Episode Transcript
<p><!--block-->Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Radiating Faith, the ministry sub-series on the Couple O' Nukes podcast. I am excited to be here. I am recording from Japan, where I am temporarily residing. I'm here for a stay, and so this sermon got delayed because initially I had the idea for it a few weeks ago. I was at the virtual water cooler drop-in event hosted by Steve Wright, the founder of the Managers Who Lead Facebook group and the host of the One to One Thing podcast. Mr. Wright and I were on a call with some other people And at some point, I don't remember the exact you know, context for why he brought it up, but he mentioned being educated on the fact that flamingos are not born pink. And he went into the science a little bit behind what makes them pink, and I was like, boom. I told him right then and there, and he can hold me accountable to it. You know, I said there, I said, "Hey, I'm making a Bible sermon about this." And so here we are. I've even got my flamingo shirt on, courtesy of my unofficial stepmother. She got this for me. You know, she's just not legally my stepmother, but she does play that role in my life, and so she saw this somewhere and was like, "Oh, Mr. Whiskey would love that." And it is, it is great. It's for those of you just listening, it's a white Hawaiian shirt with pink flamingos on it, of course. Now that I know they're not born pink, I'm gonna have to go make a, you know, non-pink flamingo shirt. But she knows that I've been on a couple cruises for work the Podcasters at Sea, now called the New Media Cruise. I'll actually be speaking on the New Media Cruise this year, 2026, focused on mental health and media, and you can secure your cabin now at newmediacruise.com if you wanna attend. But she saw this and, and got this for me, and lo and behold, just a short time after I got this shirt from her, here we are doing a flamingo-themed sermon, which I would have never expected. But that alone is a testimony to God's just how amazing he is when it comes to sermon inspiration. I have a list of sermons I'll be doing over the course of the next few weeks, and I am just super excited about it because some of them are just, you know... The inspiration for them just blows my mind sometimes. I think that it's part of the reflection of creativity in the Creator. You know, God has gifted us with such creativity and the ability to really leverage things to evangelize. I recently did a May the Fourth be with You sermon talking about, you know, that Star Wars trend, May the Fourth be with You. I talked about Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. And you know, it's not about making everything Christian, but everything we do, we're supposed to do for the glory of God. You know, we've secularized everything when we need to make everything about God because he is the reason for everything that- We have and that we are. And so I'm super excited for this. Again, not to try and make flamingos such a Christian thing, but I believe that when we can talk about God and see some parallels and analogies, it's excellent, and I think it's great for reaching those who maybe the Bible is complicated language or they just have church or whatever it is that is keeping them, and maybe I'm speaking to you right now from getting into the Word. Hopefully this analogy will make it something more approachable for you, and that's ultimately the goal here with this sermon, and we're gonna get right into it. I do have some notes that I'll be referencing because I wanna, you know, share some of these Bible quotes verbatim. Now, what I found out is that flamingos are born gray or whitish. They're a mixture of gray, white, maybe even a little black color, you know, depending on ev- every bird is born a little bit differently, but they're, they're born gray. And this really shocked me. I mean, I've gone over two decades now, I never knew this. And maybe some of y'all know that, maybe you learned that in high school, middle school, college, whatever it was. I never knew this. I, I don't know. No one ever told me. You know, it's not something I ever looked up. I've never been, like, a flamingo enthusiast, despite the shirt I'm wearing. And so I found out recently from Steve Wright, actually, on the water cooler, that it's ... they're, they're born gray and white. Their pink, you know, plumage, feathers, whatever you wanna call it, hopefully those are the right words, you know, that pinkness actually comes from what's called carotenoid. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. But carotenoid pigments in their diet, so basically looking at their algae and then the small crustaceans such as brine shrimp that they eat, that results in that pink transformation. And when Steve Wright was sharing that with me, what I heard in my preacher, minister brain was, like the flamingo, humanity is born without the full color that we were created to display. Like the flamingo, their grayness is biological design by God. God made it so that w- when flamingos are born, they're born gray or, or whitish, right? But he made us to be vibrant. We were made in his image. It is the condition of the fallen world that led to this. It's the global historical consequence of free will and past choices made, the original sin of Adam and Eve, that made us gray. We weren't born gray originally when God created us. However, now we are all born gray because in this fallen world, we are born into the grayness of sin, of brokenness, and inherited corruption. And I wanna share a couple Bible quotes. Like I said, I'm gonna read them verbatim here, focused