The Joshua Victor Theory

    Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Last week in Ephesians 4 we talked about the worthy walk vs. the unworthy walk. God made us for new life in Christ Jesus. We walk together as the body of Christ, not isolated individuals. Today, Paul exposes the harm of the unworthy walk, the old walk, or the walk of the unbelieving Gentiles. It’s bad for your health. Paul urges us to shed the old self like a dirty old clothes and put on clean, new clothes in Christ Jesus. New clothes for our new walk! When a doctor sees a sick patient with a chronic but correctible health condition, they can’t accept the status quo and let the patient continue to suffer while they can help. If heavy drinking is destroying your liver, you’ve got to cut it out! If your diet is causing your diabetes, we’ve got to work on changing that! If you’re accustomed to old, unhealthy habits, we have to address that! Paul adds, if you’ve been a liar,...

  Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Walk, walk, walk. The Bible talks a good bit about walking. Not the walking your dog type of walking, but how you conduct your life. A good walk vs. a bad walk. Walking in the way of righteousness vs. the way of wickedness. God’s Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, while darkness and pitfalls surround the pathways of disobedience and lawlessness. In Exodus today God tests the Israelites: whether they will walk in His law or not (Exodus 16:4). Then Paul urges us: “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Walk worthily or walk unworthily. The Scripture is full of this contrast. To walk worthily, you must know the difference between a good and bad walk. Just like to seek health, you must know the difference between health and sickness. You can’t be doing destructive things to the body. To seek justice, you must know the difference betwe...

  God’s chosen ones clothed in Christ! Grace and peace to you! Amen. I chose Colossians 3, especially verses 15-17 for our Thanksgiving message, for its connection to thankfulness in our singing and worship. Let’s reflect this evening on “Worship as Thanksgiving”. Hear those verses again: “ And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful . 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God . 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him .” Worship is more than just music, but music serves a key role. Music often carries or expresses our emotions. Music also sinks deeply in our heart and memory, more than spoken words usually do. Music can be grand and triumphant for an occasion to celebrate or honor;...

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His Holy Name! Last week we spoke, sang, and meditated on a deeply personal Psalm—Psalm 42. It was the cry of a soul in distress, and pointed the soul to hope in God, our salvation. This week Psalm 103 begins with individual praise, the soul blessing God and recounting all His benefits—but then the psalm expands our vision to include the whole community praising God. What begins as a solo turns into a chorus of praise to God. This beloved psalm has been paraphrased several times into hymns, including both of the hymns we sing tonight. As the solo turns to a chorus, the singers of the psalm reflect on our human frailty and sin in comparison to God’s eternity and forgiveness; and finally the psalm soars in a closing doxology that calls all creation to praise God. The closing words bring it full circle: Bless the Lord, O my soul! The psalm begins and ends in praise, much like we often pray in church: It is truly good, right, ...

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Today on Reformation Day, we conclude our mini-series on some of the things that made the Lutheran Church distinctive. We’re going to look at two core ideas to Lutheranism, from our reading in Romans 3: Sin and Grace. These two teachings of the Bible are at the heart of salvation—they define both our great need before God, and His even greater solution to our predicament. Predicament , or can we say an epidemic ? We have all heard a lot in the news lately about the deadly Ebola virus and the epidemic that has people worried worldwide. An epidemic is when an infectious disease rapidly spreads through a large number of people. Technically, an epidemic is usually temporary, not permanent, and widespread, but not global in reach. The term for something truly universal or worldwide would be “pandemic.” Can the analogy of disease and viruses help us understand something about sin? Sin i...

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...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. “The time is coming…” the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, a young pastor. “The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” Well it shouldn’t take much convincing for us to realize that that time is now here. We already live in the time Paul described, where people will not listen to or tolerate sound teaching, but gather around them teachers that will say what their itching ears want to hear. Today Paul’s words to Timothy call us to make sure we are listening to the God-breathed Word of holy Scripture, which is vital for our spiritual health today. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. So are we really living in “those times” when people won’t listen to sound teaching,...