Central BCS - Sermons

In this message on Acts 9, we follow Saul’s dramatic encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus and his transformation from persecutor to follower of Christ. The sermon explores how Saul’s conversion reveals the miracle of new faith: that God’s grace awakens people to spiritual life and gives them reason for unshakable hope.

The Sermon, based on John 20, teaches that Jesus’ resurrection meets us in our fears and moves us toward faith. Mary Magdalene’s anxiety, Peter’s guilt, and John’s grief give way to hope as they encounter the empty tomb and the risen Jesus. When Jesus calls Mary by name, she recognizes Him and is sent to share the news. Jesus also meets His disciples’ fear with peace, gives them purpose by sending...

In John 12, Jesus announces, "The hour has come," and the Gospel of John turns from the book of signs to the book of glory. In this message, Pastor Phillip Bethancourt unpacks one simple but challenging principle: If you want to live like Jesus lived, you need to die like Jesus died. Using the remarkable story of 2,000-year-old Judean date palm seeds that were brought back to life, Phillip walks t...

The Sermon walks through Luke 24, where two heartbroken disciples on the road to Emmaus discover that Jesus meets us in our darkest moments and shows us His deepest truth. Pastor Phillip Bethancourt shows how these disciples were consumed, crushed, and confused when life didn't go as they expected, a struggle that mirrors the mental health crisis facing our community today. Yet Jesus meets their f...

The Sermon contrasts two ways of being spiritually lost—the younger son’s open rebellion and the older son’s self-righteous religion—through Jesus’ parable of the two lost sons in Luke 15. Phillip Bethancourt shows that while one child runs from the Father by breaking the rules and the other by keeping them to earn favor, both are rescued by a prodigal God whose extravagant grace runs to meet repe...

The Sermon calls believers to embrace their role as everyday missionaries from Luke 10, highlighting the urgency of God’s coming judgment, the sending of the 72, and the reality that the harvest is plentiful but workers are few. Listeners are challenged to pray earnestly for laborers, discover their role in God’s mission (staying, going, or joining church plants), and live with compassionate boldn...

The Sermon from Luke 4 shows how Satan tempts Jesus to doubt His identity, pushing three lies: that we are slaves to our appetites, orphans who must earn love and success, and masters of our own destiny. Phillip answers each lie with a gospel truth that in Christ we are soldiers who trust God's provision, children of God with secure adoption, and servants who trust rather than test God because Jes...

The Sermon calls believers to a cross-shaped life from Mark 8:31–38, showing that we are saved by Jesus’ suffering and that a heart consumed by comfort, control, or worldly gain will ultimately be consumed by those very things. Phillip Bethancourt urges the church to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Jesus daily, teaching that we truly live by dying to self and gain by losing our li...

The sermon confronts today’s crisis of meaning—loneliness, anxiety, and emptiness—and shows how Jesus, in Mark 3, calls ordinary, broken people to Himself, reshaping their significance through intimacy with Him, ministry in His name, and shared authority in spiritual battle. It then traces how Jesus rewrites our stories and redefines success by revealing life as spiritual war, binding the “strong...

The sermon traces how Jesus meets our deepest lows with His deepest love in Matthew 14, stepping into ministry even as He grieves the death of John the Baptist—His “John Powell”—and experiences rejection in His hometown. Using the feeding of the 5,000, the pastor shows that God often allows physical, emotional, and spiritual hunger so that He can meet those needs through Christ’s compassionate pro...

The Semon centers on Mark 3 and confronts our culture’s crisis of meaning beneath widespread loneliness, anxiety, and emptiness. Using Maddie’s story and our tendency to fill our lives with noise and activity, the pastor shows that true significance begins when Jesus reshapes our lives and calls us to Himself.

The Semon traces how Jesus meets our deepest lows with His deepest love in Matthew 14, stepping into ministry even as He grieves the death of John the Baptist His “John Powell” and experiences rejection in His hometown. Using the feeding of the 5,000, the pastor shows that God often allows physical, emotional, and spiritual hunger so that He can meet those needs through Christ’s compassionate prov...

