Well, I invite you to take your Bible and follow along. I want to read from Romans 12:1 and 2. Last Sunday night, we started our summer series, the Christian and the Digital Age. I started a message called Tech Savvy, and I want to come and look at this again this morning. And to be honest, it’s going to spill over into next Sunday morning also. This subject has become a Russian doll. The more I get into it, the more I see, the more I want to communicate. It’s the world we live in. I can’t think of anything more pressing and contemporary, but listen to Romans 12:1 and 2.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
A group of young children were sitting in a circle. Their teacher had just taught them about the animal kingdom, and so she wanted to gauge how much they had learned. And so, turning to one boy, she said, “Peter, what noise does a cow make?” And Peter dutifully replied, “Moo.” Turning to a girl, she asked Anna, “What noise does a cat make?” And little Anna replied, “Meow.”
Turning to another girl, Jamie, she asked, “What sound does a sheep make?” To which she quickly replied, “Baah.” Finally, she turned to a boy named Tommy and she asked him, “Well, Tommy, what sound does a mouse make?” And he immediately answered, “Click, click.” Now that’s kind of funny, but in some ways, it’s sad because it’s a reminder that you and I live in a world where technology and computers are redefining our vocabulary and they’re redefining the way we live and interact.
Let’s be honest, the influence of places like the Silicon Valley and its products stretch from the West Coast to the East Coast and everything in between. The world we live in is a digital one, and it’s not all bad. I’m not trying to be a cultural Luddite. I’m willing to admit that technology has enhanced our lives. It’s defining our lives. It’s redefining our lives, but undoubtedly it’s enriching our lives in the way we communicate, learn, do business, travel, administer health, and entertain one another.
In the words of Bob Dylan, “The times, they are a changing.” There’s no doubt about it. It reminds me, doesn’t it, and reminds you of that interaction between Steve Jobs in the early days of Apple when he approached John Sculley, who was head of Pepsi Cola, and he challenged him to come and join this struggling, fledgling company that promised to change everything.
And if you know that story and that conversation, you’ll know that at one point, Steve Jobs says to John Sculley, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want to change the world?” That’s a prophetic statement because Apple and companies like it, Samsung and others have undoubtedly changed our world. And the changes have been speedy and sweeping.
I just want to delve into that for a moment or two. I hope I’m not rehearsing too much of what I covered last Sunday night, but the change, much of it for the good, has nevertheless been speedy and widespread. These companies and their technologies and products are reordering and redefining our lives in a staggering manner. In case you forgot about it, since you’re so used to having a smartphone in your hand on your bedside cabinet or wherever you go, the first iPhone appeared in 2007. That’s not recent.
In many ways, the digital culture is only about 50 years old. The first commercially available microprocessor from the Intel Corporation appeared in 1971. It was known as the 4004 processor. It was rudimentary compared to what we’ve got today. It was at the head of a long line of processors that have got smaller and faster, that have shrunk in size, and you’ll find them in our computers, calculators, televisions, mobile phones and toys and so on. There’s been an explosion of technology.
In fact, let me put this in another context to just frame this. The first iPhone 2007, the world of microtechnology, 1971. In fact, if you go back to the Cold War, which wasn’t that long ago, it’s in living memory. MIT had a huge defense contract with the United States government. They had to manage the targeting exercises that we needed to prepare for a nuclear exchange with Russia as it was anticipated in the days of the Cold War.
And think about this, the cutting-edge computers that they used to indeed prepare a nuclear exchange, they were massive in size. They typically were housed in buildings that were the size of a typical gymnasium. Think about that. But comparatively speaking, those massive machines were only 2% as useful as the average iPhone and Android today. In fact, let’s have a little bit more fun in the sense that there’s more computing power in the average digital washing machine today than was used to put the first man on the moon. I mean, that’s staggering.
You millennials, you probably got used to it. I mean, when it comes to technology, there’s immigrants and there’s natives. And the millennials are natives and my generation are immigrants who’ve kind of had to grow into this, but you have grown up with it and in some ways, it’s marvelous and it’s exciting, but the change, the change is rapid. The speed is staggering and the spread is staggering.
