The Joshua Victor Theory

  Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. These are ordinary questions: “Do you read the Bible?” “How do you interpret that passage?” Now flip them around. What if I asked you: “Do you let the Bible read you?” “Are you letting this passage interpret you?” God’s living and active Word reads and interprets our lives. Sharper than any two-edged sword, God’s Word searches our hearts and minds (Heb. 4:12). The real question is how God’s Word is reading and interpreting our lives. How is God’s Word at work in us? So instead of us acting on God’s Word, God’s Word is acting on us. Let’s try this with Psalm 28, our Introit. On the one hand we could read the Psalms like a Bible study of the prayers and hymns and laments of Old Testament believers. But that wouldn’t let God’s Word “read us.” It keeps God’s Word at arm’s length. For God’s Word to “read and interpret us”, we must find ourselves, our unnamed fears and emotions in the ...

            Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. 1 Peter 4 & 5 tells us that Christians are to expect fiery trials and suffering for the name of Christ, and that Christ endured the same. Jesus Christ, being God’s own Son, and suffering in the flesh Himself, changes everything for us. That God would not remain aloof and distant from our sufferings but come down under it and in the midst of it, and feel the pain, the loneliness, and the struggle of it all, is amazing. No other god has wounds.             It’s hard in the midst of suffering not to be overwhelmed by a sense of the meaninglessness or injustice of it all. On the one hand, if a person believes in God, they are troubled by the question of evil, and wonder how God could allow it. On the other hand, if a person doesn’t believe in God, it must amplify the meaning...

·          Jesus’ soul searching questions and statements: “ cannot serve God and money”  Sets up a choice between two masters, and we can’t have a split love or split loyalty between them. Considering the options, why is it infinitely better to have God as our Master, rather than money? If money is our master, what does it demand of us? We are in a constant pursuit of money, and like an old Lutheran hymn says “ earthly wealth is not abiding, like a stream away is gliding” (LSB 732). Money is like a stream of water—it doesn’t stick around for long, and you can hardly hold it in your hands for long. If we are always chasing after money, we will not find happiness, but only the anxieties and worry that Jesus describes here. Money is a poor master—it can only give us more things to worry about. Money can give you cars and houses, but then those things cause us worries too, and they breakdown and cost us more money. The same is true for everythi...

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The Parable of the Sower that Jesus tells today is the first of a great series of parables in the Gospel of Luke, and describes two basic reactions to His parables. He says in verse 10, before explaining the parable, “ To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand. ’” You see, believers will hear and understand the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for unbelievers, they will actually confound them and they won’t understand. This is not just a matter of whether you “get it” or not right away—the disciples didn’t get the parable—but they asked questions to learn more. They were hearing the Word with “honest and good hearts”. Others tuned out or ignored the Word. This parable shows us why sometimes the Word of God is sown like a seed, and it grows and bears ...

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Unbelief is really the chief and greatest sin of all, and the hardest sin to overcome. When we think of what the worst sin might be, our mind rarely lands on unbelief—but unbelief is really the sin against the first commandment. God says, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Believing in God is the first and most important command. Unbelief shows itself in a variety of symptoms, ranging from outright rejection or anger toward God, to making substitute gods or idols, to take the place of the One True God, or hardness of heart and distrust. The last one, hardness of heart, is the core problem in today’s reading. What does the Bible say about hardness of heart? Frequently in the Old Testament, this is described as a sin that is common to rulers and kings. Pharaohs, Kings of Israel, and Kings of Babylon all suffered from this sin. They became proud in their spirit, stubborn and ...