Transcription
For centuries, humanity has grappled with questions of consciousness and identity. But today, we find ourselves asking these same questions about something entirely new: AI. Artificial intelligence is changing everything. And not just how we search the web or write emails. AI is forcing us to confront the deeper questions. What makes us truly human? What gives our lives ultimate value? And are we replaceable?
"All right, everybody. Good morning."
"If you don't know me, I'm David. I am also one of the pastors here. And we are beginning in the second week of a series that we're doing on artificial intelligence. Who am I? And we're talking about this because AI is everywhere in our world right now. And it's raising all kind of questions. And and I got the conviction months back that like we really need to talk about this in the church. Like this is something of a technological revolution that is going to be sweeping over our lives for the next decades. So, so let's talk about it. And so that's what we're doing. That's what we started last week. Kind of laid a foundation. If you missed it, I'd really encourage you guys to go back and listen. But uh if you didn't um try to keep up today um and today what we're going to do is is really do a deep dive into the book of Genesis to really uh dig into this question of our human identity. So if you want to turn there now uh to Genesis chapters one is where we'll start. We'll go to two. If you don't know where it is, it's at the beginning of your Bible. and uh and and as you guys are getting there um let's let's go ahead and as we always do just take a moment to ask God to meet us in this as we pray let's pray God we are here and um we are in new territory Lord uh for me as a preacher for us as people and I just pray for your wisdom and your grace. I pray for your Holy Spirit to come and empower my words and quicken our hearts and minds. Lord, I pray that um we could see what we need to see and and God, just understand um ourselves and you and who we are to you in this world um as as lots of things are changing and going to change. Lord, I just uh lift all these things up to you in the name of your son Jesus, who's our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Amen."
Okay, I want you guys to walk back 75 years with me for a second to 1950. And there are some major strides being made in computation, in programming, in machine learning. And people are starting to ask themselves, how do we know if a machine actually starts to demonstrate intelligence? How do we know that uh a robot is is actually having a level of intelligence? And they talk about this and philosophically they try to engage it and it's not easy. Actually determining what intelligence is is a lot harder than a lot of us realize. However, there's a man who steps forward in this moment named Allan Turing who was a pioneer in um in the computing world and he says, "Let me offer a different solution. Instead of trying to determine if a machine is intelligent, why don't we just see if a machine could demonstrate the same level of intelligence that a human being could in a certain situation, for example, a conversation."
And so what Turing suggests is what he calls a sort of imitation game. He says, "Here's what I'd like to do. I'd like us to put a human in one space, is in an isolated space, and then I'd like to take another human and a AI chatbot, like a robot, in another space, and I want this human over here to have a conversation with these two people over here." Not people, one person, one robot. and he can't see who he's talking to, but at the end of it, at the end of that conversation, 5, 10, 20 minutes, uh, he's going to guess which one is the real human and which one is the robot, which text conversation was which.
This game, this imitation game became famously known as the Turing test, and it's been treated as kind of a benchmark in machine machine learning for decades. And it's interesting. For decades and decades, hundreds, thousands of Turing tests have been done. And really, there has not been a single AI chatbot that's ever consistently regularly been able to fool humans into thinking that they were talking to a human until recently.
So March of 2025 of this year, there were some researchers from UC San Diego that published the results of some work that they did where they conducted a number of Turing tests. And in those tests, they took a very specific approach. They took chat GPT4, you know, our powerful AI model that's already one behind the latest, but they took it and they said, "We want you to take on a persona. We want you to pretend that you are um a young person who's introverted, knowledgeable about internet culture, and uses slang. So So basically, imagine maybe your 13-year-old emollient niece, right? Okay. So this is this is kind of who who trying to trying to talk uh at the other end. And they said, "Okay, now we want you in that persona to have conversations with." And they did about 300 of these Turing tests. 300 individuals were isolated and talked. And what they found at the end of these tests is that 73% of the time the real human thought the robot chat GPT4 was the other real human. 73% of the time, this chatbot with this persona passed the Turing test. Really, for the first time in history.
