How Do You See? | Sunday, February 1, 2026

Amen. Praise the Lord. Thank you, Anthony. Good morning, Cross Connection. You guys can have a seat. It is such a blessing to gather together to worship the Lord this morning. Thank you, Anthony, for leading us before the Lord.

I would ask that as I share this message, you pray that the Lord would give me the proper way to frame it. I recognize that the things I want to share with you today are going to stretch your brain. I hope you are ready for this mental exercise. I will try not to talk too quickly; I will do my best. But with your prayers and the supply of the Holy Spirit, as Paul said to the Philippians, God will help.

As many of you know, the last few years have been quite significant. Let me put it like this: How many of you have used any of the AI tools that are available, like ChatGPT? OK, many of you. Some of you have not, and I commend you. God bless you. I have spent the last two and a half to three years deeply involved in the whole AI revolution because my research for my Ph.D. is in the area of artificial intelligence ethics.

I am researching how to govern these tools, not necessarily how you and I use them ethically, though that is a really important topic. It is more about how we govern these tools once they become autonomous. We have actually hit a critical mass just in the last 72 hours with some of these tools becoming autonomous in a way that, from a research standpoint, is quite frightening, to be honest with you.

For a while now, I have been working on how to develop ways, especially using the scriptural model and biblical ethics, to govern such systems. It is fascinating when you start to research these things. Did you know that, in a very real sense, we do not know what is happening inside these AI models when you ask them a question? We do not understand how they answer the way they do. This may seem strange to you, but even within the AI research field, they refer to it as a black box. We know that it provides answers, and we know that those answers are actually quite good.

But how it came to that answer involves entire divisions of major companies like OpenAI, which provides ChatGPT, Google, which creates Gemini, and XAI, which makes Grok. There are teams within these companies devoted to what's called interpretability. Their whole goal is to try to interpret how these systems work in the black box. They want to understand what is going on inside the system when it provides an answer.

Now, you may think, "I'm at church. Why are you telling me this? What does this have to do with the Bible?" Well, I believe it has more relevance than you might realize, as we will see when we get into the Scriptures today. Whether you realize it or not, in the same way that these systems are a black box, you are a black box as well. I don't actually know how your consciousness, understanding, perception, and intelligence work. I know that they work, and you know that they work. Up to this point, your perception of the world has helped you navigate life in such a way that you are still alive.

Your consciousness has taken you to this point in life, and some of you are advanced in age, past middle age. You've survived for a while, and your mental model is predictive of reality, which is why you didn't die a long time ago. Bravo! Good job! You've made it. However, if I were to ask how that mental model works for you or why it produces the outcomes or decisions that it does, that is a black box problem. It is an issue of interpretability.

The way we perceive reality and the answers that come back to us as we sense and move about in reality are being handled by this large language model that is your consciousness. Did you realize that neuroscientists don't even know exactly where that consciousness resides? We often imagine that it is in our brains. Many of us picture our brains like the characters in the Pixar movie "Inside Out," where there are little characters inside a girl's brain. We tend to think of our brains as the computing center, with these little entities moving everything and seeing through our eyes. However, that is merely a metaphor for how this works, and we still do not actually know how it works.

It's a black box. In the area of studies of neuroscience, this relates to what is called the hard problem of consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness is a black box problem. It's the same with artificial intelligence. Incorporated in all this is the issue of perception and how we understand reality.

A good way to illustrate this is to ask, "What color is this mug?" Most of us would say it is orange, and you would be right. In normal lighting, with eyes that are perceiving correctly and according to a category that you've been taught, you have a category for orange.

This became an interesting topic for me a number of years ago during a conversation with a friend of mine. He is connected to our church missionary who served for many years translating the Bible into a Philippine language and lived in the Philippines. One morning, while having coffee, he shared how they encountered problems during the translation of the Bible, particularly with colors. The people they were working with did not have categories for certain colors; for instance, they did not even have a category for green. To them, all green is blue.

How do you operate in that context? Many of you operate quite well in this because every single lady in this room has categories for colors that I don't have. Right, guys? You have a category that allows you to see something that I don't see, and it's hard for us even to imagine that.

Here's the crazy thing: I don't know that your perception of this color, orange, is the same as my perception of it. This is a philosophical problem that has challenged philosophers for a long time. For most people, this seems trivial, and they think, "I don't need to think about this." However, it actually affects things.

