Not New Things (Issues Facing the Church) - Part 4

So, I don't have a passage for you as this series has not been expository, but it is part 4 in a 5-part series. Next week is going to be a little more of the same as this week, but the difference is, is I'm going to try to make next week some application, some ways of using the information that I've been trying to give you. I know it's way more like a lecture than it is like a sermon. A big part of it is to keep myself accountable, to be commenting on things that are indeed affecting what I'm gonna keep calling the conservative church.

I know that habit is, is when we, as conservatives, fundamentalists, people who have held to these conservative doctrines, and we have a conservative style of worship and style of church, that over the years there has been a sort of an us-and-them mentality between us and the church growth movements and the liberal movements and the modern evangelical movements. And typically we are trying to tell the truth about such things. The ecumenical movement, where churches are joining together with false teachings and things like that. So there is that pressure to make sure and maintain biblical separation. All of that's true. But in this case, this whole series is not about what's going on out there. It is about things that are happening that are creeping into theologically sound conservative churches.

Denominational movements, the more conservative ones in the Reformed movement, uh, and more conservative ones, and even like the Southern Baptist Convention and things like that. Um, there— if you didn't know, there's a whole sort of sub-movement in Southern Baptist, uh, called the Founders Movement. They're solid, they're solid, they're Calvinistic, they hold to real solid doctrines and things like that. So there's big groups of solid theological churches, and these things I'm talking about are not things that are happening out there. They're things that are happening out there, but they're creeping into here. They're things that the conservative church is sort of responding to in a friendly way, rather than what they would have done in the past by hindering or pushing them, keeping them out.

I've said it before, and I don't mind repeating it. I'm going to repeat this thought over and over again, because I'd like you to adopt it. I would like you to take this thought with you. And that's the thought that the— The world is never arguing amongst itself that it's too churchy. Do you ever notice that? Like, there's nobody— nobody in the world is saying that their songs are not Christian enough. Nobody in the world is saying their social gatherings are not churchy enough. They're not— the world isn't trying to be like us at all, right? The world is not envious of what we have as Christians at all. It's not trying to adopt what we have. It's not trying to reflect it. It doesn't even have its own version of it. Right? Like, there's a lot of churches that have versions of the world's things, but you don't see the world mirroring that and trying to be like us.

And that tells you something, by the way. That tells you something. It tells you, first of all, that we might be old-fashioned and boring and all the things they don't want to be, but it also could tell you that we're right, that people don't want what we have because it's right and good. It's not gross and vile the way things in the world are. And so For some reason, I don't think we maybe see— you know this is true. We've said this before, that people often don't know that they're in history when they're in it. Have you ever heard the analogy of the frog boiled in oil or in water? Did you know that the foundation of that experiment had to do with a frog that didn't have its brain? That the frog that is the first frog that was boiled in water that didn't jump out of the pot, it didn't have a brain. The whole point of the experiment was to see if it was a reflex of the body of the frog and whether it would respond to the hot water and jump out. So first of all, crazy experiment. And funny that we would say, yeah, you know, a frog, it'll just die if it's boiled in water. It'll die. It'll be boiled alive. It'll just stay there and not jump out. Well, of course it will if it doesn't have a brain. No one ever talked about that part, that it didn't have a brain.

But there were further experiments after that where in early experiments it was true that a frog would. Stay. As long as the temperature rise was slow enough, it would boil to death. But I will tell you this, modern science says that's faulty science and says it's all not true. That it isn't, in fact, true. That a frog will move its environment if it can. If it's able to move to safety, it will. So God created it to try to stay alive. The point I'm making is, of course, you know the analogy. But I often like looking at the source of the analogy to see if we should be using the that analogy, if it's a good analogy. And in that case, the frog didn't have a brain. Of course it's going to stay in the boiling water. But we do know the analogy and the metaphor. We all know it, or should know it, which is we can get complacent. We can find ourselves being taken away with the things of the day and not even know that we're doing it. We might not know that there are things happening in the world influencing the Church that we are going along with. We might be unwitting participants to bad movements, to The things that we should be more attentive to and paying attention as to whether they're biblical or not.

So whole movements out there that are happening, things. And today I'm going to talk about social media a lot. That's the primary thrust of this evening's message and what it is and how it is working and what's happening with it and the way Christians should be thinking about it to some degree to just at least know, even if you don't change anything, but just to know, to be aware of some of the dangers related to it.

And so the question will be simply, I ask now, what voices are the loudest? In our lives. Who has our attention? Who are we listening to? Is it Scripture? Is it good theology? Is it good churches? Is it something where we're getting out of the Bible what we're supposed to be getting out of to get the data we need for life? Or are we just taking in all of the data that's out there? And in particular, we'll look at social media tonight. And then the last part of tonight's message, I'm gonna kinda rush through except for the very last point, and then I'm gonna reiterate those things with application next time.

