The Joshua Victor Theory

Sermon Notes: • Today: lesson in prayer, persistence/determination, justice, suffering, and the character of God.  • V. 1 Don’t surrender to discouragement or impatience! Have confidence to continually bring your prayers before God, knowing that He desires and invites them and has compassion. Christ is engaging with what is likely our common experience of frustration with regard to prayer: giving up prematurely. We are promised that we will face difficulty and crosses that will test our faith and persistence. Christ wants to build up our hearts, our resiliency, determination.  • “do not lose heart” Ephesians 3:13 “over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.” • “do not lose heart” 2 Cor. 4:1, 16 in the ministry, or while our “outer self is wasting away”.  • Jesus tells various people to “take heart” when they were ill, when they needed forgiveness, when they were afraid because they didn’t recognize who Jesus was, or when they were to face tribul...

Sermon Outline: ·          Season of Epiphany: season of light, from the illumination of the place of the Christ child’s birth to His blinding transfiguration on the mountaintop. Epiphanios—shining out, manifest, revealed. All point to Jesus as the Son of God in human flesh, God in man made manifest . Today’s Gospel serves the same purpose—dramatically manifest or shine out Jesus’ glory. ·          Tomorrow: president “inaugurated”—oaths and new term of office. Jesus had an “inauguration” of a very different sort: baptism—the Father announced: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased”; public ministry began. Likewise, wedding at Cana is the “inaugural miracle”. Fitting that it was also at the inauguration of a new marriage, as Jesus would frequently use marriage, and particularly the wedding banquet as a picture of the heavenly banquet of believers united to Him by faith. Jesus had now “com...