So, I don't know that you're seeing this in the same way that I'm seeing it, but we both have a category for this that we have labeled as orange. Therefore, when you see this mug, you say it is orange, just like most of the things in my life that I like, which are orange.

We have categories, we have eyes, we have perception, and in normal lighting, if our eyes are working correctly, we all see this and have a category for it. Therefore, we say it is orange. But what happened when I asked you what color this is, is an issue of interpretability.

There's something inside the large language model that is your consciousness, which returned an answer. It's the same sort of thing when you ask AI a question; it returns an answer. But how did it do that? I have no idea, and neither do the researchers. How did you determine that? I don't know, but you did. Your answer is predictive of reality, and therefore, you can navigate reality in a way that keeps you alive today. These are philosophical issues, and I think a lot of people don't think about this stuff very frequently, but it is important.

You matched something that you saw to a certain category. There's a cup, but it's a special kind of cup; it's a mug, and you have a category for color. Years ago, there was this toy that you can actually get as an app on your phone now. It's called 20Q. We used to call it the demon ball. It was this little purple ball that would ask you questions, and you would just answer yes or no. It would figure out what you were thinking about, and it was freakishly good. To the point that you would think, this thing is demonic. But all it did was hone in through categories to figure out what was in your brain and what you were thinking about. It matched the categories.

Now, here's the amazing thing: if we dim the lights enough, you will still be able to see the mug, but the color will change. When I ask you what color it is, you'll have a different answer. Here's the question: at that point, is the mug still orange? That's a philosophical issue that people really argue over. Some of you will come and argue with me about it later, which is fine. It has something to do with ontology, the being of that thing, but our perception is different. The orangeness of it will disappear at a certain point, even though you can still see the category of mug.

All these things play into how we live through this world. We have certain labels for things that are based on conditions, and I would call that condition a framework or a lens. It is the way that you see reality. The question of how you see reality and the answers you come to from that is an issue of interpretability. It's not just what you see, but how you see and why you come to decisions about the things that you see. This is not just an abstract issue because it affects things at a big level; it affects marriages.

I'm sure every married couple here this morning recognizes that the person sitting next to you doesn't see the world the same way you do. Has it ever caused any conflict? No, not at all. Maybe not even within the last two hours. But these differences affect friendships, politics, church life, and everything else.

One guy that I listened to for a long time, who recently passed away, would call this the "two movies on one screen" problem. We're all seeing the same data and hearing the same things, but you're perceiving something entirely different than I am. This is because your perception is altered by your framing, your framework, and the lens through which you see. So, while we are watching the same thing, it feels like two movies on one screen. We have the same facts, the same events, and even the same sentences, but two completely different realities are playing out in our minds.

The scary part is that when you are inside your framework and I am inside mine, it doesn't feel like a framework; it feels like reality. I am convinced that this is reality.

So, here's the question I'm getting at, because at this point, many of you may have checked out. What does this have to do with the Bible? I will get there; most of the time, I do. When Jesus taught, what was he doing? I want to suggest to you that he wasn't just dispensing information. He wasn't merely trying to transfer information from his consciousness to yours, like moving a file from one computer to another. That's not what he was trying to do.

I want to suggest that when Jesus teaches, he is rather trying to reform your perception and reframe the way you see reality. This is similar to what researchers do with AI models. They train these models with a vast amount of data, and after they are trained on terabytes of information, they use what's called reinforcement learning by human feedback.

In this process, they direct the weighting of the answers so that the models respond better. If you've ever used ChatGPT, you may have noticed that sometimes it gives you two answers to your question and asks which one is better according to your perception. As you click on one, you have weighted the answer and helped it improve. You are changing the perception of that thing.

In the same way, I want to suggest to you that Jesus' teaching is to give you and me the keys to unlock understanding. He provides us with a lens to help us see in a way we didn't see before. He's reframing reality.

I will suggest this: Jesus, who is presented in the Bible as the creator of all things, knows reality better than we do. After the fall described in Genesis chapter 3, our perception of reality has been corrupted by sin. Therefore, every one of us comes into this world with a faulty perception of reality. What Jesus is doing through His teaching is giving us a new mental map, a new model for perceiving reality so that we understand it as it actually is. This is a totally different way to think about what Jesus is doing in the Scriptures.

Now, I will suggest to you that what I'm saying could be wrong, but I don't think it is. I am quite convinced of this more and more over time. He gives us a new map for perceiving reality, reframing reality. I think that's exactly what the passage we are going to look at in a moment will do this morning. It will open our eyes to something different, but more on that in a second.

