The Joshua Victor Theory

            In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Today is Trinity Sunday. This Sunday is unique on the Christian calendar, because it doesn’t commemorate an event, miracle, or a person, but rather a doctrine. The teaching of the Trinity is central to the Christian faith. Attacked for centuries, but always defended as the orthodox or correct teaching of the Bible. From the earliest centuries the Creeds were confessed to defend against distortions of the Bible, especially about the Trinity. We could get stuck on the semantics of the word “Trinity”. The word itself is not found in the Bible, but that’s not the important question. The important question is whether the teaching is found in the Bible. We simply use “Trinity” to describe how God shows Himself in Scripture; as Three Persons, One God .             I assume most or all of you alrea...

Intro: The Lord be with you! Today I wanted to do a special teaching sermon, where we will learn some of the reasons for why we do what we do in worship, and to explain the meaning behind some of the symbols and actions that we often take for granted. I pray that this will help make your weekly worship more meaningful, as we draw near to worship our Triune God and receive His gifts!             Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Let’s start with a brief introduction to the theology of worship. Worship could be understood in at least one of two ways—one way is that worship is an activity we do for God, and goes from us up to God, and His blessings return down to us, like a capital “M”. The second way is to see worship as first and foremost what God does for us. His gifts and blessings come down to us, and our praises return up to Him, like a capital “W”. The d...

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Today, a little different than usual, rather than focusing on a single text, I’ll be focusing on the theme of the Trinity, and related Bible passages. When we reflect on that teaching—do we think of it as a high and lofty “doctrine” that has no practical bearing on our Christian life? Or is it central to all the articles of Christian faith? You can probably already guess my answer. The word “doctrine” has a tendency to cause a knee-jerk reaction, or raise suspicion that we’re talking about something abstract or academic. Strangely, the word “teaching” doesn’t cause the same reaction, even though teaching and doctrine are the same thing. Doctrine is simply the church’s teaching. And the “doctrine” or teaching of the Trinity, while it may be lofty, mysterious, and even difficult to grasp—is not just for academics, nor is it impractical and irrelevant to our lives. Granted, the terms that theologians later used to...