The Joshua Victor Theory

·          What we see in creation: beauty or suffering? The positive: the case for design/creation; beauty, engineering, puzzle. The negative: the thorns, the parasites, diseases, COVID, natural disasters, death? Led many evolutionists to doubt and reject God. ·          Rom 8—creation groaning—subjected to futility. Futile: ineffective; failure; lack of purpose or success. God subjected the world to this b/c of sin—Adam’s first sin opened the world to futility and subjugation. Sin is an ongoing, thorough devastation of the whole creation, not just humans: entire physical universe. The Christian understands this from God’s Word, that sin has infected everything, and that the world is not as it was or should be, but that what we see now is the corrupted world. But others may look at the defects, diseases, and death in the world and think God didn’t know what He was doing, or that He wasn’t a good designer....

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. The sermon text is Isaiah 40:1-11, beginning with the words: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.” The prophet Isaiah carries this message to a people harassed by warfare with enemies, laboring in the darkness of uncertainty, mourning underneath their sorrows’ load. They were a people living with the guilt of their sin and disobedience to God, facing the punishment and penalty of their sin. Whether they lived before, during, or after the captivity in Babylon, or under the harsh rule of the Romans, many things conspired to quench the hope of God’s people. God’s people were waiting—they were waiting for the Advent, or coming of the Lord, who’d comfort them in their cheerless circumstances. This season of Advent, we wait with them, saints of the Old Testament. But now we’re waiting for the second Advent or coming of our Lord, and sharing in His same message of comfort, even as we’ve circumstances that would tr...