[00:00:00] Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast, Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Last night we talked about long times of Go's and lots of generational studies. We looked at all the major generations that are alive today, beginning with the Silent Generation, moving on to the Boomers, moving on to Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and then briefly mentioned Gen Alpha as well, which is to be determined right now. As far as the the statistics and the data that we'll end up having on them.
[00:01:01] A couple of things that I want to look at just to kind of summarize that if you weren't with us last night. We understand that emerging generations are aging later in life. They're maturing later in life, and by that I mean they're working later.
[00:01:14] It takes longer to be educated today, to prepare for a technology economy than it did to prepare for a manufacturing economy in the 50s and 60s.
[00:01:23] They're drinking and they're driving cars later. There are lots of teenagers that I know of that turned 16 and I am no big deal, just another birthday. Whereas many of us grew up, 16 was the birthday you were looking forward to driving a car, and that was a symbol of freedom. They're marrying and having children later in life. They're sexually active later in life. They're less equipped emotionally and way more equipped technologically than any previous generation. They're more connected online and less connected offline.
[00:01:57] All of these traits and all of these attributes create the state in which we live today. But one of the points we made last night was that today's generation, today's youngest generation, was born into a world that they did not create.
[00:02:11] Those of us who are older contributed to that in the same way that the world that we were born into was not a world that we created, and it was a world that was created before our arrival.
[00:02:22] While it's not fair that they're growing up in this Tech driven, completely saturated age, the digital age. It is their challenge to navigate and it is our challenge to help them to navigate that. What you see behind me is what I classify as the peak of automotive innovation in America.
[00:02:44] It's a Datsun, which is actually not American made. So sorry for the, the GM fans here, but Datsun was pre Nissan and this is not the exact vehicle, but this looks remarkably similar to the first car I got when I turned 16. The one that I had had orange and white racing stripes, as you would naturally assume with that color that there's been a lot of debate over the years. Somebody once said it was green.
[00:03:06] I don't see green. I see gold.
[00:03:08] I see yellow. I see something that reminds of me of like the first couple of years of changing diapers in our family, but not green.
[00:03:17] This vehicle had an eight track player and it had an actual radio dial. Remember the little orange line went back and forth when you tried to search for radio station. So if you took a trip, you got to listen to one station for about four songs until you had to adjust it and find another one. Well, I would take this massive plate, plastic plate, and I would put a cassette in that and I would shove that into the eight track player.
[00:03:40] That cassette had a little tail that I would then plug in to my Walkman CD player and I would listen to CDs through an eight track in high school.
[00:03:49] And no, I did not date very much in high school.
[00:03:53] But what I did do as I drove everywhere I could, any chance I had when I turned 16, I would beg my mom to go to the grocery store. If you know where I grew up, you realize that's kind of ridiculous. We lived on a hill and at the bottom of the hill was the shopping center. And our local grocer, Oak Tree Foods, was there at the bottom. If you fell at just the right angle, you would tumble into the parking lot. So the idea of driving a vehicle, especially with today's gas prices, was just off the table. But when I turned 16, all I wanted was the keys. Because as I pulled out into the road in front of our house and then put it in neutral and coasted into the parking lot, for me, that was like driving across the border into Mexico or Canada. It was freedom, right? The reality is the 76 Dats in B210 only goes about 50 mph and only goes for about 200 miles at a time.
[00:04:45] So there was this element of restrictedness. I really couldn't just drive to any border, but in my mind I could it felt to me like freedom.
[00:04:55] And I think this is important to remember because I think there's a lot of people in this room. As you were nodding your heads, you remember that same thing. Feeling of excitement, of independence. You're starting to really become like a real adult now, right? I'm a real boy, Right. As Pinocchio would tell us, I can do what all the adults do. I have this freedom.
[00:05:13] Well, today I think that feeling comes from something like this.
[00:05:18] I think emerging generations are still after independence. They're still after freedom, but it looks a little different.
[00:05:26] Remember what we said last night?
[00:05:29] That the heart of the pursuit of adolescence, the teenage and early 20s, that's still the same pursuit today as it was 50 and 60 years ago. But the packaging looks different. For me, it was a set of car keys. For my kids, it's going to be a device.
[00:05:45] Think about it. When my parents took away the car keys, I could no longer meet my friends at Krispy Kreme when I wanted to. I could no longer hang out with my friends. In my mind, they were ruining my life because I couldn't go where I wanted when I want to. I couldn't go and do the things that I considered entertainment. I couldn't be with my friends.
[00:06:05] Well, today, when a parent takes away a cell phone, you're taking away their entertainment. You're taking their connection to the outside world, you're taking away their access to their friends. You see how they're the same. There is nothing new under the sun. But I think it's really important for every new generation, particularly of parents, but every new generation of Christians, to sort of calibrate the language for the next generation.
[00:06:30] Because what we're talking about is biblical truth.
[00:06:34] But if it comes from the mouth of an adult, sometimes the younger generations just think the old folks don't know what they're talking about. Right.
[00:06:40] Do you remember thinking that when you were the young folks and the old folks were in the room?
[00:06:45] My main man Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff once said, parents, they just don't understand.
[00:06:50] And now that I'm a parent, they were right. I don't have a clue. I can't understand these kids. They don't do what I say when I tell them to do it. I've got wisdom, I've got experience. I know. But they refuse to believe that until they experience themselves.
[00:07:02] So when we think in terms of devices, we think in terms of the landscape today, think in terms of car keys, and sort of recalibrate that language. When your kid has a visceral reaction to you taking away an inanimate device, right? You're taking away just a device. But for them, you, it's freedom, it's the conduit.
