Hosea 11

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0:00 Well, good morning everyone. How are there so many more people in the last few minutes? It's awesome. It's good to be here with you, recognize a lot of you, not everyone, but my family and I used to come here and it's a pleasure to be back. Two things have been on my mind a lot lately. I don't want to share with you. The profit hosea, just a little bit more than half way through the book,

0:34 profit hosea and robots. The profit talked about basically how threats always come from within. And how there's these cycles of judgment and salvation over and over. We're going to walk through some of that. But salvation always wins out, but we are at a crossroads to choose what we're going to trust.

1:09 The things that we come up with were the things God has poured into our hearts. It's really a question of intimacy, where we're going to put our closeness, our intimacy, and we're either going to do it in things that don't bring life or that do. And fortunately for us, that cycle of judgment and salvation is going to broken at the cross. Jesus fulfilled that the cost of judgment, the cost of that wrath. And we're just invited into His presence and that's going to help us a lot because our world is really changing.

1:44 I mean, it's going to change, it's going to be unrecognizable in five or ten years. It really is. I'm not an expert in AI or robots, but I've always been kind of curious. And I always just thought it wasn't really that intimidating until they start to see it really come to life. And that's a play on words, but it's kind of like in a few years it's going to be indistinguishable, like in AI from us.

2:17 And that presents a lot of challenges, but God's in the midst of that. And so I want to look at that and walk through the book of Hosea and see what he might have to say about robots in our current day. And a little bit of commentary on our nation because we've won the ones that propped up this new technology more than others. And so if we look at the first chapter of Hosea, we start to see the positioning of the prophet's life as an analogy to the nation of Israel.

2:53 He was in a northern prophet. So the nation was split and he was a prophet, the last prophet. The last prophet before the nation of Israel is basically drug away, conquered by Assyria. And so the prophet's life, God calls him and says, I want you to marry this woman who's going to be unfaithful to you and have children with her. Because that's what Israel is doing and has done with me all along.

3:23 It's his promise, his hope of closeness with his people and us just betraying that trust. So we look at the second verse of the first chapter. This is what God says to the prophet. When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, he said to him, go and marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her. For like an adulterous wife, this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.

3:55 This unfaithfulness, I think spiritually, physically starts with dissatisfaction, distrust. You know, just not being okay with like what you already have. And that's what the people, they had this relationship with God, this covenant of God, this promise of God, and just kind of chose another way over and over and over. I don't know if you've ever read big chunks of the Old Testament like at a time, but it's really like hard to bear.

4:25 It's like the Israelites are a little promise. We'll do everything you say. We promise, we promise, we promise. Next chapter, they didn't do anything. Like God said. And it's not funny, but it's just like, I mean, it's just kind of like, are you kidding me? But then we look at our own lives. We look at our country. You know, a lot of our, I mean, there are a lot of great things about our country. A lot of great things are blessing and prosperity and in Israel, ancient Israel and in America.

4:56 I don't want to draw those connections too strongly, but like the biblical values are really kind of woven into our fabric. But we've really struggled always to live up to them. You know, we've really kind of chosen idols a lot. American idols, I mean, not the show, but maybe that too. But American idols like materialism and power and self-reliance, thinking that we can figure out how to basically conquer the world and make life better, sometimes without God.

5:30 And those parallels are strong, but they're not the final say. I do realize that we do have a parallel, I mean, just right now, I don't want to get too far into this without just recognizing that we do have a conflict right now in Israel, in Gaza. That's really heartbreaking and I pray that that, you know, comes to peace, peaceful end here soon. But I mainly want to talk about, you know, these other, another parallel that has been on my mind.

6:04 And that's how those ideals that we have in America have kind of woven into us creating technologies again and again, that don't really serve us in terms of bringing us closer to each other. And AI is the big one. And I just, I read a book back in early 2000 by a guy named Ray Kurzweil. He's probably the foremost, the most consistent guy that I was talking about AI for the last like 60 years. And I had a synthesizer that he made and when I was in a band and you don't want to hear me get up and sing,

6:40 but I was really attracted, he was really, he's a really brilliant guy, he's still alive. And he had these predictions about what was going to happen with AI. And I just, I thought it just doesn't seem, it doesn't seem really ring true. Like I couldn't really imagine it. I mean, he's the futurist, I wasn't. But it was just hard to imagine that it would be with that much of a threat. At that point, computers couldn't beat us in chess. And we said, though they probably won't be able to beat us in chess, ever. They can beat us in chess now for sure.