We’ve said that tentacles of technology have reached into every sector of life, education, entertainment, communication, medicine and travel. In fact, Neil Postman, who was a little bit ahead of his time, he says that technology is not additive, it’s ecological. What did he mean by that? Well, it’s not just something that’s invented and then added to life alongside other things. No, it’s much more ubiquitous than that, much more impactful for that. It’s not just auditive, it’s ecological. It changes the environment. Things don’t remain the same. It redefines life and living.
In fact, one writer kind of gave this analogy that I think helps us and kind of puts it into perspective. When a species, he said, his name is John Dyer. When a species isn’t reduced into a biological ecosystem, the presence of that new species affects all the other plants and animals in the system. For example, if you drop a shark into a fish tank, the shark won’t simply be added alongside the other fish. Instead, there will be a major clash changing the makeup and the order of the fish tank.
And that’s a good analogy. I mean, the shark of technology has been dropped into the fish tank of life and it’s just not an additive. It’s an ecological change. It’s redefining how we interact. Even today, there’s talk about a transhuman era, when machines and humans will merge. I mean, this is the stuff of science fiction and in some ways, it’s the stuff of horror movies, but this is the world we live in. Technology is not simply part of our lives. It is a way of life. It’s the way we think. It’s the way we interact.
And you know what? In the best of circumstances, again, I don’t want to be a cultural Luddite. It’s a wonderful servant. These things are wonderful tools and they serve mankind in so many ways that enrich and enhance, but there’s always a danger. They become our masters because what we make turns around and remakes us.
And that’s why we’ve got to bring some thinking to our technology. Our theology’s got to catch up with our technology in the sense that we’ve got to think biblically about this. That’s why we started this series. That’s why I’ve decided to elongate this sermon over three sermons because there’s so much. As I said, it’s like a Russian doll. There’s so many levels to it, so many thoughts. It raises so many answers it requires. And we need to bring a biblical worldview.
I want to remind you as followers of Jesus Christ as disciples, those schooled in the school of Jesus, that he wants us to think biblically. He wants us to act Christianly. This is what Paul is teaching, isn’t it? In the verses we read in Romans 12:1-2, he says, look to those in Rome. “Don’t be squeezed. Don’t be pressured. Don’t be molded or conformed into the likeness of the world.”
Now, when he uses the word, “world” here, cosmos, he’s not thinking about the blue marble that we call planet earth. He’s not thinking about the teeming masses of people that walk the terra firma we call earth. He’s thinking about a mindset, a philosophy that governs the people on the planet. He’s thinking about a philosophy that governs the people that inhabit the planet. And that philosophy often is raised up against God in rebellion. Remember, Romans 1 tells us that man in sin has exchanged the truth of God for a lie and he has come to worship the creature rather than the creator.
That’s the world you and I work in. That’s the world out of which technology comes, a world with a mindset that we have got to reject and push back against. What does Ephesians 2:1-2 tell us? We were dead in our sin. We have been made alive in Jesus Christ. We were children of wrath and we once walked according to the mindset, the course of this world.
We just went with the flow. We buckled to the pressure of our peers. We uncritically drank what we were given at school or what we watched on our televisions. But now as Christians, we have the mind of Christ. We’ve got to think biblically. We’ve got to act Christianly. We’ve got to create a window, a worldview through which we look into the world, which includes technology.
So, I want to pick up where I left off last Sunday night. Move the ball forward a little bit. If you remember, we looked at the question of thanks. We made an argument from the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:26-28 that made in the image of the creator, man was made to invent and create and produce, and he has done that. Technology’s been with us from the invention of the wheel, from men built bridges over rivers. Technology’s just part of life and it’s to be embraced and it’s something we’re to give thanks to God for as man made in the image of a creator has created and invented and produced. We give thanks to God for that.
Then we looked at the question of time, the question of time of all people. Christians live with the backdrop of eternity, the overshadowing of the judgment seat of Christ. We want to redeem the time. We want to make sure that we’ve numbered our days and we plant our hearts to wisdom and we realize that the internet, we realize that the worldwide web, we realize that our smart technology is a black hole in which our time can be poured in frivolous things, maybe even not always bad things but good things that are not the best things.
And we also realize, there’s an immediacy to all of this that can blind us to the spectrum of history where the Bible tells us to remember by looking back and the Bible tells us to hope by looking forward, but caught in the vice grip of technology. We become prisoners of the moment and the passing fads and fashions of the world and that’s dangerous.