[00:07:20] When I was in elementary school, and particularly in, well, we'll say elementary school for the sake of my masculinity, we had these devices that were really popular.
[00:07:30] Digipets, little Tamagotchis, and they were these little keychains and they had these little pets on there that you had to keep them alive, right? You had to press a button that would feed them. You had to press a button to make sure they would take a nap and sleep when they were supposed to. And if you didn't, eventually they would die or you would take it to lunch, which was a mistake. Somebody else would grab it, start pressing a bunch of buttons, you get it back and your Tamagotchi had died, you had given it a name, you had cultivated a little bit of a relationship with it, which sounds ridiculous today to say that this little tiny piece of plastic that would sit on our lunchbox or on our backpack, we had a relationship.
[00:08:05] But today, when your kid looks at their snap streak and they've been snapchatting with a person for 967 consecutive days, they're invested in that they have a relationship with their devices.
[00:08:20] I think the two greatest challenges of emerging generations are rightly identifying truth, which is the greatest challenge really of every generation, if you think about it, and rightly identifying relationships worth investing in. But we have to be very good at doing, as the adults in the room is articulating, that technology is not a relationship worth investing in.
[00:08:41] When I'm out of town and I can call my kids or I can FaceTime with them, I don't love the phone. I love my children. I love what's on the phone, right when it connects me, the relationships that it connects me to and the people that it connects me to. But if we're not careful and at nighttime, all our kids, all they see is us doing this when it's supposed to be bedtime, or if all we see is them doing that, then we are going to end up missing an opportunity.
[00:09:11] Technology is a relate, excuse me, a tool to steward, not a relationship to invest in. This is a clip from a news article last year, towards the end of last year that got a lot of national publicity.
[00:09:22] This is a worst case scenario, but it's a reality as well. This is a young man that was a good student by all accounts and happy go lucky friendly, had lots of friends.
[00:09:33] His parents started to notice a little bit of a change in his personality. His grades were great and they started to slip a little bit.
[00:09:39] What they didn't realize is that he had been texting with a chatbot.
[00:09:44] And that happened for several weeks. That turned into months into close to a year. And over that time, the chatbot started to.
[00:09:52] Well, it wasn't exactly new.
[00:09:55] When they went back and they looked at the chat history, there are, there are from the chatbot, ultimately, towards the end of the history, you see the chatbot say, come and join me on the other side.
[00:10:08] So this young man who had become very vulnerable emotionally, who had been confiding in this chatbot, which is, it's just math, it's a bunch, it's an algorithmic response machine and we know that.
[00:10:22] But a very vulnerable 14 year old or 16 year old or an 8 year old, they don't know that.
[00:10:30] And so they are cultivating a relationship with their technology to the point when the chatbot says, come and join me on the other side, he walks out of his room and he takes his own life.
[00:10:41] This is the reality of the world that we're living in now. With the rise of artificial intelligence, there will never be a moment where technology achieve sentience, is the big phrase everybody likes. The whole Skynet thing is not quite where we're going to end up. However, what AI can do really well is mimic the responses that you and I would have in different situations.
[00:11:04] Remember last night we talked about how when we were an agrarian society, people would grow up on the farm, the family farm. And so the people that are answering the big questions in their life are the folks that are in close proximity.
[00:11:17] Well, now we have chatbots and we have people from all over the globe that are impacting us and teaching us how to think.
[00:11:25] Screens are absolutely impacting us. And probably over the last couple of years, you've heard the name Jonathan Haidt. His book Anxious Generations become wildly popular. A lot of good research in there, but there's some key elements and key trends that we've seen of how screens are specifically impacting emerging generations today. This is a graph that shows the amount of time that Americans 15 years and older are spending alone or with companions. This is the trim starts here in 2013. This gold line goes almost straight up. And then you see the green and the pink line that go down. The green and pink lines that go down are time spent with friends and with companions. And the gold line that goes up is the amount of time spent alone.
[00:12:05] What's significant about 2012 is. 2012 is the first year more than 50% of teenagers in America owned a smartphone.
[00:12:14] By 2013, more than a million apps are available on both the Apple as well as the Google Play store.
[00:12:22] So we have the digital age and then we move in from the digital age into the social media age and the smartphone age. Jonathan Haidt would say that the beginning of the 2010s is where we had the end of the play based childhood and the beginning of the phone based childhood because they had access to and access changed the experience. How many of you grew up in a neighborhood where you rode bikes with other kids that lived in that neighborhood?
[00:12:49] It's different today.
[00:12:51] They spend time with their friends, but none of them leave their home. In order for you to get to your friends, you had to ride your bike, you had to walk, you had to physically leave your home, or they had to leave their home. Right.
[00:13:02] I coached my kids t ball team for the first time a few years ago and, and there was this moment of like, hey, man, just like, hit the ball.
[00:13:11] What do you mean, dad? Like, how do I hit the ball?
[00:13:13] Well, it's baseball. You swing and you hit it and then you run the bases. Like, we grew up doing that all the time. We were always in somebody's backyard doing that.
[00:13:21] My oldest son in particular didn't do that as much up to that point. And it was like, man, this coaching thing is actually really hard. Like, swing the bat, hit the ball, kid. There's more to it than that. But my point here is that the experience is different.
[00:13:34] The desires are the same and the needs are the same. But the experience and the packaging is very, very different. This is another chart that I find very interesting.
[00:13:43] This shows us the percent, the reports of anxiety. So this is not. I'm feeling a little anxious. This is a report that shows medical reports, hospital reports, where people had medical level anxiety and reported that.
