What Happens When A.I. Takes Your Calling? | A.I., Aliens, & Algorithms

Hey, let's talk about some jobs that no longer exist.

Let's start with the first one.

Log driver.

Once upon a time, there were people that cut down logs and moved them down the river.

But that time is gone.

Here's another one.

Once there was aircraft listeners.

I'd like to wear that thing for a couple hours.

Thankfully, we don't need those anymore.

What else we got?

Factory lectors.

So before there was radio, everyone in the factory is just bored while they're working.

Somebody's got to stand up and read.

So that's what somebody might do for a few hours.

There's also milkman.

My granddad was a milkman.

We just don't need milkmen.

You know, we need the humans, but we don't need the job anymore because there's a lot of milk.

There's a lot of milk at the grocery store because you can just go get it there.

Uh, what else we got?

We got pin setters.

Man, could you imagine what it's like to just put up pins hour after hour?

Uh, you're back, dude.

That must be so rough.

And then here's my favorite rat catchers.

Could you imagine if that was your job, dude?

Like, that's what you do all day is you find ways to get rats.

And like the bigger pile you get, like, the prouder you feel.

Uh, all those were very meaningful, though.

Like, they sound kind of funny, and yet the truth is people were paid real money for those, and families really ate because that real money happened.

But as time went by, those things went away, and new jobs replaced them.

Now, they might have been worried what happens when my job goes away because the tech changes.

I'm sure it was real, it was a real concern.

It's a real concern now.

There's definitely a sense of, man, if if your job might go away, there's a there's a time to grieve that.

And at the same time, we've just got to know, like, if we're gonna, if we're just gonna live in the now, stuff does change, and ultimately, it really will be okay.

It'll be okay.

And Christians should know that better than anybody because um Christians know the God of heaven and he promises to take care of them.

He takes care of every sparrow that falls, he promises to take care of us.

Here's my question today.

We're gonna we're gonna end the AI part of this series, AI, aliens, and algorithms.

We take a few weeks off uh with some other important messages to hear, but then we're gonna come back and talk about aliens.

I know you're gonna dig that, but here's the final question I want to ask you as we try to wrap this topic up for a little while.

Does my use of AI help me faithfully carry the responsibility I've been given by God, or help me avoid it while looking like I fulfilled it?

Does my use of AI help me faithfully carry the responsibility I've been given by God, or does it help me avoid that responsibility while it looks like I did fulfill it?

So I remember in the early days of the internet, I'm I'm old enough, I'm lucky enough to remember what it was like before the internet, and I remember when the internet was around.

I remember some of the things that began to change when the internet like came out.

Okay, some of you might remember this.

In in as in my youth, you had to go to the music store to get tapes or to get CDs.

And it was a whole deal, man.

And it might be three, four bucks per song.

Some of y'all can't imagine that.

You had to buy each and every song.

Like that's how that worked back then.

But you had to go, and so it was it was good money.

If you wanted the song, man, you gotta pay good money for it.

Well, once the internet came, there was this thing called Napster.

And suddenly you could just download free music.

It was it was like, are we stealing?

What is this thing?

Like the tech had released a new possibility.

We can do something, but should we do this thing about just kind of stealing music?

As the internet began to you know pick up pace and people were on email more, there we all discovered a different kind of spam.

It's not the delicious mystery meat that some of you love.

It is where you realize I can send an email to a thousand people.

Should I send this email to a thousand people?

We learned over time, it wasn't obvious at first.

We learned over time, no, you should not send that email to a thousand people.

We learned right away.

So if you might have been a student during this time, you figured out, wow, I can just like go find stuff on the internet and copy and paste and put it in my paper.

Like that is a thing that I can now do.

However, as time went by, we began to realize, okay, we tested that.

That's not everybody's conscience doesn't feel good about that.

So let's not do that.

There was some confusion as we started the shift into the internet world.

And there were questions, there's new things possible.

Should we do these things?

Some of them was like, yes, there's some awesome things that we can do now on the internet.

And some of them, it became clear over time, not instantly, that is now possible.

But we as a society should just decide we're not going to do it that way.

One of the difficulties of AI is we can begin to ask, if AI can do my job, do I still matter?

Because it's not just it does a piece of my job.

There's some jobs it can do the entire job.

And it can do it pretty and it can do it instantly.

And really, what I want to try to convince you today is that's not so much a technological question as it's a calling question.

It's not a technological question, it's a calling question.

