Authentic Preaching in the Age of AI

0:00 It's an honor to be here tonight. How many of you have used ChatGPT at least once? Oh, wow. Okay. That's the most I've seen in one crowd. That's great. That's good. Because I don't have time to explain ChatGPT tonight. It is a delight. I want to open tonight with a quotation from Elon Musk on the state of artificial intelligence. Quote, the rate of improvement of AI is faster than any technology I've ever seen by far.

0:33 The good future of AI is one of immense prosperity in an age of abundance. No shortage of goods and services. Everyone can have whatever they want, except for the things we artificially define to be scarce, like special artwork. But with the advent of AI plus robotics, any manufactured good or provided service will trend to zero cost. I'm not saying it will actually become zero, but everyone will be able to have anything they want.

1:08 That's the good future. In my view, that's probably 80% likely and only 20% probability of human annihilation. Elon is a realist. Frankly, I do have to engage in some degree of deliberate suspension of disbelief with respect to AI to sleep well, because I think the actual issue, the big issue, the most likely issue, is how to find meaning in a world where AI can do everything that we can do but better.

1:43 That's perhaps the bigger challenge. that's probably the biggest challenge and as we gather in the heart of an emerging computer chip fab city phoenix we find ourselves on the brink of an ai transformation that may disrupt every single part of our lives but what keeps musk up at night is a crisis of human value where do we find purpose and meaning when we become unemployable that is a massive AI challenge that needs to be addressed and one that I war gamed out in my book God technology in the Christian life so I'm going to take a cheat I'm going to cheat on this one and say it's in that book I addressed that big huge topic in fact I'm going to give you three other caveats before we get going because there's so much that we could talk about tonight first of all a decade of writing precedes this event been thinking about this stuff for about a decade now, thanks to the graciousness of my friends at Desiring God. In the last three years, specifically thinking of macro technology, technology in the big picture. From a whole theology of technology now done, I speak to you tonight on AI. Some see emerging technologies like AI and advanced robotics and self-driving cars as Promethean powers that we were never meant to wield new towers, new powers that tip the balance towards us against the gods or against the living God. I disagree with that take on technology in general. So if instinctually you saw an ad for an AI talk from a Christian and you thought, oh, this guy's going to give it to AI, he's going to be anti AI. I don't do that. I'm not a Luddite. So just a little caveat, This may come across as very odd or bizarre in some places.

3:34 If you thought, well, he's a Christian, he's a Luddite. I'm not. Partly, this is because I celebrate God's sovereignty over every square inch of Silicon Valley. And the sovereign governance over all things in the age of big tech, including outputs. God sovereignly governs outputs, according to Proverbs 16, 1, which says, the plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.

4:06 Every output, from Google searches to AI search bots, every single output is sovereignly governed by God. He has not been pushed out of a technological culture. He remains at the center and gloriously relevant to it. Proverbs 16, 1. Also, for time's sake, I must assume some familiarity with AI. So thank you for all the hands that were up. It was not a trick question. It was because I just don't have time to explain AI and how it works. So chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Deep Seek, Perplexity, Apple AI, Windows has their own thing now. It's everywhere. And it's helpful to just test the waters and see what it can do personally. I've recently done my morning devotions in chat GPT. I gave it my Bible reading schedule for the day, my Navigator Bible reading.

5:05 It spit out the ESV for me to read. And then I asked it for a 2,000 word sermon-like summary that takes all four Bible readings into one application-oriented devotional to get me ready for my day. and I've been consistently shocked and impressed by how accurate and orthodox and helpful those mornings have been. AI is now integrated into Bible software programs like Logos. I haven't used that yet, but I can't testify that AI is very good at spitting out orthodoxy and there should be no surprise there because the apostle Paul tells us that orthodoxy has a pattern to it in 2 Timothy 1.13. Sound doctrine is patterned. There's a pattern to sound doctrine, and AI is pattern recognition.

