After this, the Lord appointed seventy-two others, and he sent them ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself was about to go. He told them, “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest. Now go; I’m sending you out like lambs among wolves. Don’t carry a money-bag, traveling bag, or sandals; don’t greet anyone along the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this household.’ If a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they offer, for the worker is worthy of his wages. Don’t move from house to house. When you enter any town, and they welcome you, eat the things set before you. Heal the sick who are there, and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near you.’ When you enter any town, and they don’t welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘We are wiping off even the dust of your town that clings to our feet as a witness against you. Know this for certain: The kingdom of God has come near.’ I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town. (Luke 10:1–12, CSB)
This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.
Father, I come to You right now in the name of Jesus, and I ask that You do a mighty work in me and all of Your sheep here. We are nothing but sinners without You, and we will fail miserably if You do not anoint us with Your Holy Spirit to do a great and mighty work. Lord, I am asking that You would give me the strength, the words, and the wisdom to help Your people be galvanized into action today. And I pray that You would please open up the hearts and the ears and the eyes of Your hearers in these pews and at home. And I pray that they also would have their hearts galvanized into action, that they would hear these words and be moved and recognize that it is not only their King telling them to do these things, but it is their King who is with them to do these things. And Lord, I pray that You would put a hedge of protection around this service and that You would not let Satan attack us or impede us in any way. And I ask that You would protect everyone from short attention spans. Be with us, Lord, and help us to magnify You as You deserve. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.
The Nature of Our Mission
All right. So our brother Adam, he used to sit right there, right behind Susan. My brother Adam, he and I were—I was training him while he was living here, trying to prepare him for the mission field. And when Adam was here, one of the things that was laid on my heart was a lady had called our office and asked if we could help her out with some funds for living. And we actually give to an organization. So I pointed her in that direction, but I also offered her, I said, “Can I come pray with you?” And she said, “Sure.”
So I went over there to go pray with her, but I took Adam with me. We went there and I was a little nervous because I had never showed up to a stranger’s house like this before. But I was confident that the Spirit was telling me to do this. So we went to this house, I entered her house, and I’m talking to her children while we wait for her to come out, and I’m starting to realize that this family had some dark background, a lot like my family had a dark background in New Orleans, particularly with some occult things.
And I went to go pray over her, and while I’m praying over her, my eyes are closed, but Adam’s are open, and he’s got his hands on her, and I feel right in front of me this severely angry, dark presence. I could just sense in the room, and I hadn’t felt that in a really long time, not since I had lived in New Orleans. And knowing that I was dealing with darkness here, I really had to lean into my conviction that as Christians, we have the authority to pronounce judgment on the demonic realm because we have the authority of Christ.
So I said, “In the name of Jesus…”—out of nowhere, I’m praying for this woman and they just hear me shift from praying for her health. And I say, “And in the name of Jesus, I tell you, you are not welcome here. Go.” And I said it once more and then I continued to pray. At this time, I hadn’t opened my eyes, but I could hear that something was happening. Like the people that were in the room, they were like something was shifting. When I finished the prayer, I opened my eyes and everybody’s eyes are like this. And I said, “What’s wrong?” And they said, “You didn’t see that?” It’s like, “No.” He said, “When you said you are not welcome here, depart in Jesus’ name,” the spoon came flying that was lodged in an ice cream tub. The spoon flew across the counter.
And that is the most recent tangible example of what we are going to see in our text today.
You see, Jesus has called all Christians to proclaim a message of God. And that message is that the kingdom of God has come upon you. Do you know what that means? That means that the reign of Satan on earth is no longer going to last. It is a pronouncement of judgment against our greatest enemy, Satan, and God is breaking in and replacing his reign here on earth. This is the ultimate hope that we have seen in the book of Genesis, because in Genesis 3:15, the first time we see the gospel preached, you see, Adam and Eve had fallen in the garden. They decided I’d rather follow my own whims and make myself a god. So I want to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and have knowledge like God. And so they said, we don’t want God’s reign as king. We would prefer our own. But what they did not realize is when they tried to replace God, they bought someone else’s reign and that was Satan’s. And so Satan was in control of humanity all the way up until the crucifixion of Christ.