So let's pray and we'll dig in. Father, we do ask that even though this is not an expository message— I'm more comfortable in expository preaching and going through each verse of the Bible— I do think these things are needed, at least even if we can just put them in our minds so that we're thinking about them, so that we're not mindless and not being carried away by things just because they're happening around us, that we're not— we don't lack diligence, that we stay sharp the way Peter tells us to, because the devil is seeking whom he may devour. We'd ask, Father, that we would be on guard. So tonight isn't necessarily an imperative type or prescriptive type message. It's more descriptive— what's going on out there— and that we're aware of it, that we're careful not to just be taken away by what's going on in our world. So help us be alert and sharp and only use things the way you would have us use them that would glorify you. And we'll thank you for it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Now, you, most of you know, I think all of you know that I am not officially on what would be considered social media. I've never had a Facebook account. I've never, I don't do X. I don't do TikTok. I don't do those things. And for lots of reasons, but one of the major reasons is, will be some of the things I'm saying here. But I do want you to know that while there is no doubt some level of confirmation bias in my talking. Like, I'll talk— I talk often about alcohol, right? That I am a teetotaler, right? I'm a complete abstentionist who believes it's probably never good for Christians to drink alcohol. But I know that that is not the only acceptable view on alcohol. I know that other people have different views and can defend those views. I just say it so that you know where I'm coming from. This is like that.

If you use social media, I'm not telling you to stop. That's up to you. You're free. I believe in individual soul liberty. You can do whatever you want. But I do want you to know, especially you who are conservative responsible Christians, that when I'm talking about the effect of social media on the church, I'm not talking about looking at pictures of your grandkids on Facebook. That is not what the world is doing with social media. That's not what's happening out there. Full-on theological, philosophical, fundamental, ethical battles are happening on social media. And people are being swept away in all manner of contradiction and conspiracy. It is wild out there. I mean, it is like the Wild West out there with philosophy and paradigms and the way people think.

So it is not you posting a cute picture with you and a butterfly. Yeah, do whatever you want with social media if you're just taking a picture of the bread you baked. Hallelujah. Put the best-looking bread with all the filters you can and make it look great on the internet. That is not what I'm talking about. If you use the internet that way, hallelujah. That is not what we're talking about. I'm going to say things that might shock you tonight with the internet. It's shocking. And by the way, I'm going to say things tonight and right now, and even in this first point, that as I say them, I have personal experience of counseling people who have been affected in these ways. These things happen, and they happen often quietly because social media seems public, but it isn't. It's things that people do in private that are often terrible. And so as we get rolling and we talk about these things, I do want you to know, of course I have my biases, but I don't want you to think it is only my biases talking. I know where my biases are. I don't mind telling you I have them. These are things that are actually happening in the world and affecting the church in negative ways, measurable ways, ways where I'm not the only one saying these things.

So, one thing I've never heard is I've never heard somebody say, "You know, after long and lengthy arguments on Facebook, I now think like you do. You changed my mind. I think like you do now. I'm going to start posting the same thing you're— I'm going to start posting your opinion." On Twitter battles, going back and forth, I watched the whole thing, especially like after the Charlie Kirk thing, like just watching the gross, disgusting, terrible so-called dialogue that was not dialogue at all, wishing people death and everything else. And do you think that any one side convinced anybody from the other side?

So I'm saying out of the gate that what you might be thinking about social media being social, it's not that social. Because the word social, society and social, by definition means support. It means compassion. It means connection. And we got the idea by— that social media was going to connect us, like those people who take pictures with their grandkids or sending pictures to their neighbors or somebody who's traveling, right? That's the idea. It's like we're still being social. But I do want to say a couple of things. Like, for example, maybe you've never heard of Dunbar's rules of numbers, where you will only— in theory, you're only capable— humans are only capable of having 5 intimate relationships, 15 close relationships, 50 good relationships, and 150 meaningful acquaintances. The idea being there is that we are literally, according to Dunbar and the studies done, we are literally incapable of actually being in social relationships with more than 150 people. And if you want to go biblical, you might say we're not designed to be in relationship with more than 150 people. But how— what does social media do? What are social media influencers asking you for? Like and subscribe. Subscribe to my channel, sign up to my Patreon. They have a million followers and we all think, oh, that's great that they have a million followers. It's called social media. What do you think of when you think of media? Think, what is NBC? What is CNN? What is Fox? What is MSNBC? Those are all media networks, right? They're media networks who broadcast or promote their specific agenda. That is also what social media is. It is little individual networks broadcasting an individual's agenda.

Does that sound social? If we talked about coming to church and you come to church and just sell everybody at church on the things that are going on with you in your life, if that's all you did, you came to church and you said, "Let me tell you, these are the things. Little Johnny's starting kindergarten and Sally's doing soccer now. And let me tell you about the new car I bought. You see the rims? I got new rims on it." If that's all you did at church, would you find that to be meaningfully social? Then why do we consider it out on the internet to be social in a meaningful way? We're out there broadcasting our brand, the brand Johnny with a little trademark symbol. I don't— not me, I'm not on social media, but I still do. I still brand. I still am out there branding other things. So I'm saying it to you that it's called social, but social means by definition something where there is an actual connection. There's something— is an actual human interaction, even the opportunity to support and show compassion. That's what the word means. That's what society used to mean. But now with social media, we've lost that.