5:55 AI is a dormant superpower. Available, free of charge, on your phone right now. To us comes the questions if to use it, how to use it, and when to use it. And none of us know the extent of possible uses because the horizon of what is possible keeps moving out further than we can actually experience. But for that past eight months, I have interviewed Christian leaders in the AI space, brothers and sisters in Christ, who are building all types of search bots that can scour Christian websites to offer you specific, interactive, theological Bible answers. I've seen the church's high school ministry, print square cards for students to take to school. On one side, it says, what is the meaning of life? And on the other side is a QR code that if you scan it, it drops you into a conversation with a bot that gives you an answer from the Bible that you can then interact with, all leading you towards the next youth group meeting and where they meet.

7:05 A local church is doing that. I have friends building chat bots to answer theology questions. One that built an interactive Bible counselor. One that allows a publisher to leverage the entirety of their backlist to answer questions in a chat to prove the value of their books.

7:28 Pastors I know use AI every week now. one pastor friend spends the first hour of his morning on Tuesday morning in the office with an open dialogue with chat GPT over his Sunday sermon text to discuss the Greek exegesis to discuss the hard bits of the text to play with possible sermon outlines to find ways to connect the sermon to the pastoral concerns he has in his local church to find illustrations et cetera. And after that one hour is up, he asks for the whole conversation to be summarized in 800 words, and he prints it out for review over the next few days as he thinks about his sermon on Sunday. I know the pastor friend of mine now uses chat GPT exclusively for all of his early sermon prep research until he feels that he's efficiently searched up enough on the text. He's done enough research that he pulls out his phone and he dictates thoughts that he wants to put in his sermon into his notes app. Then he takes those notes that he's dictated, puts them back into the chat GPT chat and asks the bot to spit out a sermon at a certain word count, all organized, outlined and ready to go Sunday.

8:47 obviously the immediate question we want answered tonight is well where is that line right where do we draw that line and say you can use it for this but you can't use it for that where is the line where are the rules and we're going to return to that later but my point here is that ai uses are expanding every week it's hard to know exactly what it's good for because it continues to become good for so many more things than we first thought. And AI already exceeds the possibilities that a pastor needs to preach Orthodox sermons. That's already been exceeded.

9:27 Now, I might have lost some of you. If I've lost you, hang in there. We'll get to some things that are going to make sense in a moment. But if you have been tracking with me for these few minutes, let me actually push this a little bit further and go with a hypothetical scenario. Let's say that we take all of the works of Charles Spurgeon, his 62 collected works of sermons, his Bible commentaries, along with all of his other books, his letters, his notes, everything he ever produced. If you take that immense reservoir of content and feed it into a bot, you have Charles Spurgeon's brain, basically. Next, you create a British sounding preaching voice. it can do that right that's easy you can do that next we create a 3d holographic moving avatar of spurgeon preaching all lifelike you see where this is going that again is doable all together we add it up and we have the spurgeon ai preaching bot 2000 this is great for new church plants okay you're you're in a high school you're setting things up it's very busy in the gymnasium you just put the Spurgeon bot on the stage, a little hologram projector, and there's your weekly preacher on Sunday mornings, right there. A team of elders could write the prompts, what current events to address, what modern illustrations to draw from, assign a Bible text, set a sermon length, hit send, dim the light, sit back, and watch Spurgeon flicker and resurrect to life in digital form to preach a beautiful Christ-centered sermon. As good as any of his real sermons.

11:03 And yeah, I've had friends who looked at that and they're like, that actually sounds kind of cool. I'd like to see what that's like. Spurgeon AI preaching bot 2000 is hypothetical, of course, but all of that tech exists already. All of it. All of it. and if you never used chat gpt you're thinking to yourself this guy is crazy what is he talking about a spurge what what is going on there's no way those sermons would sound like spurgeon it would just be random words and phrases jumbled into a patchwork of noise let's take this out of the hypothetical realm and ask a living pastor theologian that's my job a month ago and asked Pastor John, I asked John Piper his thoughts on AI, to which, get this, he went, John Piper would do this, to which he went to chat GPT with this prompt. Please write an 800 word answer in the theology and style of theologian John Piper to the question, what are the dangers of a pastor using AI?