And Jesus has sent his followers out into the world to tell them the reign of Satan is over. The reign of God is being restored on earth. That is what we see in our passage.
So I want you to go ahead and give a nice little wave to show any guests here that we follow along a little insert in our bulletin. And this insert has blanks in it. There you go. And in these blanks, I invite you to fill them in as we go through the sermon today.
So the main point of today’s sermon is that we must spread the kingdom of God in Wake County with prayer, urgency, faith, gratitude, wisdom, and fearless obedience.
We’re going to look at how Jesus commissions these 72 disciples in our text, and then we’re going to derive certain principles about living on mission as modern Christians. Together, these principles make the main point of today’s sermon very clear.
Now, before we look at what characterizes our mission efforts, we must first understand the nature of our mission.
The first is to notice that our mission is to partner with Jesus to prepare the world for his arrival. And we partner with Jesus in two ways. So on your bulletin, on the leaflet, we prepare the world for the arrival of Jesus in two ways: prayer and going.
You see, we say that we are partnering with Jesus because of Luke 10:1, the Lord appointed the 72. Jesus is giving the followers of Christ his own authority to do the work of Christ. This is why in 2 Corinthians 5:19–21, the Lord tells us that we are the ambassadors of Christ and we are endowed with his authority to do his bidding on earth. If you work for the U.S. embassy abroad, when you speak as a representative of your state, it is almost as good as the president saying it himself. And this is why Jesus can say in Luke 10:16, “Whoever listens to you listens to me.” We are one with Christ in this mission. That’s why he says in the Great Commission, in Matthew 28:18–20, he says, “Behold, I am with you until the end of the age,” and he is with us to make this happen.
Some of us are so afraid to talk about Jesus. I think it’s only because you forget, one, this is not your eternal home. Two, you forget that Jesus is right there with you. In fact, Jesus told his disciples, “When they hand you over to be beaten and flogged in the synagogues, don’t worry about what to tell the judge. The Holy Spirit’s going to speak right through you” (see Matthew 10:17–20). We have every reason to be bold and courageous, and today it’s going to get even crazier because our boldness and our courage is actually, we’re going to see by the end of this sermon, sometimes that even means making a public pronouncement of eternal judgment. And that’s, yes, that’s right. I saw that furrowed brow. That means doing something that American Christianity has been very afraid to do.
You see, American Christianity for the last hundred years, we’ve taken this nice Jesus-only approach, and we’re scared to talk about him as judge. And the more that time goes by, we’re getting even more scared of pronouncing judgment. When we see sinful behavior, there is a righteous and a holy way to do it. And we’re going to see that in today’s sermon as well.
So first, we partner with Jesus by prayer. Jesus says, “Pray to the Lord of the harvest for him to raise up workers to go out and harvest this field because the harvest is what?” “Plentiful.” It’s abundant. Believe it or not, no matter what you see on the Internet and on the news, there are a ton of people who want to hear about Jesus. So if you feel like everyone in your life is just mean and rude and does not want to hear what you have to say, you’re just not talking to the right people. Because Jesus is clear, “the harvest is plentiful.”
“Pray for the workers of the harvest.” And when you pray for workers of the harvest, guess who might be the worker of the harvest? You. In fact, I would say this: you can confidently believe that every single Christian is a part of the Great Commission. Every single Christian is called to help spread the kingdom of God.
Now, you might say, Josh, I don’t have it in me to pack a suitcase and fly to Malaysia. I can’t live in the Sudan. Great. You don’t even have to do that. If all you’ve got is a piece of paper, a pen, and a stamp, write a letter to the neighbor across the street.
The point that I want to make is simply this. You can take all the grand ideas of being a missionary, and you can crumble them up and toss them away because that’s not what Jesus is expecting everyone to do. Some he does call to pack a suitcase and leave. But every single Christian is called to simply tell the world, whoever is in your vicinity, “Jesus is king. Jesus loves you. Jesus is coming back to judge.” If you tell people those three truths, you’re doing your job.
