that are built in fact to do the very opposite. The scriptures regularly warn against friendship with and coming under the influence of evil people, across both the Old and New Testament.

But we need to be careful not to turn these warnings into excuses to ignore the call of the Holy Spirit or the example of Jesus Christ. In this passage, Jesus explicitly tells the Father that He is sending the disciples into the world. He asks that they go deep into the darkness of the world, but remain protected.

We are called into unfamiliar territory and places where we face rejection and even temptation. We need to be careful with that last one in particular because we still need to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit and not put ourselves in places that are setting us up to fail.

At the same time, we are not called to live inside a holy huddle – we are not called to stay in our own homes and interact only with our own families and possibly a few people we know we agree with. We are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation, and we cannot do that from within our own room.

We have the message that those around us can be given forgiveness and favor. What do we do with that privilege? Jesus models intimate conversations and soft words that span ideological and political perspectives.

Where is the Spirit leading you? Take some time to be in two-way conversation with God and see where He leads you. You may experience rejection and temptation so put on your armor of God. The darkest rooms are the ones most in need of light.

Let us pray for one another as Christ did, and encourage each other as we bring the message of Christ’s forgiveness and favor into a dark world.

— Sermon Notes, Alison Robison, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, January 29, 2023

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Nontraditional Family – Matthew 1:18-25

Today we look at the story of Joseph, and his response to God’s plan. Those of us who have had children that have gotten older often miss the times when our children would jump into our arms, triggering our parental instincts and desires to protect and provide. We promise to keep our children safe, but ultimately we know that we don’t have full control, we can’t be with them every second. For that matter, we ourselves are sinful people, and at times we ourselves will hurt the ones we love.

Consider these feelings and instincts in the person of Joseph, within his patriarchal cultural contact. All his plans and hopes and expectations, gone in a moment.

We hear this story all the time, and may associate the Holy Family with the cozy Western peppermint mocha-style of Christmas. But the reality is not particularly cozy.

Joseph’s world would have been completely upended, and he likely felt hurt and upset. A natural response would be a desire for revenge, but even though he has lost face and felt hurt, he did not want to cause more pain or expose Mary to public disgrace. He would let her go away quietly and live the rest of her life as best she could.

While we may not have gone through that, we have certainly gone through our own dark night of the soul. Loss, disruption, betrayal, our world upended and our future thrown into doubt.

But it is into this darkness and storm, that God speaks the words of the angel to Joseph – God is with us.

And so when he woke up, he did as instructed. Most of us would rather avoid these situations, and the pain and emotions that go along with stuck disruption. But Joseph engages with it, living with the fact that he is no longer in control, and that his life was not going to be what he expected. Joseph is faithful, listens to the voice of the Lord and obeys. We have the same opportunity in our lives.

And when we do this, we have new possibilities. Even amid the challenges that come in that difficult situations, God acts. He did things in the middle of a chaotic, oppressive tax accounting scheme. He did things with a family seeking refuge from political violence. When we ourselves are fearful, anxious, greedy, jealous, vindictive, hurt – God is with us.

The bonds within the Holy Family were not the traditional bonds – the child was not conceived in the traditional way, and the parents did not even come together physically. This is something adoptive families, blended families, broken families can all look to.

And all of us can find hope in the promise that God is with us.

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood, WA, December 18, 2022

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Are You the One? – Matthew 11:2-11

Waiting and longing are difficult parts of life. We all have longings and desires, and when those desires are put off, it is hard. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” The best example for many of us is our longing to be married when we were single. We have a hole that needs to be filled, but have to wait for that to happen, and the waiting is painful.

This was the state of the people of Israel, which we can see in the persons of Simeon and of Anna, waiting and longing for the redemption of Israel for decades.

John the Baptist is in a similar situation in this passage. His whole life, from before he was even born, was bent towards preparing the way for the messiah. He preaches about his coming, calls the people to repentance to prepare, even baptizes Jesus Himself. But now he finds himself in prison, hearing about Jesus’ ministry – and it doesn’t sound like what he expected.

John had been preaching a strict message of repentance, a firm and strong word. It jived with the expectations of the people for a strong military leader who would lead them against the Romans. But John hears about Jesus’ ministry – eating and drinking, sermons of love and joy, healings. John may have expected something very different, and so he sends disciples to demand of Jesus whether He really is who John has been hoping and longing for.

And Jesus answers by pointing to the prophecies of Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.

