From the beginning of time, the God of heaven and earth has declared war on all wisdom that ignores his own. He will tolerate no rivals when it comes to our trust. That’s what makes artificial intelligence such a danger to the Christian, and especially to the minister.

We need to be reminded that God’s wisdom is not the wisdom of a supercomputer. We need fresh conviction that God’s presence must do God’s work. We need to be warned that relying on artificial intelligence instead of the Holy Spirit must eventually end in defeat. To illustrate, I would like us to travel back thousands of years and bring AI to the Canaanite city of Ai.

Victory at Jericho

Let us begin on the eve of Joshua’s initial invasion into the land of promise.

Imagine you gaze at the fortified city of Jericho from a distance. You consult your military council, your maps, your men, and you double-check the steps of your invasion. You open your MacBook and take another bite of the apple, asking ChatGPT to review your strategy and recommend any alterations for your plan of attack. Well, Yes, it quickly replies. Alterations are needed for all of your plans, at every level.

Cross the Jordan during flood season? Impossible. Circumcise your army in enemy territory? Foolish. Expose your entire force to hostile eyes for a week? Unwise. March around the walls for seven days, and then expect a shout and trumpet blast to bring down the foe’s stronghold? Comical.

God’s strategy for victory defied computation. His thoughts were not the thoughts of men or angels. His ways were not the ways of a supercomputer. So Joshua must take the army, walk around the city for seven days, give a big shout and trumpet blast, and expect the miracle. Day one passes — nothing. Day two passes — no sign of progress. Day three passes — naught but amusement from the walls above. Where is the battering ram; where are the scaling ladders? the enemy wondered. What are they doing?

A ram’s horn could not unglue brick and mortar. What did Jericho need to fear from a box, seven priests, seven trumpets, or seven days of the enemy getting their steps in? The commanders of Jericho didn’t need superintelligence to compute whether these walks posed any real threat. If they could have asked, ChatGPT would have compiled the findings of the greatest architects and war generals of all time; it would have scoured all the books of science and warfare and found no evidence whatsoever that their wall was in any danger from quiet walks or loud shouts. But then they soon felt the tremor beneath their feet. The Hebrew God — in the foolishness of his wisdom — was against them. The wall crumbled; they were soon dead, their city ablaze.

What can we say of this victory? It was illogical, unfathomable, unreasonable, a perplexity to men, angels, and mainframes. The utter oddity of the triumph was a signature — this battle belonged to the Lord. Like so many other battles, it was promised of God, acted by man, realized by faith. “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days” (Hebrews 11:30).

They did not need the best of natural or artificial intelligence; they needed the foolishness of faith and God’s presence (1 Corinthians 1:25). On the eve of battle and the start of this seven-year campaign, God did not send technology to assist Joshua; he sent the Commander of his army to prostrate Joshua. What God gave to Joshua he gives to us today — not cheat codes and shortcuts but a promise: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9).

Defeat at Ai

Now contrast this with the second battle, the only one Joshua loses. He sends out spies to Ai. The report returns, insisting this small population required only a fraction of their force. Joshua sends three thousand men, a reasonable tactic given the size of the opponent. Had they consulted their computers, three thousand would have been a logical strategy. But to everyone’s astonishment, Israel flees against the little brother of mighty Jericho. Thirty-six men die in the embarrassment.

Joshua tears his clothes, and he and the leaders throw dust upon their heads. What went wrong? How had they failed so miserably? The hearts of the people melt. Is God giving them the land or not?

They trusted their eyes, trusted their sense of things. They assumed they had enough knowledge and acted on what they had. The Lord need not be troubled with this small affair. This victory is manageable. Divine guidance would be overkill. They didn’t need the theatrics of faith as before; they had this in hand. Alone, they could see, come, and conquer. No need of a Revealer for revelation. They mistook knowledge of the mission for God’s presence with them on that mission.

Had they asked the Lord beforehand, they would have discovered that all was not right in their camp. Their eyes scanned only the enemy, not themselves. The Lord could have revealed their disobedience prior to their defeat. Thirty-six men could have lived.

Brothers, God’s eyes are not just on the sinful Canaanites in the land of promise. His eyes are upon us and our people. How we obey him, depend upon him, seek his face has more to do with victory than competent plans or comprehensive sermon outlines. We cannot lean on our own understanding (or that of a computer) even when we possess superior numbers. What will that avail us if God sees an Achan in the camp?

