Gulf Coast Community Church - Sunday Sermons

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

If given a choice between suffering or sinning, most people would choose sinning. Yet Christ Himself chose suffering. What did he know that we don’t? What insight did He have that we need?

This text, 1 Peter 4:1-6, is about arming yourself for a war against sin. This will involve, first, a disarming. Peter has already addressed the disarming by the time we get to these verses. Now he talks about getting rearmed! This begins with an insight that Jesus had; an insight that doesn’t come naturally.

We discover in our text, that in our battle with evil, we can sin, or we can enter the sufferings of Christ, but we can’t do both. In truth, for the believer there is only one option: to enter the sufferings of Christ and, therefore, suffering. Why would we? Why should we? What hope is there in that? Well, actually, that is just it… it is the only hope!

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/09/20210926.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

It’s ironic that Peter commented on Paul’s letters that they were hard to understand (2 Peter 3:16), when many scholars suggest that 1 Peter 3:19-20 are one of the hardest parts of scripture to understand. A bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

To be fair, it’s hard to understand because of both the cultural and 2,000 year separation between that original audience and us. Can such a seemingly strange text have anything practical to say to us? Can we see past the difficulties to hear those parts that are not difficult?

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/09/20210919.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

A few decades ago, a synagogue and a church building sat right next to each other in Greenville, SC. Over coffee, the rabbi explained to the pastor how tough it was to be a Jew in Greenville. “We are forever telling our children, ‘That’s fine for everyone else, but it’s not fine for you. You are special. You are different. You are a Jew. You have a different story. A different set of values.’”

To live as aliens and strangers in this world as Peter is calling us to in his epistle, we must increasingly find the need to say to ourselves, “Such behavior is fine for everyone else, but not fine for you. You are special. You are different. You have a different story. You have a different set of values. You are a Christian.”

Of course, merely saying it is not what is important. We must actually have a different set of values than the world. Those values must lead to a changed life, and that life will produce the kind of community that God intends for His people to be.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/09/20210912.pdf

Speaker: Peter Stonecipher

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/09/20210905.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

As noted in the last sermon, 1 Peter 3:18—3:7 is filled with landmines. There are landmines placed here by our culture. E.g. “Submit yourselves” is a landmine. There are landmines placed by Christians who have used these texts wrongly. Justifying oppressive sinful treatment of others. E.g. Husbands telling their wives to submit and be quiet when wife disagrees with them.

There are other landmines, even some placed here by the Gospel. Jesus’ means of becoming a conquering king required him to be a lamb slain. He calls us to follow Him to that same sacrificial altar, becoming living sacrifices, laying down our lives one for another. Being told we must become a lamb to the slaughter, in a world of standing up for our rights is an offense!

My task as a preacher is to disarm mines that distract us from Peter’s purpose in writing and to detonate the landmines placed by the Gospel. Then we must pray the Spirit puts us back together increasingly conformed to the image of Jesus.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/08/20210829.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

How do we live as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation, offering our lives as a spiritual sacrifice unto the Lord while experiencing injustice? How do “King’s kids” live in a world where they are thought to be slaves or second-class citizens? These questions get to the heart of what our text this week (and next) will address.

The Christians in Peter’s audience likely knew well that they were part of the new creation and lived under the kingship of Jesus Christ. “Shouldn’t we just demand our rights, or resist the structures that still exist now while we wait for the fullness of the kingdom?” Borrowing from Paul it might be asked this way, “Since in Christ Jesus, there is neither male nor female, slave nor free (Gal. 3:28), what does that say about existing social structures and how we respond to the injustices within it?”

This text ultimately speaks to any Christian who lives in a world of injustices (the one that is passing way but is still very real). Join us this Sunday for worship as we explore part one of a message from 1 Peter 2:18—3:7. It is a text filled with both cultural and religious landmines, but also one that gets to the heart of what it means to live the Gospel.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/08/20210822.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

In this Sunday’s text, Peter makes us aware of a problem. We are indeed sojourners and exiles, but our inward motivations, our desires, are far more in keeping with the culture we live in than the culture we are called to represent. There is a battle going on within us over how to live!

It raises questions like, “How do we live as the people of God, whom we are, when we don’t want to?” Peter, after reminding us who we are, begins to delineate what that means for how we live. Whether Peter or any other New Testament author, the goal of their ministry (to include their preaching style itself, their lives, and their message) was the transformation of the church by God’s Spirit into the image of God’s incarnate Son… an image that can never be separated from His going to the cross.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/08/20210815.pdf

Speaker: Vance Whitaker

Speaker: Peter Stonecipher

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2021/08/20210801.pdf

Speaker: Ryan Carver

What can God do about the brokenness of humanity, the earth, and the nations?

Do these questions hit home? Maybe your kids are asking, “Where is God?”, “Why didn’t he heal that person?”

Maybe your neighbors are asking, “If there is a God, why do the nations rage? Why is there so much evil?”

We all experience this broken world together. When we hear the groans of our friends or those we cross paths with in our city, we should listen to their complaints just like God listens to us when we cry out about the hardships in this world. But, we can also give those around us hope.

As we look at Genesis 12 this Sunday, we’ll learn some of the main threads of the biblical storyline. This text may be the most pivotal section of scripture in which the mission of God is clearly laid out, we see God’s role, and we see our role. Genesis 12 is where we really begin to see the “genesis” of the unfolding redemptive rescue mission of God. And of course, it all points us to Jesus!