Let me try to do what I can do to convince you of that.

Here's the first error we might begin to think.

If my task can be automated, I am not needed anymore.

If this can be automated, I'm not needed anymore.

But here's the other side of the ditch.

If we're on the road in the center, that's one side of the ditch.

Here's the other side.

If the tool can make it, I don't need to learn, I don't need to have judgment, I don't need to have wisdom, I don't really need to do anything because this thing will do it for me.

So one feels very discouraged because now suddenly I'm not useful, and one says, I've got a great opportunity here to do a whole lot less than what I used to be responsible for.

And I'm essentially shirking my responsibility.

Here's the deal, yo.

It's not just about output, it's not just about the products that we make.

It's true.

There's machines now that can replace some of what we do.

Here's a danger.

As human beings, we don't want to hand over to machines what it means to be human.

We don't want to give away something of ourselves that machines can do, but it hurts who we're becoming.

So here's the deal: AI is part of a bigger conversation, and the conversation is calling.

I want to try to convince you today about understanding your calling better so we can all make wise decisions about AI because I'm pretty sure it's here to stay.

So the Israelites are on their way out.

They're now traveling to the promised land.

Some of you remember a couple years ago we did an entire two series, uh, the way out and uh the way up or something like that.

I don't remember what the series is called, but it's an Exodus series.

We're back in Exodus.

This is chapter 31.

Isaiah 31 · chapter mention

And Moses is being told by the Lord, here's how you're gonna build the temple, meaning the place where God is gonna abide, God is gonna dwell, that's where his presence is gonna be.

God brought them out of Egypt because he wanted to be with them, he wanted a relationship with them.

He said, You're gonna have to build a special temple for me so that I can come be in the midst of you guys.

Dustin, if we get that picture of what that camp would look like, there it is again.

Well, they've got to build that structure, that tent, that tabernacle.

And they don't necessarily know how.

Okay, so there were slaves coming out of Egypt.

They don't know where the material is gonna come from, they don't know exactly what God would want as he's going to build a temple.

So God gives them some instructions.

He says, it's not just that I'm gonna build it for you, I'm gonna use you to build it.

We're gonna learn a little bit about our calling and responsibility by looking at what a guy named Bezalel was commanded to do by God.

Here it is, Exodus 31:1.

Exodus 31:1

The Lord told Moses, look, I've called Yuri's son Bezalel.

Somebody say called.

Called, grandson of her from Judah's tribe, and I've filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, all kinds of craftsmanship, to create plans, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, for cutting stones, to set them, for carving wood, and doing all kinds of craftsmanship.

I'm now appointing with him Ahimas, Ahias.

Man, I practiced for like 10 minutes to get this right.

Ahisamak, that's what it is.

Ahisamak and Aholiav.

Well, humility, from the tribe of Dan.

And I've given wisdom to all who are skilled, so that they can make everything I've commanded you.

And he goes through verses 7 through 11 about okay, you're gonna make this tent of meeting, you're gonna make this Ark of the Covenant, you're gonna make all the furniture, you're gonna even make stuff down to the anointing oil, down to the actual garments that people wear.

And then ending in verse 11, they're to make them in accordance with everything that I have commanded you.

God called not just for things to be made, he called for unique, specific individuals that he'd uniquely gifted to be a part of the making of them, not just for forming products.

He had things he wanted done, and he gave them skill to do it.

He gave some of them the teaching ability to help others do it.

And here's what I want us to take away.

Here's number one.

Humans alone can be privileged with God's number one calling.

Humans alone can be privileged with God's calling.

I want to get into calling because it's a very cool idea, but here's a first cooler idea.

The first place that God calls us is to his son Jesus Christ.

That's that's what happens first.

Okay, so before we can even talk about the calling of God, we are called, we are awakened, we begin to get a sense of I'm interested in the things of God.

That is the Spirit of God awakening something and making that attractive to us.

And it's really Jesus summoning us, saying, Come to me, I'm actually the answer you seek.

Because the relationship with God itself is broken.

And now there's a wall up between each human and God, and the only way to break that wall down and repair the breach is to trust in the saving work of Jesus Christ.

So you can't even really get into God's calling for your life, really?

You can do a bunch of stuff that you're really gifted to, and you can you can, in a general sense, be doing probably what a human with your gifts should do on planet earth.

But specifically, until you know Jesus Christ, until you receive his calling, you're still not quite, you haven't closed the breach, man.

Like you're still not quite on God's program.