Isaiah 61:1

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

Isaiah 35:5-6

Jesus makes the point here that His ministry must look very different than John’s – John is a prophet, the greatest of prophets, but Jesus is the fulfillment of all that prophecy. He is here to turn everything upside down – when He came, everything changed.

Today, we live in that change, we live in that kingdom where the least are greatest abs the greatest are least.

But we can still feel like John at times, both in specific circumstances and in our broader faith journey. Like John, we wonder if this really is the place we are to be, we may even wonder if Jesus is who we think He is.

Like John, we should look around us for what work Christ is doing in the world – because he is always at work, healing and loving and bringing the good news of His Kingdom.

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 11, 2022

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Fire and Fruit – Matthew 3:1-12

We are introduced to John the Baptist in this passage, and he comes onto the scene with one very clear message – repent! This message is not quite the one we think of at the time of Christmas, but it’s hard to miss this clear, hard message from a hard man. John serves as a bridge from the prophets of the Old Testament to the gospel of the New Testament. Elsewhere, Matthew describes John as a second Elijah.

John lived apart from the culture and away from the population centers – he set the pattern later picked up by the Desert Fathers of the early church as well as the broader monastic orders. John serves as the model, establishing himself away from the rest of the world but serving as a magnet for people seeking the truth being shared – truth about sin and repentance.

How do we talk about sin and repentance? Some talk about it in the context of judgement, others in terms of broken relationship with God, others in a more postmodern way, addressing our behavior in relation to our own personal beliefs.

John’s role was to call for paths to be made straight, to point Jesus out to people in a way that was clear, insisting that his listeners reorient themselves around the coming Messiah. John’s whole identity was as a witness to the person of Christ. He spent a lot of time insisting he was not the Christ, but pointed the way to Him.

Carl Ellis describes a matrix of righteousness, addressing the personal and social working out of both piety and justice. As evangelicals, we tend to live in the personal piety quadrant nearly all the time, while other traditions may live more in the social quadrants. The challenge is to seek righteousness in a holistic way.

This was the challenge laid out by John the Baptist, looking ahead to Jesus who will make all things new. Some of that new-making, though, will be destructive, an axe at the root of the tree. These processes can be painful, but “joy comes in the morning.”

As a church we have felt like we have been in a time of wilderness. As a society, as well. And so our responsibility is to, as John instructs, produce fruit in keeping with repentance – to emulate John, speaking the truth that clears the way for the truth of Christ’s love to enter all situations.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 4, 2022

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To God be the Glory – Luke 5:17-26

Wonder is a key to transformation, faith and worship. Understanding ourselves in proper context to God will lead us to a childlike faith and out of the day-to-day grind of earthly life.

False humility is the flip side of arrogance. Both mean that we are failing to give God the glory for what He has done and the gifts that He has given. God may need to work in us to properly orient our outlook and behavior in one direction or the other.

But what do those two truths have in common, and how do they connect to this story of the man lowered through the roof?

The story starts with the earthly enemies of Christ watching him for anything they can use against Him. But Jesus was doing what he so often did, healing the sick.

We would prefer to see ourselves in Jesus in this passage, but so often we are the Pharisees, knowingly or unknowingly putting barriers between Jesus and the people seeking Him.

In reality, we should be seeking to be the friends in this story, loving others with a creative intensity that drives us to seek their good by any means. But the best good did not come from them, but from the infinite power of God through Jesus Christ. God doesn’t need us – and yet we matter to Him and he invites us into what He is doing.

There is a tension and even a paradox here. God’s work is not about us – and yet at the same time, God’s work is about us, transforming us into the person He has already proclaimed us.

Within the church community, we play both the role of the friends and the man on the cot at different times. We cannot be too proud or protective of ourselves to be the one who needs others to lower us down to Jesus. We cannot be too afraid to step into the unknown and the difficult – the possibilities of failure open up broader opportunities as well. God wants us in this vulnerable position so He can do “unimaginable things” that will give Him the glory.

God has put people in all of our lives who will lower us in a cot. Anything we accomplish is bolstered by the people and opportunities God has placed around us to glorify himself through the work He and they do through us.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, November 6, 2022

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Be Patient with One Another – Ephesians 4:2-6

In this passage we see how the community of believers can demonstrate the power of God through our unity. Unity enables the Body to care for the vulnerable and spread the gospel.

But unity is hard. Living with humility, gentleness and patience is hard. Why is it so hard, given that the same Spirit lives in each one of us?

Looking at the story of Adam and Eve, they’re enjoying the garden, everything was provided. God created everything around for them to enjoy, so what happened? They were living in humility, they were gentle with one another – but sin entered in. Just as it does for us.