I'm going to read something to you from a medical journal. Social media use by minors has significantly, significantly increased and has been linked to depression and suicidality. Simultaneously, age-adjusted suicide rates have steadily increased over the past decade in the United States. With suicide being the second most common cause of death in youth. So in the United States, suicide is the second leading cause of death in young people. Hence, the increase in suicide rate parallels the simultaneous increase in social media use. The connection is undeniable. I didn't even mention the studies I saw with young girls on social media, teenage girls, high— junior high-aged girls killing themselves because of things said to and about them on social media. So instead of connection and compassion and support, it has turned into what we know sinners can do with any sort of opportunity. So it's not social. Whatever it is, it shouldn't be called social. It should be called something else. It should be called promotion media or something because it isn't promoting the real definition of social.

It also might not be thoughtful. And when I say thoughtful, I don't mean like instead of thoughtful it's mean or not nice. That's not what I mean. I mean it's not It doesn't use thought. Social media doesn't promote thought and deep connection in meditation. Psalm 77 says, "I will also meditate on all Your work and talk of Your deeds." So the psalmist says, "That's what I'm going to think about. I'm going to think about Your work and I'm going to think about Your deeds." Psalm 119, you know that psalm that has some reference to Scripture and God's commandments in every single verse, the psalmist says, "I will meditate on Your precepts." and contemplate your ways. So the principle of the Scripture is to be meditating on God's things. So if you think about it, what are the things we're supposed to meditate on day and night? And I'll just ask you plainly and pointedly, is that what social media is offering you? Is social media offering you thought on God's things with deep meditation where you consider God's things, you internalize God's things, you're hiding his word in your heart, You're thinking of Him. You're thinking of His precepts?

If you haven't read the Puritans— I know a lot of people do like them. I don't read the Puritans a lot because of the history related to Puritans. But man, if you read the Puritans, they'll write 20 pages on 2 words to get you to just stew on those words, to chew on them, to meditate on them. Like, he's not a Puritan, but Martyn Lloyd-Jones, you know that name? He preached something like 6 weeks on the 2 words, "But God." And you say, "Well, no, that's overboard." No, I'm talking about real digestion of God's things, real intentional meditation on God's things. Social media does not help with thoughtfulness. It actually helps with thoughtlessness, amusement, getting your thoughts in a million different directions so that you're not ever really focused on those things. And you can argue with me if you want. You can tell me that you didn't watch 42 cat videos. You can try to tell me that you didn't scroll fishing poles for 2 hours. You can try to tell me, but people tell me all the time. I know what's happening.

By the way, you know what's happening too by whatever you're seeing all the time in your scrolling. You need to know that 75% of what you see on any social media platform, all of them— TikTok, YouTube, all of them— 75% of what you see and you have looked at is suggested to you by algorithms. And I don't just mean the things you didn't search out. I mean the algorithm knows what you want to see and offers you what you want to see. So if you ever complain about what you're seeing on social media, I'll just tell you frankly, it's your fault. Social media is giving you what you want. And it knows what you want by what— this is so crazy. They have it down to the millisecond in scrolling. Let's say you're scrolling X or Twitter, whatever you want to call it, or TikTok. They're all the same. They all have the infinite scroll built in. And in that scrolling, they literally measure the number of milliseconds you are— even in your scroll, they know how fast you're scrolling. So if you scroll fast, They don't feed you whatever you just scrolled fast through again. But if you scroll slow, even if you're scrolling, oh, they slowed down their scroll right here. Oh, they stopped here for 8 milliseconds. Feed them more of that. It's measuring your eyeballs. It's measuring your habits. And so it's going to feed you what you want.

Now the question is, if you're a Christian and you want to contemplate and meditate on the Word of God, is it slowing down on verses and showing you more verses, more gospel passages? More Psalms. If it's not giving you that, it's because it knows you don't want that. So please be careful. Please. It takes away the thinking aspect of our life. Christians are supposed to be meditating on God's things. Our world doesn't offer meditation. Everything in our world is moving fast and chaotically. And social media gets us in the idea that we don't have to stop and think and consider things, meditate on things.

It's also not the best medium for communication. I have the Galatians passage here. It's not the best passage, but I do want to suggest— I'll just ask you rhetorically, you can think about it on your own, is what you have seen on the internet in general, not the things you seek out, okay? I'm not talking about if you want to look up what a theologian says about something, or you're looking for a specific passage preached, or— I'm not talking about a Christian that goes and willfully, carefully, mindfully searches out Christian things. That's not what I mean. I'm talking about social media in general. If you open YouTube's homepage, if you open whatever your Google homepage or whatever news or whatever you open up, I'm gonna ask you, do you get the idea that— I'll read the fruit of the Spirit. When you open social media, does it promote love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? Is that what the media is jamming down our throats? Or is it more like fornication, adultery, lewdness, hatred, Sorcery, contentions. Do you understand that the division in our country right now between left and right is by design? It didn't happen by accident. It wasn't that people all of a sudden decided to be on a 50% tribe. It didn't happen that way. It happened through these kind of things, by design, with social engineering, so that we would continue to scroll what we want to believe. It's literally designed by that.