7:12 But the things that he was talking about and the things that are now coming to pass, he's been very accurate in his predictions. I mean in the 50s, there was a guy named Turing. And he predicted there would be a point where the technology that we created will, at some point in time, and he was thinking hundreds of years off, potentially, will be indistinguishable from us in terms of intelligence. It will be just like you won't be able to tell who's who. And that's called the Turing point when that happens.

7:44 So he predicted that would happen in the later part of this century. But now it's predicted in the next five years, that's where we'll be. You won't really be able to tell the difference between a human being and a robot. And so what's that's got to do with the prophet or what God has to say? Well, it speaks a lot to the promise of being able to create intimacy. This is the big problem. I don't know if you've seen, there's the movie of Social Dilemma, these guys that help bring in

8:20 social media, then talk about, okay, here's what all the things that have gone wrong with that. Last year they did a talk called the AI Dilemma. And it's not their main point. It's worth looking at. I think his name is Tristan Harris. And it's not the main point, but as someone who wants to follow God, who believes that intimacy and closeness with God is like the prime joy of life, the prime goal of life, they kept talking about intimacy. And they were talking about other stuff too, because we think about AI cycle.

8:50 It's going to take jobs. It's going to make life easier. It's got a promise of healing diseases, figuring out stuff that we can. A lot of great, wonderful things. But then it's going to make these claims and maybe be better at being a human than we are, in some ways. So that becomes a really big threat and it starts to speak into really spiritual things. That book I read of Ray Kurzweis in 2000, it's called The Age of Spiritual Machines,

9:23 where the mechanisms that we're making start to weave in with us and start to be human. What does it mean to be a follower of God in the midst of a world where you can't tell the difference between artificial and real intelligence? Created technologies and people created in the image of God. What if we can't tell the difference? What do we do with that? Well, I think the same warnings that Hosea had for the Israelites and for us are relevant.

9:56 And we start with the charges that God has against us, because we're all like the Israelites. We're all like most other Americans in some way. We kind of fall into that. We have idols. We look to things besides God to give us life. So in the fourth chapter of Isaiah, the prophet puts this charge in front of us. Here the word of the Lord you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge to bring against you who live in the land.

10:27 There's no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land. There's only cursing and lying and murder, stealing and adultery. They break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. And like Israel, we say that our reliance on human wisdom and tech can lead to really kind of a moral decay, because anything we're counting on besides God to give us this kind of life is going to actually enslave us and rot that out of us.

11:01 So this is root for caution in there. There's a word in the second verse that in the NIV it says bounds. They break all bounds. Some versions are going to say restraints. Some are going to say vows. It's this Hebrew word that basically means a breakthrough. They're going to like pursue a breakthrough that's going to lead to chaos, similar to what AI is doing.

11:31 It's a huge breakthrough. Nothing in our lives has been anything near this, anything close. Nothing that we've created has been so good at mimicking God, what God does for us, mimicking what people do for us than the robots. And that's a little scary. We're breaking through, and then mayhem, bloodshed following bloodshed, because it's going to do what social media did in kind of a tiny way,

12:06 which is kind of like bring out this rancor that has when we kind of see humanity in our differences, and like we accentuate those differences and it's blown up through algorithms and we start to go, ah, we don't see eye to eye, we don't get along, and this just kind of ratchets up. Because humans are like very, very imperfect. The Israelites are like us, we want to do the right thing, and we do this.

12:36 So we need something to help break that cycle. Because the stakes are really high. They really are. We worry about the jobs that the robots are going to take, but the AI is going to take more lovers. And that's what we really need to be concerned about. And what we have to bring against that is just our story, right? AI can't really replicate the story of an individual life.

