The Joshua Victor Theory

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. 1 Peter 2 beautifully pictures our growth and sanctification in the Christian faith, and teaches what the Christian church is. We aren’t lone individuals, but members of the spiritual house of Christ.  Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation--if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.  Peter calls us back to the basics.  Infants crave pure milk because it is their life, their growth, and even the sharing of their mother’s immunity. The pure milk we crave is God’s Word. As a new Christian learns the words of faith, they start to explore what it means to trust in Jesus and follow Him. But even mature Christians still depend completely on God for salvation. Jesus used infancy as a picture of our complete dependency on God.  Jesus’ disciples frequently became competitive in an unhealthy way, glory-seeking, exalting ...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Last week’s sermon highlighted the personal love and individual care that we have in Jesus, our Good Shepherd; in whom I lack nothing. This Biblical reality is very comforting for us as Christians, but it is also very easy for us to hear, because it fits well with American individualism. But if we limit ourselves to a personal, individual description of the faith, we put blinders on ourselves to the vast importance and beautiful descriptions of our corporate life together as Christians. Perhaps harder for us to hear is that God intended us for community and interdependence. The Christian is part of something much greater than themselves, and greater than their individual relationship with God; we are the body of Christ. Or as Peter describes it in our reading today—a spiritual house, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, etc. All are plural descriptions of the church, not singular. How does this instruct us to live out ou...

Sermon Outline:  1.       Monuments of time and history: Great Wall, Pyramids, or Brooklyn Bridge. Took a lot of “blood, sweat, and tears” to build them. Mammoth designs and dangers in construction often meant the injury or death of the workers. Impressive; standing many hundreds or even thousands of years, but time and weather endlessly wear away at them and age them. With ongoing maintenance the effects of time might be stalled—but eventually, even the great monuments of time will succumb to rubble and dust. 2.       Another structure: far surpassing all others in glory—the Christian Church. Built for the glory of God, not the glory of man. Stretching through time and to eternity—a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to build. Not talking about bricks, mortar, stone, and wood. Not about church buildings. That’s not the “Church” I’m talking about. Living structure, living stones, members of the body of Christ. Jesus’ blood, sweat ...