I'm going to do something very rare right now, okay? I'm only going to do this once. You can ask me privately again, but I'll try never to do it again from the pulpit. I don't think I've ever recommended a motion picture from the pulpit or a documentary. I talk about Star Wars, but I've never told you to watch it, okay? There's a documentary called The Social Dilemma. It was out a few years ago. I'm not telling you to watch it, but I am telling you it is extremely informative and eye-opening. And the main people being interviewed in it all were involved in the formation of what we now know as social media. That infinite scroll that I'm talking about, that infinite scroll, the guy that invented that is in that documentary. And what you hear from all those inventors and people that are at the foundational levels of social media, they all say, our kids don't use social media. We would never let our kids use social media. They're all regretting. There's a couple of guys that have started companies to try to undo the things that they engineered into social media. Because they see the harm that it has caused in culture and they feel regret for it.

So please take that for what it's worth. Ask yourself if good things are coming into your life. Ask yourself if you're being responsible. For example, you spend $1,000 on a phone. Shouldn't you know what it can do? Would you as a parent hand your child a loaded gun and say, "Go figure it out"? Do you know how much evil happens because of a $1,000 phone? Do you know how many adulterous relationships started on a $1,000 phone. Do you know how many pornography addictions started on a $1,000 phone? That nobody— the Apple Store didn't tell you, please be careful. Even though there's an app on your phone that tells you, warns of your screen time usage, you literally have regulation in the phone itself that gives you the opportunity, if you choose, to tell you you're looking at social media too much. Like, they know that it's a problem, but they won't come right out and say, hey, just so you know, this thing has the potential to ruin lives.

Now, yes, there's sermons. Yes, there's good things on there, podcasts on there. Yes, there's hobbies, wonderful things you can look for. On there, like how this guitar was designed by who. Yes, there's good things on there. Of course there is. I'm not telling you to completely unplug your life and move to the mountains, unless you want to. But I am telling you, they don't come with instructions. And nobody's warning. Nobody's saying it. And I'm trying to do that here now.

If you want to do an experiment, you can do this. I have done this. I did it especially during— right after— well, during and after COVID. I went a bunch of weeks where every day I would screen grab. If you don't know what that means, it's like just take a picture of whatever's on the screen. I would screen grab the news headlines and then just save it. So every day I was doing it. Open my computer, go to the news page, screen grab. And I did it and did it and did it. And then I got tired of doing it. I was going to do it for a long time. Like I had a plan. I'm going to do this for a year so that I could show somebody. I want to— on the anniversary of this day, I want to go back 1 year ago and look at this day a year ago and see what was in the news headline to show you We actually don't care about it. We only care about it for the 15 seconds we're looking at it, and then we cry about it, and then we yell about it on the internet, and then the next day it's something else. But I don't have to do that. I can ask you, how are you feeling about Venezuela right now? You really upset right now that the Special Forces went and got that leader and took down the regime of Venezuela Maduro? Isn't that really— does that really bother you right now? No, it's not in the news. When's the last time you saw the shooting in Minneapolis and the ICE and The protests, where did that go? Hey, where's the Free Palestine protests? Where did those go? Those were all the headlines in the last months and they're gone now. And I'm telling you, whatever's in the headline right now, Iran today, whatever's in the headlines right now, in 3 weeks, 4 weeks, we're not going to care about it.

Now I'm asking you, are you able now to choose right now not to care about it instead of having to wait for it to disappear and then get roped into the next thing? These things are by design to get our attention. To pull us in. It's not a good form of mediating. And that's what media means. Media is something used to mediate. And I'm asking you, what is the mediator doing? What is Twitter doing? What is news doing? What is Fox doing? What are they mediating? There's somebody on the other side that is mediating between them and us. And what are they mediating? They're getting our eyeballs so that we can see all the advertisers for those people paying for the advertisement. And what are those people getting out of the deal? They get our eyeballs. But what are we getting out of the deal? Something today that'll change next week, that won't be important next week. It'll go away quickly. Not that it isn't important, by the way.

It is important what's happening in Iran. It is important what happened in Minneapolis. Those are important things. It's things we should care about. But we're not being helped caring about them by the media. It's too ADHD. It's too attention deficit hyperactive disorder for social media. It's feeding us what we desire because the algorithm says so.

And now I'm trying to tell you the things it's feeding us are man-made things. And I'll just go all the way and say flesh-related things, the works of the flesh, not the things of God. And if somebody is trying to jam things into your eyeballs that are not the things of God, the very least we can do is have our guard up and be vigilant and be sharp and not just go be passive and say, that's okay, that's okay, that's okay, that's okay that I learn what's going on and who hates Trump today and who Who is bombing who today?

It can be really hard to keep up if you haven't figured that out. And I haven't even talked yet about theology, because all of that same stuff I'm telling you is happening doctrinally too. It's happening with denominations. It's happening with words like we looked at last time, attraction versus desire, movements happening within the Christian community. All that same chaos and noise that's going on out there, all the same scrolling is done by Christians about Christian things.

And I can tell you, some of you have experienced it. You've experienced, "Hey, PJ, have you heard about the..." The answer to that's going to be no. Okay, I'll just warn you in advance. It isn't because I'm ignorant. It's because I don't spend time looking at the... because I know that in 2 weeks you won't care about the... and neither will I. I just want to apply the Word of God to the things of the day. It doesn't mean I've disengaged. It doesn't mean I don't care.