Then we looked at the question of triviality, where the worldwide web can expose us to greater knowledge where we can access classic works and even use Bible tools to study the word of God more deeply and read great theologies that we can’t afford, but we can find at less than half the price on the worldwide web. We’re thankful for all of that.
But at the same time, the worldwide web is full of trash and triviality, banality, amusements that is not good for the Christian because the Christian ought to be sober minded. The Christian ought to be driven by the fear of God, an understanding of the weariness of his glory and how that falls upon us to live in his image and reflect his glory and certainly love and serve his son.
While Christians can have as good a laugh as the next person, we’re not jokesters. We’re not clowns. We get up every day with a purpose and a seriousness because time is passing and as old Bunyan would say, “This world is a Vanity Fair and we need to escape it and fight it and push against it.” We need to put our fingers in our ears as Bunyan’s pilgrim does and run for the cross.
But I want us to look at what I call the question of temptation, but I want you to hold that thought because I do want to go back to an element of the question of thanks, an element of the question of thanks. Because while we give thanks to God for our creative passions, the Bible celebrates artisans. In fact, if you go back to Exodus 28 and Exodus 31 and 1 King 7, you’ll see that God gives wisdom and his spirit to men and women who are artisans, who work in embroidery, who work in construction, who work with silver and gold and bronze. We give thanks to God for that.
Man made in the image of a creator creates. But I do want to qualify that because remember, our Christian theology teaches us, we go from creation to fall. We go from fall to redemption. We go from redemption to consummation. God creates man in his image, walks with him in the garden, invites him to rule and exercise dominion for his good and for God’s glory. Man rebels, sin enters the world along with death, right? Romans 5:15. Man no longer submits to God. Man makes idols out of the things he makes. He suppresses the truth of God. He swaps the truth of God for a lie. He begins to worship the creature, not the creator.
God, then from eternity passes, has had a plan to fix that which takes us to redemption and the coming of Jesus Christ, the just who dies for the unjust that we might be brought to God. And then there’s the promise of consummation and you have and a new earth where the old things pass away and we go back to the beginning in the future.
Now, that’s a two-minute flyover of the whole Bible, creation, fall, redemption, consummation. But I do want to remind you since we have just argued that technology’s a question of thanks. It’s a reflection of man’s ability to create, invent and produce. And that is a wonderful thing. And we celebrate that. Our doctrine of the fall would remind us and it’s worth recognizing that sin has touched and tainted and corrupted everything about man. Every faculty of his being and everything he does has been affected by sin and can be an expression of sin to varying degrees.
Psalm 51:5 tells us, we were shapen in iniquity in our mother’s womb. We have a sin nature and it forms us and it shapes us. And we come out into those early years as little tyrants, disobedient, self-centered. That’s a reality. And it carries on into life. All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, right? Romans 3:23. That’s true of every human being who has ever lived in every age, whether it’s the Bronze Age or the space edge.
Our ability to create, our ability to invent may progress, but we never progress beyond the limitations of our sin nature and the boundaries of bondage to our flesh. That’s a reality that only redemption can answer. But the point I’m making is you’ve got to bake that into your cake. As a Christian, that’s got to be your worldview. You’ve got to realize that with every upside, there’s a downside. You’ve got to remember that man began to make idols of the things he made. Man began to raise cities and acts of self-promotion.
We go from the garden to the city, from Genesis 1 through 3 to Genesis 11 in the Tower of Babel. And now man has fallen. Man is living east of the garden. Man is in rebellion, man is in sin, and he builds himself a marvelous construction or he attempts to the Tower of Babel. And according to Genesis 11:4, he does it for his own self-promotion. Let’s do this for ourselves, that our name might be great.
And there you have as early as the Book of Genesis chapter 11, technology, amazing technology. As man created the image of God creates, invents and produces, but he does it now for self-promotion. It’s marked by humanism. It’s marked by secularism. It’s marked by life divorced from God, where man worships the creature and what he creates rather than the creator. That’s powerful stuff. That’s important to grasp.
Listen to John Dyer teaches at DTS in a book, From the Garden to the City. Technology then is the bridge from this world to the imagined one. But he goes on to talk about the fact that a man building and creating, man has divorced his creation from the creator and has taken the glory to himself. And that’s scary. Technology can become an idol. It promotes pride. It can be used for sinful ends. It makes man less dependent upon God and it can be presented in terms of salvation. Technology will save us. And that’s the stuff we as Christians have got to navigate and fight.
