The Joshua Victor Theory

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. On Sunday we spoke of how we are members of Jesus’ Kingdom as fruitful branches growing from His Vine. Joined to Jesus we are green, alive, and bearing fruit. Today in 2 Corinthians 9, Paul zeroes in on one particular spiritual fruit: generosity. The well-known phrase, “ God loves a cheerful giver .” Immediately upon hearing this phrase, our minds go to money, and our hands go to protect our wallet. Or they might , anyhow, if we think this passage is only about how generous our offering will be in the plate. But while Paul certainly appealed to the Corinthians for financial support for the Christians in poverty in Jerusalem—the Biblical picture of generosity is bigger than cash. It’s a stock phrase in churches, but true nevertheless, that stewardship can be described as giving of our time, talents, and treasure. That’s simply to recognize that there are more ways to give, than just...

Sermon Outline: ·          Responsive OT reading: festival of Pentecost, bring basket of grain and spoke the recitation. Firstfruits. Confession of God’s fulfilled promises—in the promised land. All blessings from the hand of the Lord. Training them to lift up their hands to God, so they see where the blessing comes from, and to return a portion to Him as a reminder that it all belongs to Him. ·          Learning giving as a child: first money placed in your hand—offering. Then from your allowance; chores. Really the money was never ours in the first place, but our parents put it in our hands to teach us giving, and we in turn used our hands to give back to God. In a similar way, does not God put all our blessings in our hands? Whether purely receiving as a young child who did nothing for it, or through the work and labor of our hands, as in a child doing their chores, God is ultimately the giver and ...