The Joshua Victor Theory

  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...

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed, Alleluia ! Amen. The beloved old Lenten hymn, “Go to Dark Gethsemane” shifts from the darkness of the crucifixion of Jesus, to His Easter resurrection in the final verse: “ Early hasten to the tomb where they lay His breathless clay; all is solitude and gloom. Who has taken Him away? Christ is ris’n! He meets our eyes. Savior teach us so to rise.” That poetic phrase, “ His breathless clay” refers to the dead, lifeless body of Jesus, buried in the tomb. But it also reminds us of God creating Adam from the “breathless clay” of the earth, when God created the body of Adam from the dust of the earth, and then breathed into Adam the “breath” or spirit of life (Genesis 2:7). Adam, the valley of dry bones, and Jesus’ resurrection all in turn show who is the God of the Living. Who has power to make breathless clay breathe life again. Death could not hold Jesus any more. The breath or spirit of life returned to Him, and He rose, never to die again! Ezek...

A sermon from  Rev. Dr. James I. Lamb, Executive Director of Lutherans For Life On his death bed, an elderly pastor dictated a letter to his last remaining seminary classmate. He told his wife to write, “I am soon to leave the land of the living and will be with the dying.” But after a pause he said, “No, no! Change that. I am soon to leave the land of the dying and will be with the living.” As this pastor understood, we all in one sense live with dying. We all live in a dying, sin-broken world and in dying, sin-broken bodies. Sin pays its wages of death. Unless the Lord returns, we will all receive those wages. No matter how robust we might be right now, no matter what advances might be made in medical science, death awaits us all. We all live with dying. But we live with dying in other ways too. We live with dying if we have an illness that cannot be cured and will eventually take our life. We live with dying when we care for someone with such an illness. We live wit...