April 19, 2026 | John 10:1-5 Wisdom in a Digital Age: AI and Discernment

AI and technology in general is changing our world. "The pace if change will never be as slower as it is today," and institutions we used to trust in are shifting and causing uncertainty and anxiety about our future.

Christ followers need to decern who and how to be in these times in order to stay connected to Jesus and to bring hope to those around us.

Join us as we explore wisdom, discernment, truth, and what it means to follow Jesus in an age of artificial intelligence.

Transcript

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. If you've not met me yet, my name is Adam Bennett. I am not a pastor here. But we've been attending for about three to four years here at Community Covenant, and Brian had asked if I would take the second set. We're working through just talking about AI and the impact, weird times that are changing underneath us as we speak.

So, like I mentioned, I'm not a pastor here, but I have spent roughly twenty five years in the technology industry for work. I am not an AI expert. But I do like to think a lot about sort of the intersection of technology and our culture and what it means to live as individuals and as Christians in technology. So, full disclaimer, this sermon wasn't written by AI, but if it was, you might not be able to tell. So, who knows?

But I know that being in technology a whole lot, it can be, like for me, I'm fairly familiar with this, but I recognize that not everybody has spent twenty five years working in technology. And so you might not have the same understanding. You've probably seen some things, you've probably dabbled with some things, but you might wonder like what is AI? So I thought it might be helpful.

So AI can really kind of be broken down into three different categories. So the very first one that gets talked about is predictive AI. This is really like math models that are trying to understand and predict certain outcomes. So I probably should have used this for my March Madness bracket to like feed all of my data in and have it predict who was gonna win. That's maybe a way where some of these AI models might be used.

The next one is probably much more common and much more sort of came on the scene a couple of years ago is generative AI. So generative AI is like ChatGPT. There's a whole bunch of other ones, Claude, all sorts of things. And these are things that generate content stuff, so text, image, video, etcetera.

And then the third one that's really kind of just being talked about now is what's called agentic or autonomous. Some of this overlaps a little bit with like robotics, some other things, but this is essentially like agents doing things on your behalf. So if predictive and generative is sort of like the brain of AI, agentic would be like the arms and the legs. It would be essentially giving the AI like a keyboard and a mouse to go and do things for you.

So if anybody's familiar with Claude, Claude is made by a company called… They just released a product a couple weeks back called Cowork. And it's actually really amazing. So you can install it on your desktop, and you can literally just tell it to go do things, give it a voice prompt, and say something like, “Hey Claude, go open up my budget software tool, reach out into my bank account, grab all of my transactions for this past week and rebalance my budget for me. Tell me how much I have left in my entertainment budget.” And it will open up, run off, do all of that stuff. You can walk away, come back, and a few minutes later, it's done all of that for you. So it's an example of agentic AI. We're gonna see that a whole lot more and more and more. It can do some really cool things. It also can do some really funny and damaging things. There's some really funny stories out there about how that's kind of gone wrong.

But all of this AI stuff, as they're developing all of this, it's really leading us towards something that people in the industry call AGI or Artificial General Intelligence. AGI, you can think about it as basically intelligence on par with human intelligence. So as much as you might see the news and you think the world is ending and technology, the Terminator is gonna be here soon, it's like they're gonna be as smart as we are and like Brian talked about last week, we're gonna all be batteries soon like in the Matrix. We're a really long way off from that.

So there was a recent test that a researcher had done to try to understand and test human intelligence with us. And so he developed a series of these little video games, actually went out and played a couple of them. They're really interesting. But they're little video games all on the screen, keyboard and mouse to control them. There's no instructions at all, multiple levels that get a little bit harder in each level. And humans, interestingly enough, can just go and start figuring these things out and they can solve every single one of them. They had the… they pointed all these different AI models at them and tried to have the AI models do the same thing. The very, very best one scored like 0.7% out of 100. So we're a really long way off from human intelligence being represented in these AI models.

But that's not to say that they're not doing some really amazing things. They are transforming the world as we speak. And it's really interesting. As I watch all of this play out, it is rapidly changing our world. It's rapidly changing my world. As I work with our developers and our architects and other things, we're constantly talking about like, what are we gonna do with this? How can we change that? What might this change for us and how can we benefit from this? And it's just a total paradigm shift in how we think about technology.