I still look at the news every day, if you care how I look at the news. I have 5 sources of news, all from different sort of backgrounds and priorities, conservative, liberal, Christian, like Newsmax, you've heard of them if you haven't, Ground News, right? I have all of those so that I open every one of those up and I see what everybody's saying and I notice how they contradict each other. And I usually assume I'm probably gonna be somewhere in the middle of those two, right? And what I think about things.

And if it does impact us as Christians, if it's moral, if you hear that there's moral judgments happening or decisions on ethical issues like abortion or trans or attacks on marriage and the family, I'm looking at those. Okay, I'm paying attention to those things. Homeschooling, all those things, I'm attentive to that kind of thing. But as far as who is married to who and who's cursing the president today, yeah, you can have that. I'm not only not doing that, I don't want to do it because it makes me angry. It's not good for the blood pressure to get involved in those things.

So I'm going to suggest to you that you can see in your notes that social media has become antisocial and in the worst way. I mean antisocial in an unbiblical way. Antisocial as in draws us out of the actual social, which is what I think God intended, which is congregational connection. Connection with Christians, connection with people, connection with our neighbors.

I had a really neat thing happen. Some of you know I shop at this auction in town. Don't ask me the name of it because you'll hate it. Hate me if you start shopping there because you get crazy good deals. Got a weed eater for $6. I mean, I don't have enough garage space for how awesome that auction is. But one of the things I bought was this foam topper for a mattress. And I actually bought 2 of them, but the second one I bought on accident. I just bid on it because there were 2 of them. And I bid like $1.50 on it. And I didn't know that it was new, $200, right? But we won it. And now I have 2, and I don't need the second one.

So I'm trying to ask my neighbor if he wants it so I don't have to throw it away, right? Trying to figure out what to do with it. So his daughter called today because I texted his older daughter and then I texted him, but he doesn't speak English hardly at all. So today I see his number on my phone and he's never called me. I've got texts, but I've never gotten a phone call. I'm like, oh no, something's wrong with the neighbor's house. Like maybe he needs me to go over and help him, you know. That's what I thought. Like maybe the family's in trouble or something.

So I answer the phone. Hello, hello, hola. You know, I'm trying to say, ¿qué onda? Like, what's up? I'm trying to talk to him in my terrible Spanish. And it was his daughter saying, "Do you still have the mattress thing? My dad was— he wanted to take it if you still had it." And I just thought, that's how it's supposed to work. Neighbors looking out for each other, talking to each other, giving each other stuff. Like, we're losing that as a culture of just loving your neighbor.

Like when Serge gets all that food, whenever I'll take extra and go give it to my neighbors, I love it every time. I always give— credit where it's due, that it came from a ministry and came from my friend and it came from the church. But it's always neat to be able to just go knock on the door and say, "I have this for you. You know, I want to share this with you," and give a good testimony of our church.

Just that— that is social. What I just described to you with my friend is social. What I described to you with my neighbor across the street, that's social. Taking a picture with my duck lips out and taking a picture and posting that on the internet, that's not social. It's antisocial. It's not real. So please don't fall for it. And if you're gonna use social media, please use it well. Use it correctly. Use it like a Christian. Do with social media what I just tried to describe for you I'm doing with my next-door neighbor. Be a person on social media. Be careful though, because you'll— people will attack that.

What I've been calling it lately is electronic Gnosticism. And what I mean by that is in the Gnostic world back in the day, the physical was considered evil. Anything physical was considered evil. Flesh was evil. The physical world was evil. And only the enlightened people could rise beyond the physical and have enlightenment and be truly enlightened and spiritual only. To the point where the Gnosticism had affected the church to where there was a heresy related to Jesus not ever being physical. Docetism. It was just that he appeared to be physical, but he wasn't really physical. Why would— how could he be physical if the physical is evil? Evil.

Well, guess what? We have some version of that now, which is we don't have any real contact with humans anymore where we help anybody. See someone in need to help push their car to get them off the side of the road and look out for people. So you have a real opportunity, I think, as Christians to stand out and be the neighbor that you can be, to love your neighbor and give a good testimony of the Lord instead of letting the way the world is doing it out there and thinking that we're being social because we read somebody's post on the internet, that that is social, that that is real, that we connect with each other and meaningfully interact with each other.

I'm not— again, if you're doing it right, if you're sharing good things, if you're encouraging each other on the internet, keep doing it. I'm not saying unplug with social media. But make sure we're clear on what social means. I like what Paul says in Galatians when he says, I would like to be present with you. This is interesting because the churches were in trouble, weren't they? The Galatian churches were giving in to the Judaistic heresy. And so Paul says, "I would like to be present with you now and to change my tone, for I have doubts about you."

Essentially, he's saying, "What I'm reading is making me angry. What I'm hearing, that you seem to be giving up the free grace of the gospel for works and for the Judaistic heresy, for law, for ceremony, for circumcision. That's what I'm reading, and it hurts. I would like to be with you so that I could talk to you face to face and talk to you like somebody who you know loves you and who I know you love. That connection. So Paul didn't say, I'm gonna post this on Facebook, I'm gonna post this on IG, I'm gonna put— no, he wanted to be with them.