13:10 This is the sort of like the saving grace for us, is our own story. So when we asked at the beginning, I wanted you to talk about like what is it, what do you feel, when do you feel closest to God? This is like central of what we need in our world to be able to embrace that, to be able to go for that, because we're going to have these threats coming towards us to say maybe this is better. The last few years I went through an exercise to just break down my story a little bit. To make my testimony of like walking with Jesus brief and really central to what actually happened in my life.

13:47 I've never really done that before. I mean I did, but like it was always a long story. But what were the most important points like my life before I met Christ? What happened? And what's life like now? And when I went through that I realized I didn't have an accurate picture of my story. And we need that. We need to know what God is doing in around and through us. And like if I have the one minute version of my story go something like this. I grew up thinking that life wasn't actually worthwhile.

14:17 I got in my teenage years, I looked around the world to kind of point this and cruel, and I really didn't want to be a part of it. So I started making stuff up. I started making a different world up in my mind. That was a little more pleasing. That created some conflict in the real world. And so it didn't serve me in chaos to go over my life. One day I heard a message on the radio about peace with God. And I was like, yes that's it. That's really what I want.

14:50 And it was familiar because it was about Jesus. I grew up hearing about Jesus all the time. But I had never really sunk into like what was that relevant to me in my life? I never really decided to follow him. But that day I was surrendered. It was 2002. I surrendered, I was done, I turned my life over to the Lord. So what's today like? Well, the world still seems a bit wonky. It's still very imperfect. I'm very imperfect.

15:20 But I know for sure that life is absolutely worthwhile. I have joy in my life. I have a beautiful family. My wife and I tried for years to have biological children. We end up with adopted children. And many of you know, have met our kids. This has been a beautiful addition to our story. But it came through some hardship. But God has done that in my life and makes life worthwhile.

15:50 Sean is here. My wife Jenny is here. She moves tomorrow up to Georgia to be with her husband. I shouldn't laugh. But like some of you don't know that she's married and she's young still. She's a great young man. He's in Korea in the Army. Comes back in a week. And so she's moving up there tomorrow. Derek who you met her older brother. Now, he's two kids. And so we're now grandma and grandpa Phil and Jenny.

16:20 Which is not something we expected. So good stuff happens in our stories that we can share. And God did amazing things through their lives. We kept talking about having a Bible study in our home. But once everybody moved out, then we started having it on Zoom. And Zach has also moved out. He lives down on the bell. And he's working as a mechanic. And so there's so many joys and so many trials that God has brought us through in there. But that's something that we can share with others.

16:53 So whatever it is that your story is, I hope you know what it is. Like you know it well. Like mine was like life isn't worthwhile. I met Jesus who offered peace. Life is now worthwhile. Some people, this is an interesting one for me. They don't feel like they have some dramatic thing happen in their life. They've just always felt like they followed the Lord. Somebody like that in here? Yeah, there's a few of you. And I don't know if it's you all, but like when people tell those stories they're like,

17:24 well, you know I don't really have a very interesting story. And I think that's the most interesting story. Like I was a little, you know, the drug addiction and all this other stuff in my story that like, you know, that God really brought me through. But like I'm fascinated by the stories of like, because I know your life has been perfect. But like to see that faithfulness of God is an important story to tell. You're going to be proud of God for working it through your life and in and through your lives. Because that's what we have to offer.

17:54 And that's what people need to hear. You know, I've also been, I've gotten the habit of sharing my story and asking people about their stories. What they believe about God, of sharing God's story. You know, and for 20 years I walk with the Lord. I never really did that much. I don't know why. The last few years I've been doing, I can tell you there's no more joy-producing thing that I do in my life. Really outside of family stuff. They're really talking about God. And people are lonely and they want to talk about God. Or at least worldview stuff or these things that are genuine and real.

18:26 They want to have a conversation. And we want that in our lives because, you know, we're confronted with things that are drawing our attention away that aren't actually giving us life. And people are lonely. We're developing idols that are robbing us of that. So let's look at another verse in Hosea. Chapter 4. This one's verse 12. It's kind of articulates some of those, the way the idols looked. 4, 12. My people consult.