We are in a section of the Gospel of Luke that you can also find in Matthew and Mark, the Synoptic Gospels. This is the storytelling side of Jesus, where He begins to tell these stories. The Gospel writers refer to these stories as parables. As I shared last week, a parable is a short, easy-to-comprehend story that unlocks a deeper spiritual truth.

In this parable section of the Gospels, Jesus is speaking to the crowds in stories. Some of His disciples come to Him and ask, "Why are you speaking in this way?" He gave an answer, which I shared last week, and I want to share it again this week. In Matthew chapter 13, His disciples came to Him and said, "Why do you teach like this?" He responded in verse 11, "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them, it has not been given."

Notice that there are two categories of people in this passage: "you" and "them." He says to His followers, "It has been given to you to know the mysteries, but not to them." For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance. But whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore, in verse 13, He says, "I speak to you in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand."

Notice what Jesus is saying: two movies on one screen. It's an issue of interpretability. Jesus tells a story to the crowd, and there are some people who just hear the story and think, "Oh, that's a nice story. It's an interesting story." They kind of check out; their minds mentally move on from that. They don't go any deeper than thinking it was an interesting story about a farmer. Not a very good farmer, because he wasted a lot of his seed in the last story last week.

Then there are other people who hear the same story but perceive something different. They come to Jesus later and ask him a question about it. When his disciples ask him why he preaches in this way, he gives a strange answer. Basically, what he's saying is that these stories, these parables, are meant to reveal mysteries to one group but are also intended to hide those mysteries from another. That's an interesting answer. How can a story told to a group of people bring clarity and understanding to one group while befuddling the next? It's an issue of interpretability.

When hearing Jesus' stories, one group of people says, "That's an interesting story," and they move on. Another group, however, says, "There's something more to that story." They come to Jesus and ask him, "What does that story mean?" As we saw in Luke chapter 8, verse 9 last week, they asked, "What did the parable mean?" He said to them in verse 10 of Luke chapter 8, "To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it has been given in parables, so that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand."

Now, the parable is this. He explains it to them graciously. So what is Jesus doing there? When he says this to his disciples, he is giving them a key to unlocking understanding. He is providing them with the keys for interpretation and comprehension.

You and I have this mental model, this framework for everything that happens. We process what's happening to us in the world as we move through it using this framework. You have a map of the world, a mental model, and it's how you process reality. You are thoroughly convinced that your perception of reality is reality. But there's a challenge: we don't all have the same map. We don't all see the same way. Every married couple recognizes this in a big way; we don't all see the same things. There's a whole study in psychology called cultural perception.

They find that people who live in rural communities in the outback of Africa see the world entirely differently than those who have lived in a hyper-built, right-angle constructed world. You don't see things that they see; literally, your eyes don't even perceive certain things because their perception of reality is totally different. It's hard for us to even grasp this with our minds.

Because this is true, and because we don't all have the same map, sometimes we need an update to our moral models and mental models so that we can comprehend reality better. Let me give you a simple illustration of how this reframing happens. Today, we're going to be in Luke chapter 8, verses 16 through 18. But first, look at verse 19. Open your Bibles real quick to Luke chapter 8, verse 19. Here, Jesus reframes something in a way that unlocks understanding.

In Luke 8:19, it says, "Then Jesus' mother and his brothers came to him, and they could not approach him because there was a crowd." So, there is this great multitude of people, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers show up. At least James and Jude are two brothers that we know of. It was told to Jesus, in verse 20, by some who were there, "Your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you."

Imagine the situation; you can completely grasp this. There’s a big crowd, and some people say, "Hey, your mom and your brothers want to see you. They're outside." Now, how would you expect someone to answer? Do you think Jesus loved his mother? Of course. So, the crowd says, "Your mom and your brothers are outside. They want to see you." How do you assume he should answer? "Oh, time out. I've got to go talk to Mom," right? After all, she's kind of a big deal, Mary.

But how does he answer? He says to them, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it." What? Why would you say that? I know, I know, I'm questioning Jesus. You probably don't do that, but I do it all the time. I think, "Why would you do that?" But what did Jesus do right there? In one sentence, he reframed our conception of reality. You see, we have this conception of family, especially regarding our nearest kin, like kind.

That's where that idea of kin and kindred comes from. They're nearest to you in kind. Your blood relatives—that's your family. Your mother. No one occupies that role. Your brothers, they're near to you.