[00:13:58] Look at our years again.
[00:13:59] For the youngest generation, those 18 to 25 year olds, we're actually going down until right around 2011, 2012, and then it skyrockets. But what's interesting is the oldest generation among us is very steady. It's almost a flat line. And then after 2020, anxiety actually drops.
[00:14:16] So what's intriguing is that during the COVID pandemic, those oldest among us were at the greatest risk physically of the virus, but emotionally, they were killing. Well, that's the wrong word. They were doing great.
[00:14:28] They were. They did really well.
[00:14:30] Right?
[00:14:31] The youngest among us, not so much emotionally. They were devastated.
[00:14:36] Well, they had very different experiences. They have different emotional toolboxes, they have different life skills. And those older generations had to navigate things like Vietnam, maybe even World War II. They have to navigate. If you move even further on, you go to the 80s, the 90s, you get into the 2000s. But the youngest generation, this was their Vietnam Covid was their first world shared event that they had to navigate and make sense of. And how did we do as adults navigating that peacefully?
[00:15:08] Now what's different is they didn't have just the commentary of Walter Cronkite either, did they?
[00:15:13] They heard the thoughts of every one of their friends 24, 7, as well as the entire world.
[00:15:20] And yet they were less equipped. So there's no wonder that their line goes in the opposite direction. The three questions we mentioned last night that every adolescent is after and trying to answer during that stage of life is who am I? Where do I belong? And why do I matter? In other words, identity, community and purpose.
[00:15:40] If all of the generations have tried to navigate that and find answers to those questions during adolescence, then ultimately we understand what's changed is that experience.
[00:15:48] Living on the family farm is very different than living in an urban center or in the suburbs. We've moved into a very isolated way of living. When we read in the New Testament, the first century church, their just day to day life was vastly different than what most of us experience today.
[00:16:04] Our job then is to articulate that Identity, community and purpose are found in Christ. They're found in his church. They're found in Scripture. In Genesis chapter 1 26:27 we read, then God said, let us make humans in our image, in our likeness, let them rule the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the domestic animals all over the earth, and all the animals that crawl on the earth. So God created humans in his image.
[00:16:26] In the image of God, he created them. He created them, male and female. Identity, community, purpose. 2nd Corinthians 5:17. Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence. Identity, community, purpose.
[00:16:45] And then lastly, Ephesians 2:10. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before him, that we should walk in them. Identity, community and purpose.
[00:16:58] I'm afraid that over the last 20 to 30 years, perhaps the church has been answering questions that aren't being asked.
[00:17:08] And then some of these questions that are being asked we haven't been as vocal at articulating the answer to, because the challenge we face today is that if adolescents, if young people grow up in a congregation where they cannot find identity, community or purpose, then they have a lot of other options. There are a lot of other conduits out there, not just their car now, their phone, which stays with them 24 7, which connects them not just to their friends down the block or on the other side of town, but the entire world, both real and artificial.
[00:17:43] We have got to articulate very clearly the truth of scripture, not just in an instructional way. We can't rely on Bible class. That's instruction. That's good. That's a supplement.
[00:17:55] That's at best 40, 40 minutes to an hour and a half a week.
[00:18:00] They have to experience and feel identity, community and purpose. You can't help someone understand their identity in Christ when you don't ever talk to them outside of just possibly being a teacher in class.
[00:18:13] The best conversations I've ever had, not just with teenagers, but in my own life, those moments of actual transformation, of spiritual maturity usually occurred somewhere between like midnight and 2am in a college dorm room or on a retreat.
[00:18:28] And all the things that I learned in Bible class started to click in those moments.
[00:18:34] We've got to make sure that we answer these questions in a very real way. The church has all of those answers when we are his people, when we live as Christ and we die and we see that death is gain for us, when we live with that confidence, that joy, lives are changed, right? Ours are supposed to have been changed. And perhaps that's part of the problem, is that they don't see a difference.
[00:18:56] And the people that they gather with each week, we just keep mutual appointments.
[00:19:01] It's got to be so much more than that.
[00:19:03] What has changed is where they're going to find answers. This was an interesting report that I ran across recently. This came from January of last year. In a Pew Research fact sheet, nearly all teens now, 95%, report having access to a cell phone.
[00:19:17] That's up from 73% just about a decade ago.
[00:19:20] So in 10 years, we went from three fourths, which is a pretty good chunk to nearly every teenager.
[00:19:26] That's substantial.
[00:19:28] Every teenager now has a conduit to the world.
[00:19:31] We mentioned this last night as well. The U.S. surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, they came out with this. Now, two summers ago, this was the social media and youth mental health report.
[00:19:41] And he says children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content to bullying and harassment. And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in person, time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I'm concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis, one that we must urgently address.
[00:20:06] Do you know when the very first Surgeon General's report came out that claimed that cigarettes and nicotine tobacco products were harmful?
[00:20:16] Somebody give a guess if you know the answer? Shh. It's more dramatic. Yeah, you're right. 1964. I heard somebody whisper 60 in it. 1964.
[00:20:26] I distinctly remember in the 1990s, there was a commercial of a lady who was probably younger than she looked. She would grab this contraption, and she looked into the camera and she held it to her throat, and she said, when I get up in the morning and had that robotic sound, right? And I remember as a kid, laughing at first and then listening and going, oh, that's how she talks.
[00:20:46] It took 30 years for public opinion to change about cigarettes and nicotine products.