The worldwide web, Facebook and Amazon, just to pick a few, promise us that we can know everything. We can be everywhere. We can connect with everyone and we can have anything with the click of a mice. I don’t know. That’s the language of omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. That’s ominous. That’s the language of deity. We’re told that our machines will soon be able to read our minds and upload our thoughts. Medical science is seeking to defy death and promises lifespans of 200 years in the not too distant future. Scientists are seeking to roll back the effects of the fall and create a new world.
And you know what? A lot of that is appealing and exciting and something to celebrate. We certainly celebrate it and give glory to God. The world celebrates it and takes glory to itself. In fact, there’s some talk today in the early stages of what’s called the transhuman era, when men and machines will fuse.
Listen to the words of Elon Musk, SpaceX founder. He launched Neuralink in 2017 and he tells us that this company has been tasked with developing technology that can connect human brains to computers. He thinks that the neural lace, the systems will successfully implant tiny brain electrodes that may one day upload and download thoughts. There’s going to be a fusion of robots and humans, machines and people. In fact, some have talked about the fact that if robots are better than humans, then that eliminates the need for humans.
This is a fallen world. This is a world that is forgotten made in the image of God. And just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it. And we live within the boundaries of what glorifies God and what enshrines the uniqueness of man within creation, but that’s not where we’re at. And so, when it comes to technology, there are many things that are appealing and there are many things that are appalling. And the technologists and the scientists of our day are in danger of falling into the Nebuchadnezzar syndrome as they look out on their machines and what’s possible.
They’ll walk someday amidst it all and say, “I built this. Look at this great machine, this great city.” And that’s the stuff God curses. That’s the stuff God judges. That’s the stuff God condemns. In fact, I’m going to give you an example of this. If you need this to be brought home, I’ll make this point and move on.
But not too long ago, the world celebrated the 25th anniversary of the first test tube baby, Robert Edwards, along with his partner Patrick Steptoe, had pioneered a procedure, but in an interview celebrating that breakthrough, they said to the Times of London these words, “It was a fantastic achievement, but it was about more than infertility.” Listen to that. This was about more than infertility. Edwards says this, “I wanted to find out exactly who was in charge, whether it was God himself or whether it was scientists in the laboratory.” And with a smile on his face, he said, “It was us.”
That’s blasphemous. That’s dangerous. That’s a creature worshiping a creation more than the creator. And that’s the world we’re in. And we’ve got to bring biblical thinking and Christian living to that. And I hope this series and some of the materials we’ll recommend will help you in that.
So, I wanted to go back to the question of thanks and redefine it a little bit. Qualify our celebration of man’s ability to create and invent and produce. But you know what? Fallen creatures take that to places that are acts of idolatry and acts of blasphemy. Question of thanks, question of time, question of triviality. For the time that remains, we’ll add one more and we’ll pick it up next Sunday.
A question of truth. A question of truth. Now listen, God’s people are people marked by the truth, okay. John 8:32, the truth will set you free. And we have come to be marked by that truth and we’ve come to embrace that truth. We’ve come to see that truth amidst the lies and illusions of the world around us, amidst the philosophies of man who’ve been raised up as arguments against God.
Christians are those who love truth, learn truth and live truth. We’ve come to understand that God has revealed his truth and it’s the highest application of our mind to learn that truth. And we bring a faction of the heart in loving that truth and we bring our volition to living that truth. That’s what Christians do. We learn truth. We love truth in an act of worship towards God, and we live it for the benefit of mankind.
You see, truth biblically is defined as an understanding on a reality concerning life that corresponds to God’s understanding. It’s thinking thoughts after God’s thoughts. In John 17:3, what are we told? This is life eternal that you might know the one true God. That is life, to come to know the creator of life and to come to know that he’s true. And everything true and real and substantial corresponds to him and his revelation of his will and mind.
Psalm 31:5 tells us, he’s the God of truth. And you know what, he has revealed himself. He’s not only declared his glory in the visible things of the heavens and the earth. He has now revealed his glory and will in the visible incarnate son of God, Jesus Christ, who was God, who was with God, but he was made flesh who came and lived amidst his creation.
