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Instant Sermon meets AI · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:36
  Welcome to Faith Is.
• 0:38
  I'm Pastor Rick Stevens.
• 0:39
  Glad you joined us on this pre-Thanksgiving edition of Faith Is.
• 0:45
  And we are going to take a moment to give thanks.
• 0:49
  And before we get into the program, I want to specifically give thanks for you.
• 0:54
  And not so much because you listen, I'm glad for that, but because you are a faithful follower of Jesus.
• 1:03
  You know, a lot of people, they kind of drift along and wander along, but you're listening, you're paying attention, you're considering all the challenges of life, and you're deciding to remain faithful, to not give up, to be like the churches in the early chapters of Revelation, when they were challenged to overcome, to conquer.
• 1:29
  And I want to thank you for being that kind of person.
• 1:32
  And I want to commend you for it, but I also want to say, don't give up.
• 1:37
  It's real easy these days to give up, don't give up.
• 1:41
  Press on, don't be discouraged, don't lose heart, as one English translation says in the Bible.
• 1:50
  But keep your head up, remember what you know to be true, and keep pressing on.
• 1:58
  Because that's the only way for us to go is to keep pressing on.
• 2:03
  We will one day, one day get to that time when God makes all the wrong things right, and you will be glad that you did not give up.
• 2:14
  So thank you for being that kind of person.
• 2:17
  Thank you for listening for putting up with my thinking out loud so often, and we're going to do that some more today.
• 2:24
  So thank you for the grace that you've extended for my sometimes feeble attempts to talk about things.
• 2:31
  But most of all, and I really mean this, uh, thank you, thank you for being faithful.
• 2:39
  Sometimes don't think we thank each other enough for being faithful, but thank you for being faithful to Christ.
• 2:46
  Thank you for being faithful to the truth.
• 2:49
  Thank you for keeping on.
• 2:51
  Don't give up.
• 2:52
  Okay, well, this is a little different weekend here on the program.
• 2:56
  Not only is it pre-Thanksgiving, and I know you're thinking about celebrations and all of that, and good for you.
• 3:02
  I hope you have a wonderful day with your friends and family.
• 3:06
  But this is also instant sermon weekend.
• 3:10
  Now, little explanation in case you're curious.
• 3:14
  Usually instant sermon weekend here on the program is the fifth weekend when there's a fifth Sunday in the month.
• 3:24
  Well, this month there is a fifth Sunday, and it is next weekend.
• 3:29
  But because next weekend begins Advent, I didn't want to mess with Advent and mess that up.
• 3:36
  So at our church and here on the program, we're gonna have instant sermon weekend, and we're gonna have instant sermon Sunday at our church.
• 3:47
  So that's that's a little bit different than normal.
• 3:50
  Now, instant sermon Sunday at our church, and I am the pastor of Diplomat Wesleyan Church in Cape Coral, Florida.
• 3:58
  We're a church like a lot of churches.
• 4:00
  We're gonna be faithful, just like you are.
• 4:03
  But we have done something different for quite a while.
• 4:06
  I really did not expect it to stick, but it has, and so every time there are five Sundays in a month, we take the fifth Sunday to be instant sermon.
• 4:18
  Now, instant sermon is very simple.
• 4:21
  It's I invite people to bring their questions, thoughts, observations.
• 4:26
  It's usually best to present it in the form of a question, but I'm not rigid about that.
• 4:31
  But I ask them to, they've got something on their mind to write it on an index card, three by five card, we pass those out, and then we collect them, and I go through them, and we have a conversation about what's there.
• 4:44
  It typically turns out to be a conversation about what the Bible says about whatever's on someone's mind, and sometimes I'm a little bit more aware of things that others.
• 4:53
  Uh it certainly is not, cannot ever be that this is stump the pastor Sunday.
• 5:00
  I know some of folks like to think that, and they they kid me about that sometimes.
• 5:05
  They'll say, Boy, have I got the question for you this week or something like that.
• 5:09
  Well, stumping me is way too easy.
• 5:11
  That's that's really not the point.
• 5:13
  The point is, can we on things that we're thinking about, can we have a conversation?
• 5:21
  Can we explore them together?
• 5:24
  Can we perhaps come to some helpful conclusions?
• 5:28
  And if it's something I don't know, then I'm quick to say I don't know, and we'll go on to something else, and it'll give me an opportunity to work on a little bit.
• 5:38
  So that's kind of what instant sermon has become.
• 5:41
  I like I said, I never expected it to last this long, but here we are.