And how many preachers mimic Achan with his stolen plunder? Contraband discourses, borrowed knowledge, unlawful paragraphs copied and pasted because a quick AI prompt was easier than doing the work themselves. To me, these have the glimmer of cursed objects, gold and silver under the ban.

The victory at Jericho taught all Israel that God must lead them into battle. Trust him even when the plan doesn’t make sense. Have you not learned the same? The Bible is a long account of such unorthodox conquests — men having their faith tested, hazarding life itself on what God said rather than what they thought.

What is a studied and well-expressed sermon built largely on the foundations of artificial intelligence? Is it not stolen plunder? What value is that orthodox teaching, conjured with a few keystrokes, when bereft of orthodox affection? Is this the blessing that Jacob wrestled all night for, the blessing that marked him the rest of his days? Men’s sacred trains of thought ought never run on AI search engines. There may be gold in their orthodoxy or oratory, but too often these are nuggets taken by the hand of laziness, inexperience, and lack of prayer. A lifetime of AI-produced sermons, Bible studies, and Sunday school lessons will not honor God and will end in defeat.

Victory at Ai

Israel repented; Achan was destroyed. They reengaged the foe.

God now gives them instructions for ambushing the adversary. His plans for them — shrewd and tactical — differ little from what any general could provide. Troops sneak behind the city in the night, and a small decoy force pretends to flee again, luring the enemy army out of the city. This time, the hidden troops destroy the city and encompass the foe. A far cry from silent walks and blowing trumpets, this plan agrees with the reason of both man and computer.

But even here, God adds his signature. Israel would gain victory, based not on their superior plan or numbers, but because Joshua obeyed the Lord, holding up his spear for the entire battle: “Joshua did not draw back his hand with which he stretched out the javelin until he had devoted all the inhabitants of Ai to destruction” (Joshua 8:26). Like Israel’s first battle out of Egypt, when Moses held his staff over the battlefield for the victory against Amalek (Exodus 17:8–13), so now, Joshua holds up his spear to ensure success. Such are the ways of God.

What is the point? Ministers must never replace their reliance upon God and his Spirit with any tools. The warrior of God does not trust in his spear or his chariots or his ChatGPT. If you are abusing your tools, put them away. You don’t need them. If you can use such permissibly, resolve to never use such lazily. God is your sole trust.

The work of ministry is supernatural. Take your computer to the graveyard and see what success it has in calling forth the dead. But one word from Christ Jesus, one visitation from the commander of the Lord’s armies, and Lazaruses come forth still. The weakness of man — his limited knowledge, his lack of eloquence, his human imperfections — are more than a match for the foe when God is with him. By faith, his shouts can bring down the impenetrable walls of the rebel heart, for God has promised to be glorified in man’s weakness, engraving his greatest signature upon the foolishness of the cross.

But grab irreverently for knowledge that is not yours, rely upon the shortcut, go to battle in armor that you have not tried, put your trust in AI, and you shall know the defeat of Ai. It makes sense on paper, the plans are genius, you have more than enough strength to accomplish it, and yet you shall fall because the Lord is not with you. This position is not anti-technology; it’s anti-abuse of technology and anti-trust in technology. It’s anti-reliance upon the flesh — your flesh or digital flesh. It’s anti-leaning on any wisdom but the Lord’s.

Pastor, with all your weaknesses and limitations, preach the word. Preach as God made you to preach. Study hard, pray harder, plead for help, and do not succumb to artificial sermonizing. If God desired, he could have sent his army of seraphic beings with flaming tongues to preach to the world of men. He could have sent Gabriel to do all the heralding. But he didn’t. He doesn’t need you dressed in all the knowledge of the pastors of ages past; he needs you dependent on him: on your knees, waiting for his power to show up.

Joshua didn’t need to consult all military science; he needed to meet God and receive his instructions, however implausible. That is our need today. Where are God’s generals who don’t seek counsel from a computer but trust in God’s signature means of word and prayer? Such will see Jericho’s walls fall, enemy strongholds burn, and God’s people enter the land of promise.

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Have you been caught off guard by the anger of Jesus?

There you are, peacefully meditating on the Gospels, or flourishing under a favorite preacher. With great comfort, you’re finding Christ to be master of every situation. He wields concrete images, asks perceptive questions, and seems unfazed by conniving opponents.

Then flashes some surprising flare of his holy anger. He makes a whip and clears the temple court. He sighs aloud in frustration. He is reported to be annoyed, even indignant. He “strictly charges” men and women he has just healed. And you recall how often he rebukes, not just demons and fevers, winds and waves, but also his own disciples.