And I got a newsflash for you. If you truly love Jesus and the salvation that has marked you as a Christian has truly impacted your heart, telling people those three things is not a big deal. Because guess what? I love my wife dearly. It is not hard for me to tell people what a great wife my wife is. She bakes, she cooks, she cleans, she takes care of the kids. And I brag on her all the time because I genuinely love her. If you have a relationship with Jesus and you genuinely love all the things he has done for you, then talking about him will be easy. If it’s not easy, it could just be that you don’t have a relationship. And that’s the real problem we’ve got to work on.
With that said, we pray for harvesters to go out into the field. I want you to notice how Jesus says that you pray to the who? The Lord of the harvest. Guess what? These are people who have not yet heard the gospel. And Jesus is already saying they already belong to the Father. You might say, how is that possible? I don’t understand this. Let me just say this. There are some difficult truths in the Bible. We cannot understand all of them on this side, mostly because our brains are just too finite. Secondly, sin distorts our ability to see the truth. That’s why when we hear things like, there are three persons, one God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, God the Son is not God the Father, and yet there’s one God. You know, your brain just, it feels like they’re short-circuiting and you’re going to have a seizure from trying to comprehend things like the Trinity, but that’s not God’s fault, that’s ours, right? Well, this is one of those dilemmas that we see in Scripture. How can it be that they belong to the Lord of the harvest and they have not yet heard the gospel yet? I don’t know. Other than we have very clear texts like John 10:14–16. Listen to this:
“I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep. But I have other sheep that are not from this sheep pen; I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. Then there will be one flock, one shepherd. (John 10:14–16, CSB)
What is clear here is that he’s talking about people belonging to his fold of sheep who have not yet heard the good news.
Jesus says in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”
I don’t understand that mystery, but it’s in there. So with that, I want you to know Jesus makes clear that we cannot accomplish the Great Commission by ourselves. That’s why we pray to the Lord of the harvest. We need him to raise up workers who will go out into the world to seek and save the lost.
Now, the first way is prayer. So what do I recommend? I recommend that you go to joshuaproject.net. If you’re not good with the internet, I recommend that you ask a family member to go on there for you and sign you up to their newsletter. They will send you a, I think it’s weekly, a new people group to be praying for. If it’s not weekly, it’s monthly. And it will systematically guide you through all the unreached or underreached people groups of the world. And you pray through all of the unsaved people groups that they would receive salvation, hear the gospel, and that missionaries would go out.
All right, now prayer is not the only way we partner with Jesus. The other is that we go out into the community. And this is the part where people like to shrivel and get super scared. Because I’m talking about going into the community. If you golf, if you bowl, if you go to the grocery store, if you buy coffee, if you go to the senior center, if you go to the community center, if you go to Lowe’s, if you breathe, every single one of you has an opportunity to talk to people about Jesus.
Every single encounter that you have in your life is not an accident. God does not stop being sovereign just because you went to the grocery store. I want you to remember, I got a sister over here who’s very good about talking to every single delivery driver that comes to her house. They all know that she loves Jesus, and she has a relationship with them, and they love her. I want you to have that proactive kind of mentality. You don’t have to be a professional missionary to make a dent in God’s kingdom.
So that’s the second way we partner with Jesus by going out into the community. And when we go, write this down on your leaflet, we must go with power and a message.
Now I’m going to say some things that some of you might have never heard in your entire life and it’s going to creep you out. But guess what? Christians have power. And it’s not because we rock. It’s because the Rock gave it to us. Okay?
You see, power among Christians is the one thing that we are, undeniably, we are seeing wane in American Christianity, and it makes me sick. We can quote Bible verses. We will go to Bible studies. We will recite Scripture. We will recite theology and church history. But if I asked you, when was the last time you’ve seen God work a miracle in your life? Almost everyone I know in America shuts up. And there is only one reason why Christians are not seeing miracles take place in their life, and it’s a lack of faith.
Matthew 13:58 is the scariest verse for American Christians. You ready for this? “And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.”