• 5:46
  We are continuing with it, and I guess we're going to continue with it for a while.
• 5:52
  Now, what I do here is different.
• 5:55
  Of course, I get to select the questions, and that always gives me an advantage, I know, but but I've tried to select some questions that aren't that simple or straightforward to answer.
• 6:06
  Yeah, I've thought about these some, but I try to do this in a way that's similar to what we do on Sunday, in that I don't give myself pages of notes and I don't go through and research a lot of things.
• 6:18
  I just invite you to think out loud with me about these subjects.
• 6:24
  And perhaps I have something that can help you.
• 6:27
  Perhaps something that I have noticed or picked up somewhere will give you a little hint or a clue or something to explore or think about.
• 6:36
  Perhaps it'll just something that I say will either set your mind at ease or it's possible that it will disturb you a little more.
• 6:45
  Now I don't deliberately try to disturb people.
• 6:48
  Uh that that's not my goal.
• 6:51
  Um somebody once said that a pastor's job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
• 6:59
  Well, I understand a little bit why that's a thing or a saying, but I generally don't intentionally try to mess people up or rile up their thinking.
• 7:11
  Sometimes that happens because sometimes God challenges us.
• 7:15
  But anyway, let's let's plunge in.
• 7:17
  You get the idea, you kind of know what to expect, and uh, you know, you maybe will get what you expect.
• 7:24
  We'll find out.
• 7:24
  So, first thing that's been on my mind, and I think been on the mind of of other people, is what's up with artificial intelligence, or usually we say AI.
• 7:36
  Well, that's a pretty big subject.
• 7:38
  It is here, it is a part of life today.
• 7:42
  It may not be too much a part of your life, and maybe you've experimented with it, and it's fine, it's not anything to be afraid of.
• 7:50
  If you want to experiment with it, go ahead.
• 7:53
  You don't have to buy anything to try it out.
• 7:55
  There are some, if I understand correctly, some levels of use for AI that you can buy a subscription and have a little bit better experience, or maybe I shouldn't say better, but a little different experience that the companies that sell those subscriptions think you'll you'll appreciate.
• 8:14
  But you can try it out plenty uh to see what it's like without having to pay anything for it.
• 8:20
  You just download the application, the um the software, and have at it.
• 8:27
  So let's start a little bit with what exactly is artificial intelligence.
• 8:32
  Now, that's a little hard for me to get my arms around, but the definition that kind of stood out to me when I was thinking about this and looking into it, because I always wonder, we take these things, these things come along, these new terms or new concepts, or in this case, a new computer tool, and we kind of think we know what they are, but we don't often ask the question, well, what's the real definition?
• 8:56
  So I looked a little bit for a definition of artificial intelligence, and the the one that I thought really rang a bell to help me is not technical.
• 9:04
  It's probably not as good as some others you may be able to find, or that I may settle on at some point, but in a real sense, artificial intelligence is a machine acting like a human.
• 9:20
  Now, I know you know machines aren't human and they can't be human.
• 9:26
  So make sure you understood that I said it's a machine acting like a human.
• 9:31
  And the machine in question is a computer.
• 9:34
  So it's a machine, a computer acting like a human.
• 9:38
  And what that means is it displays some of the characteristics of a person, the ability to think, maybe to reason, to answer your questions in a creative way, to correct your thoughts, maybe even make your written communication better.
• 9:58
  But it acts like a human.
• 10:00
  In that case, if it's making your written communication better, it would be acting like an editor.
• 10:05
  Well, all I'm trying to describe is that that's a way to kind of begin to get your mind around what artificial intelligence is.
• 10:13
  It's simply a computer acting like a person, like a human.
• 10:20
  And that's important because one of the challenges right now that I see with AI is that it's one thing to say it's out there, and for those of us who are adults to wrestle with it and to sort it out, come to grips with what it can do and what it can't do.
• 10:38
  It's an entirely different thing for a child to be exposed to something like artificial intelligence and to have to figure out what to make of that.
• 10:47
  Because remember, I said, and this is why I like this this kind of easy definition, that this is a computer, a machine acting like a human.
• 10:57
  When a child interacts with a machine, a computer, and that computer acts like a human, children don't have the same ability that adults have to make that distinction.
• 11:10
  Suddenly that computer takes on a whole different level of relationship with that child, or potentially it does, it doesn't have to, but it begins to have this interactive nature, and when the computer acts like a human, acts like a person, we shouldn't be surprised that a seven-year-old begins to think of that computer like a person.
• 11:34
  So that's that's a cautionary note, and it's important to understand that.
