Urban Legend: What Happens In Vegas, Stays In Vegas Series

What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas

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We have been talking about Urban legends these past several weeks and we have been examining urban legends in the culture even as we talk about Spiritual Urban Legends.

One that we started to look at that looked too unbelievable at first has really taken on some steam. We saw video these past 2 weeks of a cell phone popping popcorn. We saw it occur not only in America, but also in Japan. I didn’t show it but there was also a video of this happening in France or Germany.

Well, it has moved beyond popcorn now and in my research I have discovered a video that shows a cell phone cooking a steak. This is really unbelievable.

Take a look

Video

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Now that is powerful. It not only cooked the steak but it made mashed potatoes and beans.

Unbelievable.

Now the reality is, is that those cell phones didn’t really cook that steak.

I am sure you know that.

And the reality is, is that the cell phones did not really pop popcorn. It is only an urban legend. It was actually a part of a viral marketing campaign for Cardo systems, the makers of Bluetooth headsets.

They dropped in already popped popcorn and digitally removed the kernals.

Tried this at Home

On a side note, when I first saw this a year or so ago, we actually tried this at home with the kids and some of their friends.

Most people don’t have 2 cell phones like all of the people in the video so we had a number of people and we were calling on some cell phones and our house phone and a neighbor’s house phone. I was using the neighbors house phone but I had to stand outside the house for the cordless phone to reach their base.

As we did that, and I was outside, everyone inside yells like it worked and I come rushing in to the whole group laughing at me.

It was quite funny and it was fun to try and debunk this urban legend, but it just goes to show that urban legends often appear to be true on the face of it.

Spiritual Urban Legends

Not only do we face urban legends in our society, but these past several weeks we have been talking about Spiritual Urban legends and seeking to debunk these legends with the truth of God’s word.

This morning we are going to be finishing up this series in a message entitled

What Happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

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In 2003, the city of Las Vegas abandoned their campaign to advertise Las Vegas as a Family Friendly resort area and returned to an adult theme in its advertising.

The result was the slogan “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

It was designed to imply that you can come to Vegas and do whatever you want and no one will know about it and it will have no consequences in your life.

When you leave Vegas and all that you did, it would just stay there.

While not too many of us overtly believe that, we do act sometimes in ways that would appear that we believe it.

There are certain sins that have a pulling temptation for us that we think, if people did not know or would not find out about, I would do it and if no one found out, it wouldn’t have any impact.

This is exactly what this advertising campaign is playing to.

It is a mentality that believes if I can keep things that I have done from others, or at least from certain people, everything will be just fine. Those actions, decisions, will have no consequence in our life.

Well the reality is, is that is a lie of Satan.

He wants us to believe that if sins remain private, they will not effect us.

The reality is that our actions in private, that are against what God would want us to do, do have affect, more affect than we realize sometimes.

The sins we commit that nobody knows about are not harmless events that have no affect or consequence outside of the spot they happened.

What happens in Vegas, does not stay in Vegas. That is an urban legend that we are going to debunk today and see the affects of secret sins have in many places.

To do that, we are going to take a look at a man who committed a sin that he wanted to “stay in Vegas” or at least within his palace, but had many effects that he did not anticipate when he was engaging in this sin.

This man’s name is David. Turn with me to 2 Samuel 11:1.

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