Gulf Coast Community Church - Sunday Sermons

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

We were created for belonging. We were created to belong in a family, a people, a tribe. But the fallenness of this fallen world tends toward isolation, fragmentation, and shattered relationships. So we all find ways to cope with belonging. If we are doing the inviting, we comb the list to make sure we invite the people that will make others want to come to our party. If we are invited, we evaluate whether going to this event will better our status before those we think matter. This is the stock-in-trade of social maneuvering in the world. But how do we deal with not being invited? With rejection?

The HuffPost published an article on how to deal with not being invited to an event that most of your friends are going to. After describing how not being invited can sometimes hurt and walking through the ways one typically will console themselves (excuses for why), it offers 5 steps to take if your hurt is still unresolved. It’s a good thing the Canaanite woman in our text had not read this article, or the outcome may have been very different.

Matthew 15 is about belonging: Who belongs and who doesn’t. Therefore it is centered around meals (bread), since being welcome to a table to eat in the world of Jesus and his disciples was about belonging: inclusion and exclusion.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2019/11/20191117.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

You arrive home after work one day, grab the mail on the way in and throw it on the counter. Pop the dinner which you picked up on the way home into the microwave and begin sorting through the mail. An invitation printed on very nice stationary stands out. A banquet at the Vinoy; from a powerful politician. Private, invitation-only, celebrating this politician’s birthday, lavish entertainment.

After a few advertisements is something from the church. An upcoming seminar on a Saturday about how to care for the needy. It’s all day; meals are on your own. You can also bring non-perishable food items for the poor. Both events require an RSVP. Both events are on the same Saturday. What do you choose?

This Sunday’s text sets before us two banquets. One a lavish banquet in a luxurious palace with the who’s who in the region, by invitation of a powerful politician– a king. The food? Lavish. The entertainment? Titillating. The end? Death. Turns out the main course is John the Baptist’s head on a platter. The second really didn’t involve an invitation, per se. In fact, you’d be barging in on this person’s retreat. But He always helps the lowly and the needy. The food? On your own. The entertainment? If you count teaching. The end? Life. The guest of honor gives himself for you!

Join us in worship as we explore Matthew 14 under the title: Two Banquets and the Life of the World.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2019/11/20191110.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

Over the past 2,000 years, people have considered that Jesus is either too human to be God, or too Divine to be human. In our day, people more often stumble over the humanity of Jesus—how could this human be God? The “Enlightenment” taught us to think from the ground up rather than from God’s revelation down, so to speak. Therefore, people start with Jesus’ humanity and can’t get to heaven (or past the ceiling in some cases). Why? Because they stumble over his humanity.

During the 1st centuries of the church, the errors that prevented true belief in Jesus came because many couldn’t believe Jesus was human. Given the evidence for his Divinity (i.e. being God), people stumbled to think he could be human. He must, they thought, have only appeared to be human.

Our text shows that during Jesus’ lifetime, the problem was more like it is today: because Jesus lived among them, they started from the ground up and were offended at his humanity… his ever so ordinary existence.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2019/11/20191103.pdf

Speaker: Peter Stonecipher

Speaker: Rob Mastry

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

If you were to fill in the blank, “The kingdom of heaven is _______,” with a simile, what would you fill it with? Glorious? Problem-free? Filled with pure joy? You’d have some biblical support for those answers. Jesus gives us six parables that begin with, “The kingdom of heaven is like…”. The parables that follow that refrain are unexpected. Some of them don’t sound so heavenly.

Donald Kraybill, in his seminal book, The Upside-Down Kingdom, writes, “The kingdom of God announced by Jesus appeared odd and utterly upside down in first-century Palestinian culture. And the upside-down surprises of God’s kingdom continue to startle people as it breaks into diverse cultures today.” In other words, after doing the work of understanding the parables in their culture, their meaning will still seem odd to us!

On one level, these parables are easy to understand. But on another, it is much more difficult to be satisfied with what they say. We want it to be another way.

Join us in worship as we explore the parables of the unexpected heavenly kingdom in Matthew 13:24-52.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2019/10/20191013.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

If you grew up hearing sermons about the “Parable of the Sower,” you might think, “What’s so hard about understanding parables?” However, living in a mostly urban world, the parable itself doesn’t resonate with actual life. There are parts that we just miss. But to the peasants of Jesus’ original audience, it was a story about everyday life with strange anomalies.

The first audience may have named this the Story of the Foolish Farmer. Seeds were “gold.” Seeds represent food not eaten in order that there would be future food. No farmer would sow seed as carelessly as this fellow… on the path, on the rocky ground, among thorns (weeds). Why doesn’t he do some weeding before sowing, or plow up the hard ground? To them, this farmer sows foolishly.

As it turns out, the harvest is bountiful! Three of the four soils fail to produce anything, yet the harvest is still abundant. A crop of 2-fold or 4-fold would be a typical. In a really fertile area with right conditions one might reap as much as 8-10 times what is sown. Any more would be a bumper crop. So 100, 60, or 30 times are all super abundant! Any seeming foolishness on the part of the sower is made up for by the abundant harvest of the seed on this 4th soil.

This parable about a foolish farmer who still has an abundant harvest raises questions and requires explanation.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2019/10/20191006.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

A professor of philosophy reportedly said he would believe in God if the heavens opened and a magnificent figure appeared, declaring, in a very loud voice, “I am God.” But, if that did happen, exactly what would he believe? Sure, he might start attending worship services, but would he start fulfilling the radical righteousness that Jesus calls us to in the Sermon on the Mount?

“Teacher, we want to see a sign from you,” say the Pharisees. Jesus answers, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matt. 12:38-39). Don’t ask for a sign! That’s what Pharisees do. But what if we are already asking for a sign and don’t know it?

Many Christians read the gospels and, whether it is the Sermon on the Mount with its rigorous demands or Jesus telling someone to sell what they have, give to the poor, and follow Him, and they think, “I’m sure glad Jesus didn’t say that to me!” What would it take, then, for us to think Jesus is talking to us? That we should do what He said? Matthew wants to make sure we aren’t waiting for a sign!

Join us in worship as we explore Matthew 12:38-50 and its implications for our lives!

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2019/09/20190929.pdf

Speaker: Peter Stonecipher

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

I have a confession: I don’t like texts like Matthew 12:22-37 on the Tuesday before preaching it. Apparently I am not alone in this sentiment, as preaching lectionaries (the schedule of preaching texts for churches that plan the text for all their congregations weekly) leave Matthew 12 out altogether. Would anyone notice if I just skipped right past it?

My “dislike” is not because it is difficult; I like difficult. Nor is it due to a lack of material on this text; there is an abundance of material, but very little that even attempts to get at its purpose. I think that that is because there are so many “tree issues” in the text. You know, “You can’t see the forest for the trees!” Issues that cause us to focus on the wrong things.

Why is this text here in Matthew’s Gospel? What is its purpose for us? (I am assuming it is not here to raise all sorts of strange questions for young believers.) How does it fit with what comes before it? What does it have to do with being a follower of Jesus?

Join us in worship as we explore what Matthew 12:22-37 is calling us to, not just what one thing we need to make sure we don’t do.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2019/09/20190915.pdf