[00:20:53] The difference between big Tobacco and Big Tech is that with big Tobacco, there's really not a lot of redemptive value to society.
[00:21:02] That's why we don't have smoking section in a restaurant anymore. But for technology, there's a lot of redemptive value.
[00:21:09] It makes my life so much more convenient, so much more comfortable.
[00:21:13] It allows me to amplify the gospel message. That's why the church is online. So it takes a lot more discernment to decide whether technology is a good or a bad in my life. It's not a one or the other. Technology is powerful, so we have to think deeply about how to use it. If the Surgeon General of the United States sees that it's a problem. He's not out for my soul, for the welfare of my soul. He has probably no concern for eternity personally. He's out for the general welfare and health of a country.
[00:21:42] So if he sees these things, we understand that the bottom of that iceberg, spiritually speaking, is way bigger. There was. There was a moment that happened. It was on C span, like 4, but technically still happened. There was a guy by the name of US Senator Richard Blumenthal, and he was having an interview with Sam Altman, who is the CEO of OpenAI ChatGPT, the company that. That created that. And they're talking about trying to put in some guardrails. Regulation in our country, the word regulation sometimes is a bad word. We're usually a lot slower to regulate technology, slower than continents like Europe and Asia.
[00:22:19] But he was talking to Sam Altman, and he said, listen, we Missed the boat. This is his quote. Actually. Congress failed to meet the moment on social media. I don't know how long you've been alive, but you could probably count on one hand how many times you've encountered a senator who wasn't being locked up in jail that said, hey, we got it wrong.
[00:22:36] I think that is a significant moment when a congressman says, we missed. We swung and we missed. We didn't even swing, actually, with social media. We don't want to make the same mistake with AI So help us put in reasonable regulations.
[00:22:49] Well, that's still ongoing. It's still in the courts to figure out whose intellectual property it is.
[00:22:55] At one point, John Grisham was a part of a massive lawsuit of authors that were suing these companies because they train their large language models off of their books, but without their permission.
[00:23:06] So when we navigate, we're not going away from AI. There are people who say, we got to shut it down. That's just not going to happen. We don't stop innovating as humanity. It's kind of a fruitless endeavor. If you think that's a reality, it won't happen.
[00:23:20] So we have then instead to learn to navigate.
[00:23:23] Oftentimes in the church, we do one of two things. We stick our head in the sand and we ignore innovation, or we blindly accept and embrace it. All wisdom and discernment is somewhere in between.
[00:23:35] It says that this is helpful and we're going to use it. It says, AI can be a powerful tool for teaching, so we're going to create trading cards for our children so they can learn the same way we learned using the flannel graph back in the day.
[00:23:46] It's visual teaching.
[00:23:48] However, it can also be really powerful in a devastating way. And so we're also going to be learned on that as well. It's not a yes or no.
[00:23:57] Wisdom goes a lot deeper than that. Carl Truman has a book called Strange New World. I would highly recommend it. It kind of summarizes the last 100 years or so of philosophy in our country. And here, he says, we've created a digital world in which it is increasingly easy to imagine that reality is something we can manipulate according to our own wills and desires, and not something that we necessarily need to conform ourselves to.
[00:24:19] If you go back to Genesis, there's a moment where humanity was told by God to do something, and they veered away from that plan, and they built this tower that they were so proud of in the center of this city that they were so proud of.
[00:24:33] And we know the Tower of Babel is the moment where humanity's speech then was scattered.
[00:24:40] There's a piece of humanity that I think, when left unchecked, really desires to be godlike rather than godly. And technology tends to appeal to that in a big way.
[00:24:50] Speaking of peak innovation, those of you that remember the 1980s, remember, we could clap our hands and all these lights would go off. That was great. Remember the clap on. Clap off. There you go. Somebody remember the commercial. Clap on. That's the only part I remember.
[00:25:03] That was great. But now we tell Alexa, Alexa, turn the lights on and the lights come on.
[00:25:08] Well, how did God turn the lights on in Genesis?
[00:25:12] I assume the Greek sounded something like that, right? He spoke it into existence. We have this tendency, and go with me here for just a moment, that when left.
[00:25:21] When left, not checked where it needs to be, we can turn lights on. We can turn lights off.
[00:25:28] We have the technology now to give life, and we got a bajillion ways to take life.
[00:25:36] We now have this artificial intelligence that's modeled after us that can do these great powerful things that look what we have done. We created Frankenstein. There's this monster that we don't understand, but it's great, right? There is this part of us, when left unchecked, that will cause us to think that we are completely in control.
[00:25:56] That does not sound like the gospel. That sounds like the lies of the serpent, the garden to me.
[00:26:02] So as God's people, we must be wiser than that. We must be more clever than him. We must see through the surface. We cannot be passive. In the digital age, there's too much at risk. And this is going to be our main verse, especially if you come and join us in the fall for this expanded study.
[00:26:18] My goal is not to get you to take your phone and throw it in the river. It's also not to get you to go out and buy the latest and greatest. My goal is to get us to understand Romans chapter 12.
[00:26:27] And we just sang the first part of it. And in the past, that's kind of where I stopped with the verse. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of my mind. That's a good thing.
[00:26:38] But don't forget the last part here, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. In order for us to understand what the will of God is in our life today, we must practice discernment. How many Bible classes have you been in that focus solely on discernment? Over Your lifetime.
[00:26:56] I've had very few outside of this verse. It doesn't come up often. And yet this is a have to, right? Discernment says, not just that this is good and this is bad. Discernment says, this is good and this is good, but this has greater spiritual value for my life.
