My Second Sermon Story
One Friday during supper our land line phone rang (yes this was in the mid to late 1980's before we had cell phones). Answering the phone, I discovered it was our Pastor asking if I could give the sermon the following Sunday because he had something come up and had to be absent Sunday. Feeling the skepticism in the pause that followed our Pastor added that I could either give my own sermon or simply read the sermon he had already prepared. I have a really hard time saying "NO" so it would be I doing the sermon Sunday one way or the other.
I had full intentions of simply reading his prepared sermon as I had no time to prepare one of my own in such short notice but that morning inspiration came upon me and a sermon title came to me (not the sermon itself) with the heavy weight on my heart that this is what the Lord wanted me to preach on. It was real crazy but I made a deal with the Lord at the end of my run that if He gave me an obvious sign between the start of the service and the time to give my sermon that this very alternate sermon was meant to be given; I'd give it in faith.
Before the service started, I made copies of our Pastors sermon and placed them on a table near the entrance of the church so people could take a copy whether I read his sermon or did the one the Lord wanted me to give.
Then the service started with a band that our church had never met before and the leader of the band started by saying, "This is going to be a very alternate service as the Lord has given us many ways to worship him!"
I couldn't believe it, this was the sign, obviously, that the Lord would inspire me to give the sermon with the title he provided that morning while I was running.
Not only that, when another member got up and read the Gospel, the Gospel was about the woman that was healed of the bleeding problem that she had had for a long time and was healed when she touched Christ's rob as he walked through the crowd and He stopped and mentioned having felt healing energy leave Him. (Luke 8:46)
I had full intentions of simply reading his prepared sermon as I had no time to prepare one of my own in such short notice but that morning inspiration came upon me and a sermon title came to me (not the sermon itself) with the heavy weight on my heart that this is what the Lord wanted me to preach on. It was real crazy but I made a deal with the Lord at the end of my run that if He gave me an obvious sign between the start of the service and the time to give my sermon that this very alternate sermon was meant to be given; I'd give it in faith.
Before the service started, I made copies of our Pastors sermon and placed them on a table near the entrance of the church so people could take a copy whether I read his sermon or did the one the Lord wanted me to give.
Then the service started with a band that our church had never met before and the leader of the band started by saying, "This is going to be a very alternate service as the Lord has given us many ways to worship him!"
I couldn't believe it, this was the sign, obviously, that the Lord would inspire me to give the sermon with the title he provided that morning while I was running.
Not only that, when another member got up and read the Gospel, the Gospel was about the woman that was healed of the bleeding problem that she had had for a long time and was healed when she touched Christ's rob as he walked through the crowd and He stopped and mentioned having felt healing energy leave Him. (Luke 8:46)
The time for the sermon came and I started by picking a friend near the front to time me as I wanted to finish in less than 20 minutes and was used to 50 minutes for a class period as a high school teacher.
I started with that I am not a pastor, but I do have a license to teach Mathematics and Cantor in the early 1900's proved that if you started with the counting numbers (1, 2, 3, ...) that is an infinite set of numbers and add one number to it, namely 0, the whole numbers is the same size infinity because you can set up a 1 to 1 correspondence with the counting numbers like early shepherds did with their sheep and small stones (as they had a small stone in a clay jar for each sheep they had in their flock so they could pour the stones out when they got to their destination and as the sheep went by put one stone back in the jar for each sheep that passed and if stones remained at the end they knew how many sheep were lost to go back and look for them). You can hook 1 to 0, 2 to 1, 3 to 2, etc. thus linking all whole numbers to the counting numbers.
Next you can add another infinity to the counting numbers and still have the same size infinity. Take the integers ...-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ... and make a 1:1 correspondence by hooking 1 to 0, 2 to -1, 3 to 1, 4 to -2, 5 to 2, etc. hooking all even counting numbers to the negative integers and all the odd counting numbers to the positive integers.
