Pastor of Fellowship Church in Texas Ed Young is in the midst of a sermon series examining what Christ would say in a one-on-one conversation with some of the nation’s celebrities, including Katy Perry, Lance Armstrong, Ellen DeGeneres, basketball star LeBron James, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Kim Kardashian. This week, Young took a look at Jerry Jones and featured Jones’ comment that he’d “made a deal with the big guy upstairs.”
Young explained that God is “at every level of life,” not just “the man upstairs” as Jones quipped. Young warned the congregation against making deals with God, treating him like He’s in our pocket, and we can take Him out to perform for us. Young emphasized that even millionaires like Jerry Jones have nothing to offer God in a deal, but rather God Himself gave us the “sweetest deal in the universe” by sending “Jesus to live righteously, to die sacrificially and to rise bodily” for our salvation.
In an interview with The Christian Post earlier in January, Young said the series was not intended to “slam” any celebrities but rather discussing certain portions of their lives, and indeed it might be presumptuous of him to say he knows what Jesus would say to these people. But he added that the gospel provides clues in Jesus’ interaction with people that parallel today’s celebrities.
“One of the reasons why we are so engrossed by the icons of our culture is because we would say to ourselves, ‘I would never do that. I would never spend my money this way; I would never travel that way, I would never have friends or date people that way,’ Young told CP. We say these things to feel better about ourselves. These celebrities happen to be on our culture stage — and they are a reflection of who we are.”