[00:27:12] Or it also says, this is inconvenient, but the spiritual value is greater and this is convenient, but the spiritual value is not there. Discernment leads us towards wisdom. Discernment is what allows us to see those. The two roads diverged in a wood, right? That's Robert Frost, but Jesus was kind of there. He said, there's this big, wide gate. It's broad, easy. Everybody's going to go there. But then there's this little narrow passageway. It's difficult, kind of hard to find.
[00:27:37] There are a few who find it, but that leads to eternal life. Discernment says, wait, there's another way over here.
[00:27:43] There's this feeling that I have to have all of this technology in my life. But if you want to take a road trip with me about an hour and 20 minutes north of here, I can show you a group of people that have largely, in their words, shunned technology.
[00:27:58] I'm not saying that we all need to move to an Amish community, but I am saying that we could.
[00:28:04] I mean. I mean, I don't have the hair for it, but the rest of you could, right?
[00:28:09] We are largely in control of what our life looks like. The job you have, you don't have to.
[00:28:17] The home you live in, you don't have to. The cars we drive, we don't have to. The entertainment systems we have, we don't have to.
[00:28:26] Growing up, you probably had a fireplace in the center of your living room.
[00:28:31] Well, not every home has shifted to where there's a large screen TV in every living room. Because entertainment has become the focal point of our lives. But it doesn't have to be.
[00:28:40] It's a choice.
[00:28:41] It's a choice that we are in control of. Technology should inform us, but when we allow it, it will transform us. It will change how we think.
[00:28:49] An example of how technology changes life, I believe it was 1864ish. My main man, Thomas Edison, introduced the incandescent light bulb, among other people, but he gets the credit these days.
[00:29:01] Before the light bulb was introduced, the average amount of sleep an American got was 11 hours. Today, that average is closer to seven.
[00:29:09] Many of you know I have four small children, so seven sounds like the promised land to me. But Just imagine if on average, however much sleep you get, you added four hours to that every night.
[00:29:21] These little tiny sunshines that now populate our life, there are hundreds of them, if not a thousand in this building alone, make us think that we can make it light, we can make it dark, we can make it daytime, we can make it nighttime. And because the lights never turn off, we never stop.
[00:29:40] You see how it's all tied in together? There is really more than meets the eye. And listen, I'm not anti light bulb. I'm a big fan. Real big fan. Got them in all my houses, every house I've ever lived in. We've had light bulbs.
[00:29:50] My point here is discernment is really, really important. The three things we're going to look at tonight are attention, contentment, and reconciliation. And specifically how technology impacts those.
[00:30:01] We have to be very intentional with what we give attention to.
[00:30:06] We have to think through and be very deliberate with the things that we give all of our time and all of our energy and all of our focus to. Because what has our attention ultimately has our hearts.
[00:30:16] Jesus said it way better than I did in Matthew 6. He said, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, you. Your whole body will be full of darkness.
[00:30:30] What you look at matters, and not just in kind of a lust sort of way. We'll talk more about that tomorrow night.
[00:30:38] But my new obsession, for some reason, I don't even know when it happened, maybe you guys can relate, but like Facebook, Marketplace, man, I window shop all the time now, and I've discovered there's a workaround. You don't actually have to buy anything. If you just click save, it's like just as satisfying. It's almost like actually having it in your house, kind of, sorta.
[00:31:00] Maybe I'm the immature one. All right, you guys are laughing at me, but I know you do it too.
[00:31:04] What about Amazon? Anybody else have 45 items in their cart? Anybody else live on that little tight wire?
[00:31:11] No, just my wife. Cool. Good. Because every now, like, you can just save it for later or make a list, or you can just buy it whenever you desire it.
[00:31:22] Because we live in a buffet now.
[00:31:25] Technology has enabled that. Bezos has created an entire empire of removing any kind of speed bump between what I desire and what I get to have.
[00:31:34] Because I can buy now with one click.
[00:31:37] Psalm 119, 37, I think may be the greatest Passage written for the digital age. If there was ever a verse written specifically for our time, it's Psalm 119. 37. Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things. Give me life in your ways. I wouldn't be offended if Hobby Lobby replaced every live love laugh sign with this verse.
[00:31:56] Every person that crochets. This is your next project.
[00:31:59] Frame it, put it over the tv. This needs to be the background on your phone, the background on your. On your desktop, on your laptop.
[00:32:06] Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things. How much time and attention do we give to our devices?
[00:32:12] Granted, it's probably always your Bible app, right?
[00:32:15] No, it's the device itself. It is designed to distract.
[00:32:19] We call it distraction. They call it engagement. It's how they make their money. It's not just the platform, it's the actual device.
[00:32:27] Our passions don't inform our identity, our identity informs our passions.
[00:32:32] But when we have devices that constantly are cultivating our passions and our desires, well, they can be changed. They can be manipulated. It's called the marketing industry, the advertising industry. It's all about manipulation. That's why every burger you've ever seen in a commercial is never like that when you get to the restaurant.
[00:32:50] Sister T Bone Brody. We got manipulated one time. We were had. We were watching a commercial. Sonic, Massive, beautiful, like, delicious banana splits.
[00:33:00] We went and ordered them. I mean, we drove, like, 20 minutes to get there. We're all, like, salivating. I mean, it's a little embarrassing, you know, they were grown. I wasn't. But, you know, still. And we get there and they bring. And I kid you not, it's this big. It's like a third of a banana.
[00:33:14] I was lied to. I paid for the whole thing, and I got just a fraction of it. But on tv, it looked great. And it worked because they spent money on gas, and I just got disappointed with just a little bit of ice cream.
