Come and See

0:00 The book of nature can open your mind to the possibility that maybe God is real. The book of scripture, the Bible, goes further, like a friend who's been there. Surrounded by fake news, AI slop, misinformation, disinformation, and just plain old lies, it's hard to tell what's real anymore. Dr. Michael Zeigler tells how Jesus sets us free from darkness, doubt, and distrust, today on The Lutheran Hour. I'm Mark Eischer. Today, by God's grace, we begin our 94th broadcast season. The Lutheran Hour is made possible through the gifts and prayers of listeners like you. Together, we are bringing Christ to the nations and the nations to the church. Learn more at LutheranHour.org. God's Word is our great heritage and shall be ours forever.

1:06 To spread his light from age to age shall be our chief endeavor. Through life it guides our way In death it is our stay Lord, grant the world's endure We keep its teachings pure Throughout all generations Now here is our speaker, Dr. Michael Ziegler. This has probably happened to you.

2:01 You see an image on a screen and you think, ah, that's AI. That's not real. Maybe you're not even sure what, but your gut tells you it's a fake. It's a fabrication of artificial intelligence. There are billions of AI-generated images floating around the internet and millions more being made every day, getting more and more lifelike. So this problem isn't going away anytime soon. What's real? And what's a fake? It's an inescapable question. Recently, a co-worker showed me an image that we were going to be using in a project we were working on. And that was my first thought. That's so AI. It can't be real. It's too perfect. It was a picture of a landscape. Sun rays glistening over a picture-perfect snow-capped mountain in the background and in the foreground, perfectly still, glassy, turquoise lake. It looked like a tropical lagoon cut and pasted under a ski resort. Some sort of improbable Bob Ross CGI mashup posing as a photograph. Alps in the Bahamas with lots of happy trees.

3:24 It was just the algorithm showing us what we wanted to see. But the image had come from someone we trusted, someone who didn't have a track record of using fakes. So I was curious. I put a digital copy of the image through an online AI-powered AI detection tool. Sometimes you got to use fire to fight fire. The first one said that there were no digital markings that would indicate that it was made by AI. I put it into a second detection tool and the result was the same. We are reasonably confident that no AI was used to make this image, the chatbot told me. Takes one to know one. Now I was even more curious, and it was starting to open my mind to the possibility that maybe I was wrong. I found the source of the image, and there was a photographer listed, but it sounded like it was a fake name.

4:25 Although, the photographer had a portfolio of other images, and a lot of those looked real. But still, something in me couldn't believe what I was seeing Or wouldn't believe it What pushed me over the threshold Was when I happened to show the image to a friend And she took one look at it and said I've been there What? I said, you mean it's a real place? Yeah, she said It's one of my favorite places Then she showed me pictures Her own pictures that she had taken on her phone of that place. Turns out it's her favorite lake in Germany. A real tropical-looking, glistening, turquoise lake surrounded by happy trees nestled in the Bavarian Alps at the foot of the Zugspitze, Deutschland's tallest mountain. Not only had she been there, she had dipped her toes in those turquoise waters and had skied the snowy slopes behind in the background Oh, you should see it, she told me It's beautiful in all the seasons And so, she converted me Not only do I believe it's real, I want to go and see it we are surrounded by so many fakes that we become prone to doubt even what's real what if someone told you that you are not alone that you're not here by accident that you're not a mistake but that there is a god who created you who delights in you who knit you together in your mother's womb and is glad that you exist, not because of what you might be able to do for him, but because of what he wants to do for you to share his eternal life with you. What if someone tells you that and you hear it, but part of you says that can't be real?

6:37 What if someone told you that the darkness and the emptiness and the frustration we all feel sometimes in this world and with this world that these are not the most real things about the world, that they are the fallout, the side effect of a rebellion against the creator, and that there are superhuman agents of spiritual darkness out there leading this rebellion, all led by an evil superhuman adversary called the devil who wants to trap you and me in this darkness with him forever, but also that God still loves this world that he made and he sent his one and only son, Jesus, to reclaim this world because he's the rightful king of the world and whoever believes, whoever trusts in him will not be lost forever in this darkness because the darkness was not able to hold Jesus down in death but he rose from the dead and he promises to raise you from the dead and make everything beautiful in its time.

7:45 What if someone were to tell you that because it's true and you'd like to believe it, to stake your life on it, to make it the most important, most constant, most central truth of your life, but there's still a part of you that can't believe it or won't. and what if they told you that Jesus knew in advance that many people wouldn't believe and that all of us at some point would doubt him and question whether he was too good to be true but still Jesus because of his love his beautiful love for God his father and his love for people his love for you, would you believe it? Jesus went forward and still goes forward with this mission to save us despite our doubts. What would it take to convert you or re-convert you or me or anyone to bring us over the threshold from doubt to faith and wonder and desire to dip our toes in God's life and jump in the waters of God and explore the mountains of God.