So take a page from Paul's book that we want to remember not to— like that part of having our kitchen done and having socials. Most of you don't— well, some of you do pay attention. I don't usually eat at the socials. My wife always shoves a plate in my face anyway. But I'm not usually eating, usually because my stomach is messed up. But I love— what's one of my favorite things when we're having a social, to walk around the tables, especially when there's new people.

And I'll even tell the new people, I'll look at their plate and I'll say, do you know you can judge a lot by a person by what they put on their plate? And they always have that look on their face like, uh-oh, what is this guy thinking? And we always have a fun conversation. Always. I mentioned last time about in the race discussion, that thing that I say, if you talk to two Latino people, Mexican people, and you ask one of them or both of them, hey, which one is soup? Caldo or sopas? And watch them fight. It's fun. I did it. I think I did it with your friend, Angie. Remember that came at the social that time where like, hey, his mom was there. And I'm like, hey, what is it? Which one is caldo and which one is sopas? Because people in the same family will even fight over it. And it's fun. It's a fun thing to get people conversing and to look them in the eye and have that kind of fun.

Like, who's this crazy? "Guerrito talking about caldo. He doesn't know anything." But yeah, no, we're connecting. And that thing is very valuable. I think we're losing it and we, as Christians and as the church, need to be careful because the way the world is using social media has been creeping into the church. And there's big studies about how bad for you it can be.

Now this last part, this is the part I told you I'm gonna be relatively quick. Point A in here, I'll spend a little time on, and then the last one, which I think is D, D, I'll spend a little bit of time on. But the ones in the— no, E. The ones in the middle I'm going to brush over because I have more to say on them next time. Because I wanted to make some application. I actually sort of prepared the same sermon twice, but it was very different. And so I've decided instead of abandoning that work to change that work so that I can use it to give you takeaways.

So epistemology is the study of knowledge. It's the study of like how you know things. What you can know and how you know it and what knowledge is, okay? So, epistemological concerns are the things I'm talking about that I think going with society's direction will essentially make us, if we go their direction, people who don't know things. We will lose the ability to know and learn. Because the way the world is doing it right now— when was the last time you saw somebody actually know something? Without grabbing Google? Hey, what was the name of that movie real quick? Hey, I remember that. What kind of gas does this thing mean? I do it too, by the way.

When was the last time you met somebody that just had lots of knowledge? Like they knew a lot about things. Knew. I don't mean guessed. I don't mean grabbed their Google phone and told you what Google knows. I'm talking about knowledge, real knowledge. And I think the more we go that direction, the less we'll actually know. And it's getting more and more complex. Meaning there's so much data going in all directions and there is no meditation. There's no slowing down. There's no focus.

So what I'm saying here, I got these two verses from Ecclesiastes. "For a dream comes through much activity, and a fool's voice is known by his many words." Just yapping all the time. You guys right now probably just said, "I hope you're hearing that, PJ, because you talk a lot." And then a few verses later it says, "For in the multitude of dreams and in many words there is also vanity." but fear God.

So we might think that having all that information at our fingertips, and even be churches that use all that information and all of the things available in social media are good for us. Again, I'm not talking about the solid, good usage. I'm not talking about godly podcasts and godly sermons and godly theological works that you can get your hands on. I use the internet all the time for those things, more than you probably know. I'm talking about saying, are we going to mirror what the culture is doing with social media? The pendulum is always like, it's either a lot of thought about a million things, or it's no thought about anything. And there's so much going on. And I'm suggesting to you that that complexity of information at our fingertips is not making us more knowledgeable.

You would think in the information age that we would have lots of knowledge. But the readily available lots of knowledge is not necessarily making us smarter. It's making us more dependent on the source of the knowledge and not actually studying a subject and knowing a subject. It's not very cool to read a book anymore, to learn something anymore, to learn— even I'm even talking about skills. I'm talking about construction. I'm talking about cooking. I'm talking about really learning, getting grandma's recipe and learning how to cook, not getting 45 recipes and tell ChatGPT, make this recipe better. And what's the fastest way I can do this? So that you didn't actually learn. You didn't do that thing where, like Grandma would do and say, "You know, it says a pinch of salt, but you need to put a little bit more than that if you want it to be really good." That's something she learned by experience. That's something she learned by doing.

So watch out for that idea that all that knowledge makes us smart. It can just confuse us. It can. And by the way, I can tell you that on the news front. When you go see how different people did— when this— I don't usually talk about headlines, but to make my point, when When those two guys tried to set off bombs in New York a couple of weeks ago— that's already out of the news too. And thankfully, their stupid bombs didn't work. The internet failed them in their bomb-making techniques. But those videos of that happening— did you see— oh, by the way, side note, you law enforcement guys, oh man. I was like, those guys are awesome. There's that video of the one police officer jumping over the fence. Did you see that? It's like, I want a poster of that. This guy saw the guys that did it. And ran toward them. The entire crowds are all running the other way, and this cop in New York is running toward the bad guy, and he's like scaling this fence like a superhero. I'm like, man, those guys, I'm so glad those guys are out there, right? So I was cheering for the law enforcement guys.

