Gulf Coast Community Church Podcast – St. Petersburg

Most sharks have to move to breath and therefore cannot stop moving forward. This is how they force water through their gills so they can get the oxygen they need. Humans are much the same way when it comes to glory. We were created to bear glory, God’s glory.

In our rebellion against God, we’ve substituted our own glory, a weak substitute that is actually killing us slowly (like carbon monoxide seeping into a home). But we know we must keep moving toward glory. We need to be redirected to true glory. That is what the Gospel is all about, for the human problem is that because of sin, we lack the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).

This week in our series, Gospel Clarity: What is the Gospel? Why do we need it? we will learn why the Gospel is all about glory. In fact, why Paul even calls it “the Gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.” Indeed it’s not just about the glory of Christ (kept only for Him), but about how Christ’s glory increases as He shares it with us.

Join us in worshiping our risen and reigning King.

“Our passion is to know that we are fulfilling the purpose for which we are here on earth.” — Os Guinness

Deep down, I believe Guinness is right and the Gospel calls us to that very purpose and equips us so we are able to fulfill it. (All good Evangelicals will say, “Amen!” here. But if pressed to explain how, we may well be stuck.)

Last week we began a series, Gospel Clarity: What is the Gospel? Why do we Need It? If we have a truncated Gospel we will likely not understand how it calls us to “the purpose for which we are here on earth” or equips us to fulfill it. Sadly, for many Christians, the Gospel is about the next life and has little or nothing to do with this life. If that is true of our Gospel, then it is, at best, a truncated Gospel, or Gospel-lite with half the spiritual calories.

We began this series in Isaiah 52:7 exploring what the Gospel is and why that matters. We will pick up this week in what may be Paul’s earliest letter, 1 Thessalonians, and explore the Gospel that calls us “to walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory” (1 Thess. 2:12). Does your Gospel call you to walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory? If not, it should. If so, how so?

Join us in worship as we explore Gospel Clarity.

The message of the Gospel is the most important message in all the world. Yet for most of us, if someone asks us, “What is the Gospel?” we have to pause, minimally, and often struggle to articulate it. When we finally do articulate it, we wonder if we got it right. Or worse, we think we have it right but wonder what relevance it has to the person we told.

Have you ever read the sermons in the book of Acts and noticed how different the emphasis of those sermons seems compared to what might be emphasized in a Gospel sermon today? I have. Early in my preaching ministry it bothered me. It bothered me enough to really think about it.

We’ve all heard that “gospel” means good news, but is it any good news? Is allgood news the Gospel? Certainly not. For that matter, does gospel actually mean good news? I.e. Is etymology (the study of how a word was formed) meaning?

This Sunday we begin a new series, Gospel Clarity: What is the Gospel and Why Do We Need It? We will begin this study looking at Isaiah 52:7, one of the most gospel saturated verses in the Bible.

The book of Revelation describes beasts, dragons, plagues, wrath, persecutions, and rewards. It is filled with visual stimuli such as blood, fire and even meteors as well as threats and promises. It finally comes to a glorious, surprising, and transforming end.

Revelation 21-22 is not only about the future, it has a lot to do with the present, a present which is anchored in a sure future. The visions of John call us out of the earthly city, Babylon, the capitol city of the Beast, and call us to the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, the capital city of the Lamb.

As believers we are called to live as citizens of the New Jerusalem now. We may live here, but we are to live here as if we are from there.

Join us in worship as we finish our series in Revelation, seeking to understand the what and when of the New Jerusalem, and how John’s vision calls us to live today.

Are you premillennial, postmillennial, or amillennial? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve gotten into chapter 19 of the book of Revelation and haven’t answered that question. Why? Because it is largely irrelevant in determining how we read the rest of the book. A whole lot of ink has been spilled on something that doesn’t really come into play until chapter 20.

That said, we will have arrived at Revelation 20 tomorrow morning, and it will be necessary to explain the chapter. For that matter to explain what those terms in the first line of the email even mean. We will do this by exploring the text itself and the rest of the NT.

