Gulf Coast Community Church - Sunday Sermons

Speaker: Dave Wilson

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2020/01/20200126.pdf

Speaker: Darryl Williamson

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

Does America’s long history of racial injustice have any bearing today? Have we shed the problems of the past and moved on to a just and free society? Even more relevant for the church is the question of whether the church is walking in full repentance for its historic complicity in racism? Might we still be participating in ways of thinking and speaking that are rooted in racism with or without knowing it?

Last week’s message laid essential groundwork to wade into the deep waters that we will explore this week. If you weren’t able to listen to that message yet, I encourage you to do so here. Last week we explored how far too often the church today is profoundly proficient at spreading the curse of Babel while being inordinately inept at spreading the blessing of Pentecost. In order to do so, we must learn how to communicate.

This week promises to force us to put this into action. The goal is that we might be a church and people who love God and neighbor more effectively than we were before. To bring mercy to those hungering and thirsting for justice and righteousness (Matt. 5:6-7).

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

The church today is very worldly. Worldliness has invaded the church. I do not mean that we dress like the world, drink like the world, or dance like the world, etc. I mean something more significant, yet far more subtle, than that.

We live in a divided world. A world which cannot communicate with their neighbors because they listen only to sound bites and respond with their own sound bites. Sound bites that are rhetorical bombs. Words that make a mess of things, rather than bring healing. It has been said that Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language. That is true today within our nation, not just across the pond. To win a debate, simply means to talk over your opponent, such that you don’t let them explain their viewpoint. No one is convinced. No one has listened.

If the church is ever going to be a city on the hill such that the world can see the glorious righteousness, justice, and peace of God manifest, we are going to have to take the lead, not follow the herd, in regard to issues of race and reconciliation. We are going to have to find a common language. In a world in which we need no longer to be present in order to say something, thanks to social media, it is a necessary reminder that we need to be present in order to communicate. Saying something and communicating are two different things.

Join us as we explore how Acts 2:1-11 calls us to undo the curse that came at Babel (Genesis 11:1-9).

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2020/01/20200105.pdf

Speaker: Peter Stonecipher

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

“Peace on earth…” the angels declared to the shepherds at the coming of the Savior in Bethlehem. In view of the last week, or the last century, some might wonder what the coming of Jesus had to do with peace.

This Sunday we celebrate the 4th Sunday of Advent with the theme peace. Oddly enough, my text this Sunday (Luke 19:41-44) describes war and destruction. However, Jesus is only predicting a destruction (which came to pass) because they did not know what would bring them peace; they did not recognize God’s divine activity among them. Do you know what will bring you peace?

The implication of Jesus’ cry as He wept over Jerusalem is that if we don’t know what will bring us peace, we will miss it. The Creator of the Universe came to visit us, to work among us as one of us, in order that we might have peace. Yet, if we don’t know what will bring us that peace, we will miss it altogether.

Join us as we explore the answer to two questions. First, why do we need peace? Second, do you know what will bring you peace? There might be some surprises in the answers the Scripture provides for these questions.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2019/12/20191222.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

Advent, that season leading up to Christmas, has not always been about the mad rush to get “ready” for Christmas—buying, wrapping, and mailing the gifts, and then planning the festivities. Advent is about waiting. Not waiting in line at stores; a different waiting. Andre Henry describes Advent as “the time for acknowledging our deep longing for the world to be made right and the joy of Christmas emerges from that season of groaning—from the fact that God has met us exactly where we are, as we are.”

If we don’t pause and reflect on the waiting, on the groaning, Christmas becomes like an answer without a question. Hence, for many, Christmas has become meaningless and the only thing left is the nostalgia. Our text, Habakkuk 1:2-4, may seem like an odd Advent text, but it poses the questions to which Christmas was the answer, but not in a trite or cliché way.

For many, Christmas is not “the most wonderful time of the year.” Why? In short because brokenness still exists. God’s answer in the form of Jesus was not a fix to our problems so that we might live our lives in “suffering free zones.” God’s answer, Jesus, didn’t set everything right in the world but demonstrated how God will set everything right, and created a people through whom that process would continue until the day when He brings it to His glorious completion!

Join us as we prepare our hearts to celebrate our King’s birth.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2019/12/20191208.pdf

Speaker: Peter Stonecipher

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

The editor of Time magazine—in a special edition that came out after 9/11—said that if you want to humble an empire, you attack its cathedrals. Apparently, the enemies of this nation assumed that wealth and its power were the gods of this nation and, therefore, the Twin Towers were its representative cathedrals.

“Who do people say that I am?” (Matt. 16:13). Imagine how one might answer that question if Jesus were walking down Wall Street. What do those people say about Jesus? Or, on a University Campus? What if that same question were asked in a small town in the Bible-belt south?

Where you are makes a difference in how you hear a question. It also may change how you understand the answer. In the centerpiece of our text, Jesus travels 25 miles to Caesarea Philippi to ask a question. How should that location affect our understanding of the answer?

Join us in worship as we explore an understanding of who Jesus is, how he operates, and what that calls us to do as His disciples from Matthew 16.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2019/11/20191124.pdf