But the reason I bring it up right now is, did you see any headlines related to it? Did anybody see, for example, the liberal headlines of CNN on it that said two teenagers tried to cause trouble in New York, when those were two ISIS-supporting men, terrorist-supporting men. Don't want to say that. Don't want to say anything out loud because it's not politically correct. So we're going to say two young teenage men. They were teenage men. Literally called them teenagers. These guys were trying to blow up humans. One guy said he wanted to kill hundreds of people, that the Boston Marathon wasn't big enough. He wanted to kill hundreds of people in New York. But the news headline was— 2 teenage boys causing a little trouble, right?

So why do I bring that up? If you think CNN's telling you the truth and that's what you're depending on, and then your friend comes along and says, "Those were terrorists." "Oh, that's you. You're racist. You're judgmental. That's all you are. You're a right-wing extremist. All you Trump supporters, that's all you are," right? So there's no discussion. Why? Because the media didn't tell the whole truth. Now we're arguing over things that weren't even true. There's confusion. There's confusion. Nobody can talk in meaningful ways anymore. And that is definitely coming into the church because people are fighting over these things.

I got a call this week. I was going to say last week. It just happened. I got the craziest call. Jamie heard me yelling at somebody on the phone. A guy called because he had our church phone number. He— first of all, his first thing was, "Are you going to talk to me or are you going to hang up angry on me like all the other pastors did?" And he wanted to talk about how we have become feminist as churches, right? And he wanted to blast me. And I entertained him.

Incidentally, he hung up on me angry. Just so you know, at the end of that, he hung up on me. And I did text him that too. Yes, I'm petty enough to say, "For the record, I want to send this last message to you. You hung up on me angry like you accused the other pastors of doing." Okay? But I'm telling you that because everything he was saying was just— garbage, just spewing exactly what the internet does. He sounded like a human internet echo chamber. And he was just blasting me with talking about head coverings and just everything under the sun. Nothing made sense. He was all over the— he was cussing me out. I should have hung up on him, but I didn't want to give him the satisfaction. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction. I wanted to see it through. And I did see it through.

But I say that to you because he is a great example of what I'm talking about when we get swept away with the confusion of our day. He was all over the place. He couldn't keep a single train of thought. He wouldn't answer any of my questions directly. He acted like somebody that did not know how to communicate with other humans, probably because he didn't know how to communicate with other humans. And I say that to you to please pay attention in these things. Don't get caught up to where your brain is going a mile a minute in 50 directions and get confused.

When you try to get too simple, you lose nuance. If you see in your notes, that's what I mean by that. If you try to avoid confusion with our own man-made attempts at being simple, make words not mean what they mean, change the meaning of things to try to find common ground with people. Our attempts at making all that complexity and confusion simple fails, because there is nuance in those discussions.

Have you talked to anybody about Gaza? Have you talked to anybody about the thing? I had to talk to a person about Israel and say, do you know you cannot be happy about what they're doing and still support the country, right? You know that's possible. It is not either/or, that you are only for everything they do, or you hate them and want Palestine to win. It doesn't have to be— there can be a nuanced discussion to be had there to say, hey, is there a better way we can do the things we're doing? Like I've talked about the Trump issue with abortion. Did I support him on his stance on abortion? Well, yes, I did, because he was the lesser of the evils. Just because he doesn't agree with everything I say, does that mean I have to throw out everything he says? There's nuance there, but you can only do that if you stop down and have conversations. That is not what the internet does.

So there's so much craziness out there, redefine things, dysfunctional family instead of an unbiblical home, addiction versus disease versus sinfulness, drunkenness, those kind of things. So watch out for that, getting caught out there. And then people say, well, let's boil it down and make it really simple. That's where the anti-intellectualism comes in, where people say, well, all that knowledge, all that information, all that does is make people proud. Knowledge puffs up. They use that verse. That's why I have that verse there. And so knowledge is the problem. Knowing everything, having all that information at our fingertips is bad for us. We should stay simple. That's not the answer.

It's not correct to stay dull and not knowing what's going on in the world. That's not the answer, to hide yourself in a corner and say, "I don't need to know all that." That's not the answer. But neither is the second one, hyper-intellectualism, to think you need to study everything all the time and be completely aware of everything going on out there. What you need to study is Scripture. That's what you need to study because Scripture has the answer and response to everything going on in the world. If you apply it correctly and you study Scripture correctly.

I gave the passage there that in the world, not in the church necessarily, I'm not accusing the world of what Paul says of the unbelievers in Romans 1, but the idea of professing to be wise. We can adopt that mentality of the world, thinking we're wise by having all that information. And we don't want to pretend to be super smart or get super smart.

And then lastly, and this is the one I would— we're out of time, but I want to at least put it on your plate to think about it. I talked about the Dunning-Kruger effect in multiple contexts. It's actually new. That's only been a study that's out in the last 30 years or something. It's a relatively new concept. And it's a simple concept. And I think you would understand it. I think most of you in any field— like, let's say you get somewhat proficient at something in your life, some job that you do. Let's say you're in construction.

