The Joshua Victor Theory

  Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Today, our readings from Genesis 2 and Mark 10, tell us about God creating man and woman. God made us as creatures with a body. We are not like the angels, spiritual beings with no body. God made Adam and Eve in flesh and blood, with bones, muscle, organs, skin, fingers, and toes. Today I want to talk about the special blessing that God gave you a human body that is wonderfully made, male or female. The focus of our consideration is Mark 10:6-8, “ But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh ”. We won’t focus primarily on marriage today, but rather the simpler fact that God blesses us with bodies as males and females. It’s too easy to take for granted. Like a fish taking the water for granted, or us tak...

  Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. ·          In Romans 11 and 12 Paul gushes at God’s bottomless grace. universal disobedience of humans >>> but God showed His grace to all mankind unexpected, unnatural to show mercy to rebels or love your enemies; but this is just what God did in sending Jesus. He reached down and pulled us up out of our sin, to make us His dear children. o    zero in on Romans 12:1-2a, but first let’s launch from 11:35. No one could ever put God in our debt. God never “owes us” anything. §   Human indebtedness: kindness, money, saved life: “I owe you my life” or “I owe you my undying thanks”, etc. Our position before God… owe our life and undying thanks, but the tables can never be reversed. nothing so dramatic that puts God in our debt. §   100% pure gift of God’s grace. Not earned or des...

Sermon Note Outline: ·          Imitation—natural to those we admire; but also even unwittingly copy bad examples. Copy what we see and experience—not what we don’t know. (Good case for not knowing evil! And keeping the example of Christ ever before us!) ·          Imitate? What is God like? Known in Christ. 1:3—every spiritual blessing, 1:5—adoption as sons through Christ, 1:7—redemption, forgiveness; 1:18—glorious inheritance. God is lavish in blessing us, profound in generosity and mercy. Can’t imitate what is uniquely God’s—salvation, source of every blessing, giver of eternal life. Never “match” His goodness, yet Jesus calls us “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). Will never exceed His example, but His grace, His love and Spirit poured into us is the resource to imitate—to begin to act like Him. Can forgive, walk in love, reflect God’s generosity, live out His compassion,...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Today’s Old Testament reading from Genesis 2 is one of the few brief glimpses of life in the goodness and perfection that God made us for, before mankind’s fall into sin. It’s also a foundational Bible passage of who we are and what we were created for as human beings. God makes Adam in the midst of the Garden of Eden—the original paradise. So who are we? The creation of mankind comes as the highest and most tender parts of the story of existence—God had made everything else which was good—all living plants and animals. But then He pulls aside and with special care and attention, as a potter working with raw clay to make a new vessel, and God personally shapes and forms Adam out of the dust of the earth. His very chemistry was linked to the ground that God would give him to farm. And yes, after Adam sinned, God would promise “ dust you are, and to dust you shall return ”—Adam would die and return to the earth f...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. The book of Job is a remarkable book that is like a magnificent mountain range of great peaks and valleys worthy of deep reflection and exploration. Job was tormented by horrible suffering, having lost all of his children in a single day, all of his servants were killed by raiders, and he lost all his flocks and herds. As if that were not enough, he was then inflicted with painful sores all over his body, from head to foot. The book as a whole answers Satan’s jeering question, of “Why do the righteous serve God?” and the closely related concern of “How can the righteous trust in God in the midst of suffering?” While Job is by no means a perfect example of a believer bearing up under their sufferings and still trusting in God—he is certainly one of the most remarkable examples in the Bible. And our Old Testament reading from Job 19 has everything to do with the reason why. If the book of Job is a complex mountai...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul uses the analogy of a tent to describe life in our earthly body. Not everybody loves tent camping, but for many it’s a fun, summer family activity. But even die-hard campers—have stories of the frustrations of tent-living—floods and leaks, mosquitoes, cooking problems or food issues. And mostly we can laugh about them—because tent living is usually no more than a temporary vacation for us. But for Old Testament Israel, for 40 years, a whole generation of hundreds of thousands of people lived in tents on the move. Generations of Israelites afterward were to commemorate this in the Feast of Tabernacles or “Tents”, when they would live in a tent for one week, as a reminder of how God preserved Israel through the 40 years in the wilderness. The 40 years was no “fun camping trip” that could be cut short when things got uncomfortable and they wanted to head home early for the comforts of a...