Human nature is self-protection. Our natural reaction to being hurt is to react with outrage and to still retribution. Humility, gentleness and patience are not our natural state, but rather our supernatural state, the the fruit of the spirit within us. Holy and early love yourself kindness humility eness very with each other if any of you as a greater than second forget it at the door to my whole life

We can try on our own to be these things all we want, but ultimately it is out of our reach without the work of God within us.

When we love someone, we naturally expect they will love us back. But Jesus teaches and enables a love that transcends that very natural expectation and desire. This is not something we can accomplish with our brain and through our own cleverness and willpower. It’s one thing to know the truth and what Jesus wants for you, and another to follow Him even when you don’t know where He is leading you.

There are so many difficulties we are going to face together. You have to remember who is with you – you need to know who’s in your life. Obviously that means God, but also the community the people who love you and who care about you as you move ahead in God’s calling.

— Sermon Notes, Magdiel Tzec, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, October 23, 2022

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Forgiving One Another – Colossians 3:11-15

Our choices of clothes are a function of what tasks we have ahead of us, how we are feeling and what we want to convey to others. In this passage, Paul instructs us as to what “clothes” what identity we should put on as renewed people of God. The change that Christ has made in us, as a community erases the divisions among us, and creates a new people devoted to “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” And over all of these, we are to put on love. If patience is a scarf, love is the whole ensemble.

But this isn’t a mystical experience that happens to us without our participation. We have to work it out within ourselves and between each other. The crux of this section comes in verse 13, as all those virtues, especially love, find themselves called upon to support the effort of forgiveness: “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

We see this unity of love and forgiveness in Luke 7, where a woman washes Jesus’ feet to the chagrin of the religious leaders. Jesus says that “her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” Love plays itself out in forgiveness.

The hard part here is that the onus of forgiveness is put onto the wronged party. What if the sin is ongoing and repetitive? What if it’s systemic? What is if it is manipulative and abusive? Forgiveness is hard.

But that’s why Paul calls us back to Christ. He is our “all and is in all” and His peace is to rule in our hearts.

Forgiveness and reconciliation requires vulnerability and transparency. When we are hurt, our natural inclination is to move to avoidance. When we are hurt by someone or we disagree with someone, we just don’t spend time with them. But in the Body of Christ we are called to more. We are called to unity, even if we are not very good at it.

And that’s why we always fall back on Christ. Lord, help us put on Your clothes and help us forgive one another.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, October 2, 2022

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Wait for One Another – 1 Corinthians 11:33

The Corinthian church would have celebrated the Lord’s Supper as a true, full meal, likely in the evening at the house of a wealthy congregant. The problem was that they were treating the meal like just a meal, and going ahead and eating on their own, to the extent that Paul said “your meetings do more harm than good.”

In our western culture in particular, we can easily fall into this kind of behavior because we are a very individualistic culture. This can also cause trouble when we interpret scripture, because the time when the scripture was written was a much more collective age.

The root problem, though, was that by treating the Lord’s Supper as just another meal, they were missing the remembrance and memorial of what Christ did. If they had kept that event and truth front and center, they would not fall into the hoarding and self-centered behavior that Paul calls out.

As People of the Banquet Table, we are called to imitate Christ’s self-sacrifice, to wait and to give and to bring others in. Our role in this life is to exchange all the things that seem to matter, even the seemingly good and religious things, for the opportunity to feast and share at the table of God.

We cannot live in a scarcity mindset when we serve the one who fed the five thousand. We do not need to grasp so tightly or fear that there is not enough. God has more than enough to satisfy all our needs and even our deepest desires.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, September 18, 2022

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Learning From the Seven Churches

Jesus wants to speak to each of us, and each church, through each of the letters sent to the Seven Churches. He is addressing the corporate life of the church, which is foreign to our individualistic way of thinking.

These churches were also the first audience of the rest of the book of Revelation. We often think about this part as just the prologue that we have to get to to get to the good stuff, but these letters set the audience and context for the whole book.

There is much at can learn from these letters. First, Jesus loves local churches. He walks among them and holds them in His hand. They matter to Him and have always been the method by which that those who love Him demonstrate and effect that love. It is also worth remembering that one of the ways Jesus shows His love is through discipline. Additionally, Jesus is looking for a “return on investment” within each church.

Second, Jesus brings to light that which we would rather keep hidden. He does a lot of things that may make us uncomfortable.

