Soma Spokane Sermons

Planted is so much more than a capital campaign, and we’re committing so much more than our money. After 17 years of fruitful mission and ministry in rented facilities, we’re eager to become fully Planted in our city and region as a long-term disciple-making presence. We conclude our Planted series by making a 2-year financial commitment so we can take this historic next step together. But we do so as Paul urged the Corinthians, giving ourselves - all we are - first to the Lord. We remember all we have in Jesus, secured by his sacrifice and loss, and we submit ourselves to him as our Lord. We consider ourselves as stewards, entrusted with the resources of our King, and eager to joyfully and generously sow them into this initiative. In our final look at 2 Corinthians 8-9, we’ll summarize all we’ve learned and gather to prayerfully commit to Jesus and one another. Joyful Generosity is a way of life rooted in the grace of Jesus in which you freely and proactively seek to give money away, seeing yourself as a ste

Planted is a means of furthering the vision of Soma, which we find in Habakkuk 2.14: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” If we’re going to commit to Planted, we need to first be convinced that God is in this and that financial generosity to this initiative leads to that great end! As we conclude our study in 2 Corinthians 8-9, Paul describes the reciprocal nature of generosity, showing how both givers and receivers bring glory to God and declare the gospel to a watching world. Financial giving meets material needs, leading to a groundswell of thanksgiving to God from those who receive. Those who receive grow in trust and love, and give spiritual resources through prayer to those who give, building up the giver’s faith and leading to their spiritual growth. According to Paul, this circular nature of generosity is a wonderfully good gift of our generous Father, whose glory will fill the earth through the praises of his people!

In just 2 weeks we’ll be asking everyone in the Soma family to make a 2-year financial commitment to our Planted initiative and the vision of being a long-term disciple-making presence in our region and beyond. Our hope is that these 2 years will grow us into a more joyful, free, and generous people all across the board. In this section, Paul urges the Corinthians toward bountiful, cheerful, abundant giving by reminding them how the economy of God’s Kingdom works. All we have has been given by God, and he gives abundantly to us so we can give abundantly to his purposes. Our resources belong to him, and when we’re not generous we’re not just greedy but also thieves, taking what was entrusted to us for ourselves! Paul reminds us that God promises to enrich us in every way so we can be generous in every way. God will multiply our seed for sowing, entrusting us with greater resources to steward, as we learn to step courageously into joyful generosity.

Over the next 2 years, we’re hoping to raise $1 million above our regular budget for the vision of Planted. That’s a wild and audacious goal, and we’re asking the whole Soma family to participate. But to be honest, fundraising is a really strange part of ministry, and can get really confusing for everyone involved. In this section we see Paul trying to walk a fine line as he raises funds for the ministry need in Jerusalem. While it is necessary for him to share the need and equip the Corinthians for financial generosity, he doesn’t want to manipulate or coerce them, as that would entirely miss the point. He really believes that generosity is a result of genuine love for Jesus, echoing Jesus’ words about how what we do with our treasure reveals the state of our hearts. Once we have the right heart motivations in place, we’re ready to start taking practical steps toward greater generosity. Joyful generosity involves looking at our abundance, planning proactively so we are ready to give willingly and freely as o

After 17 fruitful years of being a family on mission, we’re ready to make a faith-filled journey toward permanent facilities. Our goal is to lean into being a long-term disciple-making presence in our region and beyond, and so we’re dreaming together and raising the funds we need to make it happen. To that end, we’re asking the Soma family to spend a month considering the biblical teaching on generosity and to make a 2-year financial commitment to the vision of Planted. Our aim is to grow into sacrificial and joyful generosity, rooted in personal experience of the sacrificial generosity of Jesus Christ. Without deep knowledge of his work for you - all he gave up on your behalf, and all you’ve been given in him - living a life of generosity will never make any sense. Paul urges us to reflect on the grace of Jesus until we’re transformed, leading to a radical, sacrificial, and joyful lifestyle of generosity.

We end our series, “Vintage Faith: Following the Way,” with a summary of what we’re calling Great Commission Christianity, looking at all Jesus packed into these few words at the end of Matthew’s gospel. Each phrase of the Great Commission speaks to an absolutely essential aspect of what it means to know, trust, and follow Jesus in a wholistic way; lose any aspect of the Great Commission and you have a deficient form of Christianity that will inevitably result in deformed disciples. In the difficult, draining, and confusing time we live in, what a gift Jesus has given us in this simple but rich framework! Together we’re partnering as a church to live into this vision and mission for the coming year.

Following the Way of Jesus can’t be done in our own strength or wisdom, so it is really good news to know that Jesus promises to be with us always. The same Jesus we see in the gospels — flesh and blood human; teaching, serving, and suffering; rising in glory — is the same One who comes to be with each and everyone of us by His Spirit. As the church steps out into mission, the Holy Spirit leads us, reminding us that we are adopted, leading us into all truth, filling us with God’s love, and emboldening us for witness. We’re invited to increasingly rely on the empowering presence of God as he sends us to fulfill the Great Commission together.

Following the Way of Jesus encompasses all of life, bringing significance to even the most mundane and normal parts of our days. Jesus came to make us fully alive, to teach us to live abundant life, and obeying him is not a burden but a release and a relief. Followers are learning to engage everyday practices — eat, listen, story, bless, celebrate, recreate — as followers of his way, infusing every aspect of life with Jesus. To that end, we want everyone to craft a shared set of practices around the way of Jesus together, and commit to following the way of Jesus together.