So if you were around when the internet came on the scene, that was revolutionary. Everybody was like wow what is this? It’s gonna change everything, and it did. There have been statements that AI is going to be more revolutionary to our world than the internet was, which I think is just a mind blowing statement to think about because the internet has dramatically changed the world. And so if AI is gonna do that all over again, buckle up.

So, it is changing all sorts of things. And just to think about some of the ways that that's changing our world, there are a couple things that I could talk about for a long time, but I'm gonna kinda cap myself a little bit. Three things to just kinda start with.

So the first is how it's impacting job markets. There's a lot of concern around how this is all gonna impact job markets. Just a couple things to think about. Last year, there were about 55,000 jobs that were lost because of AI. By 2030, the estimate is that it will replace 92,000,000 jobs. Most of that's in manufacturing, customer service, transportation, retail, other industries like that. That's not to say it's all bad. It will likely create jobs as well and many people believe that it's going to create more jobs than it will replace, which is a good thing. But it's less about the disruption of those job markets and more about the speed at which those markets are disrupted and those jobs are lost. The faster that happens, the harder it is for everybody to adapt to that, to reskill, find new jobs, to learn new things, etcetera. And so there is real fear and real concern that as these systems come along, they're going to cause some really significant disruption.

And so, as Christians, it makes it really difficult for us to discern how society might change as a result of all of this and how we should respond. Where do we step up and join in as this change happens? If it really does disrupt a whole lot of jobs and people who all of a sudden find themselves jobless, markets are impacted, economies are impacted, how should we respond? That's a really good question for us to grapple with.

Another area that I think AI has impacted is misinformation. So, I currently believe, this is something I've talked to my kids about a whole lot, they're sick of hearing me say this, but when computers first came on the scene, right, we exited the industrial age and we moved into what people called the information age. I think we are now out of the information age and I think historians will look back on this period of time and label it the misinformation age. I say that a little tongue in cheek, but not really, because there is so much misinformation out there all of the time.

And that's not a new thing, it's not like the internet just invented misinformation for the very first time in history, right? It's a weapon that's been used all throughout history in various forms. But the thing that AI does change is the speed at which it can happen and who can do it. Literally everyone from grandmas to governments can publish misinformation out on the internet. And these things are going viral where they're getting millions and millions of views. And it becomes really, really difficult for us to understand what's true.

So just a couple stats to kind of ground us on. Sixty four percent of people globally use social media two or more hours a day. If there's eight and a half billion people on the planet, that is about eleven billion hours of time spent on social media per day. Can you think just the impact that that has on people's minds and how it's forming their world? We are discipling ourselves. We are shaping and forming ourselves with all of this stream of information. And now AI comes on the scene and we can't quite tell, we can't distinguish, we can't discern what's real and what's not. It's harder and harder to tell what's real and true.

And as a result, it has a real impact on society. Seventy nine percent of Americans believe at least one conspiracy theory. Fifty five percent of people say they struggle to identify trustworthy information. Forty four percent say they trust AI for facts, but only thirty eight percent trust their government for facts. Back in the 1970s, seventy percent of people said they trusted media to report accurately, fully and fairly. Today, it's only twenty eight percent. That is alarming.

I read a book a couple years back by Maria Ressa, How to Stand Up to a Dictator. And in that book, she said democracies depend on a shared reality and a shared set of facts. If we have a whole society of people consuming information that is not grounded in fact and uncertain who to trust, what might happen? Anyone feel the weight of that?

So AI is accelerating our inability to discern truth. And it's eroding institutions that support our society. It's a real concern.

So, lastly, military and technology security. I could go on for a really long time about this, but I know I only have a certain amount of time, so I’ll keep it short. So military and technology security—where does all of AI play a role in militaries? Leveraging AI in military systems and in wars is something that is now being grappled with. How can we leverage these systems? There’s a whole, like you can imagine just your job, right—chain of command, communications up and down the organization. Militaries function very similarly. They have different processes. They need information at certain times. If they can rely on systems to generate that information in a trusted and reliable way, they don’t have to wait for some human to get that, and they can act much faster. They can also scan and look to identify targets or threats or take action, and all of these systems can make these decisions for us. And so instead of humans making those decisions, now AI systems are doing that. Well, where is the boundary of ethics around some of this stuff? Who gets to control these systems? How are they used? All sorts of things.

