Sermons- Trinity Bible Fellowship Davenport

A Christmas sermon by Dan Shumway

Introductions are in order; Have you met Jesus?

Mike Bell addresses the question, "Why did Jesus come as a baby?"

John the Baptist literally appeared in the wilderness, crying out, “Make ready the way of the Lord,” but we should all be making it easier for people to come to Christ.

The servant does the job hes been given thats all In the Church it is God who gets the glory

Jesus commanded us to go and make disciples How do we do that

For some reason many Christians seem to prefer not to grow up That is foolish lazy and unnatural We need to move beyond petty things and on to maturity

God reveals to us what we could never figure out for ourselves And what He reveals is truly wonderful

It is tempting when a listener is not satisfied with the Bible to want to add to it It is important to recognize that God has spoken and His power is in His words

Some of us really are wiser than others some have made fewer or smaller mistakes Some have committed more offensive sins It makes no difference The ground is level at the foot of the cross and we all are saved on the same basis and there is no place for pride

Men flatter themselves by means of their intelligence and reason but that is a mistake The power to save us is revealed not by reason but by the God who saves us

As mentioned last Sunday Corinth was a messed up church But it was still the Church Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that we are works in progress

One of the rules of preaching is You have to go through Corinth to get to fill in the blank The blank is where you live The rule means we first have to understand what the message meant to its first audience before we can understand what it means to us The thing is as we look at Corinth we may find we are already there

We will celebrate Gods love as shown by His gift to us

We all know what Christmas is and we all know why we celebrate it But what does that have to do with the way we celebrate Christmas and why do we do the things we do

Baptism has somehow become a controversial thing within Christianity and has been loaded with a lot of baggage Originally it was an initiation rite Some tie it to salvation What we read in Matthew 28 links it more to discipleship than salvation This message will consider these things looking at what baptism is how it should be done and why we do it

This will be preaching to the choir as I speak to people at church about going to church But this will consider the questions what is the Church What is the difference between Church and church Why do we do church the way we do How do we keep our heart in church Maybe more there is a lot to what we do in church for church and as a church This message will state some of the obvious and maybe some that is not so obvious

November 3 is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church We will consider this passage watch a video about the persecuted Church and spend some time in prayer

What is Communion Why do we do it the way we do Why do we do it at all These are the questions we look at this week

By guest speaker Randy Anderson