Sweet (and Sovereign) Emotion

We might shy away from the English word rage, but just a century ago the eminent B.B. Warfield (1851–1921) thought it a fitting term in his study on The Emotional Life of Our Lord. Perhaps the word’s connotations have shifted enough today that we reach for other language, but it could do us some good to see what many faithful eyes have dared to see in the life of Christ. And if anyone could rage with a holy, God-honoring anger, would it not be Jesus?

Sinless as he was, Jesus had his manifestly emotional moments as he dwelt among us. Doubtless, he was a man of composure and self-control, but it would be strange to presume he was unemotional when he whipped the temple clean. Or when he wept at Lazarus’s tomb. Or when he prayed, in anguish, with loud cries and tears. Typically, the Christ we encounter in the Gospels is a man of stunning composure — a model of the kind of poise and equanimity, in the face of the world’s chaos, that his people want to grow in by the power of his Spirit. And we may learn, as well, from his holy anger. Even his rage.

Slow to Anger

The children of Israel had celebrated their covenant-keeping God as “slow to anger” (beginning in Exodus 34:6). Slow to anger, let the record show, does not mean without anger. God clearly stood ready to punish the guilty in time. Yet, given the rebellion of his people, which was often outrageous, he was remarkably patient and markedly “slow to anger,” as prophets and psalmists alike would cherish (Nehemiah 9:17; Joel 2:13; Psalms 86:15; 103:8; 145:8).

So too Jesus, in the days of his flesh, was slow to anger. He knew how to keep his wits under pressure, when the moment required it, and he knew how to give vent to his emotions, with self-control, in the proper time and place. Typically, the Christ of the Gospels is conspicuously calm, unprovoked in the face of worked-up foes. Yet the divine Son entered a world of sin and sinners, under the curse — a world in which injustices abound. And it would not be virtue, but vice, as Warfield observes, “for a moral being to stand in the presence of perceived wrong indifferent and unmoved” (50).

Lest we feed a wrong impression, let’s draw on two quintessential Reformed voices for help. If you thought Reformed theology’s appreciation of the mind necessitated the diminishing of emotion, let Warfield, along with John Calvin himself (1509–1564), set the record straight. Sure, some may have skewed anti-emotional in the name of Reformed theology. But they are mistaken. We can hardly find voices more reasonably Reformed than Calvin’s and Warfield’s.

To do so, let’s address several key anger-revealing texts in the Gospels and consider what lessons we might draw as Christ’s disciples today.

1. Jesus experienced our anger.

Jesus, truly man and truly God, was capable of human anger, and this was (and is) a feature, not a bug. This human emotion is an analogue of divine wrath in the image-bearer. As such, it is good, a God-made gift, to help us in a world where we encounter sin, death, and injustice. Yes, indwelling sin corrupts our anger, and anger is especially dangerous because it is such a powerful emotion, by God’s design. But anger itself is not the problem. Our sin is the problem.

In the Gospel of John, the first flare comes as early as chapter 2. Jesus is manifestly angry at those who have made his Father’s house into a house of trade, for material profit rather than Godward prayer. Yet the attribute celebrated here is not called anger but zeal. His disciples remember that it was written (in Psalm 69), “Zeal for your house will consume me” (John 2:17).

Anger rises naturally, even if slowly, in healthy souls. We need not cultivate anger. It comes as a function of some greater love. What we want to cultivate is zeal, for God and his honor, and for others and their joy in God. Christians want to boil with holy affection for Jesus Christ (Romans 12:11). And as God’s word and his people and prayer feed and form our zeal, our anger will flare less at the wrong times, and more at the right times.

We do not typically use the word anger for this more constructive emotion we call zeal. Zeal is the white-hot flame of Jesus’s love for his Father, and so for his Father’s house. Anger is our term for the zealous response toward those who are treating his Father and his house with contempt.

2. Jesus’s anger was without sin.

The life of Christ shows us the possibility of holy, righteous, good anger, even on this side of the fall. Jesus felt anger that was an appropriate response to the sin and evil and injustice he encountered. He also felt anger at appropriate levels of intensity — not too little, not too much, not too frequently or too quickly, and not too slowly or infrequently.

Even as we observe our remarkable solidarity with the Son of God in his sharing in our humanity, we keep in mind that great qualifier “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). What might it be like to experience the God-given emotion of anger, but without the corruption of sin?