Now, y'all, this is a massive milestone. Like, there's people who for decades have been trying to do this, have been um have been watching it, have been saying this is going to be a huge thing when it's done. And it is, and it's a lot to take in. But now that it has happened and especially that it's happened with flying colors. So let's just note 73% is way over passing the Turing test just to pass it. All they needed to do was get 51% to convince most of the time that it's a human at 73%. That's way beyond that. But it raises another like very interesting question because here's what's actually happening. It's not just that Chad GPT4 passed the Turing test and can pass as a human being. It is also that Chad GBT4 seemed more human than actual humans the majority of the time. 73% of the time, three quarters of the time, people thought the robot was the human. Like that is wild, y'all. the robot felt more human than an actual human being. How do we make sense of this? Like I don't I don't know. Like I mean there's a possibility that the the people that were being compared to the robot were just really bad conversationalists, right? That like really boring human beings. There's also the possibility that when you have someone act like a 13-year-old girl with an iPhone, that's a specially potent version of humanity. And I would probably agree, right? But but actually none of that seems to really be true. All we're left with is this reality that now a robot is seeming more human than an actual human. And we say, "What do we do with that?" Right? And and I no doubt this raises all kinds of like questions in our minds about the power, the dark possibilities of deception um and scamming that that can take on new new things. But that's actually not what I want to focus on this morning. What I want to do is go back to the more fundamental deeper question of this reality. And I and I think it raises this question, existential question, in a whole new light. Here's the question. What makes us human? What is it that makes us human? What makes us uniquely human? Right? This is a really important question, right? Because it's not our ability evidently to talk over text with another human being.
And in the past, what the way that most of us have answered this question as we've seen robots develop and change and get new abilities over the years is we we kind of you define ourselves uniquely by way of comparison. And what I mean by that is is we would say, well, humans, I'm always going to be better than a robot at blank. And then we fill in the blank with something that we seem like we're pretty much better than and we'll regularly be better than, right? And so, for example, we'd say humans are always going to be better at robots at emotions and emotional intelligence and social awareness, right? And this is a beautiful aspect of our humanity, how we can see others and understand others and empathize with their feelings and recognize what's really going on in their hearts and minds. And there is actually I still believe there's a way in which AI will never actually be able to achieve that. However, if we're talking about an AI's ability just to assess that and to interact with human feelings, uh here here's here's something I learned not too long ago. Do you know that um there is a chat there? There's AI technology being developed right now that can scan the human face and look at your facial expressions and with over 90% accuracy predict exactly what you were feeling based based on the look on your face. I don't know that I can do that. I don't think I get it that right with Shannon, my wife. Right? Okay. Do you guys know also that there's a uh a therapy chatbot that's been developed called Wobot, WOE bot? And this thing has been trained in basic therapeutic practices and um you can download it on your phone and it will interact with you like a human and give you emotional and psychological support in times that you're down. And in early trials with this, one of the things that they discovered is a lot of people are actually preferring the wobbot to an actual real therapist. So, all kinds of things going on there. But wow, I just want to say this emotional differentiation that we have not looking quite the same anymore.
Here's another one. Creativity. Humans are uniquely creative, right? We dream up incredible things. We love to to make out of nothing to to put together art to to express ourselves through what we create. And and again, I don't think that that is ever going to be a thing that an AI can really like do on its own. But if we're talking about creativity, that is something where something is created because it's inspired by something else. Like we take an idea or a prompt and then make something new. And that is kind of the heart of what creativity is. By the way, do you know that um AI tech is is uh is doing a pretty good job at that too. For example, this is from three years back. This is a image called space opera theater that was created entirely with AI. It won an art a the big art award at the Colorado State Fair and it was created entirely with prompts. So just language. the person, the artist gave it the language, it created the image, and then the artist kind of refined it. And y'all, that is pretty cool. That's pretty amazing. If anybody's interested, they'll probably sell it to you for a million dollars, right? Um uh and then like just if you want to see the creative potential of AI, please just go play with Chad GPT. Ask it to do anything you can dream up. Ask it to write you a short um to write you a poem about fishing in the voice of Yoda and you're going to be blown away by what it can do. Ask it to write you a business plan for Tinkerbell trying to sell something to Peter Pan and it can do it. Like if you can think it up, it can do an amazingly good job with it. And if those of you that have tried this, what you've probably experienced is like that was not over only lightning fast in what it was able to do. I don't know that I could have been that creative. And so just again that differentiation isn't maybe as strong as it used to be.