So the first thing before we do anything, the call is to Jesus Christ so that we can get our sins forgiven.

That's why we become convicted.

We say, Oh, it's me.

It really is me.

I'm the problem, it's me.

I turn my sin over to Jesus and I receive his solution.

It's him.

And the solution is he forgives us for our sin.

And now we're rightly covenantally restored to God through Christ.

Not because of anything we did, but just because we relationally trusted him.

People who like the gospel should say, Amen.

But he calls Bezalel by name.

Did you notice that?

He called him by name.

You said, I chose this guy, and I chose this guy, and I've gifted him.

God says, I've it always starts with God.

I called, I gifted him with the things I want him to have.

Now we have to understand this thing about calling, because some of your translations, they mean well, but they just chose a bad word.

They use the word chosen instead of calling, and it's not quite the same thing.

Chosen could be I'm at the supermarket and I've just found some produce and I'm picking between this orange and this orange.

That's chosen.

That is not the same thing.

Called means there's a summons.

There's a summons by a king to do what the king wants you to do.

So there's much more of a moral imperative on it.

So I mean, you can imagine this.

We don't have kings in this country, but let's just say a very important, you know, judge says, you will appear in court next Thursday.

You're like, oh, I will appear in court next Thursday.

Because there might be consequences if I don't appear in court next Thursday.

I might not go to sleep at home.

I might go to sleep in jail if I don't appear in court next Thursday.

So it's like that a little bit because the authority is there, but it's more than that because God is not just a judge, he's your best friend.

Okay, so it's more like he's the judge who has supreme authority, he's summoning us, and woe be to us if we don't go.

But also he says, by the way, I'm gonna empower you to do all the stuff.

I'm your friend, I'm excited about, we're gonna do it together, and I'm gonna equip you with the power, with the resources, with the stuff, and we're gonna make a good old time about it.

It's gonna be fantastic.

So he calls them, he's the one who promises, I'm gonna make myself responsible for your fruitfulness as long as you obey the summoning, as long as you do it, I'm gonna help you pull it off.

I can remember for me, so this might feel different for different ones.

I can remember when I first became a Christian and I was gonna be an actor if you didn't know about that.

Like, that's what I was going to school for, that's what I was doing.

I was beginning to get in all kinds of like what were in my college area, prestigious plays and that kind of thing.

And I would walk off the stage and be like, I don't know, I'm supposed to love this.

Why don't I love this anymore?

And it was because I was also getting to know Jesus Christ.

And I was also beginning to share my faith with other people.

And every time I did that, it was like, like it was something alive in me was just jumping up and down.

And then slowly people began to ask me to come communicate God's word to like groups of people.

And as I did that more and more, there was just this tug of like, okay, that way was fine, but I'm calling you to go this way.

It wasn't an audible voice at that point, it wasn't anything else.

It wasn't like, I'm summoning you now, Carter.

It was much more of a gentle, my interest is going this way, my joy is going this way, and circumstances are kind of opening this way.

That's how I first recognized the calling.

Then in 2009, myself and some others, some of you were there, we decided to plant a church in a movie theater.

And that was a much more moral imperative version.

See, I'd been pushing that off for a couple of years.

I'm like, God, I don't know, man.

I've tried that before and it just didn't work, and I'm afraid, and what if that fails?

And I don't think that's gonna be very good.

And as I've shared in other places, there came a moment where it was it was very direct.

I knew his person and his voice a whole lot more.

It was, Carter, if you don't do this right now, I'm gonna give this to somebody else.

And there was like dun, dun, dun, dun, like that's what was happening in my heart.

And I got scared to not do it.

That was much more of a deeper call.

And so you might be anywhere along those spectrums.

It might be just a small tug, a small interest, or it might be a you kind of know you're in a and some of you might know that today.

The Lord has asked you to do something.

It's not wise to keep procrastinating if you have enough information and you know you're supposed to do it.

That's not all the time.

I think that's even kind of rare.

But once you know, baby, you know.

Now it's not just ministry stuff, and this is where we can get confused.

We can think, oh, that's okay.

So if you're a ministry person, that's probably what you do.

It's not just that, though.

See, in this narrative, there's really not any priests at all.

The first person who actually, the Bible says, is filled with the Spirit of God is Bezalel, and he's a craftsman.

And then all these other like construction people and design people and creatives are all anointed by God to help build this building.

So what does God does God say?

Well, God calls managers to be Jesus managers in their organization.