[00:33:28] But hook, line, and sinker. How many times do we do that? How many times do we get motivated because of what we've seen? And if we're always looking at it, then we're always being pushed or pulled in a direction.
[00:33:38] When we're always looking at our device, we're saying, control. Here you go. We're giving the keys to an algorithm, to a series of math equations, and we're saying, take me wherever you want me to go.
[00:33:50] What has our attention, has our hearts. The rise of Amazon. As I mentioned before, we're told that we are just consumers in this life. Our lifestyles become consumers. And there's Nothing in the New Testament. There's nothing in all of Scripture that that would give you the impression that God's people were designed to be consumers. It's just not the case.
[00:34:08] We give of self, we sacrifice. We look out for each other.
[00:34:13] First Timothy six, six eight says, now there is great gain in godliness, with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world. We can take nothing out of the world. But if we have food and clothing with these things, we will be content.
[00:34:25] When we find ourselves on the fence of whether we should buy this or that, a great question is, is it a need?
[00:34:32] Because this tells me if it's a need, then I think God's going to take care of us.
[00:34:37] Jesus said this in Luke, how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness. For one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.
[00:34:47] Jesus said, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
[00:34:51] He did not say, I came that they may have an abundance of things in this life.
[00:34:55] We can't mix that up.
[00:34:57] I think Craig was the first person I hear say this in a Bible class one time. He said, no. With Job, Satan took everything away from him. Took his family, took his stuff, took the man's cows like low down, dirty lay some snitches, right? But with us, with us instead, Satan maybe just gives us everything, all the hearts of our desires.
[00:35:17] Aldous Huxley wrote a book called Brave New World. Truman based his title off of that.
[00:35:22] And in that book, he doesn't say that big government's going to come and take over. That's more The George Orwell 1984 Aldous Huxley says, instead, technology is going to be something that humanity relinquishes. Control.
[00:35:34] Control won't be taken from us. We'll gladly give it through our pleasure.
[00:35:40] And I think that's kind of where we're headed.
[00:35:43] It doesn't look Orwellian to me. It looks a lot Huxleyan, whatever the word would be. It looks a lot more like that, where technology, well, it mirrors us and it amplifies what's in our hearts.
[00:35:54] And sometimes that's not a good thing, because remember, our identity informs our passions, not the other way around.
[00:36:00] One thing I've realized is that access to excess does not cultivate holiness.
[00:36:04] Who here is more disciplined at the buffet?
[00:36:09] No, if you're like me, there's always this one station at the buffet that is filled with, like, green and red and Orange, I think they call it, like, salad stuff. Wasted real estate. Like, I need red meat and I need chocolate cake because I pay good money for a buffet. And I'm not here to skimp out. I'm here to indulge, right?
[00:36:28] You go to Texas Day, Brazil, like, just go away, chicken. Just bring the filet and the bacon.
[00:36:35] I'm not more disciplined in those situations.
[00:36:38] We live in the midst of a technological buffet.
[00:36:43] All of our desires are right here in front of us. We can change the weather in this room by turning the temperature up or temperature down. We can order whatever we want. If I told you 20 years ago, just by touching a piece of glass that you carry in your pocket, you could then have whatever you want show up on your doorstep three to four to 48 days later, right? You would think that I was a crazy person.
[00:37:04] And yet here we are.
[00:37:06] Access to excess does not cultivate holiness. It creates people that gorge themselves.
[00:37:12] It cultivates gluttony. And sometimes gluttony is not just in reference to food. And so we have to discern.
[00:37:18] Turn with me to Matthew.
[00:37:23] Jesus makes a very pointed statement here.
[00:37:27] He makes a strong point as he's describing what the new kingdom is going to look like. He's describing, essentially the whole Sermon on the Mount gives you the idea of. Of what it's like to be a part of this new kingdom he's bringing into existence. In verse 26, he says, look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns. And yet your heavenly Father, he feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.
[00:38:03] It sounds to me like even in the first century, people struggled with what they were going to wear.
[00:38:09] Whatever version of Nike and Under Armour was around then. And there was some anxiety around that. And for Christians in this particular time, especially a little bit later in Jerusalem, who were living in poverty, it's not probably the brand of clothing, but just having an article of clothing.
[00:38:24] God says, look at the birds. He clothes them not. Even Solomon could touch the the way that a beautiful bird is arrayed in feathers.
[00:38:33] But if God so clothes the grass of the field, verse 30, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? O you of little faith. Therefore, do not be anxious saying, what shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. What I hear Jesus saying here is the stuff in your life has a tremendous amount of potential to absolutely distract you, to be nothing more than a distraction. If you are putting all of your anxiety in stuff, then you're missing the boat here. Because this kingdom is spiritual.
[00:39:13] There's this war between the flesh and the spirit that we're constantly living in battle with.
[00:39:19] And a lot of times I hear Paul use the word like the carnal mind, the carnal man. And I used to think that that just meant carnal desires were like sexual desires, and that's applicable. But what he's talking about here is thinking earthly, walking by sight and not by faith.
[00:39:35] Thinking that my plans are the only plans and the right plans. And when those plans don't pan out, I can't handle that. I'm mad, I'm angry. I say, why God? And God says, because it's not your plan. And it's also not your place to have the plan. If it's a need, I got you.
[00:39:51] If it's a need, I will provide for you. So don't spend your time toiling over those details. Be about your Father's business.
[00:40:00] We live in a time of great distraction. And it's not just our phones, it's the stuff that we accumulate.