And what did Jesus do? He just reframed your reality. Your family changes when you become a follower of God. Oh, that's a new reality. All of you have perceived this if you've been a Christian for a long time. Some of you know that you are closer to those who are your Christian family than to those who are your blood relatives. Jesus reframed our reality right there. Your family changes when you begin to follow God.

Now, these are huge, real problems with great challenges. This is not just in the area of AI research, the black box problem, or the interpretability problem. This affects things in a huge way. I already told you it affects marriages, friendships, and politics.

You've probably had this experience: you're having a conversation, and you see the world. You see all the things that are happening in the world and in our nation. All the big things, the bad things—you're processing it a certain way. Then one of your coworkers comes to you, frantic and freaking out. They're having a panic attack. "Did you see what happened? I can't believe what's happening! X, Y, and Z. That person did this, and they said this, and this person is..." fill in the blank.

You're standing there, thinking, "I don't see what you see." Has anybody ever had this experience? As you talk more with your coworker, you start to think, "I think he's crazy. What is he seeing? I don't see what he's seeing. He must be wrong."

It would be like if I said, "This mug is pink," and you would have this issue with your mind. Now, if I was John, I'd say it's salmon. Right, salmon, yeah. This is pink. He has more categories for color than I do. So you would think if I swore to you, "This is pink," you'd say, "There's something wrong with him. He's wrong."

But the only thing you could be certain of in that moment is that my perception is different from your perception. I'm seeing differently than you are. It's like two movies on one screen. These are big real-world issues with huge ramifications.

So why do you see as you see? It has to do with reinforcement learning by human or world feedback.

As you've gone through this world, your model has been weighted to see, perceive, and understand in a different way than mine is. The challenge is that the framework through which you see the world might not be right. I want to suggest to you that Jesus wants to reframe our mental model so that we see reality in the proper way and understand what is actually going on. How we determine how to move through this world and answer the difficult questions of life has to do with that mental model, and He wants to reframe that. This is all a question of interpretability, and it matters more than we realize.

Now, what on earth does this have to do with Luke's Gospel? Well, if you would, open up your Bibles real quick. Turn to about the middle of your Bible. Stand with me, if you would, to the Gospel of Luke. Turn to the middle of your Bible, then to the right from there: Matthew, Mark, Luke, chapter 8. We're going to pick it up in verse 16, and we're going to get through three whole verses. I know, hard to imagine. I'm not kidding when I said we're going to be here for ten years in this book.

Luke 8, verse 16. Jesus says, "That's an issue of perception. For whoever has, to him more will be given. And whoever does not have, even that which he seems to have will be taken from him."

God, I pray as we consider this text that You would give us understanding. Help me to say correctly the things that I want to say, that Your Word would open our eyes to see differently. Continue to transform us by the renewing of our minds. Give us a new mental model to comprehend reality and to get to know who You are. God, speak to us, we pray. We ask this in Jesus' name. And all those that agreed said, "Amen." You can be seated.

Over time, I've come to realize that I don't see the Bible the way that a lot of my peers see the Bible. I have kind of a strange approach when I come to the Scriptures, and some of you have seen that.

Some of you have recognized that. Sometimes, when I see the scriptures, I see them in a totally different way, from a different angle. I really want you to be able to see it too. I want you to see the scriptures differently. But I want you not just to see the scriptures differently; I want you to recognize and understand that by seeing the scriptures differently, it's going to change the way you understand reality and your place in the world. It's going to change how you view the world.

As I've already alluded to, I'm not convinced that we, by nature, when we're born under sin, perceive reality as it truly is. Our mental model, our framework for understanding the world and ourselves in it, is corrupted. It needs to be reformed. It needs to be transformed. As Romans chapter 12 says, we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. That part of you that processes everything you experience needs to be reformed, reframed, or changed. It needs a total reboot.

I think that's exactly what Jesus is doing with many of His parables and stories. He is reframing reality for us. He is helping us to see differently. The passage we just read from Luke chapter 8, verses 16 through 18, is kind of a weird passage. What makes it weird is that Jesus has just spoken one of His most famous stories. We could call it the story of the sower, the story of the seed, or the story of the soils. However you call it, it's fine; it's all the same.