The sermon explores how Matthew presents Jesus—beginning in Matthew 1 with the revelation of His divine identity and mission—and then through His parables, the Transfiguration, and the cleansing of the temple, to unveil both the hidden and unveiled glory of Christ and the nature of His kingdom. It shows that Jesus’ parables gradually disclose the “secrets of the kingdom” to those with ears to hear...

The sermon walks through Zechariah 9:9–17 to show Jesus as both the humble King who rides into our “waterless pits” with compassion and the divine warrior who fights our battles for us, securing total victory through the blood of His covenant. It calls hearers to stop trying to be their own saviors, live as “prisoners of hope” and crown jewels in God’s hand, and actively pass this living hope down...

The sermon uses the book of Joel to depict the “day of the Lord” as both devastating judgment and gracious salvation, calling God’s people not just to outward religious activity but to truly rend their hearts in repentance. It then shows how God pours out His Spirit, enabling believers to expose their functional idols, turn from complacency, and live fully for Christ with hope, urgency, and depend...

The sermon shows how Ezekiel 34 exposes the failure of selfish and absent leaders while revealing God as the true Shepherd who sees, rescues, and restores His wounded and scattered people. It then points to Jesus as the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep and calls every believer, in whatever sphere of influence they have, to reflect His sacrificial care toward those they lead.

The sermon explains how Ezekiel 34 exposes failed shepherds and broken leadership—both selfish and absent—and how God Himself steps in as the true Shepherd who sees, rescues, and restores His scattered, wounded people. It then points to Jesus as the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep and calls every believer, in whatever authority they have, to reflect His care by laying down their...

The sermon walks through Lamentations 3 to show how God’s people honestly bring their pain, questions, and even feelings of abandonment to Him in lament, while recognizing that He is sovereign over both their suffering and their circumstances. It then turns to the hope of verses 21–24, calling believers to remember God’s steadfast love, daily new mercies, and unchanging faithfulness in Christ so t...

The sermon unfolds Jeremiah 31 to show that God’s answer to Israel’s shattered hopes and deep rebellion is the promise of a new covenant—one that gives His people renewed hearts, a truly believing community, and full forgiveness from the inside out. It then reveals how Jesus fulfills that covenant through His cross and resurrection, and calls hearers—especially men and fathers—to embrace His trans...

The sermon walks through Isaiah 65 to show that God’s promise is not merely to take believers’ souls to heaven but to create a new heavens and new earth where His people live forever in resurrected bodies, in a world reborn without sin, sorrow, or death. It calls hearers to stop shrinking this hope, to see how God over-delivers on His promises in Christ, and to live now with humble faith, joy, and...

The sermon walks through Isaiah 52–53 to show Jesus as the suffering servant who is crushed by the Father in our place, accomplishing atonement, substitution, and justification so that sinners can be declared righteous by grace through faith. It explains why God “delights” in the death of His Son—because of Christ’s victorious achievement over sin and death, the salvation and joy of many, the glor...

The sermon uses Song of Solomon 8 to show that God designs marriage as a lifelong covenant marked by friendship, public and private affection, passionate commitment, and persevering love that reflects Christ’s love for His church. It then calls both married and single believers to see Scripture as God’s love letter, receive His pursuing grace in Christ, and actively pursue Him in return through de...

The sermon walks through Ecclesiastes to show that life “under the sun” is disorienting—our work, wealth, pleasure, and even wisdom are like vapor—yet God calls us to receive our ordinary, present lives as gifts rather than chase ultimate meaning in achievement. It then lifts our eyes above the sun to Jesus, the greater Teacher who enters our futility, bears its full absurdity at the cross, and se...

The sermon walks through the story of Job to show that even the strongest believers are stretched to the breaking point by suffering—lamenting, questioning, and protesting—yet God invites that raw honesty in prayer and uses it to deepen, not destroy, true faith. It then shows that God’s ultimate answer to “Why me?” is not an explanation but Himself—His sovereign wisdom, His presence by the Spirit,...

The sermon uses Nehemiah 4 to show that families live in a hostile culture, a fearful moment, and an uncertain future, and yet are called to “face their fears and fight for their families” with both dedication and dependence on God. It calls parents and the church to take up the “shovel and the sword”—actively building into the next generation while spiritually protecting them—trusting that in Chr...