I.
The lessons we read in church each Sunday are meant to do one thing: separate the wolves from the sheep, the hypocrites from the sincere, and the faithless from the faithful.
Wolves devour, hypocrites flatter, and the faithless usurp.
Meanwhile, the sheep (who follow in good faith) are slaughtered, the sincere are defrauded, and the faithful look on while others take what belongs to them and their children.
God’s Word has the power to separate and divide, to try and to test, and, ultimately, to render a verdict.
This is what is going on in the reading from Micah today.
The chapter opens in a courtroom, the courtroom of creation. The mountains and the foundations of the earth are judge and jury.
God is the plaintiff, and He has brought a lawsuit against His own people.
“O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me.”
II.
I don’t know about you, but for the past few weeks stories about Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been in my newsfeeds.
Most ominous is the reporting about AI in the battlefield. We may soon fight our wars with sentient and autonomous machines. The fear, of course, is that these machines will turn on us.
Michael Osborne, professor of machine learning at the University of Oxford, said:
“I think we’re in a massive AI arms race, geopolitically with the US versus China and among tech firms there seems to be this willingness to throw safety and caution out the window and race as fast as possible to the most advanced AI.”[1]
“To throw safety and caution out the window.” These are not comforting words.
The other AI story is ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. Using a human-entered prompt, ChatGPT will spew out several paragraphs in response. Just last week, ChatGPT was able to pass the MBA final exam at the Wharton School of Business.[2]
To test Chat’s capabilities myself, I decided to prompt it with this week’s readings.
In the style of Thomas Aquinas expound Micah 6:1-8:
“My dear brothers and sisters, let us turn our attention to the passage of Micah 6:1-8, which speaks to the nature of justice and righteousness. It is through the practice of these virtues that we fulfill our ultimate end, which is to achieve eternal life with God.”
In the style of Karl Marx expound Micah 6:1-8:
“Comrades, Micah 6:1-8 is a passage that speaks to the fundamental issue of justice and righteousness in society. It is clear that in capitalist societies, the ruling class uses religion as a tool to justify their exploitation and oppression of the working class.”
In the style of Jimmy Buffet expound Micah 6:1-8:
“Well, folks, it’s a beautiful day here on the beach and I’ve got Micah 6:1-8 on my mind. And what does the Lord require of us? Well, it’s simple really, just act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. So, let’s raise our tropical drinks and make a toast to righteousness…”
ChatGPT’s answers are pretty good! At least, they are formally correct. It’s a clever bit of programming that knows it should include nature and virtue in the answer from Thomas Aquinas and the beach and a tropical drink in Jimmy Buffet’s.
Yet, as Paul points out in today’s reading from 1 Corinthians, knowledge without knowing God is formalism and a wisdom that excludes God is under God’s judgment.
“For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’”
III.
God is the heart of our creativity, of our lives, and of the wisdom that makes us human, yet we continually remove Him from all three.
So, God brings His lawsuit against us.
Paul asks:
“Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”
ChatGPT certainly has. Now you can have any answer you want, from any point of view, in a matter of seconds.
What of all the toil of reading and researching? Of writing and re-writing?
Now, only a fool need work for knowledge. ChatCPT will do your learning for you.
IV.
“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad” is a proverb attributed to the ancient Greeks, but of God I think it is better to say, “Whom God would redeem, He first will judge.”
The ancient Jews had no case against God. God’s question, “O my people, what have I done unto thee?” was rhetorical.
They knew the answer. God had done nothing wrong.
God had only ever been good and just to His people, even giving them knowledge of His law so that they could be wise.
But, instead of keeping that law, they resorted to formalism, to a legally correct answer, and to the hypocrisy of hyperbole:
“With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old? [Legally correct.]
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? [Hypocritical hyperbole.]”
In fact, they had done just that. They resorted to human sacrifice.[3] You have to understand that people back then actually thought it was okay to kill their own children to make God happy.
No wonder God needed to destroy their wisdom.
To make them look like fools for sacrificing their own children, God eventually sent His own Son to die in the place of their burnt offerings, and calves, and rams, and children, and to put an end to all such sacrifices, once and for all.
V.
God has long ago told us what will make Him happy.
“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
Here is where the word of God divides and separates us. It is impossible to hear the words of Micah and say that you do not know what God wants you to do.
It is impossible to hear the words of Jesus, who says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” and not understand what God wants us to do.
We just don’t want to do it.
Poor in spirit? We would rather justify our sinful thoughts, desires, and actions when we should be mourning them.
The meek? We would rather build up our own strongholds, than trust Christ to guard us.
Hunger and thirst after righteousness? I read the other day that deaths of despair from suicide or alcohol abuse have been skyrocketing. The researcher correlated these deaths to the repeal of blue laws that limited commerce on Sunday mornings, which, in turn, drove church attendance.[4]
Your church is dying in part because no one hungers and thirsts for righteousness — and our laws are reflecting that more and more.
The merciful? The other week I attended a gathering of clergy. We heard from a delegation from the Anglican Church of Canada about the precarious pastoral position many of their ministers are now in because of that country’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) law.
How could it possibly be merciful for a priest to advise a parishioner to kill himself? That is not mercy. It is a gross caricature of mercy. Yet that is where we are headed.
If this is the wisdom of the wise, O God, then please destroy it.
The pure in heart? Which of us has not at some point been more concerned with keeping up appearances than with doing the right thing?
The peacemakers? There was a time when liberal Protestant pulpits railed against the war in Vietnam. We inch closer by the day to war in the Pacific and war in Europe. Where are those preachers today?
Finally, those persecuted for righteousness’ sake. This is the one that truly separates and divides. For Jesus’ sake we are asked to endure all manner of insult, injury, damage to reputation, slander, libel, and even death.
This is not a club you want to join, but if you get tapped, you have no other choice but to. You have to follow the Voice of the Master and the great Shepherd of souls.
If He calls you, if He calls you by name, then you must answer Him. You cannot bide your time with bowing and praying and attending church and doing all manner of good and nice things for the community.
You have to answer clearly and say, “Yes, Lord, I believe,”[5] and take His Name and His shame upon you and walk the way of the cross with Him.
This is why you are in Christ Jesus. This is wisdom. This is righteousness. This is sanctification. This is redemption. This is the reward of the blessed.
Nothing else matters. Amen.
Preached at St. Peter’s, Lithgow, on January 29, 2023.
Epiphany 4, Year A
Micah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12
[1] Sarah Knapton, “Advanced AI 'Could Kill Everyone', Warn Oxford Researchers,” The Telegraph (Telegraph Media Group, January 25, 2023), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/25/advanced-ai-could-kill-everyone-warn-oxford-researchers/.
[2] Steve Mollman, “Chatgpt Passed a Wharton MBA Exam and It's Still in Its Infancy. One Professor Is Sounding the Alarm,” Fortune (Fortune, January 23, 2023), https://fortune.com/2023/01/21/chatgpt-passed-wharton-mba-exam-one-professor-is-sounding-alarm-artificial-intelligence/.
[3] See: 2 Kings 21:6; 2 Kings 23:10; Psalm 106:37-38; Ezekiel 23:38-39.
[4] Steve Goldstein, “Rise in Middle-Aged White 'Deaths of Despair' May Be Fueled by Loss of Religion, New Research Paper Argues,” MarketWatch (MarketWatch, January 16, 2023), https://www.marketwatch.com/story/deaths-of-despair-may-be-driven-by-loss-of-religion-new-research-paper-argues-11673876749.