John Mark Hicks

Paul’s “new covenant” ministry is life-giving, hopeful, and glorious. This contrasts with the glory of Moses’ “old covenant” ministry which was hidden to Israel in the wilderness but is fully revealed in Christ. The movement from “old covenant” to “new covenant” is not so much an abolition of the “old covenant,” or a sense that […]

This is the link to my recent lesson on Romans 5:1-5 at Lipscomb University’s “Summer Celebration.” What does it mean to boast in our sufferings, and what does suffering produce in our lives? Suffering has meaning; suffering has purpose…because we know suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Without peace, afflictions […]

[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, […]

This salvation, for which we bless God, in which we rejoice, and which fills prophets and angels with wonder (1 Peter 1:3-12), is the foundation and ground for everything else Peter writes in 1 Peter 1:13-2:10. “Therefore” (1 Peter 1:13) introduces the first section of the letter’s main body and roots it in God’s saving […]

The prophet Joel, whose name means “Yahweh is God,” taught Judah to lament and hope. His message announces the coming “day of the Lord,” which entails both judgment–for the impenitent among God’s people and among the nations–and the renewal of God’s vision for the reign of God in the world. Lament and hope. No one […]

Last week Lipscomb grieved through a student’s death on campus. The University responded wonderfully and in every way. I was asked to speak in chapel last Tuesday. Here is the link if you wish to hear it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMc39Go6d7Q

The above title is the first line in the refrain of Andrew Peterson’s “Come Back Soon.” On Sunday my old and dear friend Dean Barham, in his morning sermon at Woodmont Hills, alerted me to Peterson’s music and particularly this line. It has stuck with me for a few days now. Yesterday I read Keith Brenton’s funeral […]

The twentieth century is too familiar with valleys of dry bones. The images of stacked bodies from Nazi concentration camps, churches filled with the bones of those who sought sanctuary in Rwanda, or the killing fields of Cambodia. Unfortunately, with the help of media and the horrific inhumanity of recent times, we can all too […]

Haggai’s third oracle, like the previous two, is precisely dated. The first oracle was delivered on a new moon festival and the second was delivered during the Feast of Tabernacles. This third oracle, however, has no clear canonical link to a Jewish festival. Nevertheless, the day is significant. The oracle is delivered on December 20, […]

Part III, the shortest, is humanity’s response to God’s redemptive act and is focused on the hope of resurrection which leads to a final praise of the Lamb. Handel ends his Messiah with the praise of the reigning King, a slain Lamb. Handel weaves together texts from Job, 1 Corinthians and Revelation. He uses the […]