He calls people to be writers, not necessarily Christian writers, but writers who are Christians.

He calls people to be gardeners, not Christian gardeners.

How do you be a Christian gardener?

Just a gardener that's a Christian.

Okay?

You're doing it unto his glory for his purposes.

Anyone that has a job at all, if you're a Christian, here's really what you're doing.

You're trying to like them.

They're building the kingdom of God in their time with the thing God wanted to be done.

In your time, your best purposes, whatever you do for a living, is to say, this is for Jesus.

I offer this to Jesus, and I'm gonna take part of what I make in my money as I'm going to give it to the kingdom of God to support the kingdom moving forward on planet Earth.

That's the smartest play, a promise.

That's what that's what you're gonna not regret forever.

That's what you're gonna be like, daggum, I'm glad that preacher told me.

Uh, because in heaven it's gonna be a really, really big deal.

So here's just a question like, whatever your understanding of your calling is today, are you taking that seriously?

Are you taking it seriously enough?

And are you maybe not uh dissing yourself, saying, Well, I'm nobody, I'm nothing.

No, dude, God knows you by name.

He picked you out to do your exact stuff.

He made you interested in all that stuff.

He's the one who made you good in that stuff because he has purposes, and not just because he's summoning you, but because he likes you and he wants to share it with you.

And I mean, I think I don't think I'm outside of the scripture to say this.

I think it's fun for him.

You know, when I go do something with my kids, it's fun.

It's fun because we're doing it together.

Even when they're very little and they just really couldn't do much of anything very good, like, you know, they didn't even draw a picture and it was just like hilarious.

But being with them itself was what made it fun.

I think it's fun for God.

But you'll notice he didn't just call Bezalel, he called a whole bunch of people.

He called them in community.

See, part of our calling, this is where our I think our current generation gets so self-autonomous.

We're trying to do so much on our own that we forget in the Bible, dude, the people are almost always called together.

And even if they're called individual, like Moses, they end up with other people.

Because God's trying to do this thing in community.

We need one another.

Why?

Because he models for us through one another how to not just make the curtains and carve the wood.

He's modeling through each other how to live for Jesus Christ.

That's why we need us.

Because we're actually helping each other know him deeper in ways you can't just know him if you're always on your own.

Speaking of that same church plant in that theater, you know what's so dope about that time?

We had barely a clue what we were doing at all.

Okay, so it was, it was humorous just to watch us try to do that thing.

But there was also a radical faith, a radical hunger for God.

And it made all of us pretty doggone close because we're just in the trenches together, dude.

And if it sucks, we suck together.

If it's great, it's great together.

And we saw God move, and if we're not much of anything, we did it together.

There's something so powerful about that.

That's what I really feel bad for folks that don't understand the significance of serving in church yet.

So, dude, significance is a whole lot more important than whatever convenience we could talk about.

Significance means eternally.

How much stuff are you doing that has eternal value?

Let me just ask that question.

How many hours a week are you doing stuff that this is gonna ripple throughout eternity, forever?

Serving God and building up his church, dude, that's gonna ripple forever and ever and ever and ever.

Because every life you touch is gonna be touched, and they're gonna touch lives, and they're gonna touch lives, and then eventually Jesus is gonna count it all up.

And you say, Wow, well done, good and faithful servant.

You were faithful a little, let me put you in charge of a lot.

So there's a significance when we get together, it's significant not only because of what we're doing, but because who we're becoming, and that's a faithfulness test, too.

Come on, somebody, are you hearing this?

Humans alone can be privileged not only for God's calling, but for the filling of the Holy Spirit.

I've filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge.

This is a preview.

So this is not the same thing as Pentecost, but it's a it's an old testament preview of God is demonstrating to everybody when I put my power on somebody, everything gets elevated.

Everything gets more.

So it's not that Bezalov wasn't already skilled, but now he was skilled plus God.

All these other people, it's not that they weren't wise, they were wise now plus God.

God was showing them, hey, um, I've given you power so that when you go to design that thing, which is a special skill that I've given you, you can have that with God.

And I think that's one of the challenges for us today.

When you think about calling, what God is asking you to do, as far as you know, in the next year here on planet Earth, we can do that alone.

And you can't even praise God for it.

Thank God I got these gifts.

These are great.

Thank God I get to do this.

You can do that, and that's a great level one.

Let's quickly go to level two.

Level two is God, I'm this thing that you made.

I'm also an empty vessel that if you don't fill it, is not gonna be really good for much eternally.