Since between any two consecutive integers you have an infinite number of fractions, Cantor proved that you can take an infinite number of infinities and still have the same size infinity as the counting numbers by proving that all rational numbers and algebraic irrational numbers have a 1:1 correspondence with the counting numbers by making a two dimensional table of all fractions and taking the fraction in the upper left corner of the table and writing it down in a linear fashion followed by the number under it, then going up the diagonal to the top, then the number to the right when you hit the top, then go to the right one number and go down the diagonal again, etc. repeating the pattern so as to pick up every fraction in the 2-D table and writing them out linearly. Cantor than threw out duplicates like 3/6, 4/8, and 5/10 as they all equal 1/2 which we kept. (I don't even bother throwing these out as it doesn't matter in the end) Finally Cantor simply hooked 1 to the first fraction left in the linear row and 2 to the second fraction and 3 to the third, etc and since the 1:1 correspondence can be set up the fractions are the same size infinity as the counting numbers.
Now Cantor proved that if you wrote all real numbers down in a column so there decimal points were directly under each other like:
234.00000000000000000000...
5.25000000000000000000...
67.77777777777777777777,,,
3.1415926... (pi)
etc.
that even though you had written down all the real numbers in your list that he could find one that was missing. He called the process diagonalization.
The way I explain it is suppose your favorite number is 7 and my favorite number is 2. Cantor could find a number not in your list of all real numbers by taking the first digit after the decimal point in the first number, thus 0 in our example and if it is not a 7 make it a 7 but if is a 7 make it a 2. Then take the second digit in the second row and the third digit in the third row, and the 4th digit in the 4th row, etc. and use the same rule.
Our new number so far is .7727... and will be all 7's and 2's but it not in your list as it differs from your first number by the first digit and by the second number by the second digit and the third number down in your list of all real numbers by the third digit, etc. Thus the set of real numbers cannot have a 1:1 correspondence with the set of counting numbers and is thus a larger infinity.
Cantor then used his idea of power set to make an infinite number of different size infinities and placed them on a number line of infinities (like the real number line). The Power Set is all possible subsets of any given set thus the set (1, 2, 3) with 3 members would have the Power Set (), (1), (2), (3), (1,2), (1,3), (2,3), (1,2,3) which has 8 members compared to 3 in the original set.
The original counting number, whole number, integer, rational numbers (fractions), and algebraic irrational numbers (all non perfect roots like the square root of 2) he gave the name aleph null and the power set of aleph null was aleph 1 and the power set of aleph 1 was aleph 2, etc. and the real number infinity Cantor gave the name C (for the continuum) null and its power set is C 1 and its power set is C 2, etc.
For his part, Cantor suspected that the absolute highest infinity was God.
Next I said, "I do not have a degree to be a Pastor but I do have a degree in Physics and I know from Einstein that E=mc^2. Thus an extremely small piece of matter can be converted into a gigantic amount of energy or a gigantic amount of energy can be converted back into an extremely small piece of mass. Another way to put it is that humans used this to make to atom bomb and on the other front have witnessed mass appear where only energy existed before in space.
In conclusion, when Jesus felt healing energy leave him when the lady had mass added to heal her bleeding problem, do you think Jesus had any less energy after than before?
When Jesus twice took a few loaves of bread and a few fish and feed thousands to their fill by converting His energy into the mass of food, do you think He had any less energy after than before?
When God the Father created the universe (all the mass and dark energy in the universe) through Jesus do you think He had any less energy after than before?
When the sermon was over in 15 minutes according to my friend and afterwards I did receive compliments galore but made sure I let them know that it wasn't me that came up with the sermon but Jesus just used me as His vessel to deliver the words as they came to me. All I needed was the FAITH to trust HIM.
I started with that I am not a pastor, but I do have a license to teach Mathematics and Cantor in the early 1900's proved that if you started with the counting numbers (1, 2, 3, ...) that is an infinite set of numbers and add one number to it, namely 0, the whole numbers is the same size infinity because you can set up a 1 to 1 correspondence with the counting numbers like early shepherds did with their sheep and small stones (as they had a small stone in a clay jar for each sheep they had in their flock so they could pour the stones out when they got to their destination and as the sheep went by put one stone back in the jar for each sheep that passed and if stones remained at the end they knew how many sheep were lost to go back and look for them). You can hook 1 to 0, 2 to 1, 3 to 2, etc. thus linking all whole numbers to the counting numbers.
