This was the question that was answered last night for Ignite Student Ministries at Spring Creek Assembly in Edmond Oklahoma. Pastor Phil Freeman asked me to preach for him while he was at camp with some of the students. I was surprised when I showed up last night because the Ignite Students showed up in force. Even though Pastor Phil and some of the student were gone, the students who didn't go to champ showed up. There were what looked to be about 35 to 40 students! Thats Awesome!!!
Well anyways, I just wanted to thank Pastor Phil for allowing me to preach. Check out the sermon below.
“Pizza Maker”
Jeremiah 18:1-6
How many of you have ever made your own pizza from scratch?
How many think making your own pizza is ordering from Pizza Hut, Dominos, or Mazzios and having it delivered?
What are some of your favorite ingredients?
Pepperoni, Sausage, Hamburger, Cheese, Extra Cheese, Anchovies?
There are tons of different ingredients that we like on our pizzas. Some people love Pepperoni, while others hate Anchovies. So when we get to make our own pizza’s we put what we like on them.
Tonight we are going to look at how God, Pizza, and our lives fit together.
Think about this for a second, if God wanted a pizza what would he want on it?
If you were the pizza God was making, what would be the ingredients he would want you to have?
While your thinking about that, please stand and lets read tonight’s scripture out loud together.
God’s power over his creatures is represented by the Pizza Maker. God announced that the Pizza Maker and the Pizza illustrated His relationship to His people. That’s why He sent Jeremiah to watch the Pizza Maker working. While Jeremiah is watching everything, God comes to him with two things:
1. God has the authority, and power, to form His creation as he sees fit. He can dispose of it if he wants to, and it would be crazy for us to argue about it. It would be just like a pizza that fights with the pizza maker.
2. The second thing is that God always goes by fixed rules of justice and His goodness. When God judges, it is because of sin; but a sincere faith in Jesus will prevent the punishment.
You see in Jeremiah’s time, God promised that he would bless the Israelites, but because of the evil they were doing He would reconsider the good He had intended and instead bring judgement on them. But, because of God’s goodness, He decided that if the Israelites turned from evil and asked for forgiveness, then He would not punish them the way he planned. Now your going to have to go and read the rest of the Book of Jeremiah to find out what happened to them.
Lets see how God and pizza to apply this to our lives. If you look at a pizza, there are four basic layers. There is the Crust, pizza sauce, cheese, and the toppings.
Our lives are represented by the pizza crust. As we start to grow older, we get rolled out. We learn and experience all kinds of things. One thing that happens is that we all fall at some point or another. We end up sinning by doing bad things such as lying, stealing, treating our parents badly, or by breaking any of the other10 Commandments. This causes us as dough to become to thin and rip. At that the point where we sin, God the Pizza Maker makes a choice. He either chooses to throw us away or rebuild us. If we don’t accept Jesus as our Lord God and Savior then when our time comes to be Judged, God will look at us and say, (Matthew 7:23) ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
But if we accept Jesus into our hearts as our personal Lord God and Savior, then we will be reborn and God will reshape us into the Crust.
Once we’ve accepted Jesus, we have the Pizza sauce poured all over us. The Pizza sauce like the Blood of Jesus that covers up all of our sin, which is all of the mistakes that we’ve made.
Psalm 103:12 (NLT) says,
He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.
That means that when we ask for forgiveness, God no longer associates us with the sin or the bad things that we have done.
Once we’ve accepted Jesus, and we have had the Pizza sauce added to our lives, then we get the Holy Spirit that is added on top. Listen to what Jesus says about the Holy Spirit in…John 14:26
Once we have a good crust that has been reshaped by God, have the Pizza sauce from Jesus, and have plenty of cheese from the Holy Spirit… Then we receive the toppings. The toppings of the pizza are like a training program. This is where we become devoted learners and followers of Jesus as the Holy Spirit starts to teach us.
While God adds the toppings to our lives, we start learning all kinds of things.
We learn how to study our Bibles, how we should act, we learn about Prayer, how we should live, how we should serve, how we should give, we learn how to tell others about Jesus, and we learn so much more. This is also how we get to know God on a much deeper level.
If you allow God to shape and mold you, like a Pizza Maker makes a pizza, then your life will change. You will see God in a way you might not have seen before, and you’ll learn about things you never knew before. When you submit to God and allow Him to take control of your life then you will see things and go places that you never thought were possible. And if you submit to God, and let him shape and mold you, then he will call you to do something Extraordinary with your life.
How many think making your own pizza is ordering from Pizza Hut, Dominos, or Mazzios and having it delivered?
What are some of your favorite ingredients?
Pepperoni, Sausage, Hamburger, Cheese, Extra Cheese, Anchovies?