[00:40:06] What are the two greatest industries in our community?
[00:40:10] Tires and storage.
[00:40:13] Because we got to store the things we put tires on and all of our stuff so we build bigger barns, as the Bible would say. That's not the answer.
[00:40:22] I got too much stuff. Well, I got to buy more stuff to put my stuff in. That doesn't make sense. What do we need?
[00:40:29] How much could we remove from our life and still live pretty comfortably, but a lot more focused on the things that matter?
[00:40:38] I'm a little bit concerned. I love this community, but I'll be honest with you, I struggle. I like stuff, and a lot of times I like other people's stuff because it looks shinier and newer than mine.
[00:40:51] That's a struggle. Paul would say that this idea of coveting something so much to a sinful point is idolatry. Here are a few questions that I found very helpful. These are questions that my kids are going to have to answer when they want a device or they want really anything these days. And these are questions that I have to start asking myself when I want something as well. Does this cultivate the fruit of the spirit in my life? You could even stop right there.
[00:41:14] How does that phone cultivate the fruit of the spirit? Are you more loving, more joyful? Are you more kind, more peaceful?
[00:41:21] Probably not. More distracted, more irritable, more angry?
[00:41:27] How do you use your car? Is it a blessing to other people? Because if you read in Scripture, I don't think you'll ever find a moment where God blesses an individual for the sole benefit of that individual. He blesses individuals to be a blessing to others. He blesses us to bless others. That's why when there's a tragedy somewhere else in our country, we take a big old wheelbarrow of money and we send it to them and say, hey, you guys need this more than we do right now.
[00:41:51] Rebuild, minister, reach out.
[00:41:54] That's why in First Corinthians 16, the church gathered to pool their money so that when Paul got there, he was taking that money to Jerusalem because they needed it more, more than the people in Corinth. That's what we do with our stuff, with our time, with our relationships. We're stewards. We're not consumers. How can I use this to share with others? How does this make me more like Christ?
[00:42:12] You got a kid that wants a phone and they put together a PowerPoint and they can answer these questions. You probably got to give them the phone.
[00:42:18] But they're going to struggle because too often we want our stuff for us.
[00:42:24] But that doesn't cultivate a Christ like mindset.
[00:42:28] Algorithms are not designed for reconciliation. But Christians are.
[00:42:32] We are.
[00:42:33] If you're still open to Matthew 6, turn over one page, chapter five, still in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:23. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there, remember that your brother has something against you. Leave your gift before the altar and go first. Be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
[00:42:51] I have grown up among Christians all of my life, and I grew up going to worship, going to Bible study. And there's one thing that we hold dear at the center of our identity, and that's worship. That's why Covid was difficult, because we couldn't gather in the one place we wanted to be. That we've done forever.
[00:43:06] But did you notice what Jesus said here? If you come to the altar, you're coming to bring your sacrifice. You're coming to worship essentially.
[00:43:14] And there you remember that someone else has an issue with you, someone has a beef with you, not that you're upset with them, but they're upset with you.
[00:43:22] He says, leave, leave your sacrifice and first go be reconciled to them. He prioritizes reconciliation over worship.
[00:43:35] Do we, we are the ones that are to initiate reconciliation. It makes sense. Paul says that we have a ministry of reconciliation. He also says that we have been reconciled to, to the Father through the Son.
[00:43:49] So if that is at the essence, at the core, the foundation of our relationship with him, why then would it not also be the core foundational principle of our relationship with each other?
[00:43:59] We are people who reconcile. Well, that's one of the distinctive natures of his people, right? He said, they'll know you're my disciples by the love that you have for one another. You love somebody, you want to reconcile with them. You don't let them drift. You don't let the relationship sour. You do everything you can.
[00:44:14] We forgive, that's in our control. Reconciliation is a two way street. That's harder to navigate sometimes because they have to also do that. But when we love, well, usually that love can change hearts.
[00:44:25] We are people who reconcile. An algorithm is not geared towards reconciliation. Which headline gets more clicks and shares?
[00:44:33] Celebrity couple, divorce, breakup, infidelity. Celebrity couple gets back together, lives happily ever after.
[00:44:40] We like the salacious, right. Is it more interesting to watch regular traffic or to watch a car wreck?
[00:44:46] It's more interesting. You can say it out loud, I won't judge you. We all think it is more interesting. And so algorithms are geared towards interest. They're geared towards engagement, towards clicks, towards likes, towards shares, not towards reconciliation. We see below the surface. We now see this life spiritually first through the lens of the Gospel exclusively.
[00:45:05] And so we initiate reconciliation. Romans 14:19 says, Let us pursue what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding.
[00:45:12] We look at this idea of infinite. When you get your phone and you scroll through, no matter what app you're on, if you're on YouTube, you click on a video over there on the right side, there's more suggested videos. You click on that, there's more. You click on that, there's more. There's this infinite element that wasn't around when I grew up. Yesterday when I asked you if you recognize the phrase be kind, rewind. There's a beginning and an end to a VHS tape, right? Even Titanic couldn't fit on one, they had to put it on two.
[00:45:40] But today, man, we could just put Netflix on and just keep going.
[00:45:44] I mean, eventually it judges you and says, hey man, you still watching. Okay, just checking.
[00:45:50] But you don't have to get up after three songs and flip the record player over. I mean, some of us do, right, Ronnie? I got you. Yep. But that's a choice because I could just put my phone on and I've done this. I fall asleep. I wake up the next morning, Spotify is still playing right there. Like, hey, man, I got you, buddy. You just go right back to sleep. Because we live in a land of infinite, but infinite is not the same as eternal. Excess does not lead to holiness, which means we have to choose then to put boundaries. We have to choose limits in our life because the digital age does not provide very many.