Would you fill my gifts?

Would you amplify what I'm doing for your kingdom?

Would you make it way more powerful than I could ever make it?

And let Let's say this would you not only do that, make it more powerful?

I think a lot of us think about the Holy Spirit as an effectiveness thing, it's a power thing, it makes things work better.

100% true.

Let's review the side that maybe we don't review enough.

The Holy Spirit's first name is Holy.

There's a clue there.

Holy Spirit is about not just like amplify my abilities to do stuff, amplify my integrity to represent you.

So here's the next question.

Like, we might pray a lot.

God, please fill me with your spirit so I can deal with that girl today.

Fill me with your spirit so that I can, you know, stay with enough power to get this really hard task done.

Very important.

Good.

Always pray those things.

But also, God, would you fill me with your spirit just so I honor you today?

Just so I think the right thoughts today.

That's what I need the Holy Spirit for.

So I speak sweetly today.

God, you know, if I'm just left on my own, who knows what's going to come out of my mouth?

Would you place a guard over my mouth?

Fill my mouth with the Holy Spirit so I say Jesus type things.

Come on, somebody.

Now, here's a danger that we can all get in.

You're like, where's the AI?

We're getting there.

Hang on.

Here's a danger.

See, in the very next chapter, okay, so 31, they're getting all these instructions.

You guys are gonna be filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom.

You're gonna build this thing, it's gonna be awesome.

You're gonna use all this stuff that's some of it you took out of Egypt, and now you're gonna use it to build this temple.

Tabernacle.

In the very next chapter, Moses goes up on the mountain.

He's gonna talk to God for a while.

And all the people say, You know what we need?

We need a God like the gods we had in Egypt where we can see them.

How about this?

Let's get all of our gold together and let's have somebody hammer it into a golden calf.

Then we'll have a visual for what our God looks like, and then we can worship that thing rather than this invisible dude that Moses seems to think he's talking to.

So many problems with that.

So we don't even have to review necessarily the idea that God specifically commanded do not create anything as an idol, a physical thing to worship.

And the reason that was true, guys, is because we don't have anything like God.

There's nothing you could make, there's nothing you could hammer.

Anything you hammer something out, anything you create is less than God.

It's gonna give you the wrong idea of what God is until God is seen in the image of Jesus Christ.

Finally, we understand this is what God is like.

He's like Jesus.

But that's a sidelight.

They're taking their skill, they're taking their things, they're taking their gold, and they're creating something.

And that thing is idolatrous and false worship.

We can create our stuff, we can take our AI knowledge, we can create all kinds of stuff, and we can do it fast and we can do it effectively, and we can do it even in a way that people are like, yes, excellent, now we got this thing.

But all it does is it creates something that really is an abomination to who God is, who he's asked his people to be, how he's asked us to represent him, what his character is like, so much lesser than he is.

That's what happens when we just don't ask any questions.

We just say, hey man, if it's effective, use it.

Well, these guys seem to think their tools were effective and they wasted all their gold on this stupid calf rather than the place it should have been put, which was the temple of God.

Is anybody hearing us?

This sound familiar to anybody?

God wants everything we do to represent his truth, he wants it to adorn the gospel of God, he wants it to make his people look sweet, he wants it to stir up godly ethic inside of us.

What did it do?

Well, you know, Moses comes back and he says, Aaron, what's up with this wicked display that I'm seeing right here?

What's up with this golden calf?

And uh, some of you know what Aaron says at that point.

He says, He essentially says, Hey, I don't know.

We threw in gold and out popped this calf.

What did he do right there?

He abdicated his responsibility.

He was a responsible worshiper that was responsible for outcomes, and yet when the outcome came, he said, Well, that's not really my fault.

No, Aaron, but it was your fault.

You were the guy in charge, and you allowed the fact that you could make this thing bring about something, and then you walked away and said, Well, uh, it's not really my fault because I didn't he just made an excuse for it.

And that was disgrace on Aaron.

So we just I'm just trying to get us to think through, guys.

There's things that AI will be able to make that it it's fine that it makes some stuff for us that adorns the gospel and points to God, but we have to ask the question does this adorn the gospel and point to God?

Yeah, does my AI use help me faithfully carry my responsibility that God has given me?

Or does it help me avoid my responsibility, making it look like I fulfilled it?

So in about probably about 2006, here's what I did.

I'm like, oh man, I'd really like to listen to these worship.

