The Joshua Victor Theory

Sermon outline:  ·          Re-read: “ 28Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Beloved passage ·          Burdens and yokes. Farming, oxen. Trading Yokes with Jesus. Heavy for light ·          Our yokes and burdens: 1) the yoke of sin and guilt. 2) “wearisome changes”—the yoke of worries and cares in the world, 3) the yoke of labor ·          All my burdens. All my anxieties. Sin and guilt—heaviest and perhaps least understood. Invisible, but we feel its weight. Feel the dread of guilt, judgment, fear of hell. Denial doesn’t get rid of it. Anger can’t lift it. Passing the blame doesn’t lessen the weight. Doesn’t stop us...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. What do 6 th century Benedictine monks, the 19 th century inventor Cyrus McCormick, and the Apostle Paul, have in common? They were each driven to be productive and hard-working, by what is often called the Christian or Biblical “work ethic.” The Benedictine monks believed Paul’s admonition that “ if anyone would not work, neither should he eat” and that “idleness is the enemy of the soul.” So they were hard-working and diligent, and applied their God-given reason and creativity to invent technology that would make their work more productive and efficient. Similarly, Cyrus McCormick was saddened by the drudgery and purposelessness of seeing slaves harvesting grain by a sickle. He held strong beliefs that God had given dignity to mankind, and that work should be purposeful, and so he invented a mechanical harvester that revolutionized farming. These and many other Christians throughout history were positivel...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today we hear the well-known miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. Today we are also installing a new principal and teacher, and rededicating our staff for the upcoming school year. It’s interesting to see in the story the pattern or cycle of teaching, followed by hunger and tiredness, and how that turns into more teaching, healings by Jesus, more hunger, and finally a meal. A miraculous meal, which provides yet another teaching lesson. I’m sure we won’t have to stretch for teachers to relate to teaching, hunger, and fatigue, both on their part, and on that of their students. Often hunger competes with learning. It also reminds me of the fact that there are all types of learners. In the early verses of Mark 6, we heard the last two weeks, about those who resisted and defied Jesus’ and John’s teaching of God’s Word. Today we have crowds racing ahead of Jesus just to get more teaching, and experience more of H...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Our text today is the reading from Isaiah 40. It’s scarcely possible for us to contemplate the vastness of the universe and the majesty of God’s glory that it displays. The incredible window seat God gave our earth to view the depths of the universe through telescopes and space exploration has stunned countless humans with the realization that those tiny twinkles of light that pepper the nighttime sky are all giant, burning stars like our sun—and often many times greater in size. And yet they are at such great distances from our own solar system, that it staggers the human imagination. Perhaps if it does not fill us with pride, we might say that because we have those glimpses of the grandeur of the universe, we can even better appreciate Isaiah’s words: “It is [God] who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them li...