In His story, He talks about a farmer who is planting seed, and that seed falls on certain soils, producing certain outcomes as it falls on these different soils. Then He explains that. But as soon as He stops talking about this, He immediately pivots, making a hard left turn and mixing metaphors. Have you ever spent time with someone who mixes metaphors? It drives you crazy. Jesus does this all the time.

What does it mean to mix metaphors? Well, He has just been talking about planting seed, where the seed is the Word of God, and the soil represents the heart, which produces fruit. Then He pivots and starts talking about light and lamps. The problem is that He has just shifted and mixed metaphors. I'm trying to understand something that He just said, and the metaphor is given to unlock understanding. Sometimes, it's hard for us to grasp abstract ideas, so we use a picture to associate with that concept, allowing us to say, "Oh, that's kind of what it is."

But then, when I throw in an entirely different metaphor, it's like, wait, are we talking about farmers and seed, or are we talking about lamps and light? I'm confused. Jesus had a way of confusing us sometimes by mixing metaphors, as He does here in this passage. Our brains get kind of mixed up because now we don't know what we're talking about.

Jesus jumps from planting seeds and reaping a harvest to lighting lamps and increasing vision and understanding. Our minds are thinking, how are these related? That was my question on Monday. I taught through the passage on the soils last week, and then on Monday, I opened up my Bible to look at where we are going this week. It's like, okay, you talked about this, and now you talked about that. How do these things go together? They seem totally disparate and disconnected. What are you doing here, Jesus? That was my question.

Here, I think, is the key point. Number one, Jesus wants you to see differently than you did before. I mean, that's exactly what the text says. In verse 16, it states that those who enter may see light. He wants us to see differently. I don't think Jesus is necessarily changing subjects; He is changing images and trying to reframe something for us so that it unlocks understanding.

Now, I'm going to say something here that is going to strike some of you as strange—very strange. For some of you, this strange thing that I'm going to say will change everything about how you see church. It will change everything about how you see what is happening here right now. You're going to see things differently because of this one strange thing that I'm going to say. After you see it, you're not going to be able to unsee it.

Now I have to deliver. Here it is: it doesn't bother me if you don't remember anything from this teaching by Monday afternoon. What? Let me clue you into something. Most of the time, I don't remember what I preached on by Monday afternoon. I'm not kidding you. People will ask me, so what did you preach on yesterday? I go, what did I talk about?

I spent several hours preparing, and I spent three hours preaching it three different times. Less than 48 hours later, I don't remember what I said. Now, if I don't remember what I said, I'm thoroughly convinced you're not going to remember what I said tomorrow afternoon. That doesn't bother me.

If my goal was to transmit information from my brain to your brain, and for that information to be retained in your brain, then I would always be sad because you don't remember 24 hours after I shared the message. So it does not bother me that you do not remember, because that's not my goal. My goal is not your memory of the message. My actual goal is that as you hear this, because Jesus says, "Be careful how you hear," it will change your framing of your world and where you are in it. It is reinforcement learning by biblical feedback, and it's changing your mental model. I'm reframing reality for you right now.

Here's a simple reframe that has transformed the perception of reality for many Christians. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that God works all things together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose." Do you realize that's a reframe? It reframes how you see bad things that happen to you in the world. It changes your perception of reality. You might say, "That was a really bad thing," and then you say, "But I know that all things work together for good."

Some people will hear you say that; non-Christians will hear you say that and think, "You're just dumb." I'm not kidding you. But for you, it's reframed reality, and you've come to realize that it's true. It's not just something that you tell yourself; it actually turns out to be true.

My hope is that through my teaching, you will hear the message and that God will use this to reframe your mental model. That you'll be renewed by the spirit of your mind in such a way that you perceive and understand reality rightly. Now, I'm speaking metaphorically, but I think you get the point. I believe that human consciousness is just like the large language models that we've been creating.

That's not to say that the large language models are conscious; I don't believe that. However, I do think that your brain is a lot like a large language model. It has taken in a whole bunch of data and has been reinforced by the things you have experienced. As a result, you interpret reality in a certain way and give answers in a certain way. But God wants you to see differently.

I believe that as we begin to reframe our understanding through the Scriptures and by the Holy Spirit, we start to understand reality better. Jesus is not mainly after information transformation; He is after illumination. He wants to transform the way we comprehend. In the same way that I say I don't really care if you don't remember the message, I don't remember much from last week either. I think I remember two meals I had this week. Would you believe I had more than two? I only remember two of them, I think. But I don't remember any of those meals, and yet they helped me live.