I would have called them CDs, but now they were MP3s.

I'd sure like these.

And then I found this little site where you could just download them for free.

And were they really for free though?

They're not supposed to be.

So here I am.

I'm a young adult minister at that moment.

Okay.

I'm downloading worship songs, stealing them.

What am I thinking is gonna happen here?

So you're gonna put these on and worship God with stolen goods?

Is that what you're doing?

Do you see how kooky we can get?

Like that's that's a that's a direct front to the principles of you can't steal and worship God at the same time.

You can't worship God with stealing.

Let's do another one.

Here's the final one.

Humans alone can be privileged with God's wisdom.

With God's wisdom.

I've given to all who are wise-hearted wisdom.

He says, Everyone who's wise, I'm gonna give them more wisdom so they can use my stuff faithfully and profitably and figure out ways to make it most glorifying to me.

God gives wisdom.

He tells us to ask for wisdom.

He grows wisdom when we keep pursuing it, when we keep trying to learn.

I think it's so important that he gave them wisdom, which means he did not actually give them every step to making this thing.

Right?

Like if he just gave them really just here's step one, step two, step three.

You don't need wisdom for that.

You just do the instruction.

But he gave them wisdom because there were gonna come up things of like, well, what's the right way to do it?

How do you carve that the right way?

Who knows?

Who's been around carpentry before?

Who knows about how to do that?

What about this laying gold thing?

Who's got wisdom about like the right amount to use in this kind of application?

There's wisdom necessary to do the work of God, and God didn't give them every last instruction.

He says, I'm gonna just give you wisdom.

And the wisdom is to most glorify me, know how to do cool and awesome and excellent stuff.

Some of you know my friend named Adam.

Adam Bitz.

Dude, this guy's a miracle worker.

He can do just anything with carpentry, okay?

So, like, I know how to use a hammer and I know how to use a screw gun.

There's other things I can tinker with and kind of figure it out.

But I at best just know how that tool works, okay?

Adam will come and he's got so much experience, he's got so many threads of knowledge, giant webs of it, that he can just feel a piece of wood and be like, now we can't use this, there's too much moisture in it.

Or he can just know, you know, I know you think it's wise to put those two materials together.

It's not gonna work out for you, I promise.

Things that I would just, hey, here's what I think is smart.

No, because I have no wisdom in this.

But in some of you are like this.

You've got wisdom in areas that an AI, it doesn't matter what an AI tells you because it doesn't have your wisdom.

It would just say, well, here's some basic steps.

You're like, yeah, but AI, I know all kinds of context that I don't have the time to type into you.

I have webs of knowledge that are just when I see the piece of wood, I just know that's a bad idea.

Doesn't matter what AI says.

This is this is what we've got to understand the limitations of AI.

It doesn't have the human touch, it doesn't have the human wisdom.

God give the wisdom to humans to be able to complexly understand years and years and years of life that built up to these moments and make a judgment call of wisdom.

This is what is wisdom, and that's what God asks us to do.

Now, one danger with wisdom there's really a false wisdom.

There's a dark wisdom.

There's a wisdom that is actually anti-wisdom, and it doesn't talk about itself that way.

But James talks about it in James chapter 3.

James 3 · chapter mention

He says, if you are wise and understand God's ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with humility that comes from wisdom.

Honorable life, doing good works, humility that comes from real wisdom.

Here's the false wisdom.

But if you are bitterly jealous and there's selfish ambition in your heart, don't cover up the truth with boasting and lying.

For jealousy and selfishness are not God's kind of wisdom.

Such are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic.

For wherever there's jealousy and selfish ambition, you will find disorder and evil of every kind.

How many think that probably doesn't adorn the gospel?

But wisdom from above is first of all pure, it's also peace-loving, gentle, at all times, willing to yield to others.

It's full of mercy with and the fruit of good deeds.

It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.

I've found that AI is just trying to get me the quickest way to whatever it thinks the goal is.

It has no concept of godly wisdom versus ungodly, selfish, self-focused, not humble wisdom.

This is where the mature ones who are asking for God's wisdom need to differentiate.

What is the fruit of this wisdom?

Like, what's the fruit of this?

What does this produce?

What does this sow into planet Earth?

Does it sow kindness?

Does this make people like act more nice?

Does this make people want to get closer to God?

Or does this just accelerate my deal?

Does it just make me look good?

Does it help me get ahead of people?

Because I'm kind of like competitive with this person and I want, I don't like them so much getting ahead of me, so I want to get ahead of them.

