The Joshua Victor Theory

  Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. When you are watching an intense movie or reading a great book, you can instinctively tell when the plot is building to the climax. Jesus’ disciples, James and John certainly sensed something big around the corner, in Mark 10. And they weren’t wrong about that. Jesus had made His third and final prediction of His death and resurrection. He had just talked about eternal rewards, their persecution, and His own betrayal, death, and resurrection. But with the particular skill of selective hearing that we humans are best known for, James and John were caught up anticipating great things, while completely ignoring all the sacrifice and crosses on the road in between. Their request seems audacious: “ Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one a...

  In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Today is the Transfiguration of Jesus, a glimpse of Jesus’ glory shortly before His death on the cross and the resurrection. After the glory fades from the spectacular transformation, Peter, James and John are left with Jesus only. And that’s not a let-down—it’s the point. Having Jesus only, is having everything we need. The Total Jesus. The One to heed and hear, the Only One we need and fear. With a newfound reverence for God’s Beloved Son, they descend the mountain where Jesus resumes His path to the cross. But we have the Total Jesus; He is our “ all in all ” (Eph. 1:23; Col. 3:11). The Transfiguration shows several ways how we have the Total Jesus. When we have Christ, we lack nothing. Let’s consider four ways He is the “Total Jesus.” His Transfiguration shows His Total Authority, Total Truth, Total Purity, and Total Glory. It was quite extraordinary to see these living saints and biggest heroes of the O...

·          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. Last week we listened to the words of the prophet Zephaniah, who spoke about God’s joy and how He sings over His redeemed. Today, we rewind the clock even further, another 100-150 years at least, to the words of the prophet Micah, who anticipates the birth of the promised Savior. All the prophets “sang in harmony,” pointing to the Messiah or Christ, along with their various individual concerns. For most of them, the threat of surrounding superpowers like Assyria and Babylon, and the invasion of Israel loomed large. No less for Micah. Micah lived alongside Isaiah, the greatest of the writing prophets. Together, Micah and Isaiah gave great witness to the coming birth of the Savior. Some of Isaiah’s most famous prophecies are of the Virgin Birth (7:14), and the child born to be the Prince of Peace (9:6). This passage in Micah 5, echoes many words of Isaiah. God’s Old Testament people longed for a Savior, a Delive...

Psalm 8: 1 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. 2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Psalm 19: 1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. 2 Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. It would be impossible to overstate the glory, the perfection of God’s handiwork, how much speech and knowledge are revealed about God by His creation. The heavens, the work of His fingers, the moon and stars, set in their place, and this earth, our home. Impossible to overstate the sheer testimony of God’s greatness revealed in all these things, and how miraculous our life and ...

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord... For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.” In just a few words, when Peter says to Jesus, at His Transfiguration: “It’s good Lord to be here” and offers to build dwellings for Jesus and the rest of them to stay there; Peter is echoing the thoughts of Psalm 84, our Introit. Like Peter marveling about the glory of being in Jesus’ presence, so the Psalm speaks of the delight of being together with God in His dwelling place, His courts; how his soul thirsts to stay with the living God forever. At the Transfiguration, when the Father speaks from the heavens, He does not answer Peter’s suggestion, but calls him to silence and to listen to Jesus. “ This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” As God’s courts and dwelling place are lovely to the people, so God’s Son Jesus is lovely to the Father. Dear to both God’s heart and ours, is Jesus...

By God’s grace may I make the Word of God fully known to you, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints…this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim! (Colossians 1:25b-26, 27b-28a). In 1 Timothy 5:24–25, it says: “ The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later. So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden .” This tells us that sometimes, when a good work is done, it’s not obvious or noticed. But even so, it can’t remain hidden. Jesus’ miracle at the wedding at Cana was this way. He worked behind the scenes, as secretly as could be done—with only His mother and disciples and the servants aware that He had miraculously changed water into wine. Jesus didn’t announce His good deed; He didn’t step in to take credit when the master of the banquet praised the groom for the excellence of the wine, and the surprise of saving it for ...