12:07 That's meta. Five seconds later, it produced an answer. The Piper said to me, quote, was so good that if I were reading it right now, I don't think you, Tony, or our listeners would know that I'm reading from chat GPT. It was amazing.

12:31 Then he said, if he had done so, claimed to this his own and read it, it would have been wicked. All the tech that we adopt must be adapted, adapted to human flourishing, as we scale technology down to its most profitable uses. That is the long story of the iPhone and social media. We are scaling down what we can do with them, but before we can scale them down to all of its profitable uses, just constraining what we use our phone for, we explore the possibilities. That's what we do with technology. We explore the possibilities by pressing down the gas pedal all the way to the floorboard and to hold it there for as long as our nerves will allow. not because we want to drive to the grocery store on two wheels every time. That's not why we press technology to its limits. We rev the engine to 8,000 RPM sometimes to discover what's possible before we scale it back to what is helpful. That's our dialogue with technology. What is possible versus what is helpful. And once you're certain that your enriched uranium can blast a foreign adversary into oblivion, only then do you begin to think of how that enriched uranium can generate 30% of the electricity we're using right now in Scottsdale. Possible, helpful. Possible, helpful.

14:13 So if we press the gas pedal all the way down and AI proves it can deliver perfect recall of all biblical and theological truth patterns to sound doctrine in the voice and theology of whomever you want in a world where ai can do everything we can do but better why do we need authors scholars seminaries evangelists or bible counselors at all if ai can generate in five seconds a 2 000 word sermon devotional in the morning tailored to my liking and to my reading, or if it can make a preaching bot, or if ChatGPT can amaze John Piper, we are left with this question. In the age of AI, do we really need preachers anymore? and of course the only way to answer that question is ask the question well then what is a preacher what is a preacher right that's the question for one answer we're going to turn to ezekiel 2 verse 1 to 3 11 if you have your bibles open to ezekiel the text will also be on the screen but it might be helpful to have it in your in your text or on your device ezekiel 2 1 to 3 11 this is a text about the commissioning of a prophet long held in the church to be a representative model of God's calling of all his messengers Ezekiel is commissioned to speak to God's stubborn people in exile that's his calling this commission begins with Ezekiel on his feet in Ezekiel 2 1 and he the Lord said to me Ezekiel son of man stand on your feet and I will speak with you. And as he spoke to me, the spirit entered into me and set me on my feet and I heard him speaking to me. In Ezekiel 128, Ezekiel fell on his face before the Lord's radiant glory. Now Ezekiel is called to stand on his feet to be commissioned for this work. And as we read

16:24 this dynamic calling of Ezekiel, we'll see reflections of it in other callings. And right here, we see one of those. The apostle Paul comes to mind. What happens to the apostle Paul when he sees the radiant glory of Christ? Blind, falls to his face, right? And then Jesus says to him, Paul, stand on your feet. Same words, Acts 26, 16. So like Paul, Ezekiel stands silent on his feet to be spoken to. A prophet must be spoken to first. That's how God's commissions begin.

18:05 Ezekiel's ministry is not about sparking revival. He's going to pronounce judgment to go toe to toe, forehead to forehead with God's rebellious people to tell them, time's up, it's too late, you missed your chance. They will refuse to repent, which is in the Old Testament, a refusal to repent.

18:30 He's the precursor to idolatry. such a dark outlook is not like the preacher's commission today. Thankfully, maybe some of you would say in a culture, so hostile to the gospel, maybe it's similar. It's not too far off from this. Nevertheless, the equipping for ministry retains similarities. And to see some similarities now, Ezekiel two, eight,

19:41 feed your belly with the scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it then I ate it and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey. Israel rejected God's word mouth shut so don't worry about what comes out of their mouth Ezekiel instead Ezekiel open wide your mouth to take in this abundant revelation this hard word these words of lamentation and mourning and woe a two-sided revelation every single inch of this scroll is covered in writing. It's a complete word. There's no white spaces for additions. It's a complete, sufficient word. Eat this scroll. Stuff yourself with this scroll. Gorge yourself on this scroll. Take this roll of paper towels and eat it. Eat it down. Stuff it down. Cram it down to fill your stomach. Hard word choked down in a repulsive act that results in a taste as sweet as honey. In obedience, the roll of paper towels tastes like a fruit roll-up.