Calvin guards us against any naive attempt to imitate Jesus’s anger without owning up to our own weakness: “If you compare his passions with ours, they will differ not less than pure and clear water, flowing in a gentle course, differs from dirty and muddy foam.” Our anger is not pure and clear like his. If I’ve never done a righteous deed that wasn’t sullied in some small way, surely the same is true with my anger. Yet that should not keep me from doing righteous deeds or from listening to the God-designed emotion of anger, no matter how prone such a power is to the influence of indwelling sin. Every thought, every feeling, every act of sinful humans in this age is sin-infected in some sense, but this does not keep us from doing real good works, pursuing good thoughts, and feeling good, helpful emotions.

Jesus’s pure, clear anger is a summons to us to cultivate Christlike zeal. His emotions encourage ours, and even enjoin them. As Calvin adds, Jesus’s life “ought to be sufficient of itself for setting aside the unbending sternness which the Stoics demand.”

3. Jesus made use of his anger; then he put it away.

Jesus didn’t stuff his anger, and on several occasions in the Gospels, he allowed his anger to become observable. He was noticeably angry. And he made use of that anger: He took its prompting, and energy, to move into justice-remedying action.

But, note well, Jesus did not stew in it. The key moment is Mark 3:1–5. On a Sabbath, he encounters a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees look on, ready to accuse him of Sabbath-breaking. Jesus asks them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” He’s right, and they won’t admit it. They remain silent, with an evil, cowardly silence. Then verse 5:

And [Jesus] looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

Mark tells us Jesus is angry and looks at them with anger. And as we’ll see again in John 11, this holy anger coexists with sorrow. Their hardness of heart both grieves and angers him. But his anger, having come slowly, does its work quickly. It flashes, and he perceives it, is inspired to righteous action, and then puts it away in holiness. It was brief, and then, not suppressed or forgotten, it prompted his next (anger-less) action: to heal. (We find similar examples of brief anger or frustration leading to a fitting response in Mark 7:34; 8:12; 10:14.)

As Paul would charge the Ephesians, so had he heard from the life of Jesus: “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). Perceive the powerful burst, but let it not move you into sin but inspire righteousness. Which leads to a fourth and final lesson.

4. Jesus wept and raged.

John 11 is famous for “Jesus wept,” for good reason. But the more surprising revelation there is his anger. And it’s not subtle. Uncomfortable translators have tried to take the edge off it, but John is even clearer about Jesus’s anger than he is about his sorrows. Tears we might expect; anger we do not.

In John 11:33, we find a holy soul in holy anger. Jesus doesn’t lash out. He doesn’t bash anyone or say something he will later regret. Tears flow alongside his anger and so offer a revelation about both grief and anger (as we glimpsed in Mark 3:5): Godly anger goes with tears, and tears can flow with anger.

Don Carson emphasizes Jesus’s anger, alongside his grief, in John 11. The word translated “deeply moved” in verses 33 and 38 (Greek embrimaomai) “invariably suggests anger, outrage or emotional indignation” (John, 415). And he insists,

The same sin and death, the same unbelief, that prompted [Jesus’s] outrage, also generated his grief. Those who follow Jesus as his disciples today do well to learn the same tension — that grief and compassion without outrage reduce to mere sentiment, while outrage without grief hardens into self-righteous arrogance and irascibility. (416)

This is a double lesson for us wonderfully emotional and tragically sinful humans. We are not whole if we experience no anger — or only anger. Some need to cultivate the love for fellow man (and God) that leads to holy grief; others need to cultivate the zeal for God (and man) that leads to holy anger. As Warfield captures it,

He who loves men must needs hate with a burning hatred all that does wrong to human beings. . . . Jesus never wavered in his consistent resentment of the special wrongdoing that he was called to witness. (75)

So, with Christ as our one mediator and perfect model, we seek to see our spirit increasingly come under the control of his Spirit.

See the Flash of His Love

Jesus indeed knows the experience of human anger. And we do not yet know the experience of sinlessness. As we watch his righteous anger, and learn the features of our own humanity in looking to him, we do proceed with caution, recognizing the distinctive power of anger, and knowing ourselves to be sinners across all our faculties.

And whether you call it rage or not, see that the root is love. The righteous anger of Christ is a function of his holy zeal — for his Father, his word, his holiness, and his people. For those who are safe in Christ, these flares of his holy anger are full of gospel wonder. He is righteous, and righteously angry with his enemies, because of his great love for his Father and his friends.