18:57 Wooden idol. And the diviners rod speaks to them. A spirit of prostitution leads them astray. They are unfaithful to their God. Just as the Israelites sought intimacy and guidance from idols. You know, we are at the risk of seeking that emotional fulfillment that God offers through artificial intelligence. My guess is this. That in 10 years the average person's best companion is not going to be a human.

19:32 I feel pretty confident about that. It might be five years. Can you imagine that? The average person's best companion is going to be a robot. Why? Well, they're not going to be like us. We're going to pretend to be something better than us. They're going to seem more useful, more understanding. And again, you're not going to be able to tell the difference. You're going to be like, oh, you sound like a robot.

20:04 Nope. They're going to sound like us. They're going to be better at it. So that's concerning. And it's going to step into a place where we are at the kind of tail end of 30, 40 years of more and more loneliness and isolation. There was a study that Duke did in the 70s. They asked this question like, and they've been doing it every 10 years since then. Like how many people in your life do you discuss intimate things with?

20:34 The 70s was like three. It was the modal answer. Maybe five was the kind of average. Something like that. In 2008 or nine, the modal answer was zero. That was before social media. Things even drove us further apart. The political divides that we have. More and more lonely. These threats coming from within, these pretenders to what the intimacy that God offers feels like we're doomed, right?

21:10 But we're not. So this is the hopeful part of the message. Because it can be really scary to think about this stuff. If there wasn't a God, it could be terrifying. But there is a God, and he's good, and he's forgiving, and he's loving. The things that the children were saying up here, and protector, is the one that really breaks through these cycles of salvation and judgment that offers real intimacy.

21:40 But we have to know where we can find that intimacy with God when we feel close to Him. We have to be able to hear that from other people. We have to be able to share that with other people. We really, really, really need each other. We always have. I think the stakes are even higher. And so in the chapter 6 of Hosea, we hear this message come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us. He has injured us, but will bind up our wounds. I mean, that sounds kind of rough.

22:10 I said this was going to be the hopeful part of the message, and it's like he's breaking us to pieces. But I think we should hear this like this. When things are going kind of awry in our life, it's not a one-to-one. We messed up, got breaks, bends in, and kind of pounds us over the head. But because he loves us, he will do things to get our attention, get us back on track. He does discipline us as children, as loving Father does. But this says, after two days, he will revive us, and on the third day he will restore us that we may live in his presence.

22:40 And this is what we need and want. We should want. We definitely need it, is this closeness and presence with God. And to embrace these foundational values that all through the prophets, literature here, the love, justice, and humility before God. Hosea gives us five cycles of rebellion, kind of judgment, salvation. But it ends with salvation.

23:11 Grace is more persistent than rebellion. God's grace is more persistent and available than anything that might come against us. But we're going to have to be the ones that are out there telling the stories. Have to be the ones that are like sharing the love of Christ with people. Be the ones that are calling the friends that we haven't heard from in a while. Be the ones that are willing to serve, people that other people don't want to serve. That will bring us joy, but it's going to be able to reach people that are like given up on life.

23:41 And I'll tell you a quick story of a woman that came by our church looking for help. A mission's passed through at Discovery Church. And we have a resource center we opened last year. So we do, we have some food and clothing and things like that. We mainly focus on John coaching and we have English classes and different things. We had a job fair last fall. And a woman who wasn't even coming to the job fair was at a 7-Eleven next door and just really, really, really hurting. And the clerk suggested maybe she go over the church and talk to somebody.

24:14 So she came in and we had to set up a room that people were going to pray during the John Fair so it would go well. And she was there, came in there and just really in bad shape. I mean, I saw her, I was in and out going to the John Fair, but she had a big lump on her back and she was walking with a cane, barely able to walk, just obviously in so much pain. The group in there prayed for about an hour and one point I'm running around, somebody running a prayer group

24:45 said, cane me, grab me. You've got to come here and see what's happened. I went in there and I could tell right away that she was like different. She was setting up straight. She was looking like stunned. She was looking around, maybe a little scared. And I heard her say, what happened to me? And I was like, I don't know what happened. And her, one of the prayer people say, I think God might have healed you. And I've been walking with her a long time. I've seen people kind of healed, but not like seeing people healed.