Following the Way of Jesus begins with baptism, the public declaration of what Jesus has done in us. At the same time, baptism also functions as an immersion into the life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the beginning of a new way of life. The command to make disciples is accomplished as we form people into their new identity built on their new relationship to the Father, Son, and Spirit. In this way, we are shaping a disciple’s sense of identity — who they are and to whom they belong — as we help them learn to obey Jesus. Together we’re living into our new identity in Jesus Jesus as Family, Servants, and Missionaries, and helping others to do the same.

Following the Way of Jesus is about making Jesus and his disciple-making mission the organizing principle of our lives. Jesus supplies everything we need to re-orient the whole of our lives around his mission, to step into the places he has sent us with courage and conviction, and to bring the presence, kingdom, and message of Jesus. Together we’re orienting our real, everyday lives around the mission and purpose of Jesus, and increasingly surrendering all of life to him and his way.

Following the Way of Jesus is founded on and empowered by the good news of the gospel — all that is ours in the person and work of Jesus! The massive claim of the Great Commission is Jesus’ words, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.” Together we’re learning to rely whole-heartedly on Jesus, and humbly taking responsibility for our own growth as disciples.

Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness and for Jesus' name. Persecution is the selecting out of individuals and groups on the basis of ideology for intended harm. The ideology given in this beatitude is for “Righteousness' sake” and “on my account.” In America, it seems we have rarely felt persecution on these terms. But here is yet another invitation by Jesus to be His people, to be a part of restoration’s long story, and engage in the work of God the Father, to absorb, rescue, and proclaim the truth of history and our Savior. And as we experience the same resistance to this work we see we are right alongside our Savior, doing the same work. We are going to finish off the Beatitudes embracing what life throws at us knowing we are joining with our savior in His work and being His people.

We live in a world that increasingly lacks peace. There is ever-growing conflict and division. How will peace ever have its day? The good news of the Gospel is Jesus accomplished peace by reconciling us to the Father. Through the cross, Jesus became our peace and is now inviting us to walk in the “pathway of peace.” This week we explore what that looks like in our daily lives.

Since the moment the Garden of Eden was closed off, mankind has longed to see God face to face. But because of our sin, even Moses was told "no one can look upon the face of God and live." Now Jesus is proclaiming that we can see the face of God - but only if we're "pure in heart"... and immediately everyone within hearing distance is dismayed, because we all know our hearts aren't pure. He is introducing an idea that he will build on later in the Sermon on the Mount - that no matter how righteous our actions, our impure hearts mean separation from God, and the only way to be reunited with God face to face is through a purity which comes from outside of ourselves and transforms us from the inside out. It is exactly when we realize we can't create a pure heart on our own that we become the "blessed" that Jesus speaks of.

It has been said that grace is associated with men in their sin, while mercy deals with men in their misery. Mercy is more than not getting the punishment deserved. Mercy is someone seeing another’s pain, suffering, and misery and moving toward the person with compassion and action. This week we look at the fifth beatitude to hear more of the scandalous, joyful, and bewildering announcements of God’s Kingdom. In Jesus, misery collides with hope. Jesus proclaims blessing on those who are merciful; blessing on those who are painfully aware of suffering and have moved toward misery with care.

The world is not as it was meant to be, and you don’t have to be a Christian to know it! All around us, among our best relationships, and even within ourselves, we sense the reality that things are off, and we’re always trying to make them right. We want what the bible calls “righteousness,” the desire for all things to be as they ought, with God, one another, ourselves, and in the world. Jesus names this desire in Matthew 5.6, announcing his blessing to those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness.” That unmet longing, according to Jesus, is deep in us because we were made for Eden, made for a world of goodness and flourishing, and we’re over-built for the world as it is. Jesus blesses that longing, and promises a satisfaction of it that will be like a feast of rich food. That feast begins now in Jesus, in the righteousness of God given as a gift to those who confess they have none. The feast is a shared table of fellow sinners-declared-righteous, where joy and love abounds. It is an invitation to the feas

The meek will inherit the earth, and if you are like me, I don’t find myself all that meek.  The problem then would be that if I am not meek, I am missing out on blessing and inheriting the land.  Most certainly, who Jesus was talking to at that moment were meek.  They were the poor in spirit, the broken of life, and clambering up the hill to put their trust, not in themselves, but in Jesus for Life.  They had brought their hardships of life to the one who could handle them and in this, Jesus looks at them and says, blessed are you meek people, how unshakeable is your peace and shalom, I am going to fulfill my promises for you, the land is coming and I am going to be your king.  Again, if you are like me, I don’t find myself all that meek.  But there is good news for those coming to Jesus.  The fake confidence and reasons why I am okay that is covering my meekness is really not all that strong or thick and so this week we will ask Jesus to pull off the thin veneer of confidence to reveal the  truth and realit

As Jesus starts his famous Sermon on the Mount, he looks out on the crowds and begins to announce blessing on all the broken and beat-down people of the world. In particular, he sees so many people carrying heavy stories of sadness — grievers, mourners, and the brokenhearted. Jesus doesn’t recoil from them, as if the weight of their grief is some sort of liability to be avoided. He doesn’t look past them in hopes of finding more put-together and well-to-do people. He hasn’t come searching for people who have managed to avoid sadness, loss, and grief (as if that were possible!). Jesus looks right at brokenhearted people, with the full weight of their sadness, pain, loss, and makes a remarkable declaration: The Kingdom of God is for you! God’s deepest peace and his comforting presence — his free gift of salvation — is for you! And Jesus looks at us, with all our grief and pain, and says, I’m glad you are here, and your sorrows are welcome to come right in with you. Jesus invites us to feel and grieve our losses