Here's one more overall cognitive ability. Like one of the things that a lot of uh psych uh a lot of scientists have noted, philosophers have noted is that humans have this incredible ability to think broadly about different topics uh across different kinds of things and make connections and then also account for nuance and ambiguity. And for a while people thought I don't know that robots are going to be able to do this. But uh there's evidence that actually with enough computational power and the right kind of algorithmic mix uh it's pretty impressive. One example here actually is from way back in AI time 2017 when there was a chess machine a chess intelligence called Stockfish and Stockfish was already wiping the floor with chess masters. there was no human that could really beat it. And um and so there was an AI that they said, "Let's put it up against Stockfish named Alpha Zero." And uh what happened back in 2017 is that Alpha Zero basically annihilated Stockfish in in a game of chess. the the chess masters watching it said that um what AlphaZero did was incomprehensibly creative and almost alien in its strategic brilliance. And you know one of the wildest thing about all this Alpha Zero had been play trained to play chess 4 hours before it took on Stockfish. Wow. Right.
So, so there's like there's a lot more we could talk about here. So much more. But let me just simply make the point that that AI is developing at a rapid speed and challenging the capabilities of our humanity more and more and more every day all the time. And so it's not enough to say, like we've said in the past, that we will always be better than robots at blank, at least in the way we've thought about it. because honestly it's not looking the same as it used to anymore. In fact, when people say that to me it kind of feels like when people said the Titanic is unsinkable, right? And so so there um so what I think we have to do is come up with a better answer to this question. What makes us human? What is unique about our humanity? Right? because it's not working the same way it used to. We're not seeing it in the same light. Are we truly unique or has this always just been homo sapien hubris? And what we're actually doing now as AI is developing is seeing the illusion of our own exceptionalism just absolutely go up in smoke. What do y'all think? Well, that's what I want to engage today.
And friends, this is where I think the Christian worldview is so important because it steps into the void and it answers this question in a way that is true no matter what happens with AI. And so now, if you want to turn to Genesis 1, I want to get in there and I really encourage you to open up your Bible, grab the one in your chairs below because I want you to see what's actually happening in Genesis with your eyes. You're going to get more out of this if you have the text in your hands, okay? And and so I want to show you three ways that that actually Genesis tells us we are unique. We are unique as human beings. Here's the first way.
One, you humanity has a unique position in the pattern of God's creation. When God creates, we see humanity taken out of the rest of the pattern of creation in a very specific way as an indicator that we are unique. And let me get into this. I've shared this before, but there is a beautiful thing happening in Genesis 1 in the creation in the sixth and then seventh day that a lot of us have no idea is happening at all in the text. It's beneath the surface because it's it's the way that the days interact with one another. Days 1 through three are matched up with days 4 through six. And if you look at it, what you see is in the be in the first three days, God creates things. He orders space. And then in the next three days he matches those space with things that he puts in those spaces when he brings life. And so for example in day one God orders the light and the darkness. He creates it. And then when you look at day four what God does is he fills the day with the sun and the night with the moon and the stars. Those two things are matched to each other. Day two, God orders the waters above and contains the waters below. And then in day five, God fills those spaces with the birds above and the fish below. Right? Day three, God orders the land from the sea, separates it out, and then in the next day six, he creates the trees and the shrubs and he fills it with animals, right? And so what we see in Genesis 1 all the way through day 1 through six is this really beautiful, incredible pattern of creation with a symmetry to it. However, humanity hasn't been created yet. And so, when we get to the end of day six, something very interesting and different happens. In every other day, we see the end of a day goes something like this. Usually exactly like this, where it says, "God sees what God saw what he had done and he looks and he sees that it's good." You can see that in every day in your Bible. And then it'll have this phrase and it was evening and it was morning the first day and it was evening and it was morning the second day the third day the fourth and it's constant all the way up until the sixth day except that in the sixth day when God creates the trees and the animals, right? And it says God saw what he did was good. It does not then give us what we'd expect that it was evening, it was morning, the sixth day. No, instead the sixth day continues after verse 25. We're breaking from the pattern that we've seen all throughout scripture. And now, guess what happens? Well, let's read it. Verse 126. Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish and the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock, and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
And so what does God create? Us human beings. He breaks from the normal pattern. He creates humanity in a different way, right? And what do we learn about humans? That they are created in the image of God, in God's likeness. Super important. We've never heard that before in in anything else in all of creation. And then the text continues, right? This is verse 27. So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God he created them. Male and female he created them. And so now if we didn't get into verse 26 the first time, basically verse 27 is driving home the point that humanity is different and specifically that humanity is created in the image of God. Says it three different ways. So God created mankind in his own image and then again in the image of God he created them and then again male and female both God created in the image of God. Humanity is is so clearly uh being highlighted and pounded down as something different from the rest of creation. And then if you continue reading, it goes on verses 28 through 30, there's direction given about humanity's rule and rain and food and all these things. And then in 31, finally, we get to the end of day six where it says this. God saw all that he had made. And it wasn't just good, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day, right? It's pretty cool to see that. And here's what is being so utterly clearly taught to us in God's word about who we are. We have a special position, a special place in all of God's creation, right? And if you go back to your diagram just to visualize this, this hopefully is helpful for you. This is actually what's happening. So you have the pairing of the days and then kind of as the crown of it, as the final piece of creation, God puts humanity at the top to rule over it all. It's pretty cool.