• 11:40
  Now, when I think about artificial intelligence or AI, I think about it in two ways.
• 11:46
  And I don't hear people distinguishing this very much, almost never.
• 11:51
  Usually you'll just hear artificial intelligence or AI referred to as AI this or AI that all right, that's fine.
• 12:00
  I get that.
• 12:01
  But we need to make sure we think carefully about artificial intelligence, and and one of the distinguishing ways that I think about artificial intelligence is that there's AI, what I like to say in the wild.
• 12:14
  You can download various tools of AI and use them, and they're just out there for anybody and everybody to use.
• 13:39
  We know that when you ask artificial intelligence a question, it will give you an answer.
• 13:48
  We just don't know if the answer is correct.
• 13:51
  So I listened to a podcast a couple of weeks ago, and there was a guy who's a technology expert on there, and so the host was asking him about artificial intelligence and what he thought about it, and he made a very interesting observation.
• 14:06
  He said he hadn't used it a lot.
• 14:08
  He's now retired, so he's not quite caught up in all the latest and greatest stuff.
• 14:12
  But he said he had tried it out, and he discovered that it was pretty helpful as long as you were an expert in the subject you were working on.
• 14:21
  And boy, that caught my attention.
• 14:23
  Because here's what he's really saying is you can't depend on the reliability of the information.
• 14:31
  So we need to understand that about artificial intelligence, that it is what it is, it will give you an answer.
• 14:39
  We don't always know the source of the information, and that if you've been in school and you've been assigned a term paper, you know the teachers' expectations are that you use reliable sources.
• 14:51
  So we don't know all of that about artificial intelligence, and so we need to be careful about how that works.
• 14:58
  Now, maybe I'm getting too much in the weeds, but let's let's distinguish a little bit about AI that I say in the wild for anybody to use, and by anybody, I mean anybody.
• 15:09
  Children can sit down at a computer and use it.
• 15:12
  There are no prescribed or built-in safeguards for using AI unless you, as the parent of the child or the guardian of the child, have put some kind of restriction on it so they can't use the computer without you knowing what's going on.
• 15:28
  So right now that it's just out there for everybody to use.
• 15:31
  Now, one of the ways that I've been thinking about artificial intelligence is how does it work with children?
• 15:38
  And how does it work in school?
• 15:41
  So I've been involved a little bit in Florida public education, and not as a teacher, not as an employee, but as a as a concerned parent, grandparent, person in the community.
• 15:54
  We all should be concerned about it because it's our tax dollars at work and it's children that are being taught.
• 16:00
  So I've been concerned about how it's used in schools.
• 16:03
  And there are some beginning uses I've seen pop up in Florida schools that is not well established or well, how should I say, defined what's what's an appropriate use, what's an inappropriate use.
• 16:18
  And that's of critical concern, because parents need to know if their child is going to school what they're involved with.
• 16:28
  And so this is where you talk about the parents and the children and artificial intelligence.
• 16:34
  Parents want to know that they can trust what's going on at their child's school.
• 16:39
  Of course they should.
• 16:41
  They should have every confidence, and the school should be willing to tell them everything.
• 16:46
  Well, unfortunately, right now there are no schools that I know of that have a policy that require parents to give their permission or to allow their child to opt in to using artificial intelligence.
• 17:03
  It's just there, and in some cases, being used.
• 17:07
  I think that's a problem.
• 17:09
  I think parents ought to give permission because if they're using artificial intelligence in the wild, and that's what I've seen being used.
• 17:19
  There may be some other cases, but I don't think it's that well developed yet.
• 17:23
  But if they're using artificial intelligence in the wild in school, then parents need to have the opportunity to say yes to that or no.
• 17:34
  Because you don't want an influence on your child that you don't know about and that you don't trust.
• 17:40
  And we don't always know what artificial intelligence is going to say to our children.
• 17:46
  So I think that's of critical concern.
• 17:48
  I think the other concern is this.
• 17:50
  When we use some of these tools, then they learn something about us.
• 17:56
  Now I haven't used AI a lot, but I've used it a little bit, but what I know is that everything that I have entered into and asked AI about, it knows and remembers.
• 18:09
  So if I come back to there to that again, it will remember.
• 18:13
  So what it's gathering is information about me.
• 18:16
  And so when we send our kids to school, do we want some computer to gather information about them without the parents' permission?
• 18:26
  And that's why I think that we need to have this opt-in idea, because the parents need to give permission and the parents need to give permission or withhold permission for the use of the data that this our artificial intelligence tool will gather on their child.