Next you can add another infinity to the counting numbers and still have the same size infinity. Take the integers ...-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ... and make a 1:1 correspondence by hooking 1 to 0, 2 to -1, 3 to 1, 4 to -2, 5 to 2, etc. hooking all even counting numbers to the negative integers and all the odd counting numbers to the positive integers.
Since between any two consecutive integers you have an infinite number of fractions, Cantor proved that you can take an infinite number of infinities and still have the same size infinity as the counting numbers by proving that all rational numbers and algebraic irrational numbers have a 1:1 correspondence with the counting numbers by making a two dimensional table of all fractions and taking the fraction in the upper left corner of the table and writing it down in a linear fashion followed by the number under it, then going up the diagonal to the top, then the number to the right when you hit the top, then go to the right one number and go down the diagonal again, etc. repeating the pattern so as to pick up every fraction in the 2-D table and writing them out linearly. Cantor than threw out duplicates like 3/6, 4/8, and 5/10 as they all equal 1/2 which we kept. (I don't even bother throwing these out as it doesn't matter in the end) Finally Cantor simply hooked 1 to the first fraction left in the linear row and 2 to the second fraction and 3 to the third, etc and since the 1:1 correspondence can be set up the fractions are the same size infinity as the counting numbers.
Now Cantor proved that if you wrote all real numbers down in a column so there decimal points were directly under each other like:
234.00000000000000000000...
5.25000000000000000000...
67.77777777777777777777,,,
3.1415926... (pi)
etc.
that even though you had written down all the real numbers in your list that he could find one that was missing. He called the process diagonalization.
The way I explain it is suppose your favorite number is 7 and my favorite number is 2. Cantor could find a number not in your list of all real numbers by taking the first digit after the decimal point in the first number, thus 0 in our example and if it is not a 7 make it a 7 but if is a 7 make it a 2. Then take the second digit in the second row and the third digit in the third row, and the 4th digit in the 4th row, etc. and use the same rule.
Our new number so far is .7727... and will be all 7's and 2's but it not in your list as it differs from your first number by the first digit and by the second number by the second digit and the third number down in your list of all real numbers by the third digit, etc. Thus the set of real numbers cannot have a 1:1 correspondence with the set of counting numbers and is thus a larger infinity.
Cantor then used his idea of power set to make an infinite number of different size infinities and placed them on a number line of infinities (like the real number line). The Power Set is all possible subsets of any given set thus the set (1, 2, 3) with 3 members would have the Power Set (), (1), (2), (3), (1,2), (1,3), (2,3), (1,2,3) which has 8 members compared to 3 in the original set.
The original counting number, whole number, integer, rational numbers (fractions), and algebraic irrational numbers (all non perfect roots like the square root of 2) he gave the name aleph null and the power set of aleph null was aleph 1 and the power set of aleph 1 was aleph 2, etc. and the real number infinity Cantor gave the name C (for the continuum) null and its power set is C 1 and its power set is C 2, etc.
For his part, Cantor suspected that the absolute highest infinity was God.
Next I said, "I do not have a degree to be a Pastor but I do have a degree in Physics and I know from Einstein that E=mc^2. Thus an extremely small piece of matter can be converted into a gigantic amount of energy or a gigantic amount of energy can be converted back into an extremely small piece of mass. Another way to put it is that humans used this to make to atom bomb and on the other front have witnessed mass appear where only energy existed before in space.
In conclusion, when Jesus felt healing energy leave him when the lady had mass added to heal her bleeding problem, do you think Jesus had any less energy after than before?
When Jesus twice took a few loaves of bread and a few fish and feed thousands to their fill by converting His energy into the mass of food, do you think He had any less energy after than before?
When God the Father created the universe (all the mass and dark energy in the universe) through Jesus do you think He had any less energy after than before?
When the sermon was over in 15 minutes according to my friend and afterwards I did receive compliments galore but made sure I let them know that it wasn't me that came up with the sermon but Jesus just used me as His vessel to deliver the words as they came to me. All I needed was the FAITH to trust HIM.