A Model of Dependence

“Can a chatbot preach a good sermon? Hundreds attend church service generated by ChatGPT to find out”

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This is the title of an APNews article dated June 10, 2023. (https://apnews.com/article/germany-church-protestants-chatgpt-ai-sermon-651f21c24cfb47e3122e987a7263d348)

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Let me share a few excerpts from this article with you:

FUERTH, Germany (AP) — The artificial intelligence chatbot asked the believers in the fully packed St. Paul’s church in the Bavarian town of Fuerth to rise from the pews and praise the Lord.

The ChatGPT chatbot, personified by an avatar of a bearded Black man on a huge screen above the altar, then began preaching to the more than 300 people who had shown up on Friday morning for an experimental Lutheran church service almost entirely generated by AI.

“Dear friends, it is an honor for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year’s convention of Protestants in Germany,” the avatar said with an expressionless face and monotonous voice.

The 40-minute service — including the sermon, prayers and music — was created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna.

“I conceived this service — but actually I rather accompanied it, because I would say about 98% comes from the machine,” the 29-year-old scholar told The Associated Press.

…

“I told the artificial intelligence ‘We are at the church congress, you are a preacher … what would a church service look like?’” Simmerlein said. He also asked for psalms to be included, as well as prayers and a blessing at the end.

“You end up with a pretty solid church service,” Simmerlein said, sounding almost surprised by the success of his experiment.

Indeed, the believers in the church listened attentively as the artificial intelligence preached about leaving the past behind, focusing on the challenges of the present, overcoming fear of death, and never losing trust in Jesus Christ.

The entire service was “led” by four different avatars on the screen, two young women, and two young men.

At times, the AI-generated avatar inadvertently drew laughter as when it used platitudes and told the churchgoers with a deadpan expression that in order “to keep our faith, we must pray and go to church regularly.”

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ChatGPT and other generative AI technology is a big thing these days. AI has created a lot of interest, hope, and fear. There are worries that AI bots will take over jobs. There are concerns that students will fail to learn as they can simply input a few prompts and the chatbot will write an entire paper.

There is even concern about AI use in the church. If we could use AI to write a sermon, what does that mean for our understanding of how the Holy Spirit works through a preacher to deliver God’s Word to us?

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I think some of the fear and concern about AI is a bit unfounded. AI tools are trained on existing content. So… AI then generates content that is based on its input.

Of course, there are anomalies … sometimes, the information generated has errors - even grievous ones. But, typically, AI summarizes and synthesizes existing content for us.

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In a sense… it is similar to the process our brain goes through. Let’s say we read 20 articles on the love of God and then write a 200-word summary. This is essentially the same thing generative AI does… but a lot faster!

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Now, I doubt any of you came to church this morning expecting a discussion (that could go on for hours) about generative AI. So… what is my point in bringing it up?

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While we have … I hope we all have! … serious concerns about an entire church service created by generative AI, I am afraid that we sometimes commit a similar error… without hardly recognizing it.

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Our intention, our expectation, our hope - in our worship services is to carry out various worship rituals - singing, prayer, giving, preaching - in a way that we might hear God’s voice speaking to us, encouraging, challenging, correcting, and guiding us into the way of Life.

But… it is possible for us to do all of these rituals out of rote practice, disconnected from the Spirit of God.

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We can offer a flowery prayer, but our hearts and minds may be focused on something else. We can mouth the words to songs but never consider their meaning.

A sermon can be delivered and received that explains the text accurately but fails to deliver the message that God wants us to hear.

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This problem is not unique to us in the 21st century. In Jesus’ day, the religious system had also become spiritually stale and dry. The people observed the traditional practices and rituals, but much of it was meaningless.

Indeed, in their attempts to truly make sure they did everything right, rules were created that obscured and hindered the true heart of God’s Law.

We find this in our text from John 5. John 5 begins by telling us that during one of the feasts - the major festivals that the Jews celebrated, Jesus went to Jerusalem.

By the Sheep Gate was the pool of Bethesda where it was rumored that an angel would stir the waters from time to time and that the first person to enter would be healed of whatever ailed him.

Jesus walked through a throng of hurting, sick, diseased people to approach a paralyzed man. He asked the man if he wanted to be healed. Then, with no expression of faith on the man's part at all, Jesus healed him, telling him to take up his bed and walk.

The religious leaders saw the man carrying his bed and accosted him. According to their interpretation of the Laws regarding the Sabbath, he was committing sin.

They asked him who healed him, but he didn't know. Later, Jesus approached him again and told him no longer to sin. The man then told the religious leaders that it was Jesus who healed him.