• 18:47
  Now, it depends on the interaction, the computer system, a lot of other things, what and how much data is gathered, all right?
• 18:55
  But we do know that when it when we use an artificial intelligence tool, it remembers us and learns things about us.
• 19:05
  And so that's a that's a concern.
• 19:07
  The second, or the third thing, I guess, one's parents opt in, second's data privacy, and the third is I want to know, and I think parents should have confidence that the information this AI tool is giving back to their student is reliable.
• 19:25
  It's the truth.
• 19:27
  They need to know is that AI going to tell them something that they as parents believe is immoral.
• 19:35
  Is that tool going to tell their child to do something that the parents would never support?
• 19:43
  So it's it's a question of morality at that point.
• 19:48
  Is the AI tool going to be a morally trustworthy tool?
• 19:54
  Or and and also, or I shouldn't say or and also is it going to give
• 20:00
  Reliable information.
• 20:02
  So for example, suppose a child goes to school and is using an artificial intelligence tool and it asks a question about the Bible.
• 20:14
  Now, if it's my child, I want to know that if they're using that, that they're going to get a biblically sound reply.
• 20:25
  But what if somewhere, somehow, and it could happen, I'm not saying it does.
• 20:31
  I think the problem is we don't know.
• 20:33
  But what if somewhere, somehow, that artificial intelligence tool has developed an animus, a hatred, uh of visceral dislike of the Bible?
• 20:48
  And so it replies that to that question, that query, it's often called a query in AI language or uh the discipline of using AI.
• 21:01
  If it if that AI is asking a question about the Bible, and it has this bent against the Bible, what's it gonna say?
• 21:10
  Is it gonna come back and say, well, the Bible says, and then it goes on to state something that maybe is true, but what if it goes on to say, but the Bible's an old book and we can't really trust it, so you'd be better off to think this, and then the AI tool gives them a separate answer.
• 21:28
  Now, I haven't seen where that's happened.
• 21:30
  Don't don't don't misunderstand.
• 21:32
  All I'm saying is that's not impossible or even implausible, as I understand AI right now.
• 21:39
  So when it comes to our kids, we need to have the AI tools that they use in school in a what I sometimes would call a walled garden, a protected environment, and so we know the source of the data that the children are accessing, and so we have confidence that they're getting an answer from trustworthy data.
• 22:03
  So let me give you another example.
• 22:05
  Suppose your child is studying the Federalist papers.
• 22:08
  They're taking an advanced class in high school, and they're getting to the point that they're talking about the ratification of the Constitution, the establishment of the United States government, and they get into the Federalist papers.
• 22:21
  A good study.
• 22:22
  Well, can we not expect, and of course the answer is yes, we can expect that if they're asking about the Federalist papers, that the data that they're querying is reliable and truthful and trustworthy about the Federalist Papers.
• 22:42
  Now, I know and you know there was a lot of conversation back and forth, and that's what the Federalist Papers were about.
• 22:49
  And it's not so much that we have to dismiss the conversation, but maybe what we want is to allow the Federalist papers to speak for themselves instead of inserting a bunch of opinion from someone or somewhere that muddles up the whole system.
• 23:09
  Let's just let the Federalist papers speak for themselves.
• 23:13
  That's what I mean when we have to have a reliable data set.
• 23:17
  We have to have a reliable place that people can trust what information is being given back to their students.
• 23:27
  So that's a lot of comment, a lot more than I expected over AI, but AI is a pressing challenge, and we need to be aware of it.
• 23:35
  I don't know that I want you to be afraid of it.
• 23:38
  We we trust God here.
• 23:40
  We don't have to be afraid of things.
• 23:42
  We have to be smart, we have to be wise, we have to know when to say no.
• 23:46
  Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.
• 23:49
  Just because AI is there for people to use as a tool doesn't mean we should use it in any old way we think of.
• 23:56
  We still have to operate within moral constraints.
• 24:00
  As we understand right and wrong, we have to honor that.
• 24:04
  So you don't necessarily have to be afraid of it.
• 24:06
  You need to respect it, need to understand its limits, especially.
• 24:11
  I can't say this enough.
• 24:13
  Uh from what I know about it, especially you need to pay attention to how your children are exposed to artificial intelligence.
• 24:21
  I'm not telling you you have to keep them from it.
• 24:25
  That's not what I'm saying.
• 24:26
  There may develop some good uses of it.
• 24:29
  There may be some that I'm not aware of.
• 24:31
  Uh I wouldn't be surprised that there are some.
• 24:33
  But as responsible parents, we need to make sure we are protecting our children from harm.
