Gulf Coast Community Church - Sunday Sermons

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

According to Bible dictionaries, Jerusalem either means “foundation of peace,” “city of peace.” The root of the name is shalem (in English we drop the “h”), which is related to shalom, the Hebrew word that means peace. It’s not missed on the Biblical authors that there is a certain irony here, for the psalmist instructs, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psa. 122:6).

This week’s Advent theme peace. Isaiah had a vision of a world transforming peace. That vision may be the unifying theme of his long book. Isaiah longed for the Kingdom, the Reign of God to come. That is what would produce this world transforming peace.

The world today needs that world transforming peace and therefore needs the kingdom to come. But it has… and it will. The church, the transformed “city of peace,” is to put it on display. As much as ever, though, we need to pray for the peace of that “city of peace.” How is Isaiah’s vision of peace to come about? Do we have a role to play?

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/12/20211205.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

One headline reporting on the collapse of the condo tower in Miami on June 24 of this year reads, “Security footage from inside Florida condo captures moments just before collapse as debris rains and building groans.” Describing the moment when the video ends, it reads, “a deep groaning emits from the building just before it crumbles to the ground 12 stories below.”

What was your response when you heard about it? Didn’t you groan? I did. And I do every time I watch the evening news. The other night, Donna let out an audible groan upon hearing about the abuse of a 2-year-old within hours of being reunited with his mother. I had done the same thing when I heard the news earlier that day.

Groaning is something all people and all of creation have in common because suffering is something we have in common. What are the things that cause you to groan? Maybe the loss of a child or a parent? Maybe the brokenness of the world? Could it be your marriage or lack thereof? Or your children rejecting the good you so long for them to have? Or your parents? Maybe a lost job, or a cruel boss? Or lost peace or security or a sense of safety? Is it “never having enough” to get to the next paycheck?

Handout: http://gccc.net/2021/11/20211128.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

Why preach a sermon on closing remarks in a New Testament letter? Maybe because the conclusion to the letter has exactly the content Peter (in this case) might want us as readers to hear in order to walk faithfully in the grace to which he has called us.

Faithfulness to God might be a way to summarize everything in Peter’s first epistle. Faithfulness can only be cultivated in an affectionate family atmosphere in which it is highly valued. Faithfulness must be demonstrated in the context of opposition without forsaking the upside-down ways of God’s kingdom. In other words, it must be demonstrated in Babylon, with the ways of the kingdom of heaven.

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

Like many parents, Donna and I have worked to teach our children and now our grandchildren the importance of brushing their teeth by explaining how these invisible little creatures called sugar-bugs eat holes in their teeth. Of course, Dad, or now Papa, can spot them and chase them with the toothbrush until every last one is gone! They may not want their teeth brushed, but they can’t sleep if they think there are still some of these creatures in their mouth.

I don’t really see them, of course, but that doesn’t make their reality any less true, nor does it erase the fact that there is an invisible war going on in their mouth as to who will rule over those teeth! Peter uses the image of a lion to help us comprehend the nature of an invisible war that is warring over who is going to have dominion in the life of the church. Will it be Jesus Messiah-king or the devil, the destroyer who wreaks havoc on earth?

This war is very real and destructive. This enemy is very real but invisible. It is even more vital that we pay attention to this enemy and his schemes than our dental health (which is very important)!

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/11/20211107.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

We live in a culture that is great at wedding planning, but terrible at marriage. That may provide an analogy for how we do church. We can market and plan a service down to the minute in such a way it guarantees to gather people but are terrible at doing life together as the family God intends.

God has made us into a people, but we do not naturally live as people of the Messiah in the Messiah’s ways. Whether leaders or followers (even those terms bring baggage with them), our tendency is to either abuse leadership positions or abuse leaders because both leaders and followers have a common pitfall: pride. God opposes the proud; no wonder church is such a mess.

Douglas Harink captures well the essence of this Sunday’s text (1 Peter 5:1-7) through these questions: “Does the common life and order of the messianic community correspond to and reflect the cruciform life and order of the Messiah? Or do its internal affairs more nearly mirror the envy, competition, and coercion of the wider Gentile society?”

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/10/20211031.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

“Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy cows, and cows make milk, and milk makes ice cream, and ice cream makes you happy.” So reads a dishtowel I bought on vacation this past summer. It is rooted in the cliché that “money can’t buy you happiness.” But who said?

We aren’t supposed to question that (and certainly not a preacher); it is an unquestionable assumption: “Money can’t make you happy.” But there are plenty of rich people who would argue otherwise, and plenty of poor people who would like to give it a try.

The other side of the coin of that assumption is: “Jesus makes you happy.” Though rarely spoken, this is also an unquestionable assumption among many Christians. In their evangelism, some suggest that people are unhappy because they have a need which only Jesus can fill.

It’s no wonder then that many are disillusioned when, in their long walk of faith, they often experience unhappiness. We all swim in the waters of “Jesus makes you happy” to one degree or another, and for this reason 1 Peter 4:12-19 may seem foreign to us.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/10/20211024.pdf

Speaker: Peter Stonecipher

Speaker: Rob Mastry

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

In his book Your Church is Too Safe, Mark Buchanan points out the difference between travelers and tourists. The root of the word travel is travail. It references the toil and labor, the difficulty, of being on a long journey. Tourists, on the other hand, are there for pleasure. The root of the word tourist is turn. Tourists don’t sojourn in a land not their own, they visit for enjoyment and turn around and go to the next stop or just go home.

Peter has identified the saints in Asia minor as sojourners and exiles (2:11), travelers who stay for a while in the foreign land but never become assimilated into it. In a world where people have a natural fear of strangers, we are called to remain strangers to this world. This must, of course, always inform how we treat the literal stranger or resident alien.

There is a danger for the audience. The instructions which began in 2:11 addressing us as strangers and aliens, and end in 4:11 with “Amen” are given to a people who once “were not a people” but now are “the people of God” (2:10). How do a people who have spent their lives not being a people, live as the people of God – sojourners and pilgrims – without falling into their old patterns of doing life as “not a people”?

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/10/20211003.pdf