In the same way, you may not remember this message a year from now, but it might change the way you live. It might reframe how you understand your life in this world. So, watch how Jesus does this and how He says it. In verse 16, He explains what light is for; it is meant to light up a room, not to be covered up. That all makes perfect sense.

Point number two: Jesus' message reforms reality, helping us to see reality as it really is. He wants you to see reality as it truly is. So, what is Jesus doing with His parables? He is exposing what is hidden. He is bringing us out of darkness and into His marvelous light so that we can see clearly. He does not want people to remain in darkness. He does not want truth and reality to stay in the dark; He wants them to be enlightened.

"For nothing is secret that will not be revealed," says verse 17, "nor anything hidden that will not be known or come into the light." Now, some of you may be a bit confused right now. I apologize; I'm trying to go slower today, as you might have noticed. I realize this is kind of a mind-bending message. You're getting a peek into how my brain works, and it can be kind of frightening.

Freaks my family out from time to time. You can pray for them. They put up with me by God's grace.

Let me try to bring it back to the text and explain. Jesus has pivoted from this metaphor about receiving the word. The word is seed, implanted into our hearts and bringing forth a harvest. It's going to produce fruit. He has moved from that metaphor to a metaphor about light, lamps, and enlightenment. What is he doing? He's not switching topics; he's actually tightening the same point. He is trying to drive home the same message, just from a different angle.

In the soils, he showed you why people can hear the word and not receive it. There are different kinds of soils. The same seed, the same word, but not everybody receives it the same way. That's why he says in this next sentence, "Be careful how you hear." It's important how you receive that. In the soils, he is talking about the word and how not everybody hears or receives it the same way. Now, with the lamp, he is showing you what happens when the word is received. What happens in the heart of someone who receives the implanted word? It produces something.

What does he say it produces? It produces light. The seed and the lamp are the same reality from two different angles. The seed is the word going in, and the lamp is the word going out. Something is happening here. That's why he says, "Therefore, take heed how you hear." What does that mean? Take heed how you hear. There are different ways you can hear. Wives, you know this. There are different ways that your husband hears. I'll just leave it at that, and you know exactly what I'm talking about.

When the seed of the word of God enters the heart, implanted into the heart, the desire is that it will take root. As a preacher, when I am scattering the seed of the word of God, what do I want it to do? I want it to go into your heart, to germinate, spring forth, take root, and produce what? Fruit.

So, here's the question: What is the fruit? For a lot of you Christians right now who know the Bible, you might say, "Well, it's the fruit of the Spirit."

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. That is the fruit, obviously. However, the Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 5 that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. He wrote that to the Galatians about 20 years after Jesus spoke about fruit in His parables.

I want to suggest to you that the fruit Paul talks about is different from the fruit Jesus is referring to. What does Jesus mean when He talks about fruit in this parable? He tells us in the parable, which I will read to you from verse 12 of Luke chapter 8. He says, "Those who are by the wayside are the ones who hear; the seed is the word of God. They hear the word, but then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved."

He goes on to explain that those on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy. However, they have no root; they believe for a while, but in a time of temptation, they fall away. According to Jesus, the fruit He is talking about here is faith unto life, belief unto salvation. This is the fruit that Jesus refers to in this passage.

The earliest, most fundamental fruit in the life of a hearer is the germinating seed unto faith—belief that brings life. Here’s how it happened in many of your lives: you heard the word of God being preached to you, shared with you by a friend, family member, or pastor. At a certain point, it went like this: "I think I believe this." It produced faith because faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

That faith ignited something in you—miraculously, supernaturally. It ignited life by the Holy Spirit. Suddenly, your perception of reality changed. You saw everything differently than you did just a day before because the light went on; life was ignited. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. That word took root, produced faith, and ignited into life.

Eventually, that life will produce love, joy, peace, patience, and so forth. These are downstream effects of the new life that comes by the word of God.

Point number three: the fruit of Jesus' message is faith unto life. This is why Jesus says in this text, "Be careful how you hear." Hearing is important. The whole battle is over what kind of hearing you have and what that hearing produces. Does it produce a rooted springing forth of life unto faith? Once that word is implanted and it brings forth faith, it ignites what Jesus refers to as light. He shifts the metaphors and now talks about light being ignited.

What happens when light is ignited by the word of God coming into your heart and triggering faith? Look at what he says in Luke 8:16: "No one, when he has lit a lamp, covers it with a vessel or puts it under a bed, but sets it on a lampstand that those who enter may see the light."