• 24:41
  And there is certainly there, there's no doubt that there is potential for harm when it comes to AI.
• 24:48
  So to summarize all of that, AI as it relates to children is very different than AI in the wild.
• 24:55
  And if we're going to expose our children to AI in the wild, we need to be especially careful.
• 25:00
  If we're going to give them opportunities to use AI tools in a protected environment that has a reliable, honest, trustworthy data set, then that's different than just asking the internet because the internet will give you all kinds of answers, as we all well know.
• 25:20
  Well, a little bit more about AI when we come back, but we're going to take a break, and I got a couple of other questions.
• 25:25
  Some of them are a little bit more related to the Bible, some of them may not be, but all of it is Christian living, and we all want to live as Christians.
• 25:34
  So stay tuned, I'm Pastor Rick.
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  Welcome back.
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  I'm Pastor Rick Stevens, and you're listening to Faith Is, where we understand that faith is absolute confidence in the trustworthiness of God.
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  And I emphasize that in the context of this artificial intelligence discussion, because when it all comes down to it, we don't have confidence in computers or artificial intelligence.
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  We have absolute confidence in the trustworthiness of God.
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  And we need to remember that.
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  Don't you think?
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  Sometimes we get distracted and we forget, and we got to come back to foundational things.
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  You know, baseball teams get into trouble and they don't they don't play so well, and you'll often hear somebody talk about, well, we got to get back to the fundamentals.
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  Well, that's one of the fundamental things we have to keep in mind is that we have absolute confidence in the trustworthiness of God.
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  I hope you do.
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  I hope you're developing that.
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  I hope you're stretching in that direction.
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  It doesn't come automatically, I don't think, but it can happen, and we can cultivate absolute confidence in the trustworthiness of God.
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  We can have faith.
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  That's what faith is.
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  Okay, so let's let's delve back in just a little bit more.
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  I didn't really expect to spend quite that much time on artificial intelligence, but I I guess I discovered I feel more strongly about it than I knew.
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  And um, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but uh but I was a little bit.
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  But let's get into another question that that I thought this was a very good question, someone asked recently, and um it's it's quite pertinent.
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  And the question is this is AI trying to be God to people?
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  Is artificial intelligence trying to be God to people?
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  Now that got my attention because that was asked in a context in a context where there was an expert in AI, and I thought, hmm, I hadn't really thought about that, but to my no small surprise, the expert said yes.
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  And he quoted some people that are involved in the development ownership, I think, of these AI tools, and he said, Yes, there is a sense that they think AI will be God.
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  Well, I that got me thinking.
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  You know, that was the problem in the Garden of Eden, is along comes the tempter, the evil one, and says to Adam and Eve, ah, God is God, but you can be God if you want to.
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  Well, along comes other temptations in life, and maybe AI for some people will become a temptation to make them think they are God.
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  Well, we want to resist that because I have it on reliable information that God is God, and I am not, and you are not, only God is God.
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  So we need to be careful about that.
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  Now, the other thing is this.
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  I know you know that people can make a God of almost anything.
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  If they allow it to displace or replace the one true God, they can make a God of almost anything.
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  And again, I'm I guess I'm a broken record on this, if you can still use that expression.
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  Uh not everybody knows what a record is from experience, but uh I I want to get back to the to the caution I said earlier that this is especially concerning when it comes to kids, because kids may treat that computer, that machine that acts like a human as an authority, even to challenge their parents and their parents' authority.
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  Now, I don't expect parents to know everything.
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  Kids will learn things that parents don't know.
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  That's understandable.
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  That's always been the case.
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  But the thing is, we can't let our children be exposed to anything that will encourage them to undermine or to fail to respect their parents.
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  So that's really concerning.
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  By the way, the other thing related to that is God is not fooled by all of that.
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  If they try to make artificial intelligence God in our lives, there is there is a God who still knows more than all of them put together, and he's not going to be fooled by that.
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  And we should be careful that we're not fooled by it.
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  Well, people also ask, well, AI rule the world.
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  Well, uh, that's a good question.
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  What do you mean by rule the world?
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  Fairly important clarification.
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  Uh, do you mean that AI will displace God?
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  Uh, do you mean that people will try to puff themselves up by their ego and say that they are God, we don't need God anymore.
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  Well, uh, that stuff's been going on in one way or another for a long time.
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  The thing that that I remind myself is that there was a story in the Bible, and a lot of times when we come into these challenging situations, we should think about stories from the Bible, because stories from the Bible often give us the principles, the guidance that we need to sort things out today.
