The Joshua Victor Theory

  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Today’s Gospel, Mark 10, follows from last week where Jesus met the rich young man, who wouldn’t part with his great possessions to come follow Jesus. Jesus sadly reflects on that situation and contrasts His own “uncommon thinking” with our common ways of thinking. With all the details to comment on here, I’m going to walk through this passage verse by verse, so you may want to have Mark 10:23-31 available in front of you. 23Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24And the disciples were amazed at his words. The disciples show continued astonishment at Jesus’ words. Like they’re saying, “Jesus, you’re too much! We just can’t believe all the things you say!” Isn’t that how we often react to Jesus’ words? Like an old satirical song says, we just want some “Easy Listening.” Or like Paul wrote to Timothy, we want easy, so...

    Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Today in Mark 10, a rich young man asks Jesus how he can enter eternal life. He focuses on what must I do and Jesus answers with obedience to the 10 Commandments. The rich young man confidently examines his life, and finds obedience everywhere he looks, and asks, “ what more?” Jesus then gives the most decisive call to obedience. Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it “ single-minded obedience.” That is, no questioning, no if’s, and’s, or but’s, nothing standing in your way—just give up everything, obey this one command: “ Come, follow me.” For all the details and nuances here, the bottom line was that the rich young man, thought he was an obedient follower of God’s commands, but proved he did not have single-minded obedience. He could not obey the simple command: “ Come, follow me.” His wealth. He couldn’t obey Jesus’ command to part with his wealth, give it to the poor, an...

·          Jesus the greatest teacher and master storyteller ·          Stories convey deep spiritual truth; designed to get our attention ·          Unique among His stories, character of Lazarus has a name; significant to meaning of the story: “The one whom God helps” ·          Looking at his life—the rich man feasts lavishly, and living in luxury, while poor Lazarus suffers quietly in misery, licked by dogs outside his gate, until he dies—you might think it a cruel joke that his name means “the one whom God helps.” Ironic? Doesn’t his suffering show evidence that God had abandoned him? ·          Natural way of thinking: life is prosperous and well; God must be showing favor—but if life is filled with suffering and evil things, that God must be showing secret displeasure ...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Welcome again to our Children’s Sunday, and I want to thank our children for their beautiful singing, and for your support and encouragement for them today. Today I want to talk to you about Important News. Several questions to think about: What is important to me? Am I listening to important news? How would I recognize important news? What do you do with important news once you’ve heard it? As we consider some of these questions, we’ll be looking at the story Jesus told about the rich man and Lazarus. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. So what is important to you? God? Your children? Your family? Your possessions? Your life? The things that are most important to us are the things that we give our greatest time, attention, and effort to. They’re the things that we want to protect and keep safe, or the things that give us protection and security. So ...