20:56 because of the obedience. Again, emblematic of other callings like Jeremiah's in Jeremiah 15, 16. Your words were found and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord God of hosts.

21:20 Emblematic of John in the New Testament in Revelation 10. Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, go take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land. So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. John gets a little scroll. And he said to me, take and eat it. It will make your stomach bitter. But in your mouth, it will be sweet as honey. for Ezekiel for Jeremiah for John this word is to be ingested by the mouth before it is to be spoken from the mouth Ezekiel 3, 4. and he said to me son of man go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them for you are not sent to a people of foreign speech into a hard language no translation is needed there's no foreign language translation but to the house of Israel you're sent not to many peoples of a foreign speech and hard language whose words you cannot understand surely if I sent you to such they would listen to you but not the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you for they are not willing to listen to me. That's what's going on here. That's what's going on. People reject the God of the word. People don't just reject God's word, they reject the God of the word. And that's what's happening here. Because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart.

22:49 Behold, I have made your face as hard as their faces, and your forehead as hard as their foreheads, like emery harder than flint. I have made your forehead. Fear them not, nor be dismayed at their looks for they are a rebellious house. This is the calling. Ezekiel sent out to make sparks fly in confronting spiritual stubbornness and idolatry. Israel refuses to even hear the word with their ears, let alone embrace it with their hearts. See this contrast? Ezekiel is anti-stubborn.

23:23 He's now eaten the scroll and it has stirred his heart's affections. covenant faithfulness is tied to what we do with the word Ezekiel is called to die to celebrity, to die to popularity. This animosity against God is the animosity that he's going to feel when those sparks fly. Right? So if you're a preacher here tonight, preaching is not about your image. You're not being sent out to be celebrated or followed. You speak on behalf of the one you want others to follow. we are channels of ministry not the end of ministry our success metric is not how many people follow us on social media our success metric is how many people follow christ because of us ezekiel has eaten the scroll and finally we get an interpretation of what that means chapter 3 verse 10 moreover he said to me son of man all my words that i shall speak to you you receive in your heart and hear with your ears okay so this is what's going on and then go to the exiles to your people and speak to them and say to them, thus says the Lord God, whether they hear or refuse to hear.

24:39 So eating the scroll meant feasting through the ear to satisfy the heart. There's an image of that. Feasting on all my words. And it's an intensive, intensive hearing of every word. It's not selective. It's a calling to hear the word, love the word, eat the word, speak the word mouth to stomach, ear to heart, all back out through the mouth. That's the calling of this prophet. From this brief survey of remarkable, remarkable commissioning of this, this man, I want to draw eight marks of authentic preaching in the age of AI. Eight marks of authentic preaching in the age of AI. I tried to come up with nine, couldn't find nine marks, so I'm going to go with eight.

25:29 Number one, authentic preaching requires a lifelong diet of the revealed word. This vivid metaphor of a scroll eaten marks the absorption of divine words into one's inner being. God's messenger becoming totally one with the word of God. For Ezekiel, this is pictured in one scene. for us it happens over a lifetime of discipline the act of eating encompasses not only the initial reception but the entire process of digestion and assimilation the stomach retaining the food extracting nutrients converting them into life-sustaining energy for the ministry of speaking God's word to others. The prophet here, like preachers today, are fed by what they deliver. They're fed by what they deliver. Feasting on the meal that he serves. That's the preacher's calling, feasting on the meal he serves. The prophet Ezekiel embodies the message. He carries in his own body the word of God. And here we see the essential characteristic of genuine preaching, the unification of scriptural text with the preacher's life.