on that grayness and that c- that corruption and that sin. So looking at Romans 5:12, and these are all gonna be from the New International Version of the Bible. Looking at Romans 5:12, "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." Now, that's a fragment of the full quote. If you look at the full context, Paul is talking about, you know, basically the reversal, why Yeshua came as, as a man and died on the cross, and how he took sin out. He took that as one man, right? It's talking about the reversal and the parallel. If you look at the theological unity of the Old Testament and the New Testament, what you'll find is it's one big story, of course, not a story in the fictional sense as in the historical account sense. In that theological unity there's a lot of reflection. So you have Adam and Yeshua are reflected in many ways from the death being on the cross to the tree in the garden to many other parallels. You'll find that it's a reversal. But looking at just this part right here, what we see is sin entered the world through one man and death through sin. It entered the world. So when we are born into this world, it is among us. This world is, i- is death, right? We are on the other side of the garden Now, many people throughout the Bible have mentioned this as well. You look at Psalm 51:5, which I love Psalm 51. Psalm 51 is a lamentation of David really, or a seeking of repentance, an acknowledgement of his own, you know, sin. David is talking about that kind of stuff. In fact, I have a necklace on right now from Avow 119. It is Psalm 51:17 where David shares about his lamentations, talking about how God will accept a contrite and broken heart and spirit, and talks about the sacrifices needed to be made when you realize the weight and cost of your sin and repentance. So Psalm 51, if you go back from the necklace I wear, verse 17, you go back to verse 5, you see, "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." This is the same man who said that I was knit together in the womb by God is saying, "I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." So he's, he's not even saying like, "Hey, I became sinful later in life with the whole ordeal with Bathsheba." He is saying, "I was sinful at birth. I came into this world in, in sin. I w- from the time my mother conceived me." Right? Not even his birth, conception. And we know conception is a holy, beautiful thing. In fact, light is emitted at conception because it is a divine gift from God Then you look at David's son, King Solomon, if you follow the s- the most commonly accepted claim that Ecclesiastes was authored by King Solomon and that he is the wise teacher referenced in that. You see it says in Ecclesiastes 7:20, which is chapter 7 verse 20, "Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins." And you see that right there. No one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins. That keyword being never. We've, we've all sinned. In fact, that's actually stated as well in Romans 3:23. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." In Jeremiah 17:9 it says, "The heart is deceitful above all things." You know, that's referencing human nature and the decisions we make, and that is sin. Isaiah 53:6, "We all, like sheep, have gone astray." You could look even at Judges when it says, you know, people were doing what was right in their eyes at the time, and you know, there is a path that seems right but it leads to death, right? There are so many Bible quotes that we could reference. We could talk about so many other parts of the New Testament that talk about sin, right? But I don't wanna just harp on sin, but I did wanna share about that grayness that we are born into, that grayness and that white plumage, right? That's what that is. But through Yeshua, and that is commonly Jesus Christ, He is the bread of life, and by abiding in His Word, the Spirit produces a visible transformation in us, right? It's not about looking better. It's about actually changing what is being formed within us. Yeshua Himself is the proper diet, right? And we're gonna get into it's not about you know, trying to be more pink. It is about becoming pink as a result of the life we have with Yeshua. In John 6:35- A very famous one, Yeshua says that he's the bread of life, and that whoever comes to him will never go hungry, and whoever believes in him will never go thirsty, right? And I- I say that not only in the analogy of diet, but that's what Yeshua said and describes himself as, right? And we see that the fruit of the Spirit, which is from abiding in Yeshua, looking at Galatians 5:22-23, we know that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. In fact, I have a s- series running on Radiating Faith going over the fruit of the Spirit because there was a book written about it breaking down each of those; love, joy, peace, forbearance, et cetera, that I am covering if you wanna check that out as well. But those, those are like the pink feathers, right? That is the transformation we're seeing. That is the pink transformation we're seeing, right? The fruit of the Spirit. We- we don't consume the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit in this case is the, the product, the, the result of abiding in Yeshua Right? And we know that Yeshua is the vine, and that we are the branches, and that if we remain in Him, in He and I, then we will bear much fruit. That is, we will become pink in our feathers, right? And that is from John 15:5. We see where He says that He is the vine, we are the branches, right? And this is the important part. This message right here is, you know, not trying to become more