And that actually leads us to the second thing that Genesis teaches that makes humanity unique. Humanity is given a unique purpose in God's creation. We have a unique purpose different from anything else in all of creation. So when you read uh that man is created in the image of God, that word for he in Hebrew image is the word celum celum. And the place that we see it most frequently used in the ancient neareastern text is actually as a statue that kings would put to show their image um in some places in their kingdom. So uh maybe they put a cellum outside of their palace. We actually see this uh in the book of Daniel with King Nebuchadnezzar who puts his image at Selum, a big statue that everyone has to bow down to. And then in distant territories, ancient kings would al often put a statue or an image or sellum there so that people would know even though the king isn't here. He still reigns in this place. And actually I we have personal experience with this in my family when Shannon and I lived in Ukraine uh in the apartment that we were in right down uh the block just couple feet away there was a little square and during the Soviet era in that square was a cellum an image of the beloved le lenon um Ukrainians didn't think he was beloved but the reason they put it there was to say to all these pesky little Ukrainians s Lenin rules here even if he's not present. Right? It was his image. It was his representative rule. And so this is the sense in which when people originally heard the image of God in Genesis 1 that they immediately took in. People are created in the image of God. And yes, that has something to do with our nature and our being and who we are in reference to God. But also like what was being taught is that humans are God's representative rulers here on earth. We are the given authority of God in this place. Authority passed down from God who created it all to us as his imagebearers. Us his representative rulers. And you see this in the language that is being used um in like verse 126 where God says so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and the livestock and the animals and all the creatures. It's that ruling. It's that purpose. Like the the purpose is for us to be God's representative rulers. And just so you can kind of envision it again in diagram form, this is kind of how it works. the sixth day. Actually, what happens on the seventh day? It's the Sabbath. It's when God rests. It's when we turn from our work down here and we look up here to God, right? And so, again, on the seventh day, there's this focus on God who's king. But he gives and endows humanity with this ruling of the rest of creation. And this is what Genesis is is showing us. Okay. Okay.
Last thing, humanity alone has a personal relationship with God. Humanity alone in the book of Genesis is shown to have a personal relationship with God that is unique. And here I want to go to Genesis 2:7. Let's read this together. Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. So here Genesis 2, it's kind of the second focal into humanity of creation. And before what we've seen in all the days when God creates like the birds of the sky or the fish of the sea, he just speaks it into existence. He just says, you know, let these things be. Let them be created. But in Genesis 2:7, when God finally gets to the creation of humans, there's a different thing that he does. It's almost a two-step process. So God forms man out of the dust of the earth. And the idea here is that God like somehow gets into the dirt and he creates out of the earth humanity. Adam in Hebrew actually means like from the earth. And so Adam is created. Adam is made and he's lifeless. And then God does this really intimate different kind of thing that he does with anything else in all creation. He takes Adam and he breathes the breath of life into his nostrils into his lungs. You know when we sang today, this is the air I breathe, your holy spirit living within me, like this is the idea of life and creation that our life comes from the life of God and God has made us in this intimate way for himself out of himself. Our life is connected to his. And so this is what we see being emphasized and that nothing else in creation has this relationship, has this life, right? And we see then Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 in the garden with God, walking, interacting with him, having a relationship with him. And then really the whole narrative of scripture is us getting that back after sin destroys it. Jesus goes to the cross so that we can again live in relationship with God. And this is why Revelation says at the end, look, God's dwelling place is now among the people and he will dwell with them. They will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God. And so these y'all are the things the three things that Genesis really says this is what makes humans unique. And if there's one term in the Bible in Genesis here that's used to help us understand all that to encompass all of it, the term is the image of God. Humans are created in the image of God. And if we're asking the question, what makes us unique as humans? The Bible's answer is very clearly this. Humans are unique because humans are uniquely created in the image of God. And because of that, God gives us a position in creation. He gives us a purpose in creation. And he gives us a personal relationship with him unlike anything else in creation. And and and just to use like philosophical language, what the Bible is saying is that we are ontologically different than everything else. Meaning ontology is like a category. So we humans are in a different category than anything else that's that God made and and I propose anything else that could ever be made, including AI. All right. Okay.