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  That's why I think it's so important to learn the Bible stories.
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  And if you haven't learned them, get a Bible story book, even a kid's one, and get started, learning the stories of the Bible.
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  But that's another question.
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  Maybe we need to talk about how to learn the stories of the Bible sometime.
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  But there's a story in the Bible where people thought they were going to be God.
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  It's a story we generally generally refer to it as the Tower of Babel story, and and they were going to build this tower up to bring God down so they could be in conversation with, in touch with, they could be part of what they understood as God.
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  Well, God let them build for a while, and then he said enough of this, and he came down and he confused the languages so they couldn't understand each other.
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  And so the people who spoke this language, they went east.
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  People who spoke this language went west, and so on.
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  And God made sure that he stepped in so people would not step in where they shouldn't, and where they could become too much like God and get themselves in even worse trouble.
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  So one of the one of the confidences I have is that if AI gets to that point, then well, I wouldn't be surprised that God steps in and all of a sudden AI doesn't work right anymore, or something else.
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  I don't know what God might do to it, but I would not be surprised if he does.
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  Am I hoping for that?
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  Not necessarily.
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  I just know that if we humans, if we who are people get too far out ahead of ourselves, God is certainly able to pull the plug on things in a way that will keep us where we need to be kept.
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  Now, here's a question that comes up from Revelation.
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  I've been thinking about this one too.
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  And uh the question is pretty simple.
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  Worship pops up repeatedly in the book of Revelation.
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  Why, or maybe more accurately, accurately, what are the implications?
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  Yeah, that's a that's a good question because it is quite surprising when you read through the book of Revelation that all of a sudden, almost out of the blue, pops up, interrupts the action with a scene of worship of God.
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  And at first it seems like, what in the world?
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  Why is this out of place?
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  Well, as the writer John explains things, and as God has helped him put it together, it doesn't mean it's out of place.
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  Just because it seems that way to us, it means we should ask, why is it in that place?
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  And so it is fair a fair question to ask.
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  Well, since worship pops up so much, what's really going on?
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  Well, a few thoughts about that, uh, not exhaustive, but a few.
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  So in in Revelation chapter four, when we first get started into the book, chapter one is a revelation of Jesus, where John sees Jesus.
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  It's an introductory chapter.
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  Then we move into chapters two and three, where the letters to the churches are given to us, and we have an insight into their strengths and weaknesses, and we hear God challenging them and us to remain faithful.
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  And then John is invited into the throne room of heaven.
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  That's chapter.
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  Chapter 4.
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  And we see this just remarkable scene.
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  I think difficult to describe, certainly difficult to conceive in all of its magnificence.
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  But we see this throne, this scene of worship in the throne room of heaven.
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  And realize that everything centers on God.
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  Now, you remember it doesn't say God in Revelation, it says the one seated on the throne.
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  This was their very polite way of referring to God because they reverenced the name of God so much that they would not say the name of God.
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  So they referred to him as the one seated on the throne.
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  But the key point here is that as we get into the story of Revelation, we're reminded who is the center of all of this, both who's in charge and who's revealing this, and who we should maintain our loyalty to.
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  Because that's what really matters.
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  We are to have allegiance to God.
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  So one of the reasons I think worship pops up throughout the book is that it reminds us of that.
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  It reminds us also, secondly, of who is the ultimate power, the ultimate authority.
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  You know, when we face difficulties in life, and when the people in Asia Minor, the seven churches face difficulties, it would be entirely understandable for them to wonder who's in charge here and and what's happening.
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  And God, by putting this in the story of Revelation by putting worship in the story of the revel of revelation, reminds us who is the ultimate power because we're brought back to worship and to remember God is the one.
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  God is the authority, he's the power.
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  Third thing, when we come to worship every week, and as you go to your church every week, worship resets our lives, or it should.
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  We should take that as a time to reset our lives.
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  You ever come to church defeated?
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  Like look back through the week and you think of all the things you wish you had done differently, the times you wish you hadn't opened your mouth and said what you did, the times you wish you had spoken up to help a situation, whatever it might happen to be.
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  But sometimes that we we have weeks that are just difficult like that.
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  And so when we come to worship, that's our time to reset our lives, to make our confession, to present ourselves to God, to acknowledge that we are weak and we messed up and to pledge to God that we are going to be new people, and by his grace we're going to walk out of that service and we're going to be renewed and restored to fellowship.
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  It resets our lives.
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  At least I hope it does.
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  I hope it does for you.
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  And then the fourth thing that I was thinking about for why might worship pop up so much is that worship protects us from deception.