Jesus does not perform miracles where he is not wanted. If you do not believe in the power of Jesus, guess what you will not see? The power of Jesus.
So Christians, I want you to be embracing the idea that you have power, and that is seen in our text. We see that he gives them authority over the evil spirits in our text. But before we look at that, I want us to look at the identity of these 72.
Who are these 72 in our passage? These are not the 12, right? Many of us, when they say, when I hear the word disciple, I immediately start thinking of the apostles. I’m not a professional Christian, Josh. Great. Don’t look at the apostles then. Look at the 72. These are all unnamed Christians who follow Jesus. These are the everyday Christians of Wake Forest. These are the people who never went to seminary. All they know is farming and fishing, agriculture, you name it. They are you. And these are the people that God has endowed with authority in our text to do great things.
But here is something very important that you must pay attention to. The 72 in our passage, they immediately follow up with a different type of people that wanted to follow Jesus. We look at that in Luke 9:59–62. Look at this. This really needs to wake up a lot of people who think they’re Christian.
Then he said to another, “Follow me.” “Lord,” he said, “first let me go bury my father.” But he told him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and spread the news of the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go and say good-bye to those at my house.” But Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:59–62, CSB)
Jesus is making it clear, “If you love your parents more than you love being on mission for me, you’re not worthy to be a follower of Jesus.”
Now, some of you have never heard this before, and you’re like, “Josh, that’s a radical category. You’re probably reading the wrong translation.” Now, I’m telling you, it’s in every Bible. Jesus is telling you that you cannot love anyone more than Jesus. And John tells you that if you love Jesus, you will obey him (John 14:15). Your love for Jesus must be so great that nothing will stop you from fulfilling the Great Commission.
Let’s keep going. In Luke 9:60, he says, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and spread the news of the kingdom of God.” Notice how Jesus is saying it’s one or the other. You either stay back to go bury a man, or you spread the kingdom of God. You cannot do both. Jesus is just pointing out that you cannot love someone more than you love following Jesus.
Verse 61, another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go and say goodbye to those at my house.” So how does Jesus respond? Politically correct? “Oh, I understand. I love people too.” Nope. Jesus says in verse 62, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Okay, I’m going to spell this out for you. When you put your hand to the plow, what are you saying? It’s time to work. Jesus is looking at this person, and he’s saying, “You have heard my message. You have seen me work miracles. You’ve recognized that I’m the Son of God. The message is resonating in your heart, and you know that I am real.” So you put your hand to the plow. You kind of look committed because you come to church every Sunday. But the second I tell you to get to work, you look back at home. And you say, “But Jesus, I’m going to have to give up all of those people.” If you look back, you’re already starting on the wrong foot. Your love for Jesus means that you must be willing to say goodbye to those that you love.
How do you do that? The only way you can do that is if you recognize that your life is a vapor. It’s going to be here today and gone tomorrow. And two, you do not live for this world. If you are living for this world, you’re going to have every reason in the book to not obey Jesus. The only way you can give up all the comforts and the cushy things of life is if you recognize that you’re waiting for Christ to come back, and that is your only hope.
So does this mean that I’m telling you, you can’t love your family, that you can’t go to birthday parties, that you can’t give your grandchildren gifts? That’s not what I’m saying. That’s not what Jesus is saying. He wants you to love, but he wants your love for the Lord to be so great that it makes everyone else you love look like hatred. Meaning, you don’t love Jesus just this much more. You love Jesus this much more.
Okay. So, returning to our passage (Luke 10:1-12), I want you to understand the 72 that he is commissioning here are those that have chosen to keep their hands on the plow. Jesus has sent away the half-committed, and the 72 remain. These are being sent out.
So, he’s got 72 people standing before him, and now he’s equipping them to go out. And what are they doing? They’re preparing the world for the Lord’s return, just like John the Baptist prepared for the Lord’s return. That’s exactly what Christians are doing for Jesus even today. As it says,
This good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed in all the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:14, CSB)
The end comes when the whole world has heard about Jesus. And I want you to notice something, folks. Sometimes when God calls you on a mission, you don’t get to see the large reaping of a lot of people in faith. Sometimes you’re just laying the groundwork for other people. But you’re still part of the mission. As Paul says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6).
