John Mark Hicks

This lesson was delivered at the Bammel Church of Christ in Houston, Texas, on November 20, 2022. The lesson begins at minute 51 through minute 77 (1:17). The lesson follows the reading of Psalm 66

[Listen or watch the sermon on Isaiah 9 here.] Isaiah spoke into a world analogous to our own, one soaked in darkness. When  night descended upon Judah, people saw only “distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish” (Isaiah 8:22). Uncertain of where to turn, people sought guidance in all the wrong places, including false gods, […]

Mount Sinai must have been an impressive, even startling, sight. Enveloped in darkness with flashes of lightning, Israel heard the thunder and even, on one occasion, the voice of God. They felt the rumblings of God’s presence in tremors that rippled through the earth’s crust. This was Yahweh’s holy mountain. Yahweh descended upon it, and […]

That was no place for a child. In the darkest days of Jerusalem’s despair, God told Jeremiah to neither marry nor have children (Jeremiah 16:2). That world—the world of Jerusalem’s destruction—is no place for children. All that would await them was pain, horror, gloom, dislocation, and destruction. Even now it may sometimes seem that the […]

Now that I have finished reading papers, grading exams and posting grades, I hope to have some leisure time to complete my series on Salvation and begin blogging about other topics that interest me.  However, given that this Christmas week, I want to call attention to a series of sermons that I regard as outstanding […]