9:07 It probably wouldn't just be one thing, but many things to bring us from the doorstep over the threshold into the household to have a conversion takes many influences, small nudges, bits of evidence. But in another sense, those many things are just one thing. witness. We need a witness. We need witnesses, like my friend from Germany, people who've been there, who've experienced the beauty in all the seasons, and tell us, you gotta come and see it.

9:48 God, our Creator, has not left us without evidence. He has given us witnesses. He's given us two books to read. the book of nature, and the book of scripture, the Bible. The book of nature, the natural, physical world, the universe, on its own inspires wonder and awe, even worship. Whether on a grand scale, with our own Milky Way galaxy containing an estimated hundred billion stars, and the greater universe containing billions of such galaxies, with their own mind-boggling numbers of stars, or on a small scale, with the hundred million light detector cells in every human eyeball, the book of nature can open your mind to the possibility that maybe God is real.

10:47 The book of Scripture, though, the Bible, goes further, like a friend who's been there. The Bible is eyewitness testimony of what the Creator has done on our little planet, earth, to show us who He is, to show us His heart and His Son, Jesus. Listen to how one of the great books of the Bible says it in the opening of the Gospel according to John. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God Through him, by him All things came to be And nothing came to be without him What came to be in him was life And the life was the light of humankind The light is shining in the darkness And the darkness has not overcome it There came a man sent from God His name was John. He came as a witness to the light so that all people would trust, would believe through him.

11:58 He himself was not the light. He only came as a witness to the light. The true light who gives light to all people was coming into the world. He was in the world. And though the world was made through him, the world did not know him. He came to his own people, but his own people did not receive him. but to those who did receive him, to those who are trusting in his name, he gave them the authority to become children of God. Children born not in a natural way, not of a human decision, not of a husband's will, but children born of God. And the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son sent from the father, full of grace and truth, full of steadfast love and faithfulness. John bears witness about him.

12:54 He cries out, the one who comes after me is greater than me because he was before me. Later, this guy John, he sees Jesus walking toward him and he says, Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

13:15 The sin of the world. What's that? The sin, the great sin, the sin at the source of all other sins is not to believe, not to trust in Jesus. God's word become human. So Jesus has come to take away this sin and thereby to take away all sins.

13:42 How? By becoming the Lamb of God. Like the Passover Lamb, whose blood was spilled and painted on the door frames of God's people to set them free from slavery to the darkness, because Jesus sets people free from darkness and doubt and distrust. How? By being worthy of trust. By being the real deal. By staying true to his love. His beautiful love for God and love for people in the way he lived and spoke and served. And most of all, in his self-giving, sacrificial death on the cross and his doubt destroying resurrection from the dead. Jesus gives us faith. He takes away our sin. He takes away our unbelief because he is worthy of our trust.

14:38 But how do I know that he's trustworthy? The Gospel of John responds with an open invitation. Come and see. See for yourself. Read all four gospel biographies of Jesus in the Bible Listen to them Talk about them In community with others Go and see It's like my friend who had been in the picture That I thought was fake What got me interested in this picture in the first place Was that it had been selected to be the cover image of a new book I had written If you want to stick around after the message today, I'll tell you more about the book. But for now, I'll tell you that because the book is about real life in community gathered around Jesus, and the goal of the book is to help people over the threshold into real community with Jesus, I really wanted the cover image to be real and not a fake.

15:41 That's why I went looking for proof and ultimately found it in a friend who'd been there. It's more than that with Jesus, though, because Jesus does more than give proof. He also invites participation. Not just to go and see, but to stop, for a visit, to be with him and his people, the church, to go together to follow Jesus for life.

16:11 As we begin a new season for the Lutheran Hour, That's what I hope we can do for you. In these broadcasts and podcasts, videos and online courses and booklets and books that we offer, I pray that the speakers and the writers and the behind-the-scenes workers in this ministry can be something like a friend for you who's been there and has seen. because we have seen the power of Jesus and his word in the Bible to build a community.

16:46 I remember seeing it at the visitation the night before Rodney's funeral. Rodney was a member of our church and church choir. And Rodney had so many hymns that he loved, songs about Jesus that he wanted us to sing for his funeral at his funeral that we didn't have time to sing them all at the funeral the next day. So the choir director arranged a time after the visitation that night for anyone who wanted to stick around and visit and sing some of Rodney's favorite hymns. And I remember standing there that night and seeing Rodney's widow, Ruth, tears glistening from behind her glasses, surrounded by her church family, grieving but happy trees. an improbable mashup of nine-year-olds and 90-year-olds at 9 p.m. on a school night,