Third, on our side, there is a natural tendency to decline. These churches were all about 40 years old, which is roughly the average lifespan of a church today. Churches, without discrete, specific efforts, generally decline in their fidelity.

So how do we put this all together to avoid or reverse that decline? We must make Jesus’ priorities our priority. Jesus is passionate about truth, about holiness and about love. Some of these churches were succeeding in truth but failing in love. Others failed in truth while being strong in love.

Ephesus was zealous for the truth, but loveless. Smyrna was commended for being rich in faith even though they were afflicted from without. Pergamum was faithful but compromising. Thyatira was growing but compromised – receiving the most glowing commendation but also a stark warning. Sardis was active but spiritually lifeless – but we see that Jesus did not give up on them. Note that Jesus never counsels the faithful in a church to leave and create a new church. This is entirely contrary to our reformation thinking, where if we don’t lie something we just start something new or go somewhere else.

Back to the churches, Philadelphia was weak but hopeful. Finally, Laodicea was smug, yet destitute.

There is, of course, an eighth church: ours. What is Jesus saying to our church? We are working on understanding this through the interim process, using many different tools.

But for all these churches, Jesus has big plans. Everything in our lives is preparing us to reign and rule with Him in eternity. While we don’t know exactly what that looks like, we do know that this is what

There are some analogies between the Seven Churches and today (adapted from Craig Koester’s analysis). The first is persecution. While our churches don’t see any persecution on the scale of the Seven Churches, there are many around the world who are dealing with terrible persecution. Second, complacency – which is certainly an issue for all of us. Finally, assimilation into the culture around us, like a frog being boiled slowly.

There is a pattern in generations of believers, along the line of what we see going from David to Solomon to Rehaboam. We start with the Passion of new believers. The next generation imbibes the principles, but not the passion, and accepts some but not all – more religious than committed. Then comes passivity, and walking away entirely – maybe even while still attending church. Whenever you are on that slide, somewhere between the lifelessness Sardis and the faithful Smyrna, we must always be getting back to that passion, that animating love for our Lord and Savior.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, July 21, 2019

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Lukewarm Laodiceans – Revelation 3:14-22

This may be the most well known of the Seven Letters, with the notion of being “lukewarm” one of the most memorable of the concepts within, as well as Jesus standing at the door vs knocking.

Jesus introduces himself as the “true witness” which is key, because his witness will contradict that of the Laodiceans. He is the “beginning of creation” – not the just created being, but the source, the font, of all creation.

Laodicea was a town at a crossroads, established by Antiochus II and named for his wife. It was known for banking, for medical supplies (“Phrygian powder”, used for the eyes) and its textiles (a special black wool). It was a wealthy city, and when an earthquake damaged the town, it rejected aid from Rome, preferring to rebuild on its own.

Laodicea was also known for its hot springs, which might be what sparks the discussion of water temperature in this letter. It was near both Hierapolis and Colossae, and was mentioned directly in the Epistle to the Colossians, along with a member of the church, Nympha.

Jesus answers three questions that we might ask in this text. First, what makes Jesus sick?

The answer is lukewarm churches. Coffee can be good hot or iced, but nobody likes it lukewarm. Keeping something room temperature takes no effort, only letting entropy take its course. It is the perfect, easy Christian life – just sit back and rely on grace.

What made them lukewarm? He goes on, presenting the witness of the Laodiceans church. They saw themselves as being much like the city they lived in – wealthy and self-sufficient. But Jesus sees them as exactly the opposite: poor, blind and naked.

What they have is not what they need. What they need is what Jesus offers: gold refined by fire, which Peter elsewhere uses as a metaphor for faith, white clothes, meaning the new life in that faith, and salve for the eyes – the new view of themselves and others offered by Christ. Note that each of these mirrors things that Laodicea was known for: gold, textiles and eye salve.

Then we get to Jesus response to this utter disaster of a church. He wants in. He wants to not just enter in, but to eat a meal with us. The sharing of a meal held much deeper significance in this era than it does now, and the Lord’s Supper is a picture and implementation of that.

So what makes Jesus sick? We can. What makes

The letter ends by describing what happens to those who conquer – but any conquering we do is within and a piece of what Jesus did in order to conquer: namely, die and rise again. And as that conquering is a piece of Jesus’, so to is the reward, as we will reign with Him on His throne. All we do is preparing for that promotion.

Church transformation begins within each of us. Jesus’ words shift very quickly from the corporate criticism to personal salvation, coming directly into the hearts of those in the church who are willing to get off the lukewarm couch and open the door.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, July 14, 2019