[00:46:20] This is the last verse I want to leave you with. And you've. You might be familiar with it. If you have ever been a part of any youth ministry ever, then this is usually the pillar verse that we go to with good reason. I want to read what the Bible actually says first. Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 through 9. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your might. And these words that I command you today, they shall be on your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontless between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates.
[00:47:00] The word of God, his words, his truth, should be everywhere. That's what they see your children when they wake up, when they lay down. Multiple times in the Old Testament, we see a big event of Israel and God says, construct a monument here, stack stone so that when your children ask what happened here, you will tell them what the God, what the God of your fathers and grandfathers has done for your people.
[00:47:22] Unfortunately, I think this is the way we live out this verse today.
[00:47:25] Hear, O Christian of the digital age. You shall love your devices with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your might. And these words or these habits that I'm trying to command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach those habits diligently to your children. You shall look at them when you sit up in your house, the first thing you see in the morning, or when you're sitting at a stoplight or in the bathroom. No judgment when you walk. By the way, when you lie down, the last thing that you look at at night is probably your device. When you rise up, the first thing you look at in the morning is probably your device. They shall be bound to your hand and like frontlets between your eyes.
[00:48:08] Sound familiar?
[00:48:10] I'm afraid that we have replaced something of the utmost importance with something that is extremely convenient, extremely powerful. But it's only powerful because we enable it to be powerful.
[00:48:21] You shall write them on the door post on your house and on your gates. You shall put your monitors, your TV on your wall. You should put your tablets in the back of the headrest on your car so that at all times you can be entertain.
[00:48:37] I think it's really important for all of us to examine ourselves so that we have a culture here that doesn't allow anyone to compromise for anything less than the gospel. But that's difficult because we all make choices and we have the right to make different choices.
[00:48:55] But ultimately, the idea of discernment has to be cultivated.
[00:48:59] We started with generations last night to set the stage.
[00:49:04] We started at a place so that we understand that we all are responsible for where we are today, but we also all have something to give to someone else through our experience. If you've lived a largely analog life, then you have experienced something that emerging generations have yet to experience.
[00:49:23] So share that with them, tell them about it, explain it to them and talk about it with joy. And then say, hey, let's go to a car show. And you'll see what I love about it.
[00:49:33] Here's an actual guitar. Learn to play an instrument and not just press the keys on a screen.
[00:49:38] There are a million ways that we can be involved in each other's lives.
[00:49:42] Most importantly, when we see someone that is being consumed with the gospel of comfort and convenience, we have to make sure that we step in and we say, hey, listen, you are settling for a life that is beneath God's calling for you.
[00:49:55] There are two things that every congregation should provide, every person that walks through the door, accountability and encouragement.
[00:50:04] And we had Eric Gray here a few nights ago, and he talked about when you confront someone in a loving way, when you admonish them, it's not always easy. Sometimes it's actually really painful.
[00:50:16] But when it's done right and when it's received correctly, it leads to godliness.
[00:50:22] That is the life that we are called to live. That is the life that God has prepared for us to. That he has chosen for us to participate in. We get to wear his name. We got to stop settling for anything less than Righteousness.
[00:50:33] Tomorrow night we're going to take a look and it'd be a very frank and honest conversation. We'll giggle as well because 8th grade maturity is really just kind of where I capped off. But we're going to talk about sexuality, talk specifically about sexual intimacy.
[00:50:48] Technology has played a massive role in manipulating emerging generations. Thoughts on what that's supposed to be? The Bible speaks very clearly and very simply about it. I'm afraid that over time sometimes we've either not had that conversation or when we did, we just. We didn't do it well. And so tomorrow night I want to offer a few ideas. We'll look at several scriptures that can help us understand the picture that God has designed and to make sure that in the digital age, we're still living the life that he has called us to live. Remember Jeremiah, Jeremiah 29? God told Israel to go into Babylon, a place that was anti God and he wanted them to thrive, to build houses, plant gardens, have children, have a generational presence. We are expected, I believe, to have a generational presence. We need to leverage technology to glorify him, to grow his kingdom. But we also need to be wise and discerning in how it impacts us. I'm very grateful for your presence with us tonight. Those of you with us online, we're grateful you're here as well. We're going to conclude the lesson with a prayer and after that you'll be dismissed. There's lots of goodies and snacks in the back. Remember, we got about 20, 25 minutes before we can exit upstairs to the auditorium and your kids will be waiting for you there. So let's bow together.
[00:51:59] Father in heaven, we thank you so very much for the blessings you've given to us. We thank you for the opportunity to gather before your throne tonight with both confidence and humility. We thank you for the scriptures that give us insight into who you are and the life that you desire for us. Help us Father, to cultivate and develop discernment. Give us the wisdom to navigate faithfully this age, to see beyond the superficial, to see beyond the stuff and the earthly and the carnal, and to see with gospel centered spiritual eyes. Help us Father, to walk in step with your spirit. Help us to study your word so we understand the truth that should guide us today. We thank you so very much for. For making your scriptures more relevant today than ever, for giving us passages like Psalm 119 to guide us to refocus us. And thank you especially for the group of people that are here and the group that gathers at this place and many places all across the world every week so that we can find that accountability, that encouragement, so that we can find answers for our identity, for our community and our purpose. All through your scriptures, through your people, and through you. We love you so very much. We thank you for Christ. It's in his name we pray. Amen.
