The Joshua Victor Theory

Sermon Outline: 1.       Simplest definition of the church: “Lambs and believers who hear and follow the voice of Jesus, our Good Shepherd.” Paul mixes and blends metaphors of body and building to describe the church. Here focus on the body, its internal health and unity, its growth in love. 2.       Listen to the “body language:” “ 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him wh...

The following Lenten series I will be preaching on is taken from Dr. Reed Lessing's series on Jonah the prophet. Dr. Lessing is professor of Old Testament at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, MO.              Do you ever wonder what it would be like if God called you? I mean directly spoke to you in audible and unmistakable words? How would we respond? How would we treat the call? Would we take our cue from everyday life and “screen the call” or let it go to voicemail? Most of us can relate to avoiding our calls at one point or another. What if we found we were doing the same thing to God?             Welcome to the world of Jonah! Let’s begin at the beginning! When God calls Jonah to go preach in Nineveh, Jonah high-tails it in the opposite direction. The author highlights the irony of this effort to run away in a way that we wouldn’t catch—that in their time, boardin...