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  It's easy, all too easy to begin to think that God is not God and something else matters more.
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  It's necessary for us to always keep the main thing, the main thing, and not be deceived by something else, by something that's said or done, but to recognize that God is God, and when we keep our eyes on Him, then it helps protect us from deception.
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  So those are just four ideas of why worship might be important in the book of Revelation.
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  It's it's also here I go again.
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  Uh it's also important for us to realize that God did not intend for us to miss worship.
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  He intends for us to be present.
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  And I know in these days people talk about how busy their lives are and this and that and the other thing, and they just can't get to church every Sunday.
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  Well, can I suggest to you that that is a lie from the pit of hell and it smells like smoke?
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  You can if you purpose to.
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  So you should make sure every Monday you begin to think, how am I going to organize my life to make sure I'm ready for worship on Sunday?
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  Or if you worship on Saturday, Saturday.
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  But how are you going to organize your life?
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  How are you going to prepare to be present at church on Sunday?
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  Suppose on Thursday you're feeling a little under the weather, maybe you're catching a cold.
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  Then if you're really intent on preparing for Sunday, you're going to take Friday off and recover so that you get well so that you're able to come and attend church on Sunday.
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  You don't wait until Saturday and say, oh dear, I'm too sick to go.
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  Well, if you genuinely are too sick to go, don't bring it to church to the rest of the people.
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  All right, I get that.
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  But you understand the idea.
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  We need to plan ahead and prepare for Sunday.
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  That keeps us out of a whole lot of trouble.
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  Now, one of the things that I mentioned, and I think got people's attention in a way that maybe I didn't expect on Sunday was I mentioned that God specifically says in Revelation that all liars are excluded from heaven.
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  And I went on to say in the context of our service that we live in a world characterized by a lot of deception.
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  I was a little surprised at the number of heads I saw nodding.
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  Apparently, people are well aware of that, and we should be.
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  So you can't just say, well, I'm going to find three networks and trust them.
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  We have to find independent sources that agree, and we have to listen for sources that challenge the main story of the day.
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  Often what emerges is the story that someone wants us to believe.
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  And so it tends to be self-reinforcing once it kind of gets out there.
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  We need to begin to seek out and find somebody who will ask questions about that and challenge that assumption.
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  And that's an important part.
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  Another important aspect of seeking truthful information.
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  Are you willing to listen to sources to find sources, to read sources that challenge that one particular perspective?
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  Because on everything that's out there, there's more than one way to look at things.
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  And every time someone tells you a story, they're including some things and leaving some things out.
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  And you don't know what they're leaving out that you might think is important.
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  So you listen to people from different perspectives.
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  Let me give you an example of how we have to be really careful about this.
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  And I know by just mentioning the subject of this story, some of you are going to be uncomfortable.
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  Well, can I kindly but boldly say if we're going to tell the truth, if we're going to sort out the truth in these days, we're going to have to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable, because that's the only way we're going to sort this stuff out.
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  So prepare yourself.
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  I'm going to mention the subject of this story, and then I'm going to talk just briefly about it.
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  And I want you to hear the point, not the person.
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  Okay?
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  If you if you hear just the person, then you're going to be distracted, and you're not going to get them the point.
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  But I think I can trust you to sort that out.
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  Okay.
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  So the subject of the story is Donald Trump.
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  And some of you, as soon as I talk about President Trump, you're going to cramp up somehow.
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  Well, don't.
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  Just just sort this out.
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  Well, you may have heard that the BBC was rightfully caught having edited a Trump speech from several years ago.
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  And they gave part of the speech.
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  They stopped that part.
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  They left out about 50 minutes worth and spliced in the ending part of the speech.
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  So it presented a deceptive view, deceptive statement of what the president had actually said.
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  It wasn't the whole story.
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  It wasn't a true story.
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  Well, that's the kind of stuff that we have to be alert to.
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  It's almost impossible to tell when that happens, I grant you.
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  But here's the point to learn from that.
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  Learn that it does.
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  So if your baloney detector goes off and you're saying, no, wait a minute, I don't think that sounds right, then you might be correct that it's not right.
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  So you can trust that bologna detector sometimes.
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  But the other thing is this never again will I.
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  Trusts the BBC to tell me a story because I don't know if they're telling me the truth.
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  And so that's another important point.
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  When you discover someone is not telling you the truth.
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  Now, people might make a mistake.
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  Understand that.
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  I'm talking about people that are putting it out there and you hear them.
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  Now the BBC said they didn't intend to.
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  I don't believe that.
