Gulf Coast Community Church - Sunday Sermons

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

The Philippian church had supported Paul’s gospel advancing ministry from the first day they had heard him. Though that support fell off for a time, it had recently been renewed. His imprisonment no doubt concerned them, and many may have thought that the advance of the gospel itself was threatened, if not stopped. One commentator notes: “Some… may have regarded Paul’s imprisonment as invalidating his ministry, or at least as rendering him passe.”

Paul declares that despite appearances, the Gospel is growing and advancing. They likely expected to hear a Paul who was downcast, or at least focused on himself and his own needs and pains. Instead they find a Paul who is joyful. As Karl Barth commented on this: “To the question of how it is with him, an apostle must react with information as to how it is with the Gospel.” That is exactly what Paul does.

How do we find Paul? Joyful. Why is Paul joyful? Because the Gospel is advancing in three specific ways because of his imprisonment: 1) The Gospel is reaching the heart of the Empire; 2) Many others have begun preaching Christ; and 3)Paul knows how God works in salvation!

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2018/09/20180930.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

Philippians expresses most explicitly Paul’s view of how Christians are called to live. One might say that Philippians describes what Paul means when he says to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20)

Do you want to be able to say that? Philippians teaches us how to make that true in our own lives. This letter is all about what it means to be a faithful gospel witness for this generation and the next. In fact, it is all about something else we’ve said at Gulf Coast Community Church for the last 18 years: Love the Gospel; Live the Gospel; Advance the Gospel.

These (Love the Gospel; Live the Gospel; Advance the Gospel) are not really separate things, as if you could do one without the other two, or even two of them without the third. One NT scholar has said much the same thing: “Paul did not want the communities he founded and addressed merely to believe the gospel, but also to become the gospel— to faithfully embody the gospel narrative.” Then from Paul’s letter to the Philippians he demonstrates why this is true.

Join us as we begin the new series, Slaves of Christ: The Message of Philippians. Living the Gospel involves becoming a slave of Jesus Christ.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2018/09/20180923.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

Have you ever been to a circus and seen the clown car routine? A small car roles into center ring. Out of the car, over the next few minutes, come clowns, and more clowns, and they just keep coming out—far beyond what one imagines could fit in the car. No trap doors below the car. In one case, it was a matter of over 200 hours of rehearsal to accomplish the act.

Paul’s closing in 1 Thessalonians is a bit that way. It’s a letter closing—in many ways, like our “sincerly,” or “best regards.” One author describes Paul’s letter closings as the “Rodney Dangerfield” section of his letters: they don’t get any respect. There is more in them than first meets the eye.

Two things have been constant themes in the letter: Growth in holiness (particularly sexual purity and love), and the Lord’s coming. These two themes come together in Paul’s closing. The goal of this letter is not merely for the Thessalonians to have a better grasp of end-time expectations (hope). The goal of this letter is not merely for the Thessalonians to have a greater understanding of why they need to be holy because of who they are. The goal of this letter is that we arrive holy and blameless, together, at Christ’s appearing.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2018/09/20180916.pdf

Speaker: Daryn Kinney

No one likes to be told to “pay attention” unless of course, it’s a matter of personal safety or well being. If we knew our safety was at stake or the well being of someone we loved, if we knew there was potential of drifting away from what was most important in life, if we knew the warning was rooted in love, then maybe we would receive it with great appreciation. Hebrews 2 begins with a warning to “pay careful attention” to a particular message – a message that was announced by Jesus, confirmed by eyewitnesses and testified by God the Father. What is this message, why are we given the warning and why does it matter for us today?

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2018/09/20180909.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

In the summer of 1961, Vince Lombardi walked into the Green Bay Packers training camp. Just months prior, this team had lost the NFL championship (a.k.a. the Superbowl) in the last minutes of the game. Holding up a football, he began training camp with these words: “Gentlemen, this is a football.”