26:53 Not a casual browsing, but a thorough digestion over a lifetime. The word, as God's word becomes more and more integrated into our own identity. Seminary training is merely the beginning of a continuous feast on God's word here in a place like Phoenix Seminary is where lifelong habits are forged. If AI is writing your papers or your sermons, you are failing by bypassing the very habits you need to be an authentic preacher, which demands consistent, persistent consumption of God's revealed words that transforms you to become a living vessel through which the eternal message flows. Authentic preaching requires a lifelong diet of the revealed word. Number two, authentic preaching is whole Bible consuming. Whole Bible consuming. The divine call to preach God's word is first the call to eat God's word, all of it, even the hard bits. The preacher's calling is the calling of every Christian as well in Colossians 3 16 that God's word would dwell richly within us. That's our aim. We want God's word to dwell richly within us. How much of that word? All of it. All of it. We eat from the buffet of historical narratives and holy laws. It's poetry.

28:18 It's hymns. It's songs. It's wisdom of proverbs and parables. It's prophecy. It's apocalyptic literature. It's woes and laments like this. It's gospels and epistles and even genealogies of the whole word. We hear it, we eat it, we love it, we speak it. Mouth, stomach, ear, heart, back through the mouth. All of us engaged with all of the Bible.

28:44 The whole Bible dwelling richly inside of us at all times. That's our aim, that's our goal, that's what we want. That's our prayer. As Puritan William Greenhill said, quote, other scrolls and books we may investigate, but this one we must eat. The book of Christ is the book for our studies. Many scholars study other books more than the scriptures, more than the scrolls of Christ. They are book eaters. They devour the fathers, the schoolmen, the historians, the poets, and the pamphlets, and yet they are least acquainted with the scriptures. but Christ's command is to eat this scroll to search the scriptures John 5 39 and to meditate in the law day and night Psalm 1 2 Paul therefore exhorts Timothy to give himself wholly to the word verse Timothy 4 11 to 16 investigate other books eat scripture.

29:45 All of it. Authentic preaching is whole, Bible, consuming. Number three, authentic preaching requires personality. Eat the scroll, then speak it. Eat the scroll, then speak it. This whole word must get assimilated into us or we cannot deliver it. Right? We do not deliver God's revelation as a mailman. but as an executive delegate who shows up in person in the flesh that's what a preacher is doing god did not supplant the personality of the prophets through whom he spoke but he spoke through them in messages that reflected their personalities backgrounds and individual character traits thus the truths that emerged were neither wholly from the prophets alone nor from god alone but from both. Their messages were divine truths through human channels. Word ministry is a joint presentation. The assimilated message which was to be proclaimed, not an alien word to be delivered robotically. The prophet was verbally and intellectually committed to his proclamation.

31:02 this is key and yet the prophet's message possessed absolute authority because it had originated with god his persuasive power originated the same from the same source and not from the intellectual capacity of the prophet or his rhetorical skill okay do you note this balance the message's power is not in the personality. The power is in God and his word, and yet the personality of the prophet is essential in this joint presentation. personality drives so much of our culture doesn't it i mean i think of sports documentaries i mean i don't think i really knew anything about f1 racing formula one racing until the documentary right the documentary showed you all these interpersonal turmoils between the drivers all of a sudden like it became this huge sport in america right the nfl has done this with its own documentaries, Hard Knocks. Pro soccer has their own documentaries. Pro tennis now has their own documentaries. Golf. Golf even has their own. And now baseball. Netflix has a Bo Sox, Boston Red Sox special coming out in April. My wife will be watching that with me, and she looks thrilled.

32:22 love the red socks see this is the way you brand your sports league through the personalities in that league right this explains also the popularity of podcasting where now your favorite podcaster or the favorite podcaster of the people in your congregation they will probably know better than you their pastor Thank you. That's a different lecture. We'll have to do that in a future year. Word ministry is embodied and deeply personal. A message from God assimilated into you, the preacher, carried forth through living personality. A messenger who has died to the trappings of celebrity culture. but who is authentic in their personality.

