How do we remain human in an artificial world? Join us as Kent delves into this crucial question. Listen in and let’s sanctify this moment together. EASY TO GIVE at Harmony, text any amount to (859) 459-0316 to get started (or give online @ my.harmonychurch.cc/give ). Get the fill in the fill-in-the-blank bulletins my.harmonychurch.cc/bulletins.

———————

OPENING ILLUSTRATION:

We live in a crazy world.  I remember growing up talking to my great-grandma Streeter in the 1980s.  She had traveled to Kansas when she was a kid in a covered wagon…  Isn’t that crazy?  I remember thinking about how we had colored TVs, cars, phones, and planes and she had experienced all those changes in her life.  

She had experienced monumental change…

You may not recognize it right now, but you are one of those people too…

b

We are standing on the precipice of one of the most monumental changes in history.  

The internet (I remember hearing the first time someone said, “www. – it stands for world wide web…”).  Smartphones came out in 2007 and gave the internet a way to live with us all the time and now we stand on the verge of AI to potentially take all that to the next level.  

People who stand at the intersection of monumental times tend to do at least one of three things. They either…

1. Try to hold onto the past and seek to turn back to what they came from.  
2. They embrace the future unquestioningly and become passive receivers of both the opportunities and consequences of the times.
3. They find ways to sanctify the future, remembering the past and moving forward to the future God desires.

Our world is changing at a monumental pace.

We are privy at all times to all information

We live in incredible fear and anxiety because we bear the entire weight of humanity in our minds – you know about a war the instant it breaks out and see the devastation in your ticktock feed

We are INUNDATED with information – did you know one of our biggest challenges at the church is communicating with you – because you are so over-communicated within your world that you can’t hear what we are saying – that’s not a comment on you or me, it’s our world…

And it’s all about to go into overdrive.  

ILLUSTRATION:

When I was a kid I remember going to my grandma’s house, she had this basket of fruit on her table and I grabbed an apple and took a bite.  As I did, my teeth sunk in and I realized it was styrofoam.  The fruit wasn’t real.

You and I are about to have that same experience in ways you can’t even imagine.  

Already you can’t tell if the pictures you are looking at are created by AI or are actual people.  Video is already there and will soon be everywhere – you won’t know if who you are looking at is really the person or not.  You can’t tell if I wrote this sermon or if AI did.  

And here’s what I think is going to happen.

I think there is a potential that we are going to go from a world that is fairly cynical to a world that is unbearably brutal in its inability to trust anything that cannot be experienced firsthand.

b

It will have dramatic effects on the way people perceive truth, faith, God, the scripture, and Jesus Himself.

b

I feel the global church trying to turn back to where we came from.

I see the people in the world who have no faith, unquestioningly, passively receiving it

b

My question is, how do we become the people who sanctify it?

don’t hear me saying what I’m not – I’m not saying we remove truth or the past isn’t vitally important….

I’m asking a different question altogether.

How do we be human now in an artificial world?

b

My answer is always to go back to scripture and the story of God – there is so much to learn there…

SCRIPTURE

We are not the first to stand on the precipice of monumental changes.  

Joshua is one of the most interesting people in scripture.  Joshua knew what it was like to be a slave in Egypt.  He had watched his dad come home with stripes on his back.  He had heard his mom weeping as his brother was stripped from their home and sent to another master’s household.  I don’t know if he experienced these things exactly, but I guarantee you, he had stories like that.  He would have remembered the night his father put the blood on the doorpost.  He could have described the cries of the Egyptians as they mourned their firstborns.  He walked on the dry land at the Red Sea parting.  He had been one of the 12 Moses had called to cross the Jordan River and spy out the land.  He had been one of the only two who were willing to follow God into the promised land and he knew what it was to experience 40 years of wandering in a desert because the people were unwilling to step in faith.  And now, Moses has passed on.  It’s Joshua – he’s the leader, he’s the man of faith.  He will be the one who watches as the Israelites march around the walls of Jericho and watch them fall – you can visit the archaeological site today to see those walls on the ground.  He will call out sin in the camp and he will lead the conquest into the land. 

Joshua had gone from slave, to wanderer, to conqueror.  The shift he lived through was monumental.

It is the eve of the beginning of the conquest that I’m interested in.  

Joshua enters the promised land: the people cross the Jordan in a miraculous fashion – the water splits and they walk across – in the same way they left Egypt, they now enter the promised land.

Joshua 5:4-8

4 Now this is why he did so: All those who came out of Egypt—all the men of military age—died in the wilderness on the way after leaving Egypt. 5 All the people that came out had been circumcised, but all the people born in the wilderness during the journey from Egypt had not. 6 The Israelites had moved about in the wilderness forty years until all the men who were of military age when they left Egypt had died, since they had not obeyed the Lord. For the Lord had sworn to them that they would not see the land he had solemnly promised their ancestors to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. 7 So he raised up their sons in their place, and these were the ones Joshua circumcised. They were still uncircumcised because they had not been circumcised on the way. 8 And after the whole nation had been circumcised, they remained where they were in camp until they were healed.

What in the world?

They are about to go into battle, they are about to enter a new world, full of terrifying and terrific things

b

and Joshua has them perform a pretty major surgery on every single fighting man…

-this was a literal tactic used by Jacob’s sons to destroy a people group – get them to circumcise their men and attack them

Why did Joshua do this?

b

Because on the precipice of the unknown, Joshua knew to call his people back to a relationship with the God of the universe.

b

This was the sign of faith that God had given their father Abraham hundreds of years before.  

b

He is calling them to turn back to God, to consecrate (make themselves pure) for God.

CLOSING ILLUSTRATION:

You guys, what is on the line for our world is not information, or videos or pictures.  It’s not knowing if the recipe you found online was created by a person or a computer.  What is on the line is the hearts and minds of our children.  It’s the marriage of your coworkers, it’s the freedom from addiction for your spouse.  

I am reminded of a particularly chilling passage in the book of Revelation where the apostle John is describes this scene he sees.

Revelation 18:1-5

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. 2 With a mighty voice he shouted:

“‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!’[a]     She has become a dwelling for demons and a haunt for every impure spirit,     a haunt for every unclean bird,     a haunt for every unclean and detestable animal.

3 For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,     and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”

Warning to Escape Babylon’s Judgment

4 Then I heard another voice from heaven say:

“‘Come out of her, my people,’[b]     so that you will not share in her sins,     so that you will not receive any of her plagues;

5 for her sins are piled up to heaven,     and God has remembered her crimes.

Church, this morning, I’m not calling you to be circumcised in the flesh.  I’m calling you to be circumcised in your hearts.  I’m calling you to sanctify this moment.  I’m calling out with the voice from heaven.  “Come out of her my people…”  

Stop drinking in her indulgence and sin.  I’m calling you to come forward and lay it all at the altar today – I hope you see people in the aisles on their knees.  I hope we have to sing the song again because so many people keep coming forward.  I hope there is a move of God in this room, in this building, in this town where we say, 

We will be the ones who sanctify this moment.  It starts with me, and it starts with my heart…

---