At some point in your life, for many of you, the word of God had been coming in and being sown for a long time. Then, all of a sudden, it germinated into faith. You might have said, "I think I believe this," and then there was new life. Now that life ignited light. What are you going to do with that light?

"Oh, I have this light. Oh my gosh, this is really important. I need to hide it. Put it over here under a bush." Oh no! Did any of you go to Sunday school? "I'm going to let it shine." Wait, that's what Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount, another teaching to his disciples who had been enlightened.

In Matthew 5:14, Jesus says, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."

Jesus is consistent. Real faith doesn't stay covered; it shines and stands forth. Ultimately, God will be glorified, not so that you might be applauded for how enlightened you are, but so that God, who gives light, will receive the glory.

John, do you have Chuck Smith playing while I'm preaching? Technology. Coming from his salmon phone.

He gives light so that we may shine forth. Here’s the key, and I’ll try to wrap it up. Good, because I have a minute and 18 seconds. I’m not going to get through it this quickly.

Point four: the fruit of faith in Christ enlightens in order to shine. Why did Jesus enlighten you? Not so that you can be one of the enlightened ones, arrogant and proud about your enlightenment. He enlightened you not so that you could put the light under a bed, but so that you could put the light where everybody could see. Faith is not only something God does in you; it is something that God does through you. The word goes in like a seed, and it comes alive into faith. That faith turns into light.

Notice finally that Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." Years later, Jesus' half-brother James would write in James 2:26, "We know that faith without works is dead." According to Jesus, faith is the first work. In John 6:29, He states, "This is the work of God that you believe." That’s the first work, and then from there, faith shines forth.

Into what? It shines forth into the dark. And it does what? Peter, who was a hearer of Jesus when He said these things, states in 1 Peter 2:9, "You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, God’s own special or peculiar people." Why? That you would proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

What’s your job? Your job is to shine forth out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

Let me try to put it all together here. I opened this morning talking about AI interpretability. You might be wondering what on earth this has to do with anything. Well, it has to do with this: we don’t always know what’s going on inside of the system. It’s a black box. We don’t know why it answers or perceives reality in the way that it does. But this is not just an AI problem; this is a human problem. Jesus, when He taught, wasn’t necessarily concerned that you would remember everything that He said.

Or all the verse numbers associated with it. What he was seeking to do is to remap your perception so that you would understand reality as it really is. Your perception has been corrupted by sin. He is opening your eyes that you might see, to transform us. That’s why he says, "Take heed how you hear." The how determines everything: whether the word gets stolen, whether it takes root and grows, and produces fruit. The fruit of faith turns into light.

Once God has lit the lamp by faith in you, ignited you, Jesus gives a very simple exhortation: don’t cover it up. The temptation is to hold it, hide it, and hoard it. I have the light, the precious light. He says, "No. Hold it forth." Why? Because to him who has been given, to him who has it and holds it forth, more will be given. What will happen to that light? It will spread as it enlightens others, and the light will shine better in the darkness. Whoever has, to him more will be given.

The exhortation is simple: don’t hold the light like it’s for you only. Don’t hide the light because you’re afraid of what other people might think about the light that you have. Don’t hoard the light as if it’s some private treasure to be kept. Instead, hold it forth. Put it where it can be seen.

The whole point of this message is not so that you remember all the points, all those things that we put on the screen and you write down. If you throw that paper in the trash later on today, I don’t care. I know that many of them will just be left in here, and Nick will throw them away later. But here’s what I’m hoping will happen: you’ll see that God enlightened your heart so that you would shine. That’s it. Let your light so shine. Proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

Would you stand with me as we close in prayer? God, I pray that you would take the massive words that I just said and sort them out in a way that they do bring light. God, we thank you for Your word, which is living and powerful. It does enlighten us so that we could be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we might see.

We might comprehend and understand what is really real and what is really true. In knowing the truth, we shall be set free. God, I pray that You would enlighten us so that we would shine, because we live in a dark place at a dark time. I don't know if it's any darker than it was six minutes ago or 60 years ago, but it is dark right now.

Lord, there are many people who need the light. They are bumbling about in the darkness, groping for hope and answers. I pray, God, that You would help us to shine brightly in a dark world to proclaim Your praises. If You have enlightened us, You have given us understanding, and through that understanding, You have completely transformed us.

God, continue to transform us by Your renewing and transforming light and life, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.