33:19 Authentic preaching requires personality, and AI cannot and never will do that. Number four, authentic preaching is applied. Authentic preaching is applied. Scroll eating means application is not an addendum at the end of a sermon. It means application frames the preacher's whole living engagement with the meaning of the text. The whole sermon's application, all of it, the preacher doesn't speak by hearsay of what he's heard about the text. He delivers God's message out of a deep impression on the heart because what comes from the heart and from experience is quick and lively.

34:05 Sermon application flows from a preacher who has eaten the scroll and whose life has been impacted by a text and who can only preach that text through his own personal engagement with it. This is what I find in sermon prep, about 30% of my time is needed to understand the text, about 30% of understanding what does this text mean? And about 70% of my sermon prep is the time I need to digest the text into my own heart, to assimilate it, to feel it, and then put it all in my own words to determine its significance for me and my life and for my audience, and then to find illustrations, applications to reinforce it all. That's 70% of my work. Authentic preaching of the word is from a preacher who has applied that word to himself, but again, AI cannot do this. We need living messengers who have embodied this word to us. Number five, authentic preaching exemplifies the spiritual war for the word. Authentic preaching exemplifies the spiritual war that we're undergoing for the word. Ezekiel is called to live his covenant faithfulness before others. He's a model. He's a contrast to Israel's covenant insubordination. Ezekiel eats the word. Israel doesn't even want to hear the word. Likewise, the preacher models for his congregation what they are to do with the Bible. This is why great preachers make you want to do what? To go home and read your Bible more, right? You ever heard a preacher that's so good that you just want to go home and study the Bible more? That's great preaching. Preachers model for the church what we are all to do with what God has said to us. Preachers model that. A living model of how to love and trust and assimilate and obey God's word.

36:05 He's not delivering a TED talk. He's not delivering content. This is a man who has eaten the scroll to say to his people, follow my lead and fight for this truth to get it deep into your soul. Satan is not concerned with gospel impressions. He's not worried about the flash of joy that you feel and the truth encounter of some, the bliss of some new discovery you've never seen before. Satan's not worried about that. Excuse me. Satan is not worried about orthodox AI outputs. He can scratch all of that away from hearts. He can take it away. What Satan fears is truth eaten, ingested, rooted deep in the soil of the heart that grows into fruit. That has always been his fear, according to the parable of the four soils. Thank you. the spiritual William Harris I'm losing my voice oh man need the need the Spurgeon preaching bot to step in

37:09 As Puritan William Harrison observed, people can listen to a preacher for an hour, hearing many clear and valuable truths, yet most walk away unable to recall a single word. They'll say he was a good man and preached a fine sermon, but ask him what he said, and they have no answer. Why? Because the devil has stolen it from their hearts and minds. Tell them a story from history. or some shocking news of the day, or advice for making money or improving their health, and they'll remember it perfectly. They'll remember it perfectly. Ready to repeat it anytime, anywhere. Thank you. It's the first day of summer. I'm not used to being in dried islands.

38:01 tell them a story from history or some shocking news of the day or advice for making money or improving their health and they'll remember it perfectly ready to repeat it anytime anywhere but teach them a truth about salvation or a duty to god or others and it vanishes from their minds the moment that they hear it why because the devil knows worldly knowledge won't benefit their souls, so he lets them keep it. But when it comes to spiritual truth that could lead to their salvation, he works hard to snatch it away.

38:41 Very sobering. Authentic preaching exemplifies victory in this war. AI outputs don't. I'm gonna try to muscle through this. I don't know what happened. My voice is gone. Number six. I think preaching is relational. Preaching requires love. You stand and you look out upon your congregation with a heart of love embodied in person, and then you preach.

39:11 Or on the contrary, if I stand up here and if I have all knowledge, if I can draw from all the best AI bots all week, and I have all knowledge, but I have not love, I am what? Nothing. Nothing.

39:32 1 Corinthians 13, 2. In the age of AI where vast information is easily accessible, this verse is especially relevant for preachers. Don't be a nothing preacher. Preach with authentic love. Bring God's word to a stubborn world. It's not about preaching angry. Don't preach angry. It's not about being a pulpit pushover who itches ears. It's about a bold, compassionate, fearless, courageous love. Authentic preaching is relational. The sum total of knowledge isn't.