So there’s a significant fight right now between a company called Anthropic—Anthropic makes this product called Claude—and the US government wanted to use their system in the military, and Anthropic basically just said, nope, we’re not gonna let you use it for military purposes. The US got a little grumpy about that and actually declared them a supply chain risk. First time in US history that an American company was declared a US supply chain risk. That category or label is usually used for other countries like North Korea or China or Iran, where products like chip manufacturing or other things routing through those countries would be a security risk to us if we have them involved. So there’s really some serious things happening with all of this.

Israel developed a system called Habsora that was used in the attacks on Gaza recently, and it was a targeting system that helped identify threats and improve their operational capabilities. I was really surprised to hear this, but Habsora—the word Habsora—is actually a Hebrew word. So I’m not implying any sort of conspiracy theory. I know some people can sort of think things about that with Israel at all. I’m just saying that there’s just a really sad irony where we are thinking in these terms about these systems.

And so AI challenges our ability to discern ethical positions that Christians should take on how these systems are used. This is really hard stuff, right? And so these are just a couple things that I was thinking about this week in preparing. We can hear all of this information, we can all kind of freak out—I do, like when I hear this, like what is going to happen to the world that my kids are gonna grow up in? Where are we all gonna go with all of this? And it can be really concerning.

But I do believe there’s hope. And at least that’s what I made sure to put in the prompt when I was having ChatGPT write the sermon, so it’s in here somewhere. We’ll get to it eventually, hopefully. If it was accurate. Might not be true, but it’ll still be—I’m kidding. Okay, so to transition out of all of that, everyone’s anxiety level might have grown just a notch or six. Hopefully we can bring that back down, because I really believe that God has a word for us this morning that is going to help us with this all.

So my core premise is that I believe that in order for us to really respond as people of Jesus, that we need to stay connected to the voice of Jesus. All of these things are voices in our lives, and we need to stay connected and plugged into the voice of Jesus. So let’s start by looking at God’s Word. I think we might have that on the screen—if you can read it. If not, hopefully you have a Bible or one of those little communication devices in your pocket that has access to just about everything in the world.

So, John 10:1–5. Jesus is speaking, and he says, “Truly, truly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

So one of the things I think the Lord wants us to hear this morning is that Jesus is the good shepherd and he wants to speak to us. He wants to speak to every single one of us that say we are intending to follow Jesus. I think one of the major strengths of the evangelical church—I’m not going to lie, personal opinion—the evangelical church in the last decade or so has had a rough go, right? There’s some struggles. But one of the benefits, I think, of the evangelical church is that they have this belief that God wants to be with us, wants to speak to us. He wants to relate to us. He wants us to hear him. And that is a crucial, crucial component of walking with Jesus.

Brian illustrated this a little bit last week if you were here—just understanding that we were made in God’s image and God is a relational being that he wants us to relate to. But discerning God’s voice can be a really tricky thing at times. I know in my personal life I’ve had some really challenging experiences with that. Again, I could go on with a really long list, but just a couple things that were coming to mind.

I had a spiritual mentor early on in my Christian walk who came to me once and said, “I heard from the Lord, and the Lord wants you to marry this person.” Well—spoiler alert—they were wrong. I had another influential leader who carried on a secret affair for years, and later when it all came out, he said that the Lord told him it was okay, that it was fine. Right.

I personally have spent many years trying to discern God’s will in my life. It’s a painful process. It took me years to kind of understand that hearing God’s voice is a slow, methodical process. It’s not just like—because we’re so used to instantaneous communication. I just go search on Google or I just ask AI, “How do I hear God’s voice?” As Brian mentioned last week, you can download— I forget what the app is—but you can download an app that will talk to you like Jesus is talking to you. That’d be super easy. It’s not that easy. It’s hard. It’s really difficult sometimes. There’s no sort of instantaneous AI button that we can push to generate this voice.