So that's our work at Genesis. And uh maybe that seemed a little obvious to you. Maybe you were like, "Uh, David, I love the Bible nerd stuff that you did in Genesis, but it was a little dry. And did I really need a whole message for you to tell me that I am made in the image of God and a robot isn't?" Right? Anybody wondering that? Well, here that might be fair, but um here's why I think we really need to talk about this and understand it because I am more and more convinced every day that one of the things that is going to matter more in the days to come is a Christian theology of the image of God in humanity. I really think that the way that we as Christians see humans, you and me, as created in the image of God and therefore having sacred worth has always mattered, right? It it's when we lose that vision that things happen like they did this week and have been happening, right? But also when when there are AI robots that are able to mimic humanity in profound ways, in ways that make us wonder what am I interacting with here? Like it's going to matter who that I understand who I am and what this thing is, right? Because it's going to be challenged in ways we haven't been challenged before. And so we need a strong theology of the image of God. And and just to put this out there in a way so you can see where I think this could go and conversations that are already happening. Do you know right now that there are conversations about whether or not AI robots should have rights? So like like AI robots having rights like humans have rights. Um yes, people are saying in the future AI is going to feel become so advanced we're going to wonder if it's conscious, if it's sentient. We're going to talk about that next week, by the way. And um and it's going to feel alive, right? And may maybe not like me to Sario feel alive. Um but maybe me to like R2-D2, right? And this thing that I come to love and saves me when I'm facing the Death Star, right? Like what like what do I do with that? Like should this thing be protected? And so people are saying like do we give robots like protection and rights like we give animals those things to some extent. Should there be like we have child protective services. Should there be a a RPS a robot protective services that exists? Um man I found that more funny than you did. But but people are legitimately talking about these things and I just want to give you the voice of of somebody who's spoken about this uh in a real way who's very respected in in the world of ethics. How many of you guys know who Peter Singer is? Is there a couple of you in here? Some of you. Yeah. Uh he is an ethicist, a philosopher that's been huge for decades in this world. and he um actually believes that what what we uh suffer from as humans is something he called speciesism where we see our human species as more important than other species. And so his his view like we're all just one of many species and moral consideration should be kind of flat based on all species. And so he writes this famously in his book Animal Liberation from years back. If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. I want to tell you, I don't know that actually I fundamentally disagree with him on that. I mean, I I see no reason for any living thing to unduly suffer uh if it doesn't need to, right? Like I'm not uh on the other side of him on that. Um but but let's now think about this in terms of AI. Singer didn't have AI when he wrote that book in mind, but he's still alive. And he's commented on this. And you know what he said? He said, "If AI becomes conscious in a way, and if it can suffer, we ought to consider it suffering. We ought to not allow it to suffer." And I can I can actually even have that conversation. That's good. But here's the rub in all this. Singer because he doesn't believe humanity is unique actually has gotten into some very sticky dicey ethical conclusions where he will say that an animal that is a high level of intelligence and appears to be suffering we should consider it morally even to a greater degree than a human being that is very mentally um impaired. So, in other words, like a dolphin might have a higher ethical consideration than than a person who's in an accident and can't serve themselves a meal, right? That's not a conclusion most of us are comfortable with, right? And now think about it in terms of AI. So if you could argue that AI is conscious and then you take its intelligence quotient into effect like its ability to show a high level of thought, I don't know how we would value ourselves in comparison to AI.