That's all a wrong motive that is the wrong kind of wisdom.

And AI will rarely tell you the difference.

So as we're asking for wisdom, as we're as we're approaching AI and saying, God, help me do wise things, it means help me produce good in the earth.

Help me bring the kingdom with this wisdom.

Wisdom is not uh always obvious.

That's why we've got to ask God for it.

Now, let me give you my three, I've actually got like 13, but let me give you three of principles that I think are really helpful.

So this is my list, it doesn't have to be your list.

I think it's godly, I think it's based on scripture.

Uh, but let me give just give you three.

I think this will help keep us wise while we're still figuring out how AI works over the next 25 years.

Saving time is not cheating.

Okay?

I this is I just believe this.

I believe this is in scripture.

There are things that improve our ability to do things efficiently, and that's not inherently cheating.

Example, in this very book, Exodus, Jethro comes to Moses and says, What you are doing is not good.

You're seeing hundreds of people every day.

They're coming to waiting in line for you only, for you to give them the counsel of God.

Says, Moses, you gotta quit this, dude.

You're gonna kill yourself and them.

Why don't you do this?

Why don't you raise up more leaders?

Now, if you do that, it's gonna get a little slightly less spiritual and good.

Why?

Because they don't get Moses.

Even so, nevertheless, it's still more efficient and it's not cheating.

It's what God was actually commanding him through Jethro.

I would encourage, don't be overly afraid of everything to do with AI.

Here's why.

Um no one currently today like feels bad about spell check or GPS or a spreadsheet.

No one today even feels bad about medicine or electricity.

I mean you you know this, right?

Like the reason that there's clinical trials is because they're testing medicine.

How much of this kills somebody?

Like that's you know, or does something pretty bad.

Like that's what they're doing with that experiment.

But they do it so that we get to the point where this amount is gonna save lives.

And it does again and again and again and again.

But that takes not necessarily fear of it, but understanding this is a thing to use wisely so that we can do good in the earth.

What about electricity?

I mean, think about what electricity is.

Think about if you went back 400 years and you said, you know, someday your house is gonna like have lightning in it.

Like everywhere.

You're gonna carry lightning on your person.

They'd be like, that'd be so frightening.

And yet we've figured out how to take lightning and put it everywhere so that we have electricity.

Guys, we've gotta be able to experiment and find out.

Let's see what we can do that's efficient, that adorns the gospel, and makes God look good.

Again, this is just my list, doesn't have to be your list.

Here's number two assistance, not abdication.

Assistance, not abdication.

This one's really important to me.

What are people trusting is actually you?

That's the question.

Real, real easy one, okay?

So, like, if I ask AI, hey, write my wife a beautiful poem, and I give her the poem, and I'm like, Yep, that was me.

Okay, well, she's trusting me as a spouse.

You're not gonna give me AI poems.

Okay, that's that's just something we're trusting.

Here's where it maybe hits a little bit harder.

As your preacher, I want you to trust.

I'm not giving you AI sermons, dude.

That's a real thing that happens a lot all over the place.

Let me tell you why.

That would be abdicating like Aaron my responsibility.

I think the deal here is I'm gonna seek God.

I'm gonna seek for a word from the Lord.

Like, that's what I'm thinking every time we come in on a week on a weekend.

God, is there a word from God in the house?

That's what I'm asking all week long.

I'm getting that from Jesus.

That means I'm in the text, I'm studying, I'm playing.

God, what is your heart?

I'm trying to understand, I'm doing all the things I've learned about sermon writing over the past 20 years, and I'm trying to get it so that you believe and trust.

I think this is more than just hit enter and out pops a sermon.

Okay.

Now, I want to be very transparent with you.

There are now things that I can do more efficiently than I used to be able to, and it saves time, and I think it makes the sermon better because I have more time to stew in the text.

Okay, so one of those is dude, I've got I've got thousands of books about Jesus and the Bible and about preaching and that kind of thing.

There are commentaries that I know are really, really, really, really good.

I've just had them for years.

I know these are the best scholars on the topic that I really love.

So if we're in the book of Exodus, I'll say, I'll take all the commentaries that I like and I'll give them to the AI that exists in my computer.

And I'm saying, I want you to only look at these.

And I've got 25 questions that I'm always going to ask the text.

I want to give you those questions, find what these scholars are saying about it, synthesize, but also cite it, where are you getting that from?

So I can go back and make sure you're not tricking me.