We have 2 more messages, including this one, in our series in Revelation. And they surprisingly have more to do with “today” than you might suspect for texts about the millennium and the new heaven and the new earth.

Join us in worship as we continue our exploration in Revelation.

For quite some time, we have been hit with a barrage of unsettling news reports of the uncertainties with Israel, Gaza, Hamas and various warring factions.  The interpretation of these events seem to abound including numerous conversations surrounding Jesus’ second coming.

In looking for more complete understanding of these troubling events, we can seem to get fixated on the signs of His return and also on when His return will occur.

Yet if we look at the teaching of Jesus in his end times teaching in Matthew 24 and 25, we see that Jesus focused His disciples on HOW to wait for his return rather than answering their question of when he will return.

There is much to be gained here. Join us in worship as we explore what He told his disciples about how to wait in the parable of the bags of gold.

Transitions and trials are some of the hardest times of life. How do we, as followers of Jesus, have hopeful endurance through such seemingly relentless difficulties and unknowns? By pursuing patience.

Patience, which is a fruit of the Spirit, is something that is formed in us by God as He molds and shapes us to become more like Jesus. When we express patience, rooted in the love of God, we show off God for the world to see.

Join us in worship as we look at Romans 8:18-39.

Imagine you were in Bethlehem at the time of Christ’s birth. Maybe you were one of Joseph’s relatives that had also traveled to Bethlehem, or maybe one of the small number of residents. What did Christ’s coming impact you? In an immediate sense, it disturbed you.

Whether you were ignorant of the events, a relative of Joseph and Mary’s, or Joseph or Mary, your life was upended. It is true that Jesus is the hope of the world, but that hope came more like a pregnancy than a beautiful baby set in a basket on one’s doorstep. Like pregnancy, it was fraught with difficulty and would bring pain before it brought great joy! (For those new parents, I realize that all is not paradise once the baby is born!)

When God reveals Himself, it disrupts our lives and the coming of Jesus is God revealing Himself more clearly than at any other time. The coming of Jesus disturbs everyone in the birth narrative of Matthew.

Join us in worship as we celebrate the coming of Christ.

The book of Proverbs personifies wisdom as a noble woman and folly as a seductive woman (Prov. 9, 31). The book of Revelation is also about two women: a harlot and a bride. One represents the human city in all it’s luxurious grandeur (despite most its residents living in a box the size of a closet). The other, a bride who represents the New Jerusalem which is 1,400 miles square… plenty of room for everyone! One rides the beast that comes up from the earth. The other comes down out of heaven from God. Living in one appears to be wise but is foolish. Living in the other appears to be foolish but is wise.

We often think that these cities live in chronological sequence: the earthly city and then the heavenly city. So that the call to come out of the earthly city is a call to isolate and wait. But Scripture doesn’t present it that way. Rather the citizens of each city bump shoulders on the streets of Ephesus, Smyrna, and Laodicea, as well as Tampa Bay and London. How we live reveals whether we live in the New Jerusalem or Babylon.

Revelation 17-19 are not a message about how things will be one day when the stars (or current events) align, but are a call to those in the church today; a call to come out of one city and live in another.

Join us in worship as we continue our series in Revelation.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz concludes his TED talk on the paradox of choice with the image of a fish in a fishbowl, and he asks: How free is that fish? Yes, of course the fish is confined, but shattering the fishbowl, removing all constraints, would not improve the fish’s situation. In fact, it would destroy him.

The world and the rulers of this age rage against God and His righteous ways. The consequences are devastating. That little fish was not made to live in a fishbowl, but it was made to live in water. We are all made to live, to flourish within certain confines. And a key confine relates to worship. There is only one God who made all things so to worship and follow any other leads to destruction.

This week we look at the final series of 7 “disasters” (the seven bowls of wrath) which come upon those who refuse to repent of their idolatry. Honestly this section raises a lot of questions for most which we will explore.

Join us in worship as we explore Revelation 15-16.