John 5:16–17 ESV

And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

John 5:17 (Jon Courson’s Application Commentary): Truly, the Father works on the Sabbath. The sun rises; rain falls; crops grow; life is sustained. Furthermore, God’s Sabbath was “broken” in Genesis 3:8 when He went on a rescue mission to track down Adam and Eve after they had eaten the forbidden fruit. In order to help them, the Father broke the Sabbath He Himself had established. With that in mind, here Jesus is saying, “The reason I do what I do is not based on doctrine, philosophy, or tradition. The issue is singular: My Father works on the Sabbath and I simply reflect Him.”

That Jesus would “work” on the Sabbath was enough to raise the Jewish religious leader’s temperature to boiling, but this reasoning by Jesus caused their blood to reach nuclear-hot temperatures!

John 5:18 ESV

This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

The verses that follow - all the way to the end of the chapter - are key scriptures to understand the relationship of the Father and the Son in the Trinity, eternal life, the resurrection, and judgment.

For our focus today, however, I would like us to notice the relationship of the Son to the Father. I want us to notice three points about the relationship of the Son to the Father. Then, from these truths, we will find a key assertion about how we should live, serve, and worship God.

1. The Son imitates the Father, vv. 17-20.

John 5:17 ESV

But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

John 5:19 ESV

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.

In my Bible, verse 18 has a heading. It says: “Jesus Is Equal with God.” And verse 18 lays out the grievance of the Jewish religious leaders with Jesus, that he was “making himself equal with God.”

One commentator makes the following note that almost sounds like it contradicts what scripture is saying. But when we think about it, we realize there is no contradiction… and that what Jesus was claiming was much greater!

"But Jesus is not seeking to make Himself equal with God. That charge is a perversion of the truth! This fleshly Man, Jesus, who stands before these angry Jews, has been sent by God. He has come in loving obedience to do the works of Him who sent Him. The works of the Son and the Father are the same, for the Son and the Father are One! That eternal, intimate relationship is the source of His authority and mission. The initiative is God’s, not man’s!"

https://ref.ly/o/prcm27jn/233584?length=452

Someone has illustrated the realtionship between God the Son and God the Father this way.

"Just a few days before writing these words, I played a tennis match with my son, in mixed doubles competition. Since I taught Jeff to play, and since we have been playing together for over twenty years, his game reflects the way I play. He is taller, stronger, and faster, but our strategies seem eerily the same. Normally in men’s doubles I play as his partner and in those matches think only about how we fit together, not about how he plays. Playing as his opponent, however, I try to sense where he will move and hit. I find it surprisingly predictable as I attempt to make up for his speed and strength by thinking what he would do on the basis of what I believe I would do in a similar situation. I suspect he does the same."

https://ref.ly/o/hntc64jn/232867?length=730

Jesus is the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity. He is a distinct from the Father, but one with the Father. In his role in the Godhead, Jesus is subservient to the Father.

And so we see in Jesus’ words here that he imitated what he saw the Father doing. God the Son did not come down to earth and become flesh to take off on his own initiative and do whatever he thought best. Rather, the Son came to fulfill the mission given to him by the Father.

John 5:19–20 (ESV)

… For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.

The works that Jesus had done up to this point were quite marvelous. Up to this point, John has only recorded a few specific examples of miracles: turning water into wine, healing the official’s son and healing the paralyzed man beside the pool of Bethesda.

Of course, Jesus performed various other miracles. But… Jesus would soon perform even greater works, dying on the Cross and being raised on the third day by the Father, and offering eternal life to all who believed in him, as well as sending the Holy Spirit to indwell the believers.

2. The Son works in harmony with the Father, vv. 21-29.

John 5:21–23 ESV

For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

There are powerful truths revealed here. Just as God the Father can and does raise the dead and give them life, so also the Son will give live to whom he will.

Jesus did physically raise some people from the dead, butthis scripture seems primarily to be pointing to the spiritual life that we receive in Christ.

In our trespasses and sins, we were dead spiritually, but in Christ, we are born again and raised to new life!

Notice also that the Father judges no one. Instead, the Father has given all judgment to the Son.

We should take a moment to note here that the common perception of God in the Old Testament as angry and vindictive over the sins of people and God in the New Testament as loving and forgiving is inaccurate.

God has always hated sin and God has always loved us! God the Father is holy and just, yet also loving and merciful. And, God the Son is holy and just, yet also loving and merciful.

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And Jesus will be our judge!

John 5:26–27 ESV

For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.

The Son works in harmony with the Father. There is no “good cop/bad cop” with God. God is holy and must hold us accountable for our sins, but God is also loving and doesn’t want to punish us, but rather offers us forgiveness through the shed blood of Jesus on the Cross.

As I consider how to illustrate the harmony between the Father and the Son, I am reminded of the stories of some great sports teams or musical groups.

