Contagious

Good morning everyone and welcome to the virtual gathering of champions. This week we begin our brand new sermon serious entitled contagious. So invite a friend now, host a watch party, and share on your page because this will be a series you don’t want anyone to miss.

When people use the word contagious, it’s usually in reference to something negative like a virus or disease. Contagious means that something can spread from one person or organism to another by direct or indirect contact.But what if healing was contagious? What if peace, joy and love was something that could be spread from one person or organism to another by direct or indirect contact? Would you spread it?Over the next few weeks my hope is that we will all be inspired to intentionally be infectious, that we will choose to conscientiously be contagious. My prayer is that every person under the sound of my voice will choose to be the vaccine that delivers the cure for this sick and dying world because, after all, since we all have to live in it so we might as well make the best of it.Let's pray:When I was a kid, 4 letters scared me more than anything in the world: AIDS. Most of us know that it stands for Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and we, for the most part refer to the virus as HIV. But when we first heard of it, nearly the entire world freaked out.

Some of you remember when the great basketball legend, Magic Johnson was diagnosed with AIDS, the league's reaction as well as the reaction of some of his peers were embarrassing to say the least. People were afraid that if he sneezed he would spread it. They thought if he sweat too hard it would transfer to them.

Somehow, out of ignorance, urban legends were born. Rumors were started and bad information was spread throughout the world and the world reacted, peers reacted, family and friends reacted in extreme ways that would’ve gone viral if that era had today’s technology.The reason we reacted with such cruelty, is because we failed horribly to understand the issue. And that creates its own problems. You see, we tend to fear what we do not understand. And let’s face it, when people are afraid, they often do stupid things.

A few years ago my wife took our kids, along with my niece and nephews on a walk through the neighborhood where we used to live in Tennessee. As they were walking a large dog broke out of our neighbor’s house and ran straight towards them. In fear, my eldest nephew just fell to the ground.

Now, I’ve heard that works for bears but never have I seen that work on a dog. Fear makes us do stupid things.

There may be someone listening right now who is too young to remember the AIDS/HIV panic but don’t worry. You've had a first-hand experience in 2020 what it was like to live through a major pandemic, thanks to COVID-19 and I gotta tell you, the world hasn’t changed much. Scared people still do stupid things sometimes.At least we’re consistent. Speaking of consistency, you may have noticed how when we first learned of COVID-19 we asked the same questions we asked when we first learned about HIV: Where did it come from, How does it spread, and How do we stop it.Today I want to deal with that first question as we attempt to contain and eliminate a greater pandemic. I’m not talking about COVID, HIV, the common flu or even cancer. All of these are, and there are strong arguments for it, but all sickness and disease are simply symptoms of a greater ailment.

The church rarely talks about this anymore and our secular counterparts have pretty much eliminated this three-letter word from our literature and vernacular. And as I said a minute ago, people fear what they don’t understand and when people are afraid they do stupid things.

Like instead of dealing with that three-letter word, sin, we just ignore it. We ignore it because we are afraid of the consequences. We ignore it because we don’t have all the facts, but we’ve heard all the rumors. We ignore it because it makes us uncomfortable.

But you and I both know that ignoring something doesn’t mean it ceases to exist. That’s just one of the stupid things fear makes us do. To be fair, we are not the first generation to react this way.

It’s been this way since the first pandemic Which, by the way started in paradise. You’ve heard the story but in case you slept through Sunday school, assuming you ever went, the story goes like this: God created man in his image and likeness. Adam and Eve were both created to be like God. God gave them access to everything in the garden with one stipulation. Don’t eat the fruit from that tree or else you will die.

Eve, at some point was in the garden having a conversation with a talking serpent. Obviously we don’t see those crawling around these days but apparently there was a species of serpents at one point that had a voice box and intelligent speech. Anyway, the serpent convinces Eve that although she was created in the image and likeness of God, she was missing out on something.

Taking the bait, she disobeys God and her husband, well I guess he didn’t want to see her go out alone, joins the fruit party and takes a bite too. The implication here is that they did not believe God when he told them that they would die and so they had to see for themselves and thus, the first sin occurs. That of disbelief that leads to disobedience.

In case you didn’t know, your actions, what you do and what you don’t do are simply outward expressions of what you believe in your heart and mind. And this is why it is so important for us to study and educate ourselves so that we can help other people, help people.Today, I'm going to ask you to see our world as sick, sin sick. Let's take an honest look at the sin that has plagued us, beginning with unbelief, and disobedience. From lying to killing, from pride to hate, from rape to war and from unforgiveness to ungratefulness. Our world is sick, ladies and gentlemen and it has been so for a very long time. 

And now you know how the pandemic began. And in case you need scripture to support everything I just told you, you can read about it in Romans 5:12

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

Let me sum this up for you. Paul just debunked this entire idea that some of us have bought into over the recent years. He told us that it wasn’t a book or list of rules that created the idea of sin. In fact, he said sin existed before the 10 commandments and all the other laws and rules in the good book.

In the garden of Eden, there were no rules, no laws, no 10 commandments. The scriptures are clear that there were only two. The first command God gave to humanity was to be fruitful and multiply. The second was to not eat from the tree.

Allow me to break this down just a bit further. The first command required active participation. Be fruitful and multiply. This required human activity. The second command required passive non-participation. Simply, leave the tree alone. What’s odd is that both commands were ignored by the dynamic duo. Prior to getting kicked out of the garden, they failed to ignore the fruit and, get this, they failed to multiply. By the time they did, they had already been plagued with sin – a sticky condition that has stuck with humanity ever since.

Fortunately, there’s a cure. We’ll talk about it next week as we continue our sermon series, Contagious.