And that speeds up my ability to review a whole lot of information at one time.

Now, I know where the information is.

I'm the one who said it wouldn't even choose the right books.

I'm choosing the books so that I'm understanding better.

You've got to understand that's an efficiency thing.

And if you don't want a preacher that does that with like commentaries and like lexicons and that kind of thing, you might have to get a different preacher because that's that's the deal I'm making.

Okay.

Like I will use that for efficiency stuff like that.

It might be that I'm wondering how do I apply this principle to someone who is um, you know, they're a shut-in and they don't come out of the house much, but I want them to understand this principle.

I might be able to think of that and really stew on it, or I could just say, okay, I've thought about that for a long time.

Here's the principle.

What are some suggestions of how this person might play this out in their real life?

So there is consultation that go happens too, but it's always still starting with I do the creative work and I do draft one and two and three, and then I ask some questions.

All right, I'm kind of stumped here.

What's just a natural life experience that people might be familiar with?

This does this make sense, guys?

Okay, let's apply it to maybe some of your roles.

Are there roles that some of you have, like teacher, like police officer, like lawyer, where people are trusting you to do a certain thing that it's you?

Okay.

Meaning you're not gonna just gonna like, well, I have all the evidence, AI, figure out if this person is guilty.

Like that would be that would be abdicating your responsibility.

Everybody's trusting there's gonna be humans thinking about that and looking at that.

If you're a teacher and you are just putting all the homework into the AI machine and say, just grade it and tell me what you think AI of each student, and that's what I'll tell the parent at the parent teacher conference.

Obviously, none of you would do that, but that's the the point is abdication of responsibility.

Humans are counting on it being you.

If you make it not you, you're lying.

That's what we want to avoid with AI.

Here's one more, and then we're gonna stop.

I would really encourage everybody, don't outsource your formation.

Some things are hard because they're being hard makes you better.

You can do it, but you could do it more efficiently, but doing it more efficiently misses the growth inside of you.

My here's my classic example, dude.

Okay, when I was working on the railroad, it was a horrible job, okay?

It was 2002 and we were using 1940s equipment.

Like there was tech to do it better.

The people I worked for were just too cheap, so they didn't get it.

So we're out there fixing railroad ties day after day, man.

We're just ching, ching.

Like this is this is what I'm doing for 10 hours a day.

Now you could say, and I probably said, This is so dumb.

Why don't they just give us better tech to be able to do this?

That was true, but there was also something in my heart that was changing.

See, I was probably, there was probably some semblances from being a kid of laziness inside of me.

And 10 hours of just slinging that old railroad tool thing, dude, it kills all the laziness inside of you.

You're just, you, it's it's hard, it's tough, but you're also stirred up at the end, you're like, yeah, yeah, dude, dude, I'm gonna run through a troop and leap over a wall.

I'm gonna do just about anything if I can do this.

Do you see how that difficult low-tech version shaped the inner heart?

That's just a natural version of don't, especially students, especially if people are trusting this.

The point is not for you to just get the paper done.

The point is for you to become something smarter.

You can have a better paper and a dumber student.

That's not what we're after.

So instead of that, don't outsource the formation.

AI may remove the struggle.

If it removes the struggle from growth, it's a bad thing.

I've got a whole bunch of other principles I'm gonna put on my sub stack.

So if you haven't subscribed to that yet, go ahead and if you just fill out your connect card, you should get on it or just put you on there.

But here's the final question.

Guys, your worth is not in what you get done.

Your worth is in Jesus Christ died for your sins and bought you.

And that life is about him, and it's about being not only useful and effective for him, but being shaped by him to be his, by his spirit in community.

So if you're going to use AI, I want to challenge all of us.

We've got to faithfully carry those responsibilities and honestly communicate what's actually true about how we've done something so we can all grow together.

Who knows what we're gonna say about this in 25 years?

But today, let's just start with we're gonna be super transparent, we're gonna do it with the Holy Spirit, and we're gonna do it together.

Amen.

Let's pray.

God, so much we don't know, but we do know your word.

We thank you so much for it that it is our anchor in every storm in every generation.

Your word is there to hold us true.

God, would you keep us true?

Would you make us more true?

Would you help us to be a kind of people that are a light to the world because the things we do, even with AI, adorn the gospel.

They make God look good, they make it seem like good is being is happening in the world because it actually is happening in the world.

And keep us, even as we're learning, from going ways that quench or hurt your Holy Spirit.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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