There are those ball players who are so in sync with how each other play and think that they just “know” what the other is doing. The player with the ball may not even see his teammate, but he knows he is coming to the side.

He passes it just in time and his teammate scores a goal. The celebration is shared, not individualistic… because they are working in harmony with one another.

In a similar but even more perfect way, God the Father and God the Son work in harmony with one another. Jesus, the Son of God, did not come to earth to show us a “different” God or a “better” God.

Rather, he came so that we might have a better understanding of who God is, holy and loving, just and faithful.

Jesus explained, further, he lived and served and worked in harmony with the Father because…

3. The Son submits to the will of the Father, v. 30.

John 5:30 ESV

“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

In this verse, Jesus restates what he said in verse 19: John 5:19

John 5:19 (ESV)

…“Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord”…

Yet Jesus makes this point even more explicit. Jesus did not come to seek his own will; he came to do the will of the Father.

In our partnerships, whether it be business, a marriage, a sports team, or some other group of people working together, sometimes differences of opinion and belief can be used to create disunity.

One business partner wants to conduct their company one way; the other insists on a different route. One spouse holds to certain beliefs; the other doesn’t, and may even contradict their partner from time to time.

But in the Trinity - the Godhead made up of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, there is no disunity. There is no pursuit of different agendas. Rather, as Jesus stated in our text, his will was to do the will of the Father.

In his book Absolute Surrender, Andrew Murray wrote:

“When a soldier bows to his general, or a scholar to his teacher, he is yielding his will—his life—he gives himself to the rule and mastery and the power of another. Christ did that. He said He came not to do His own will but to do His Father’s will.

In Gethsemane He said, ‘Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will’ (Mark 14:36). On the cross He suffered what had been settled in Gethsemane. He yielded His life to God and thereby taught us that the only thing worth living for is a life yielded to God, even unto death.

If you are controlling your life and spending it on yourself, even partly, you are abusing it and taking it away from God’s original purpose.

Learn from Christ that the beauty and purpose of having life is so that you can surrender it to God and then allow Him to fill it with His glory” (Andrew Murray, Absolute Surrender [Bloomington, MN: Bethany House, 2003], 45).

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We began our time today talking about ChatGPT and how AI can be used to create the script for an entire worship service. We then noted an even more serious problem: even without AI, we can go through the forms and motions of worship and living for God without the essence of truly knowing God or worshipping him in Truth.

We then looked to our scripture in which Jesus confessed that he could do nothing apart from His Father. And it is here that we see the application we should make to our own lives.

Big Idea: The Son's relationship to the Father models our dependence on God.

Someone has written:

"One wonders what would happen in the life of our churches if the works we seek to do were the work of the Father, rather than our own, if they grew out of our intimate, loving relationship with the Father instead of coming out of our brainstorming sessions and program packets. There is little power or life in any work we do, even though we call it Christian, where the source is our own ingenuity and effort!"

https://ref.ly/o/prcm27jn/234376?length=410

As we studied this scripture, we found that the Son imitates the Father, works in harmony with the Father, and submits to the will of the Father.

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Yes, we understand that the relationship of the Father and the Son in the Trinity is something unique. Yet we also remember Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer recorded in John 17, in which he prayed:

John 17:11 (ESV)

Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

Jesus spoke these words especially in regards to the Eleven. But then he prayed: John 17:20-23

John 17:20–23 ESV

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

As Jesus, the Son of God, was totally dependent on the Father, so we are utterly dependent on God. Our desire should always be to imitate Christ in what we do, say, and think.

Our life and service should always be done in harmony with the Father, submitted to the will of the Father.

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Do we truly recognize how dependent upon the Father the Son was? Yes, Jesus was fully God and fully man. He was the Second Person of the Trinity.

But Jesus did not come to earth to pursue his own agenda. He came to fulfill the Father’s will. He did not live and minister by his own prerogative. Rather, he served by the power of the Holy Spirit, regularly - daily - conversing with the Father.

And so Jesus provides a powerful example to us of how we should live and serve, dependent upon God.

We dare not live or serve by rote and ritual. Rather, we need the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit guiding us and filling us.

May God forgive us of any presumption, thinking we can simply follow an established pattern and experience his glory. Instead, may we seek to know God more deeply and follow his leading more closely, so that we might truly receive his blessing.

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As the Holy Spirit speaks to us today, my prayer is that we might recognize our total and utter dependence on Christ.

As the Holy Spirit speaks to you, would you say that you tend to live, work, and serve according to what seems best, seems right, seems plausible… to you?

Or, are you careful to submit every aspect of who you are, what you hope to do and be to the will of God?

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I challenge each one of us to seek the Holy Spirit’s enlightening. Let us ask him to show us how to live and work and serve and do everything we do in dependence on God.