And here’s what we read about Jesus Christ is teaching his words his life. He’s truth embodied. He’s truth incarnate. Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the truth.” He’s one stop shopping when it comes to understanding meaning, finding meaning, understanding the world in which you’re in, where you came from, why you’re here and where you’re going. Jesus is one stop shopping.
In fact, Colossians 2:3 tells us all the wisdom of God is treasured up in him. In John 1:14, we’re told he was full of grace and truth, full of it. And so, God is a God of truth who has revealed his self most magnificently in the person of his son, Jesus Christ. The prophets spoke of that, and the apostles recorded his words and his teaching, and therefore, we have truth written down in scripture. In fact, Jesus said in John 17:17, “Father, I pray that you would sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth.”
We read in 1 Corinthians 4:6, where Paul says to the Corinthians, “Don’t go beyond the written word. As you respond to a situation, as you deal with false teaching, as you try and navigate between lies and truth, don’t go beyond the written word.” Because according to 2 Timothy 3:16-17, what we have in the corpus of scripture are the breathed out words of God, written down scripture, written, graphite.
My friends, Christians are people marked by the truth. Truth as it corresponds to the being of God and the person of God, the God of truth, who has not left us in the dark but has revealed his truth in the person of Jesus Christ. And the record of it all is in the written text of scripture. So, think about this, just quickly stay with me. For the Christian, truth is revealed, objective, written down, fixed, universal, eternal without error, Christ centered and spirit given.
But here’s what I want to say, for the most part. The digital world that you and I are immersing ourselves in, that’s now so ubiquitous it’s hard to escape. The digital world that you and I are being immersed into is not a friend of the truth. So, this isn’t just a question of thanks and this isn’t just a question of time. It’s not just a question of triviality. It’s a question of truth.
I’m thankful for the internet. I’m thankful for technology because it does allow us to spread the truth, okay? I want to make that qualification as someone that has a digital ministry, a radio program that is broadcast across this great country and into other countries, which is available with the click of a mouse anywhere in the world. I’m thankful for that. 1 Thessalonians 1:8, where Paul says that the Thessalonians from you signed it forth the word of truth reverberated, echoed.
I’m so thankful for digital platforms that allow us to allow the word of God to reverberate, but, and it’s a big but. While the digital world is a helpful tool for the kingdom of God, it is predominantly a harmful weapon in the hands of the kingdom of darkness. That’s a fact. Unredeemed, the digital world is part of a world system and a world mindset that according to 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 is raised up against God and it’s become a stronghold for Satan. Run with me here for a couple of minutes. That’s a truth.
What does Ephesians 2:1 and 2 tell as I quoted it earlier, until we were born again, redeemed and made alive to the things of the Spirit and the son of God, we walk according to the course of this world. That doesn’t mean we drove down the 405 Freeway or we got stuck in traffic on the 55 and the 91. That’s not the course of the world we’re talking about.
Course means mindset. We once walked according to the course, the mindset of the world. We were pressed into its mold. We followed its way as we drank from its supposed wisdom. That’s why Romans 12:1-2 reminds us, we’ve got to push back. Don’t be conformed to the world’s mindset.
Why? Because it’s a world remember, where men exchange the truth of God for a lie. Romans 1. They suppress the truth. What truth? The truth found in the being of God revealed in the Son of God written down in the Bible. They suppressed that because they’re off their father, the devil, and what was he? Well, according to John 8:44, he’s a liar and a murderer from the beginning.
The digital world you and I live in is not unbiased. It is not neutral. It’s a mindset. It’s a world, where every part of it is raised up against God unless redeemed by us and becomes a channel for truth. Tom Pennington, my friend in Countryside Bible Church in Dallas, did some marvelous messages on the temptations of the digital age. You might want to look those up.
But in one of his messages, he says, “It’s absolutely crucial you understand what I’m trying to say to you here. Every idea, every thought to which your mind is exposed is part of the war between God and Satan. Every website, every blog, every post, every tweet, every comment, every photo is intended to communicate a message.
Every movie you watch, every song you listen to, every show you indulge is either the truth that can be traced back to God and it’s common grace or it is part of the lie that can be traced back to Satan. That’s it. There’s no neutrality of ideas and thoughts out there. Our world is in a cosmic war and there’s only two sides. Don’t let any thought or idea that comes your way go unchallenged or untested.”