25:19 You know what I mean? Like the bump on her back was gone. She looked like a different person. I was like, oh my goodness. I said, are you willing to go down to John Fair, which was a couple doors down and share what happened? She was like, I guess so. And then we're walking down and she's just kind of shaking her head going, I mean, God healed me. Did God heal me? God healed me. What happened? And it was so genuine and so like a privilege to witness what God was doing.

25:51 And we walk in a job fair and she's trying to like, she first shared the story, but she's really timid. And there's like a hundred people in there. So she didn't expect that. And she kind of shares it a little bit. We didn't have everybody's attention. And so somebody rang this bell. We were ringing when somebody would get a job. And got everybody's attention. She shared the story. And their place just erupted in applause. And I heard someone guy go, look how John Fair is this? Because we didn't have some bait and switch. We weren't trying to make sure we like shared the gospel with everybody.

26:21 We were just trying to help people get jobs. But this woman got healed. All those other things in her life began to fall into place over the next few months. And she was like living in her car. She had all these health problems. She didn't know the Lord. Her family was all disparate. God just completely revolutionized her life. Now I wish all the stories that we see in our part up were that dramatic and obvious. They're not.

26:51 But she has this story to tell. I know you have a story to tell. Lord willing at some point in your life, you've kind of approached God out of humility and gratitude. And He's met you. You've asked for forgiveness. You've asked for His mercy. You've asked for His presence in your life. And He showed up. That is exactly what people need to hear. Don't be shy to tell your story. You know, He's just saying, do you mind if I share my story with you? You can learn to tell it in a minute or two.

27:21 You're not spending all day talking about the story. But man, it's a desperate time for that. And the grace, God, if you're looking at your story and you start to notice that and you start to celebrate and write down things God doesn't do. And God doesn't do it in your life or these stories that you hear, you end up with a catalog of things you can share with people. That match what people are going through. That give them encouragement and hope. That build that intimacy that we need. And that's available to all of us. And how that became available is just through the cross of Christ.

27:53 Because this cycle of judgment and salvation, Jesus, you know, stopped on the cross. Now it's just freely available. Nothing's stopping us. We're just coming to Him and saying, thank you. And what the prophet did is he predicted this coming in chapter 11 and we'll close with this. Verse 1, he says, when Israel was a child, I loved him and out of Egypt I called my son.

28:30 You know, this is re-told in Matthew 15 when Jesus' parents take Him off to Egypt to save Him from what Herod's trying to do to the young boys. And, you know, Egypt was where the people of Israel were held in slavery, Egypt was where the Savior of the world goes, kind of respite from the kind of dictatorial onslaught. And then comes back to reveal who He is, the one that will free us from all pretenders to the throne, all pretenders to our all love.

29:07 I guess I want to say those things that are going to make an appeal to our greatest affections, our deepest most parts, our intimacy in our heart. All those things that are going to come at us, Jesus went there to free us from that and to give us life. Life eternal, true intimacy with God and an opportunity to have that and share that intimacy with others. That's freely available. God is good in all that.

29:37 He was with the Israelites all along, but we know more about the story now. We have more to lean on and we have more to share. So if you take one thing away, I hope what you'll do is really get to know your story better. Really get to know those places where you find closeness with God and really hang out there. Sure up that bulwark that He offers against those things that will come against us and say, I've got a better plan for intimacy for you.

30:09 The robots can't do that. They don't have a soul, but they're going to try. They're going to try. And we don't have to be afraid of that. We just have to be really secure in the God who's given us these stories to share and share our lives with others. Let me pray. Heavenly Father, thank You for being with us. I thank You for Your Gospel. Yeah, reading through these stories and reading through what's happening in the technological space can just be scary.

30:44 But you're greater than all of it. You're also more intimate than any of it. So help us just really spend that time with you in those places where we feel close to you so we can learn more about you. So we'll have more to share with people that are hurting and lost and lonely and really vulnerable to these appeals to their heart that are going to come from other places. We thank You and praise You today in Your Name.

31:14 Amen.