Sermons from December 2023
The Fullness of Time
Scriptures: Luke 2:25-32; Galatians 4:4-7 Sunday, December 31, 2023 at The First Congregational Church of Marshalltown, Iowa As recorded in Luke 2, Joseph and Mary came to the temple in Jerusalem, and two people met them. One was Anna, a prophetess who lived near the Temple. The other was Simeon, a godly man who learned from the Holy Spirit that he would see the Messiah before he died. He recognized that the time had come, and that this baby was…
God of the Backwater
God of the Backwater Sunday, December 24, 2023 at The First Congregational Church of Marshalltown, Iowa Isaiah 9:2 The people who walked in darkness Have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, Upon them a light has shined. Our Story Begins in Backwater The regions mentioned in this passage were far away from Jerusalem, the center of cultural and religious life in Israel. Their history was rough; foreign invaders oppressed them on…
The Beginning of the Gospel
Mark 1:1-8; (Isaiah 40:1-11) Sunday, December 10, 2023 at The First Congregational Church of Marshalltown, Iowa Mark is the Gospel that “gets right to the point.” Believed to be heavily influenced by the preaching of Peter, Mark spends no time on the birth of Jesus and gets to action right away. The words “baptize” or “baptism” show up more than once in the passage, so baptism, for Peter, is right at the beginning of the Gospel, the story of redemption…
The Mind of Christ
The Mind of Christ Sunday, December 3, 2023 at The First Congregational Church of Marshalltown, Iowa Philippians 2:5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,.. I read recently that the ancients believed that a person could get the “mind of God,” that they learn, or somehow gain, the ability to think like God, to look at life from God’s perspective, which, according to the Old Testament, is very different from the way we view the…