That’s why, by the way, in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, we are told in a world where there’s satanic strongholds and arguments raised up against God, we’re told to bring every thought into captivity to Christ. That means we’ve got to Biblicists. We’ve got to devour the word of God. We’ve got to turn off our machines or if we’re using them, using them for the study of scripture.
That’s why we’ve got to become better disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why we’ve got to submit to the authority of the word of God in the public act of preaching. That’s why we’ve got to be good Bereans and search the scriptures. That’s why we’ve got to be like little Samuel, who get up every day and we should too.
Before the phone goes on, before the radio is turned on or the television or whatever digital or media platform you’re using, you’ve got to say, “Lord, it’s your servant.” Speak from listening before the voices of the world, which are not neutral, bombard you with propaganda and materialism and humanism and secularism and dilute your love for Christ and the beauty of God’s creation and your purpose on Planet Earth and the marvel that you have in your hand in a Bible, the treasure of God’s word, which takes you from the dawn of creation to the culmination of creation and gives you purpose for the death in which you live.
Listen to Christopher Ash as we close and the team gets ready to come up, in a book on, The Priority of Preaching, although he was talking about the centrality of the pulpit and inviting people to the church service. I want you to get the gist of this. It’s very challenging. We live in a culture where everyone has their say, where I can press the interactive buttons and register my view on the TV, where I can set up a blog and proclaim my view on anything and everything in the world, where the most friendly thing we can say in welcoming newcomers is, “We want to know what you think.”
Here’s what he says, “But I dare to say God does not want to know what we think. He wants us to know what he thinks.” It’s true. Feel free not to have an opinion about everything. Turn your machines off, open your Bibles, get on your knees because God’s not interested in what you think or what I think. He’s interested in us knowing what he thinks.
And the miracle of the incarnation and the beauty of Jesus Christ in his life is to that end. And the transmission of the inspired, inerrant word of God across centuries and millennium where it’s being preserved, it’s to that end. That’s the marvel. That’s what I get excited about most. And if my iPhone or the worldwide web can help me there, I thank God for it. If it gets in the way, I detest it. I fear it. I fight it.
During a famous battle between baseball’s Babe, Babe Pinelli, the umpire, and Babe Ruth the batter, there’s a great incident that history tells us. Pinelli calls the legendary slugger out on strikes, but Babe Ruth is having none of it. And he draws the crowd and with their sympathy and he says to the umpire, Babe Pinelli, “There’s 40,000 people here who know that that last call was a ball, tomato head.” And despite the booze and the pressure, Babe Pinelli, the great played umpire, he turns to Babe Ruth, the great batter, and he says, “Maybe so, but mine is the only opinion that counts. Take a seat.” Love it.
And you know what? The truth that comes from the God of truth who sent his son, who was full of truth, the promise of his coming and the record of his writing and the promise of his second coming is written down for us the word of truth. That’s the only opinion that counts.
Swim in those waters, become people of the truth, because technology’s a question of thanks, yes, qualified regarding the fall. It’s a question of time and it’s a question of triviality. It’s a question of truth. The internet has made everybody’s opinion equal. It’s made knowledge egalitarian. But my friend, there is a voice that must drown out every voice. There’s an opinion. That’s the only opinion that counts. There’s truth to be found. May we pursue it.
Father, thank you for our time this morning in the word. We celebrate our freedoms as a nation. Thank you for the providence of either being born or being adopted by the United States. May we, by our living, make it a richer country, a more just society. May we live up to the promise of our constitution. Father, thank you for the time of public worship. Thank you for those that are on campus. Thank you for the songs we have sung. Thank you for the prayers we have offered. Thank you for the word we’ve turned to.
Lord, some see this book as a relic, as ancient, as out of touch. But even in a digital world, in a space age, it makes sense. It is the truth. It gives us perspective left and right, past and future. We thank you Lord you’ve spoken. We thank you Lord, you’ve revealed yourself. Lord, help us to get our eyes off these shiny objects we hold in our hands. Help us to stop marveling at what man can do and marvel what God made himself a little lower than the angels, marvel that God made himself sin, marvel that God has made himself known to us and someday will bring us home when he makes all things new.
We’re excited. We’re privileged to be disciples of Jesus Christ. Help us to be good ambassadors wherever we are this week in Jesus’ name, Amen.