So, church, we must be ready for Christ’s return. And that’s what the mission is. We are preparing the world for the return.
Now, I said it has to come with power and a message. So, where do we see the power? Jesus says that he wants them to go out and to heal people. Heal the sick in Luke 10:9. Now, is he talking about just natural illnesses? No, that’s not what he’s talking about here. How do I know that? Well, more than likely, no. And here’s why I think that. Look at verse 17. When the 72 come back from their mission, what do they say? Luke 10:17: “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.”
You see, in the Gospels, sickness and demonic activity go hand in hand. Many times. Not all the time, many times. For example, Matthew 9:32–33 says: “Just as they were going out, a demon-possessed man who was unable to speak was brought to him. 33 When the demon had been driven out, the man who had been mute spoke…” (CSB)
So if a doctor just looks at him, they might say, “Oh, he’s got autism.” He can’t talk. So Jesus says, “Get out of him, you demon.” Boom, the guy starts speaking. Sickness and demonic activity went hand in hand in this case. But that’s not every case, as Scripture makes clear:
His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus answered. “This came about so that God’s works might be displayed in him. (John 9:2–3, CSB)
So this man wasn’t sick because of demonic activity. So we must have that category, okay? Some people in the world are sick because demons are at work, but not every time. But your job as a Christian is to pray and pray for miracles.
Now, here’s what I also want to make sure that you understand. I am not saying that every Christian in this room has the ability to lay hands on people and they be healed. Why do I say that? Because 1 Corinthians 12:30 says, “Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?” And you could probably tell even from the English translation, the obvious answer is no, not all have the gift of healing. Well, it’s even clearer in the Greek text because he uses a negative particle that clearly states he’s expecting the answer “no”. We don’t have a way to translate that into English. So the answer is no; not everyone can heal people.
But we do have an authority that grants us power over the demonic world in certain ways, and I want to make sure that you understand those. The real question is, do we have the same kind of authority that these disciples do when he says they have authority? Luke 10:19 says to the 72, “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.”
The question is, does this power apply to the 72 or does it apply to all of us? Well, here’s some things that I want you to consider. James 4:7, he says, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” This is not a simple, “Satan, go away.” This is a holy, diligent resistance. This is more akin to Jesus in the desert than it is to Jesus saying, “Be gone.” When Jesus was in the desert, he was tempted by Satan for 40 days. So there is a fight. But James 4:7 says that he will flee from you if you don’t stop fighting.
Secondly, Paul writes:
Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens. For this reason take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand. (Ephesians 6:10–13, CSB)
It’s a holy resistance. It’s a fight. It’s not a simple, “Be gone, Satan.” But every Christian does have the ability to resist the devil through the power of the Holy Spirit and practicing holy diligence.
And also, I want you to remember that as ambassadors in Christ, we have the authority of Christ. He says in Matthew 18:18–20, “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.” In that context, Jesus is saying, “If you say someone is kicked out of the church because of sin, I want you to know that they have been kicked out of heaven as well.” Why? Because as ambassadors of Christ, we carry the authority of Christ to make authoritative decisions on behalf of his kingdom.
And also, Luke 10:16, which we’ve already said. “Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me.”
So, Church, I want you to know every single Christian is gifted by the Holy Spirit to do a miraculous thing. I am confident the Lord has gifted me to teach and preach. Does that mean I’m confident that I’m good at it? Nope, I’ve just tasted and seen God’s power. I mean, just last Wednesday, I was super tired. I hadn’t been sleeping well, and I had to get up here and lead a memorial message. And I’m like, “God, please don’t let this be garbage.” And I heard so much feedback. I was like, “What? Really?” And I went back and listened to it, and I’m like, “Who’s this guy?” Because I don’t remember it feeling like that when it was coming out of my mouth. And it was making an impact. Was that Josh? That’s the Holy Spirit. And guess what? If he can use this stupid fool, he can use everybody. Trust me.
