Gulf Coast Community Church Podcast – St. Petersburg

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.

Text: Acts 26:16-23

Revelation is a bloody book, to be sure. In fact, we are told in 14:19-20 that in the process of harvesting the earth, the blood flow will rise so high that it will spread the distance of 1,600 stadia (it doesn’t really matter what a stadia is… primarily that it is 1,600 of them), and up to the level of a horse’s bridle! That’s a lot of blood!

Is this a declaration that the Lamb slain is now slaying a bunch of others in order to harvest the earth? Has he finally become the Lion we really wanted after all and given up on this silly lamb-like behavior? How are we to read this harvest of the earth and all this blood?

This Sunday we will slow down a little in our series, our text overlapping with last week’s text, and explore other themes that have to do with how the Lamb intends to harvest the earth and our own role in it. We will learn,

“Revelation’s visions of judgment do not ultimately conflict with the central and centering vision of God and the Lamb in chapters 4 and 5.” (Michael J. Gorman. Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation. 185)

Join us in worship as we explore afresh Revelation 13:9—14:20.

In 1937, referring to the increasing tensions in Europe with Germany, Winston Churchill used near biblical language when he said, “Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.”

In our study of Revelation, this Sunday we arrive at the account of the Beasts out of the Sea and the Land. Who are these beasts? What is this meaning of 666? How do we the church do battle in the ways of the Lamb rather than succumbing to the ways of the Beasts?

The beasts of imperial worship in John’s day have morphed into new disguises today, but that is exactly what Babylon has done throughout history. It is important that we, the church, don’t get distracted by trying to figure out who the beast is, or when he will arrive, all the while he is present among us and we may well be bowing in worship without even thinking about it.

Join us in worship as we explore the two beasts of Revelation and our call to patient endurance and faithfulness.

Lampstands, fire-breathing witnesses, a pregnant cosmic woman, and a water-spewing dragon. It’s no wonder Revelation isn’t the easiest book to understand. Yet, since it is God’s Word, we have to persist in it because it reveals something about how God is at work in the world that, though consistent with what is revealed elsewhere, presents its own unique facet.

Revelation takes off the sheet from the masterpiece of history, and shows us what is really going on. That Jesus Christ as the center of history and the transformer of history. The Lamb slain and risen, murdered yet alive, reveals not only the truth about God but constitutes the truth about all of humanity and creation. Jesus is not one of many ways to God; He is the center of history and the sum of its meaning.

In a world which is in idolatrous pursuit of freedom, personal kingdoms, and (most importantly) self-realization, Revelation calls us to come out from among them. We must witness in word and by our lives that Jesus is the only true King of the world, the promised good king for all.

Join us in worship as we continue our study of Revelation in chapters 11-12.

“Are you pre-trib(ulation), mid-trib, or post-trib?” or, more generously, “Are you premillennial, amillenial, or postmillennial?” The 1st question more or less assumes an answer to the 2nd. The latter question focuses on only one chapter in Revelation (20) and doesn’t say much of anything about how one reads the rest. They are largely unhelpful questions.

A more helpful approach might be to ask, as we would about any other book of the Bible, what its purpose is. Why it was written to the churches of Asia minor? What would it have meant to them? I find that when I approach the book with this in mind, I find a lot less to argue about and a lot more to agree on. It doesn’t solve everything but it’s a step.

This Sunday we begin with a half hour of silence (no we aren’t leaving out the singing… I’m talking about the half hour of silence in the text), work through one of the noisiest sections in the Bible with trumpets blaring, and will think about one seriously massive angel and his tiny little book-snack.

Join us in worship as we explore Revelation 8—10 paying attention to the silence, the sound, and the sweet-n-sour scroll.