Gulf Coast Community Church Podcast – St. Petersburg

Text: Hebrews 11 & 12

Themes:

The endurance of faith comes from having the proper vision of glory. Jesus endured the cross because of the joy set before Him. The people of Heb. 11 had the vision of the new Kingdom which was their hope, which empowered their faithful endurance.

Selling all to buy the field joyfully because of the treasure.

In his book, Reversed Thunder, Eugene Peterson wrote:

“While conflicts raged between good and evil, prayers went up from devout bands of first century Christians all over the Roman empire. Massive engines of persecution and scorn were ranged against them. They had neither weapons nor votes. They had little money and no prestige. Why didn’t they have mental breakdowns? Why didn’t they cut and run? They prayed.
“It was in order to hear those prayers that there was silence in heaven [Rev. 8:1-3]. He mixed the prayers of the Christians with incense (which cleansed them from impurities) and combined them with fire (God’s Spirit) from the altar. Then he put it all in the censor and threw it over heaven’s ramparts. The censor, plummeting through the air, landed on earth. On impact there were ‘peals of thunder, voices, flashes of lighting, and an earthquake’ (Rev. 8:5). The prayers which had ascended, unremarked by the journalists of the day, returned with immense force—in George’s Herbert’s phrase, as ‘reversed thunder.’ Prayer reenters history with incalculable effects. Our earth is shaken daily by it.”

Oh that we would see clearly the power unleashed through prayer in the world. May we become a praying church crying out, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Join us as we continue our series: A Royal Priesthood – A Holy People: Becoming a Praying Church.

If what we have considered in our series Gospel Clarity is true (and, of course, I think it is), then it affects everything. Since everything the church does should grow out of the Gospel, then even slight adjustments to our understanding of the Gospel will affect everything from our mission to how we achieve it. How much more significant adjustments.

We begin a new series this week. It grows out of the previous one. In fact, it will be a large series that will encompass a number of smaller series. The large series is “A Royal Priesthood – A Holy People.” The first miniseries within it is: “Becoming a Praying Church.”

Just wait until you see how greater Gospel clarity transforms the meaning and motivation of prayer. We will begin this series on Becoming a Praying Church in the parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8).

Join us in worship as we see the vital connection between the Gospel, our mission, and prayer.

Text: CSB Version. Hebrews 11:1-12:3 (also 10:35-39 as an intro)

It’s not hard to find Christians today who might bemoan the fact that the church has lost a significant amount of its influence in culture today. We no longer have prayer in schools, people have to work on Sundays, and we no longer get to define marriage by Biblical standards. I cannot deny that there were benefits to such cultural dominance that is now long gone.

What if I were to suggest to you, however, that this may be the best thing that has happened to the church. I know, many might screw up their faces looking at me in response, but there is actually a wonderful benefit to all of the above for the church. [If you have a hard time conceiving of that being the case, I need only remind you that the church often flourishes in times of persecution. If that can be true of persecution, certainly it can be true of a mere loss of cultural power.]

You might wonder what any of this has to do with Gospel clarity. As we finish our series: Gospel Clarity: What is the Gospel? Why do we need it?, we are going to look at what might be Paul’s clearest Gospel summary (Rom. 1:1-7). Understanding the Gospel with clarity may help us understand why the church may well be in a great place for Gospel advance.

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.