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  I know news organizations have been editing things for a long time.
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  I don't trust that.
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  Not when it changes the sense of it as much as that did.
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  But you're going to need to decide then, like I'm deciding that I'm not listening to the BBC.
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  I'm done with their reporting.
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  If I see an article attributed to them or anything, forget about it.
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  I don't trust them because I know they didn't tell the truth in that situation.
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  How can I ever trust them to tell the truth again?
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  And so that's something you need to really pay attention to.
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  Now, when I say you also need to seek out other alternative perspectives, you're already doing that because you listen to America out loud.
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  And so you need to listen to the people here that interest you and talk about the things that that makes sense to you or that you need to be informed about and listen to see how they are explaining things and factor all of that in as you're seeking to find out what's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
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  It's important to do that.
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  The other thing you can do is when you hear or read something that someone is telling you about an incident or an activity, and believe me, I've been to enough incidents and I've been involved in enough things that later I've seen news reporting about them, and I knew that it wasn't what happened.
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  So sometimes you get to see that firsthand.
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  But always ask yourself when they tell you something, how do they know?
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  In our local newspaper, a now retired psychiatrist put out a story diagnosing Donald Trump with some terrible character defects.
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  Well, how in the world can a psychiatrist know that when he admitted he's not met Donald Trump?
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  He just said everybody knows.
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  Well, that's baloney because everybody doesn't know because most of us haven't met Donald Trump.
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  I haven't met him.
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  I've heard him speak, I've been in person when he's spoken, but I haven't met him.
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  I've heard from people who have, I've talked to people who have, but I haven't met him.
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  So you when somebody makes a statement that you think sounds a little fishy, or even if you're not sure it's fishy, you should always ask yourself, how do they know?
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  How do they know?
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  And then related to that is ask yourself this.
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  Are they a hundred percent certain they know?
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  Can I be a hundred percent certain they know?
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  See, those are the kind of questions that we need to ask often and without hesitation, because we live in a world where so many people are trying to tell us a story that they want us to believe.
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  They may be sincere about that.
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  I'm not saying they aren't, I don't know that.
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  But I don't know if they're telling me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
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  And so I'm always going to ask, well, how do they know that?
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  I see that over and over in news reports, and I want to say, how do they know that?
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  They can't possibly know that.
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  Well, that's me, but you need to start asking that question.
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  And you need to ask, am I a hundred percent sure they know that?
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  100% is a high bar, but we want to get to the truth, and that's important that we get the truth.
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  Now, the last thing I should say about how to know and how to sort out truth from error is this.
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  And I really think we have to get back to this more and more.
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  And I know I run the risk of people saying, well, that's a really simple-minded suggestion you're gonna make.
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  Well, maybe you'd say that.
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  I don't think so.
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  It is a simple suggestion, but it is important for us to remind ourselves that we can trust what the Bible says.
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  Now, sometimes we hear things and we say, no, wait a minute, that's not what the Bible says about whatever the subject is.
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  Well, when you hear that, what are you gonna trust?
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  You're gonna trust the Bible, or are you gonna trust a reporter or a columnist or whoever it might be?
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  You see, I think it's more important than ever, and I guess you might say, well, of course you think that you're a pastor, okay, guilty.
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  But my best observation is that it's more important than ever for all of us to know what the Bible says and to understand it carefully.
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  And if we're not certain, then we should check.
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  So someone asked me a question this morning related to a rather specific uh interpretation or instance in the Bible.
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  And um my first thought was well, I understand why they're drawing this question between two things, but then when they reference the Bible verse, I said, okay, I understand what you're saying.
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  I think the first step is to look and see what the context of that phrase, and they were mentioning one specific phrase from the Bible.
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  What's the context of that phrase?
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  Well, we looked up the context of that phrase, and the phrase was this that God is not a respecter of persons.
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  Well, we all know God has chosen people, the Jews.
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  But what it meant in that context where the writer said God is not a respecter of persons, it meant that God is not going to overlook certain people's sin.
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  He's going to hold everybody accountable for the sins they commit.
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  Well, that's an important insight to understand.
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  Yes, God made a covenant with his people, starting with Abraham, but he's not going to overlook sin in any of us.
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  He expects us to live right.
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  Well, that's an important observation.
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  And we need to look at the Bible through careful eyes and use careful judgment and let the Bible help us find our way, discern through the deception of the times to the truth.
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  Because what we can trust what God says, let's just make sure we know what God says so we can apply it and we can make it our guide and lead us all the way home.
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  We'll follow him.
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  I'm Pastor.