My Pulpit Message - notes Is the news worth trending? My Pulpit Message Notes are extracted from the sermon preached at the Nairobi Baptist Church (NBC) Ngong Road on Sunday 24th April 2022. Preacher: Salame Leah, Youth Worship Leader. Topic: Is the news worth trending? Scripture: Matthew 28:18-20
Information is simply knowledge. News is an upgrade of information. News is information that is interesting, important and a recent happening. Trend is news that is high ranking. It is fashionable.
I cannot begin to fathom Someone who could split the sea into two, and instead of using the ferry to school, I walk on dry ground. That is the supremacy of our God. That is the Who’s message we are being asked to trend. Yes, His news is worthy trending. We are looking at One Who holds the answers/soluToday there are ridiculous amounts of information at our dis- tions to this fallen world. I look at the state of things today and posal. In a single second, 6,000 tweets are released. Also two wonder, how we got to such hardship and devastation. How did we million books are produced every year. This is an overload of end up with gas prices skyrocketing? As Paul would describe it, ‘an information. There are 600 million blogs and over 1.7 billion evil generation’. But there is One Who holds a message that is able websites. to rescue us in this time, in this fallen world. He has wisdom and solutions to problems of humanity. That is the supremacy of our The gospel that we have proven from the past weeks is really, God. In Hebrews, He says He is able to save to the uttermost those good, isn’t fake, it’s breaking and is worth trending. It should who come to God through Him. In answering the question as to whether this news be a calibre above the six thousand tweets a second. is worth trending, I would ask, what did it do for you? What were 1. Supremacy of the Sendyou saved from? Where did you er We may not all have gone to a theological school, but we can come from? What did it change 2. Substance of the mes- sing, so we will sing loudly. We can dance, so we will dance for you? All of us are in this fallsage vigorously. We have our professions, we have people under us, en world. Then think of all those 3. Nobility of the task people we can impact, so we will make it trend with tools that other people going through the we have. We will use our voices, and our passion and we will same things and surely, isn’t that use our knowledge, our testimony and we will make this news gospel that rescued you worth taking to them so that they will Supremacy of the trend because it is worth trending. come to where you are now. That is worth trending. Sender Matthew 28:18
“18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Here it is us considering who is sending us to go. They say that there are certain aspects of news and information that make it newsworthy. For information to become news, it has to meet certain criteria for example, about a celebrity, or someone of prominence etc. Colossians 1:15 says “15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.” Why should this news trend? Because the One from whom it originates from has superiority in the whole universe. We are talking about the Creator of the heavens and the earth, Who put a boundary to the sea. If you want to check how impossible that is, take a bottle of water, spill that water and try telling it, don’t go past here. Imagine someone who can tell the sea, don’t go past this point. Someone who formed such complexity in the intrinsic fibres of creation. Someone Who formed patterns and designs. Someone Who split the sea into two.
Substance of the message Matthew 28:20
“and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” In my first year of school we touched a little on IT, the basics, and there was a unit called ‘Networks’. I understood a network to be, as when we were young a game we used to play of using a pipe to talk through it with one person on one end and the other person on their ear. Imagine the pipe to be a network / medium that will transfer information. So one of the characteristics of a good network , we said, was one that maintains the integrity of the data. This means the message that is leaving point A should be the same message received at point B. It should be undistorted / unchanged. If we are the network and Jesus is point A and the world / nations to whom we are sent is point B, we are supposed to pass a message that retains its integrity. It should be undistorted. In this world, in these times, in this generation, there are topics that are now considered sensitive. There are topics where someone asks you what is your stand / take and because there is that fear of what if you answer and you are taken to be a judgmental person. It is important for us to maintain the integrity of the data that we are transmitting. Jesus is saying, ‘Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.’
TT 150 | April 26th - May 2nd| 2022