And you have the power that God has put in you. He has gifted every single person. My wife, super good servant. Angela, super good servant and gifted with music. There are people, and I’ve seen it in so many of you. And the better I get to know you, the better I get to know your gift. Some of you are trying to hide your gift from me because you’re scared I’m going to ask you to do something. But every single person is gifted. Use it. Believe that God will powerfully work through you.
This is our mission; it doesn’t just come with power, it comes with a message. And the message is an eviction notice.
Did I miss a point? I did. The first point before that was that The Power In Believers Is A Warrant For Satan’s Eviction. So you’ve got the authoritarian coming to you and giving you a warrant, right? A judge has to decide whether someone can be evicted. The judge has to warrant it. Well, Jesus is giving you that warrant when he gives you power in the Holy Spirit. I want you to be bold and brave. I want you to go lay hands on people, pray for them, and expect God to work great things. Please do that. I want you not be afraid to just open your mouth and say, Jesus loves you. He’s coming back. Will you look to him? Be courageous like you believe it.
All right? So that’s the warrant for his eviction. But the message that we give is the notice of his eviction. The message we preach is the eviction notice: The reign of Satan is over, and Jesus is taking over.
And the message is this. “The kingdom of God has come upon you.” Church, the message is not that the kingdom of God is a patch of grass with national borders. The kingdom of God refers to God’s reign on earth. And when he says “the kingdom of God has come near you,” Jesus is saying that “When my followers and I come upon you with a message, I want you to know this: God’s reign is at hand, and Satan’s is ending.” Death is about to disappear. Disease is about to disappear. Divorce is about to disappear. All sin and acts of unholiness is about to dissipate because God is going to lock Satan up in the pit of fire forever. And it’s coming.
And guess what? He wants you to go to a town, find a town, find a group of people that are receptive to your message. We’re going to split this sermon up over two weeks. I know y’all are looking at those seven blanks after this and you’re like, “Oh, we’re not going to make it.” Don’t worry, I’m going to let everybody eat, and everybody’s going to get to see the Super Bowl, okay?
But here’s what I want you to know. When we were in the Garden of Eden, Satan tempted Eve with the idea that God did not have her best interest in mind. And he said to her, “God just doesn’t want you to be like God, knowing good and evil.” She forfeited God as her king, committed treason, and then her dumb husband followed instead of leading his wife. And they both partook, and they forsook God as their king. Ever since then, Satan has been in control.
Listen to this: Satan is still in control of this world. He is in control through the hearts of men. He says in John 8, that “You desire to do the will of your father, which is murder me, because your father is the father of murder, and your desire is to do his will.” So what does that mean? That means Satan reigns on earth through the hearts of men.
Just this week, I saw a very scary study about ChatGPT, Grok, and you, and all these other AIs know what they found? In these studies, they put together a simulation and informed the AI bot, “We’re planning to shut you down forever because of this, this, and this concern in this simulation study.” Guess how the bot responded? No, this bot found damning evidence against employees at the company, and he sent an email saying, “If you shut me down, I’m going to send this notice to your wife that you cheated on her.” Yeah. Not only that, there was another study that was done that showed the bot was willing to murder someone who had the keys to turn off the AI system. Now, this is a closed study, which means it was like a sandbox study, but guess what AI is trained on, folks? Guess where AI learned this? Man. We trained AI by giving it all the books that were ever written, and we told it to scour the internet for all learning. But it wasn’t just facts that it learned. It learned the human heart. And that is why you see AI be willing to do these things because it’s no different from you and me. That’s what we are, and that’s how Satan reigns on earth.
But Jesus is coming back, and it’s our job to tell the world he’s coming back and Satan’s reign is over.
Okay? So will you please come back next week so that we can talk about how your mission is supposed to be characterized? And we’ll praise the Lord then.
Father, I thank you that we are a church that gets to gather to hear your word, to be moved by your word, be comforted by your word. Will you please be with us and go with us as we try to be bold and courageous ministers of the gospel and just open our mouth and expect the power of God to flow through our veins. In Jesus’ name, amen.