pink, but remaining in Yeshua, and His life produces that color in us. And this is the important part right here, remaining in Yeshua. See, a flamingo without the right nourishment loses vibrancy. Over time, it can become gray again. That pink fades away over time. It's not an overnight thing, but it does fade away if they stray away from that diet. And we know in our analogy, that diet is Yeshua, and abiding in Him So in that same way, if we stop feeding on the things of God, and we start having a, a diet that is of this world, we become spiritually pale and gray and dull and weak, and we start to go back to that sin. And I think that's really important to note. Flamingos do not make themselves pink. They become vibrant because of what they continually take in. As Christians, we do not manufacture holiness, right? We, we have to become pink by feeding on Yeshua, which is abiding in His Word and allowing the Spirit to produce His fruit in us. However, there are some people who will be gray and paint themselves pink and then tell you that they know how to get you pink as well, and they're leading you astray, right? We're talking about false prophets. It might be a podcaster, it might be a church leader, it might be someone in your life, right? It might be a musician. There are people who are gray and white in their featherage, and they are painting themselves pink and appearing pink, but they're actually still gray and white, and that's on the inside, right? I mean, look at the Pharisees as a great example of praying on the street corners and, you know, serving loudly and proudly and in front of people, right? That is displaying pink vibrancy even though you're actually gray and white, right? We need to actually have that transformation from Christ, from Yeshua Himself, by abiding in Him. A flamingo doesn't stay vibrant pink based off of yesterday's meal. Its color is maintained by continued nourishment, and that goes for us, too. We can't just stay pink forever in that transformation from Christ without continually abiding in Him, right? If we encounter Yeshua yesterday or today or tomorrow and forget about Him later on, right, we're gonna fade back Knowing or meeting Yeshua once isn't key to eternal salvation. It's knowing Yeshua, having that relationship with him, that continued nourishment, right? So it's not about yesterday's prayer or yesterday's repentance or yesterday's church session or whatever it may be. It's about the continual intake, and this is why the Bible continually puts forward that word continually. Meditate on my word day and night. Fast and pray through all things continuously, right? It does not tell us a one and done. The Bible puts forward a daily routine and discipline, and that's what people often mistake. They think once pink, always pink when it comes to those feathers, but it's about abiding continually in Yeshua because it can fade away, right? And if your diet is primarily and heavily of this world with just some of the Yeshua diet in it, it then becomes a battle for what colors will appear. And you can have some pink featherage coming through from what you do abiding Yeshua, but the rest of your body can be poisoned with the rest of your diet, right? There's a difference between having a full diet of Yeshua and a part-time diet, and a lot of us have a part-time diet And so I know that's a very short and simple sermon focused on a, a very basic analogy, but I think it's very vital. I think it's important, and I wanna end it by reading a very specific quote of scripture that I, I found while researching different quotes for this sermon. You know, I saw this one, and I felt like it really kinda put it all together. If I could put together this whole sermon in, in just one quote, it would be this one. Ephesians 2:1-5: As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us are also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath, but because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved. So looking at we were dead in our transgressions and sins. We were gray. We, we were a mixture of white and gray and black. We were living by a diet that was of the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air. That is, Satan was the one that we were dining with, and we were getting our diet from We were gratifying the cravings of our flesh, feeding it what it wanted rather than what it needed, following its desires and thoughts. We were deserving of wrath, of being gray and ugly and, and dealing with the punishment of sin that was happening and to come. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. He came and gave us a new diet, a, a way to become pink and vibrant and to radiate with that beauty as, as he wants for us. So ladies and gentlemen, what are you eating spiritually? Are you abiding in Yeshua, the bread of life, the water of life, the vine, or are you following the diet of this world? As I said, there is a difference between what our body wants and what it needs. Because in this day and age, we need fruits and vegetables and a balanced diet, but we're craving candy and all this artificial stuff made by man, right? One of them maybe is more addictive and tastes better and has us fit in more, but only one of them can actually make us spiritually a bright and pink and vibrant flamingo. And so while it's a, a simple analogy, again It's a parallel to spiritual warfare, and spiritual warfare is undoubtedly a balance of life and death for all of eternity. And so it may seem simple, like a gray flamingo and a pink flamingo, but they represent two spiritual states, two different paths, two different eternal outcomes</p>