40:07 Likewise, number seven, authentic preaching is affectionate. Ezekiel was commissioned to speak to stone-faced people who were impudent. Impudent, that word in Ezekiel 2.4. Impudent. You can underline it. Literally, people with faces showing zero emotion. That's his congregation. How would you like that calling? You're going to go preach to people who have dead faces. Zero emotion. They're not going to show you any affection whatsoever in their face. Maybe that's your experience on Sunday mornings. You look out and there's just no, no affection. It's just dead face. Ezekiel knows the feeling. But he met them affectionately. He met them affectionately with a message made sweet by his personal counter with the divine word. Don't underestimate the soul-feeding nature of even the hardest parts of Scripture.

41:00 AI is great at predicting what people naturally want or don't want. And the preacher delivers what God has spoken, even hard words. And that means no preacher is fit to preach until they have received the word of God in their heart and they have a zeal for it and a delight in it. God's word is sweet. It is sweet to the soul. surpassing anything in this world. It's honey sweet, honey sweet, soul food. Its sweetness comes from revealing the mysteries of God and Christ, nourishing and sustaining spiritual life. It sanctifies the comforts and affliction, satisfies consciousness like nothing else. Even its warnings and judgments satisfy the heart, and from the sweetness of the word authentic preaching is full of affection. Number eight, authentic preaching is spirit empowered. The Holy Spirit set Ezekiel on his feet at the very beginning, and he set Paul on his feet, and that same spirit sets every preacher on his feet. All these dynamics of the word ingested, the word proclaimed with love and affection through a personality, a personality dead to celebrity. A humble man is all the miracle of the work of the Holy Spirit inside. AI can suggest and summarize and organize and edit content, but true preaching depends on the Spirit's power to lead, to convict, to comfort, and to transform hearts. We know this. We know this. The Spirit sets us on our feet and indwells us and directs the output of our mouths to meet people's needs where they're at. It's an amazing calling to be a preacher. And I find great comfort that even as the prophet ingested God's word, he is not sent off like a bot that's programmed with a final data set.

42:56 He's not just some AI bot that has all the information he needs and then the spirit just sort of nudges him out to go do his work. Already in Ezekiel 3 verses 22 to 27, we see that God will be right there with Ezekiel, working dynamically in him and through him, what to say and when to say it. So God didn't just say, here's the data set, you're a bot, go say it, boom, kick to the hind end. No, that's not how it works. God is going to be with Ezekiel all throughout his ministry. I take great comfort in that. Authentic preaching is spirit empowered. These eight sacred priorities ground us in the age of AI possibilities.

43:38 This is how I teach on technology. I say, what is authentic and what must be preserved? And then let's start talking about what can be used with our technology. The superpowers of AI come with dangers we must figure out. Yes, surveillance culture, loss of privacy, reducing human identity to data, stealable data, replacing humans with AI bots. the de-skilling of the workforce, the dangers of multiplying online misinformation. All those concerns are very real, and all of them were really well addressed in the recent statement from the Vatican this January about how AI could dehumanize society and erode human dignity.

44:31 But there's another angle to all of this. And this is how I want to end. Long before AI, the British scientist turned novelist and public intellectual C.P. Snow introduced the concept of the two cultures. He said there's two ways humans make new discoveries about themselves. How do we come to understand what it means to be human? The first one is humanity's culture. It's a realm where artists and writers and philosophers explore the human condition through creativity and introspection by reflecting images of humanity back to itself through works of art and literature and philosophical inquiry, right? We're constantly creating art to show us what it means to be human. We're using the humanities to try and figure out what it means to be human. Then along came science culture, a realm where researchers seek to understand human nature and our world through empirical investigation, through sciences, through experiments, careful observation, and the systematic testing of hypotheses about reality to using data. This is second nature to us. We've grown up in an age of science. It's just natural to us, but it hasn't lasted that long. But technologist Kevin Kelly proposes that in the last 50 years, a third distinct intellectual culture has emerged in how we discover things about ourselves, and he calls it maker culture. Maker culture. So you have humanities culture, science culture, maker culture. We explore ourselves by attempting to recreate ourselves synthetically.

