Central BCS - Sermons

The Sermon, from 1 Corinthians 15, explores why life is hard: we live in the tension between Christ’s decisive victory over sin and death and the day when that victory will be complete. Phillip Bethancourt explains how Jesus resurrection secures believers’ faith and future, promising that Christ will ultimately defeat every enemy, including death. This hope helps Christians face hardship honestly, grieve with hope, and remain steadfast in their work for the Lord.

The Sermon explores how Christians can engage with government and election season while keeping their hope in Jesus. Phillip Bethancourt explains that government authority comes from God and is meant to promote good and restrain evil. He encourages believers to participate thoughtfully, honor their conscience, and serve their neighbors without giving politics the place that belongs to Christ. As the message reminds us, our deepest allegiance is to Jesus, and our citizenship is in heaven.

The Sermon explores Romans 5 and the assurance of salvation not through our performance, but through what Jesus has done. Phillip Bethancourt explains how suffering can lead to endurance, character, and hope, and how God’s love is shown in Christ’s death for us while we were still sinners. Through Jesus, believers are justified, saved from God’s wrath, and reconciled into God’s family, resting in a hope no suffering can shake and a love no sin can break.

The Sermon from Acts 16 shows how God uses life transitions, trauma, and trials to open hearts to the gospel. Through Lydia, the enslaved girl, and the Philippian jailer, Phillip Bethancourt calls us to pray for those far from God and faithfully share the hope of Jesus.

In this message on Acts 9, we follow Saul’s dramatic encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus and his transformation from persecutor to follower of Christ. The sermon explores how Saul’s conversion reveals the miracle of new faith: that God’s grace awakens people to spiritual life and gives them reason for unshakable hope.

The Sermon, based on John 20, teaches that Jesus’ resurrection meets us in our fears and moves us toward faith. Mary Magdalene’s anxiety, Peter’s guilt, and John’s grief give way to hope as they encounter the empty tomb and the risen Jesus. When Jesus calls Mary by name, she recognizes Him and is sent to share the news.

Jesus also meets His disciples’ fear with peace, gives them purpose by sending them out, and empowers them through the Holy Spirit. Thomas’s doubts are met with compassion, leading him to confess, “My Lord and my God.” The sermon invites listeners to trust the risen Jesus, who brings hope, peace, and new life.

In John 12, Jesus announces, "The hour has come," and the Gospel of John turns from the book of signs to the book of glory. In this message, Pastor Phillip Bethancourt unpacks one simple but challenging principle: If you want to live like Jesus lived, you need to die like Jesus died.

Using the remarkable story of 2,000-year-old Judean date palm seeds that were brought back to life, Phillip walks through three paradoxes of the cross: death is the path to glory, death is the path to life, and death is the path to significance. He then shows what it looks like to live like Jesus: living for God's glory, living out His victory through weakness, and walking in the light with urgency while we have it.

The Sermon walks through Luke 24, where two heartbroken disciples on the road to Emmaus discover that Jesus meets us in our darkest moments and shows us His deepest truth. Pastor Phillip Bethancourt shows how these disciples were consumed, crushed, and confused when life didn't go as they expected, a struggle that mirrors the mental health crisis facing our community today. Yet Jesus meets their failures with a new focus, opening the Scriptures and revealing Himself as the master key to the whole Bible, which leads to open eyes, burning hearts, and changed lives. He then meets their fears with a new foundation, showing His wounds, proving His resurrection, and sending them out as witnesses, but only after they are "clothed with power from on high." Because we can't live out God's purpose without God's power.

The Sermon contrasts two ways of being spiritually lost—the younger son’s open rebellion and the older son’s self-righteous religion—through Jesus’ parable of the two lost sons in Luke 15. Phillip Bethancourt shows that while one child runs from the Father by breaking the rules and the other by keeping them to earn favor, both are rescued by a prodigal God whose extravagant grace runs to meet repentant sinners, restores them as sons and daughters, and invites families of prodigals to wait on the “front porch” with persistent love, truth, and hope.

The Sermon calls believers to embrace their role as everyday missionaries from Luke 10, highlighting the urgency of God’s coming judgment, the sending of the 72, and the reality that the harvest is plentiful but workers are few. Listeners are challenged to pray earnestly for laborers, discover their role in God’s mission (staying, going, or joining church plants), and live with compassionate boldness toward those who are close to them but far from God.