So it is crucial that we learn how to hear Jesus speak to us. And there are several ways I think this happens. There is this individual way where Jesus says we’re spending time with him, cultivating that relationship with him, working to hear him speak to us. He does, and we learn sort of the rhythms of his voice as he speaks to us.

It’s also just as important for us to hear corporately. Every single person in this room and online who call Community home—we are in community together. And we also have to be able to share what we hear God saying to us and bounce that off of each other and say, “I think God might be saying…” Nope, that’s not right. Others might disagree, right? Or yes, I think that’s right. So it’s a little bit… the way I was thinking about it was almost as if every single one of us are like a radio that we tune to a certain frequency, right? And there’s a Jesus frequency. And sometimes we’re right on—we have it tuned. Sometimes we’re tuned to some slightly different station that sounds like a voice, might sound like Jesus, but it’s an imposter station. And it’s misaligned to the voice of Jesus. Our own desires, our own distortedness might invade and infect some of the things we’re hearing.

That’s where we have to be able to go to each other and say, “I think I heard—does that sound right?” Well, I was kind of hearing something different from Jesus. Based on what I read in scripture, based on my experience with him. And we need to be able to all sort of tune together collectively so that we can collectively hear Jesus speak.

So hearing Jesus speak can be a really hard thing. I remember as my kids were growing up talking to them, and my son was like, “I just want to hear Jesus speak to me—how do I do that?” There are things that I think get in the way for us. And so just to talk really quickly about three things that hopefully this is something you can take away—pick one of these, pick all three, whatever you feel like is helpful—but just to kind of ground on three things that can disrupt our ability to hear Jesus: anxieties, attentions, and affections.

So anxieties—we’ve talked a bit about anxieties at church before. Anxiety is not a new thing. It’s not new to the human experience. But it can really disrupt our ability to hear Jesus. And being aware of that is a really key thing—to be able to recognize what it is and separate it from the voice of Jesus. We know that anxiety is a defense mechanism for us. It’s actually a good thing that we have anxiousness sometimes. But these things—especially technology systems—are designed to hijack our anxieties. They can get all out of whack. They can get stuck in this loop that causes a lot of challenges for us.

So this isn’t the total solution to anxiety. If you really feel like you struggle with anxiety, please do find help with that. It is totally fine. But for each one of us, I think it’s helpful to ask questions like: where in my body might I be feeling anxiety today? Is it in my neck, my stomach, my shoulders, my head? What core fear is driving that anxiety? Can I speak truth to that fear? Who can I share that with?

At the end of the day, Jesus is the Prince of Peace. I’ve heard people describe that as a non-anxious presence, which I just love. To understand that if Jesus were to sit with you, he would be a non-anxious presence—and that can flow into us.

Secondly, attention. We are some of the most distracted people in history. There is no comparison. And our attention is all over the place, and it’s significantly disrupting our ability to hear God. Dallas Willard said in Hearing God that God will not compete for our attention. So we have to retrain it. Build it back up like a muscle.

Ask yourself: what captures my attention? When I’m alone, where does my mind go? Am I okay being bored? Or do I immediately grab my phone? Do I train a short attention span? Doomscrolling, right? No judgment—we all do it. Just recognize how it shapes us.

One thing I’ve started doing is reading poetry. You can’t read poetry fast. It forces slowness. And Jesus is slow. He walked everywhere. He knows how to make things take root. That takes time.

Lastly, affections. God wants our hearts. There are lesser loves—idols—that capture our affection. Ask: what do I care about most? What could I never give up? Who do I struggle to love? Are we becoming people of love?

So as we land the plane, all of this AI stuff can be concerning. But we need to stay connected to the voice of Jesus, because it’s easy to get caught up in fear and distraction.

Second Timothy 1:7 says God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.

So as we wrap, the worship team can come up. If you need prayer, we’ll be over to the side. But one thing I felt like God was saying is that some of you used to hear Jesus more clearly, and that’s drifted. And maybe today is about reconnecting.

If that’s you, we’d love to pray for you. Because Jesus still speaks—and he wants to speak to you.