There are tons of different ingredients that we like on our pizzas. Some people love Pepperoni, while others hate Anchovies. So when we get to make our own pizza’s we put what we like on them.
Tonight we are going to look at how God, Pizza, and our lives fit together.
Think about this for a second, if God wanted a pizza what would he want on it?
If you were the pizza God was making, what would be the ingredients he would want you to have?
While your thinking about that, please stand and lets read tonight’s scripture out loud together.
Jeremiah 18:1-6 (Pizza Revision)
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Go down to the Pizza Maker, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the Pizza Makers Restaurant, and I saw him making some pizza. But the dough he was shaping for the crust became to thin and ripped; so the Pizza Maker started over and formed the dough into another crust, shaping it as seemed best to him.
Then the word of the LORD came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this Pizza Maker does with the pizza?” declares the LORD. “Like the Pizza ingredients in the hand of the Pizza Maker, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.God told Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house so that he could reveal a message to Jeremiah. But due to tonight’s Pizza theme we are changing things up a little.
God’s power over his creatures is represented by the Pizza Maker. God announced that the Pizza Maker and the Pizza illustrated His relationship to His people. That’s why He sent Jeremiah to watch the Pizza Maker working. While Jeremiah is watching everything, God comes to him with two things:
1. God has the authority, and power, to form His creation as he sees fit. He can dispose of it if he wants to, and it would be crazy for us to argue about it. It would be just like a pizza that fights with the pizza maker.
2. The second thing is that God always goes by fixed rules of justice and His goodness. When God judges, it is because of sin; but a sincere faith in Jesus will prevent the punishment.
You see in Jeremiah’s time, God promised that he would bless the Israelites, but because of the evil they were doing He would reconsider the good He had intended and instead bring judgement on them. But, because of God’s goodness, He decided that if the Israelites turned from evil and asked for forgiveness, then He would not punish them the way he planned. Now your going to have to go and read the rest of the Book of Jeremiah to find out what happened to them.
Lets see how God and pizza to apply this to our lives. If you look at a pizza, there are four basic layers. There is the Crust, pizza sauce, cheese, and the toppings.
Our lives are represented by the pizza crust. As we start to grow older, we get rolled out. We learn and experience all kinds of things. One thing that happens is that we all fall at some point or another. We end up sinning by doing bad things such as lying, stealing, treating our parents badly, or by breaking any of the other10 Commandments. This causes us as dough to become to thin and rip. At that the point where we sin, God the Pizza Maker makes a choice. He either chooses to throw us away or rebuild us. If we don’t accept Jesus as our Lord God and Savior then when our time comes to be Judged, God will look at us and say, (Matthew 7:23) ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
But if we accept Jesus into our hearts as our personal Lord God and Savior, then we will be reborn and God will reshape us into the Crust.
Once we’ve accepted Jesus, we have the Pizza sauce poured all over us. The Pizza sauce like the Blood of Jesus that covers up all of our sin, which is all of the mistakes that we’ve made.
Ephesians 1:7 (Message)
Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free!Because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, if we ask God for forgiveness from when we messed up, we don’t have to face the punishment for it. It goes even further than that,
Psalm 103:12 (NLT) says,
He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.
That means that when we ask for forgiveness, God no longer associates us with the sin or the bad things that we have done.
Once we’ve accepted Jesus, and we have had the Pizza sauce added to our lives, then we get the Holy Spirit that is added on top. Listen to what Jesus says about the Holy Spirit in…John 14:26
John 14:26
But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.Jesus sends us the Holy Spirit to help us in our daily lives, to teach us the things we need to know, to empower us, and so that we can also be filled with the Holy Spirit and be able to use the Gifts the Holy Spirit has to give us.
Once we have a good crust that has been reshaped by God, have the Pizza sauce from Jesus, and have plenty of cheese from the Holy Spirit… Then we receive the toppings. The toppings of the pizza are like a training program. This is where we become devoted learners and followers of Jesus as the Holy Spirit starts to teach us.
While God adds the toppings to our lives, we start learning all kinds of things.
We learn how to study our Bibles, how we should act, we learn about Prayer, how we should live, how we should serve, how we should give, we learn how to tell others about Jesus, and we learn so much more. This is also how we get to know God on a much deeper level.
Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.God wants you to succeed in life, and He wants the very best for you. But in order for that to happen you have to submit to God as the Maker and Creator of your life. You have to allow Him to shape and mold you into the person He wants you to become.
If you allow God to shape and mold you, like a Pizza Maker makes a pizza, then your life will change. You will see God in a way you might not have seen before, and you’ll learn about things you never knew before. When you submit to God and allow Him to take control of your life then you will see things and go places that you never thought were possible. And if you submit to God, and let him shape and mold you, then he will call you to do something Extraordinary with your life.