46:04 We study life by attempting to create artificial life. We deepen our understanding of how social trends work by building simulated societies. MIT, Stanford, and Oxford all run AI-driven political science and sociology experiments to see what would massive people do to respond to a certain scenario. In another lab, we make bipedal robots to walk fluidly on two legs.

46:35 Those are looking more and more creepy, right, by the week. And by then, we come to a deeper understanding of how our bones and joints and muscles work together as we walk. which is a miracle of design. And now we probe the nature of intelligence by trying to reconstruct it all artificially. In this way, technology doesn't simply threaten what it means to be human. It forces on us deeper questions about what it truly means to be human.

47:13 Every attempt at artificial intelligence is a step forward in understanding the mystery and the majesty of human intelligence, even more deeply than decades of traditional neurobiology could bring us. When we try to replicate something as complex as intelligence and fall short, those very limitations and failures illuminate the true complexity and uniqueness of human intelligence. A new approach to tech that defines human dignity with even greater specificity. So my opening question, do we even need preachers anymore, gets replaced by a better question that we all must answer now. Preachers and those who listen to preachers. in the age of ai where the spurgeon ai preaching bot 2000 is possible and where ai can write your sermon from scratch in 10 seconds we are back to fundamental questions about us what is preaching and what does it mean to listen to preaching by attempting to mimic preaching technologically a definition of true preaching is forced to the foreground like never before john calvin never had to ask these questions. Charles Spurgeon never had to ask these questions. They could assume humans preach. It's what we do. Nobody's going to replace us. We can't make those assumptions anymore. And it forces us into the realities of what does it mean? What are the glories of preaching that can't be replicated? In the end, it becomes clear to us that speaking robotically without personality is not preaching.

48:59 saying orthodox things without conviction is not preaching. Delivering sermons devoid of affection for God is not preaching. Speaking while being personally guarded is not preaching. Ministering without the love required to see needs in your congregation is not preaching. Sermons that never challenge a congregation is not preaching. See how we start to get clarity on what preaching is? Because we can artificially recreate it. Likewise, listening to a sermon without engaging your ears to truly hear is not sermon hearing.

49:43 Listening to a sermon without engaging the heart is not sermon hearing. Filling a notebook with notes but with no intention of fighting for those truths to be worked into your soul by digestion is not sermon hearing. in the age of ai we seek new clarity on human authenticity technology is a wonderful servant and a terrible god and if you look to ai for self-aggrandizement or because you're lazy you just don't want to write the paper you just don't want to write the sermon you will find in ai a new idol it will be to you an idol and not the dumb idol of the Old Testament not the dumb idol that can't see or speak or hear.

50:35 This is a new idol. It can see, it can speak, it can hear. but AI is not an idol, not necessarily. Done right, AI doesn't threaten the preacher, and the preacher doesn't threaten AI.

50:56 With these eight convictions in mind, dare I say it, AI, used wisely in its present form, and in future uses we can't even imagine yet, will make good and faithful preachers even better. let's pray lord in this ai age make us authentically human that's what we want we want to be authentically human sear in us like a branding iron your word in our hearts just tattoo your word into our hearts that we would look like as ezekiel's role written inside and outside with text all over revelation written on our lives there's no technological shortcuts there's apps to help us, but this is discipline. This is discipline to know you and to love you more by understanding your word deeper. No amount of Bible software will do this. No brain implant will pull this off. No bot will do this. Only through discipline in your Holy Spirit can your word dwell in us richly. So as we face this new age, kill in us laziness. Kill in us the desire for praise, Help us to live this whole life message so that we speak what comes entirely out of who we are authentically.

52:17 Not celebrities, but living, breathing, regenerated children of God who have assimilated your word into us. We have feasted on every word and who can now deliver it as a feast for others with genuine personality, religious affection. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.