And then just to hit this from another angle, here's another voice in this space right now. His name is Yuvil Noah Harrari. You you might hear from him. He's in the news from time to time. Um he's a m leading materialist voice on AI and he wrote a book called homohomodus uh called a brief history tomorrow and this is what he said in the book human rights as they are conceived today are a liberal invention based on an outdated notion of human uniqueness that will not survive the AI resol revolution. He continues later, "The most important question in 21st century economics may well be, what should we do with all the superfluous people once we have highly intelligent, non-concious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?" Uh, it's pretty jarring just to even hear someone talk like that, right? But but again friends, this is where I think our Christian faith steps in and fills the void and offers clarity. Because we believe all people are made in the image of God, we don't believe our worth is dependent on what we can do or not do. Our value isn't in our utility. In the Christian worldview, it doesn't matter how good or bad or helpful or worthless a human being is in our assessment to God. They are made in his image and they have a measurable sacred worth. Right? And and so this is a categorical distinction and it's not based on who we are. It's based on who God is and God giving it to us. And so here's the important reality into the future. It doesn't matter what happens with AI. We uniquely are still created in the image of God and will have our place in creation. If AI is able to be better than us in every conceivable thing that we can do, and y'all I think we might get surprised, we still have a measurable worth and a place and a purpose in God's world because we're made in the image of God. that is going to be so important in in how we see things.
And for me, just to give you one other way to think about it, it was helpful to think about it like this. Um, how many of y'all uh had kids or grandkids and when they little they were little especially, they'd give you like artwork? They'd go to school or church and they'd make something nice and then they come back and give it to you. Yeah. Remember that? Um, mine aren't doing it so much anymore these days. Uh, but I can remember when um they'd come back and they'd give me something and for a four-year-old, I'd be like, "That's pretty good, right? That that's not bad for my little girl, right?" Maybe I as thinking she was special because she was mine, right? Um, but then at the same time, like there were also times when actually two of my boys in particular would give me stuff and objectively it was terrible. like it it was like three scribbles on a sheet of paper. Uh and and like I don't know that I love that, but if I could tell that they put their heart into it, it didn't really matter how good or bad it was. If they did it for me, I loved it. Right? If you get a gift from your kid, doesn't matter if it's a good gift. It's the heart. It's the intent. It's it's because of who they are to me. Right? Like honestly, my sons could have given me a piece of paper that was smeared in poop and and if they said, "I love you, Dad." I'd have said, "Thank you," and then tossed it in the trash. But but it's about the heart, right? It's about who they are to me and and my love for them. And so this is what we have to understand. Like this is how God sees us and and understands who we are. It's not about our abilities, our capabilities. It's about how we're created in his image and invited to a relationship with him. How he's given us a purpose in the world, right? And nothing can ever change that. It is an onlogical distinction about God loving us in who we are.
And when we get that in our hearts and minds, right, the real response isn't for us to to to then have hubris to say, "God chose me. I'm awesome." Right? When we actually get that The real response that we have that God loved us even as who we are as broken sinful people who one day might create the thing that is far more powerful than us, right? And God still love us. The response is humility. The response is to look up to the heavens and say, "God, how did you still choose us? Why do you still love me?" Right? And this is where Psalm 8 and the words of King David come to mind. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them? Human beings that you care for them. He's having that moment of smallness, looking up into the sky and the stars and the big world and he's like, "And here I am just a man, a blip on the radar and the Lord still loves me and has chosen me and I'm sinful and he still loves me and has chosen me." And then he continues, "What is man that you were mindful of them, human beings, that you care for them? You have made us a little lower than the angels, and crowned us with glory and honor. You made us rulers over the works of your hands." You hear Genesis coming out there. You made us rulers over the works of your hands. You put everything under our feet, all flocks and herds, all the animals of the wild and the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the sea. He's kind of taken up in his role and what God's given him. And then what's the response that David has when he sees all this? Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. And friends, this is where our hearts and minds go and need to go. That God, no matter what, has always and completely in our weakness, in our lack of strength, in our sins, still chosen us and made us his own. And that is the image of God in you and me. Amen.
Let's pray. God, we give you so much thanks for your word and the way in which you clarify who we are and who we are in this world. And Lord, you you you give us eyes to see what we need to see in this moment. And God, I I just pray that today as we've talked about these things that you would anchor them in our hearts, that you would remind us of them in the days to come. Lord, that you would give us a deeper understanding of who we are and who we are to you. That we could live out of that strength and out of our relationship with you more than anything else. God, do it by the power of your spirit and speak to us where we need to hear this today, Jesus. Amen.