Lombardi methodically covered the fundamentals. Each player reviewed how to block and tackle. They opened up the playbook and started from page one. At some point, Max McGee, the Packers’ Pro Bowl wide receiver, joked, “Uh, Coach, could you slow down a little? You’re going too fast for us.” Lombardi reportedly cracked a smile, but continued his obsession with the basics all the same. His team would become the best in the league at the tasks everyone else took for granted.

Six months later, the Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants 37-0 to win the NFL Championship. Lombardi would never lose in the playoffs again. In total, Lombardi won five NFL Championships in a span of seven years, including three in a row. He never coached a team with a losing record.

In this text, Paul uses what might be considered a string of very tweetable quips that are the church community’s equivalent to “Brothers and sisters, this is a football.” Our text lays out the fundamentals of church life…the blocking, tackling, the essentials of community life and worship.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2018/09/20180902.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

The onset of labor is not the time to start getting ready for the baby! At this point the nursery better already be ready, the room painted, baby clothes bought, diapers stacked, and the like. If one were to read popular books on the “end-times,” the focus may be on signs, predictions, tribulation, wars, etc. In the NT, the consistent call that emerges from texts that speak of the Lord’s coming is to be ready.

Right thinking about the Lord’s coming should always hover around this theme of readiness. For the right thinking about the Lord’s coming to be of any value, it must lead to right practice—living in a state of readiness!

Last week, in 4:13-18, we explored Paul’s explanation to the Thessalonians about things they had not heard before, which Paul tells them in order to comfort them concerning their deceased loved ones. In this week’s text (5:1-11), Paul tells the Thessalonians and therefore us what we need to know about the Day of the Lord, why we don’t need to fear that Day, and how we must prepare for it.

Join us as we explore Paul’s teaching about the Second Coming of Jesus. We will explore it under 4 headings: 1) What we need to know about that Day; 2) Why we don’t have to fear that Day; 3) How we must prepare for that Day; and 4)What we are to do with these truths.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2018/08/20180826.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

Hopelessness is a common human experience in the face of death. Melanie Greenberg, in Psychology Today, says, “The death or loss of a loved one, especially a beloved parent, spouse, or child, is one of the most profound losses humans can experience.” That was true when Paul wrote the Thessalonians, and it is true today.

In Thessalonian culture, no one was likely to say, “They are in a better place now,” or, “God needed them in heaven.” Those are ideas that, though they are not biblically prescribed responses, are at least built on Christian truths—more or less distorted.

In his book, Embodied Hope, Kelly Kapic describes the all-to-common experience of well-intentioned ministers and friends explaining away death and debilitating disease “by an uninformed appeal to God’s purposes.” He asks, “Do any of us really know why a particular event happens?” The sincere goal of such explanations is to nullify the pain or try to appease their anger toward God. Unfortunately, they rarely comfort and frequently only make things worse.

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Paul does not turn to such trite assurances. Instead he informs those believers who are enduring the grief of lost love ones in Thessalonica. Join us this Sunday as we explore how Paul brings comfort to these grieving believers by filling out their understanding of the Christian hope—a hope which transforms both how we face life and death.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2018/08/20180819.pdf

Speaker: Jerry Cisar

“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

In a 60 Minutes interview some years later, Paul Simon mentioned that some time after the song was released he received a letter from Joe DiMaggio in which DiMaggio expressed his confusion at what in the world that song could mean. DiMaggio wrote, “What do you mean ‘Where have I gone?’ I haven’t gone anywhere! I’m still around–I’m selling Mr. Coffee machines.” Then Paul Simon smiled at Mike Wallace and remarked, “Obviously Mr. DiMaggio is not accustomed to thinking of himself as a metaphor!”

DiMaggio didn’t realize that he had come to represent something bigger than himself. To really get the message of 1 Thessalonians, you have to realize that you represent something much bigger than yourself. What you have become is much bigger than you! Paul is speaking to the Thessalonians about what they are to do because of whom they have become.

Join us in worship as we learn why love has to be worked out in the practical details of our daily lives, and the grace we are given to do so as Paul tells us who we really are.

Handout: http://media.gccc.net/2018/08/20180812.pdf

Speaker: Peter Stonecipher

Speaker: Peter Stonecipher