I could definitely use Walter as an example here because Walter knows, as a licensed electrician and electrical contractor, I can ask him, "What do typical do-it-yourself homeowners do in the area of electricity, and how safe is it?" That's an easy— you should ask Walter some stories. Like, what do people do with electricity when they don't know? When they haven't been taught? When they weren't trained? They don't know the NEC book. They don't know anything, and they're just going to figure it out. What do they do?

Well, you can talk about the house fires. I could talk to Zach. He's not here tonight, but I could talk to Zach about it. How many house fires? Were started by homemade electricians who don't know what they're doing. But let me tell you, every time they touch a wire, every time they touch a switch, every time they get out a screwdriver, they think they know what they're doing. They think they know. Nobody is grabbing electricity thinking, this is going to kill me if I do it wrong. They're thinking, I got this. That's what they're thinking.

The Dunning-Kruger effect says that the more we think we know, the less we actually know. And that the people who are most knowledgeable humble people think there's so much more to learn. So you ask anybody who's really proficient at something, ask somebody, are you an expert in this? They're going to say something like, whoa, man, don't call me an expert, I'm still figuring it out. Because humble people who know a lot know that they don't know everything. But ask the new guys at work, ask the new guys on the line, ask the new guys out in the new guys that first get a badge, you can ask all of them, ask the guys that First working on a plane. Everybody knows everything. And you tell them, ah, that's not really the best way to do it. No, I got it. I got it. This will work.

So this idea of thinking you know when you don't know is very dangerous. Pseudo-intellectualism is very dangerous, to think you know. This is why I love that— you can read those verses on your own— that Paul opens the book of 1 Corinthians with, because that church had a lot of problems and they all thought they were right. And he tells them, did you know you're not as wise as you think you are? Where are the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made Foolish, the wisdom of this world.

So the idea is don't fall for the intellectualism of the world. Don't think that you're smart because you have Google. Don't think that you're smart because your favorite radio guy or podcaster or YouTuber says a thing. Don't do that thing where you— oh, please don't ever say this to me. I've done a lot of research. Oh, if you say research, I'm going to ask you, do you mean you Google a lot of things? That's not the same as research. If you have to write a research paper, you could ask Serge about the requirements of papers that he has to write. Can he just go Google some things and be OK with that? No, they're going to ask for every bibliography. They're going to ask for every reference. They're going to ask for what page you read it on that book in, because you have to prove that you know, like in math. Remember in the old days when you had to prove your work? You had to prove what you know.

Please, don't pretend to be smart. Don't be dishonest and pretend you're smart. Don't be deceived, Dunning-Kruger, and think you're smart. And don't be delusional and exchange ignorance for intelligence.

To summarize, and I'll send you home, social, rightly understood, means human connection, support, compassion, being neighborly and being brotherly, right? That's what it means. My brother and I talked this week, and I was so thankful. We— about every few months when we talk, we just punctuate our conversation with, um, You know I'm there for you, and I know you're there for me. Just remind each other. We're in this together. We're looking out for each other. And it means a lot to me that we have that conversation. Connection. That's what social means.

Our culture is getting ADD, if ADD is a real thing. I don't know. I didn't say it was. But our culture has been fed this massive amount of information. And I'm suggesting to you that it's man-made information. It isn't fruit of the spirit information. And that flow of information and the way it's digested and the way it's internalized and the way it is looked at briefly and missed and the fact that it is not becoming actual intelligence and it's becoming more confusing by the day.

And there's so much going on out there that you can't even have a meaningful conversation in the world we live in with any sort of nuance. Please, we need to be careful as a church not to let that become the personality and nature of our church, that we're not having meaningful, real connection and supporting each other. But also, please, as an individual, don't get on all the hype trains out there. Be free. Be free enough to say, "I can just look at Scripture and be content today."

I know for sure if I read a Psalm today, I will for sure be better off than if I read 10 news pages today. I know if I read a Psalm today, I'll be way better off than if I watch 5 cat videos today. You can keep watching the cat videos if you like them, but I really want us to be not feeling like we have to keep up with the world when it comes to the way media and information is processed. We don't have to. Don't think that you're weak if you're old school or old-fashioned. If we do things the way God has always done them, we're going to be okay. Don't think that— don't have FOMO. Don't have fear of missing out.

These days, it's such a joy for me. I don't usually get proud. I don't usually have a lot of pride. But every once in a while, when I see a name of some sort of famous person a musician, social media influencer, and I have no idea who they are, I just say, "Thank the Lord that I don't know who that is. I'm so happy I don't know who that is." Because in the older days, I was pretty keyed in, especially when I was leading youth and things at the church. I was sort of conversationally in the loop of things, and now I'm just a normal old guy. I don't know who's popular, and it feels great. I'm thankful. Sorry, young people, I'm going to let you down.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for giving us your word. Giving us real social connection the way your word says it, to love our brothers and sisters, to be with the household of faith, to support each other. And also, Father, help us be good neighbors and not only involved in what the world is doing out there, but maybe we can reflect real biblical neighbor love and look out for each other. Would you help us take opportunities to do that and to show the world what real human connection is like when we look out for each other? And also, Father, in all of that, help us share the gospel. Help us point people to the Lord and to find real satisfaction in him. And we'll thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.