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I have an image in my mind of the godly old lady I want to be someday: soft-spoken, kind to all, full of wisdom. Having logged half a century under God’s sanctifying sandpaper, I should be well on my way by now. And, taking stock, I can see that I don’t have to rein in my temper as much as I used to, and there’s precious little out there that tempts me to covet. What I am learning, however, is that as I age, I sin differently. Sin is still “crouching at the door.” It just comes in a different form.

I can easily be fooled into mistaking apathy for godly serenity. I might take comfort in the absence of “fiery” sins like lust and anger — yet I may be blind to the pride, selfishness, and slothfulness that have crept into their place. Time can make us lazy, and we’re all subject to its subtle drift. Perhaps the sifting question for the aging Christian is, “Am I killing sin, or have I just traded one destructive path for another?”

The sad failures of David, Solomon, and Hezekiah suggest three solemn warnings for the seasoned Christian who wants to finish well.

1. Beware the temptation to coast.

As a much younger woman, I heard a well-respected Christian leader admit, “I could take my foot off the gas pedal today, and no one would ever know it. But I would, and God would.” From Screwtape’s devilish perspective, C.S. Lewis describes the “long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity” as “excellent campaigning weather” (Screwtape Letters, 155). He added, “Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts” (61).

This description perfectly fits “the time when kings go out to battle,” as David, coasting “on the roof of the king’s house,” set himself up for moral collapse rather than tending to business (2 Samuel 11:1–2). Then, later in the monarchy’s downward spiral, King Hezekiah, concerned mainly that there be “peace and security” in his own time (2 Kings 20:19), took “the gentle slope” at the end of his reign. Apparently, if he could cruise along in safety for the rest of his life, he didn’t care that Babylon would eventually be the instrument of God’s judgment upon Israel.

With David’s and Hezekiah’s backslidings before our eyes, we might ask ourselves, “And what about me? As I age, will I coast — or will I press on?” Personally, keeping my foot on the gas pedal will look like deep study and preparation for every ministry opportunity, resisting the temptation to whip up a twenty-minute devotional from the scraps of my previous teachings. It will require that I take captive the subtle sins that go undetected by others, listening instead to the voice of the Spirit as he filters every thought, word, and deed. It will mean that I never stop praying desperate prayers for God’s power to carry me and to keep me in the battle against sin and the fulfillment of my calling.

2. Beware the tendency toward cynicism.

By the time we reach midlife, we’ve likely accumulated a fair number of reasons to succumb to cynicism: the disappointment of prodigal or estranged adult children, the challenges of the sandwich generation, the heartache of difficult diagnoses, or even the death of a spouse. It’s all enough to make us join Solomon in singing the blues about the days when “the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails” (Ecclesiastes 12:5).

But Jude’s chilling description of “fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted” sends me in search of fruitfulness rather than slothful cynicism in this season (verse 12). If I give in to cynicism, I will find myself unable to enter sympathetically into the world of young family members and friends. Dismissive and emotionally unavailable, I’ll soon forget what it was like to care.

By contrast, the apostle Paul endured every indignity, trauma, and flavor of “church hurt” that we can imagine without bowing to cynicism and taking his hand off the plow. With unquenchable optimism, he never doubted God’s ability and willingness “to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” in people, churches, and situations that he could have easily scorned (Ephesians 3:20).

With our own eyes firmly fixed on the character of God, time may test and try us, but it can also soften us. We’ve lived through some hard things, but we’ve also seen God’s goodness and faithfulness in ten thousand different lights. By grace, we get to choose where our mind’s focus will rest. We can keep listening to the heartaches and challenges of the people in front of us.

We weathered the ages and stages of parenting long ago, but Spirit-fueled compassion keeps us listening with sympathy to the sleep-deprived mother of a toddler. We know for certain that the fate of the free world does not rest on our teen grandson’s failed driver’s license test, but we resist the temptation to apply a quick Band-Aid to his disappointment. Instead, we trust God for the gracious flexibility to enter the teenage world — and the worlds of all other kinds of people we encounter.

3. Beware grasping after youthfulness.

Was David’s moral failure with Bathsheba a symptom of his desire to prove he was still “a ladies’ man”? Was her youthful beauty the trigger that overcame his good sense? When he wrote Ecclesiastes, was Solomon lamenting the effects of the aging process on his joints? Regardless of the answers to these questions, their lives certainly attest to the danger of chasing an eternal springtime.

Our culture also worships youthfulness and fears the aging process, having long ago lost touch with a biblical view of aging well. Gray hair, which Scripture describes as “a crown of glory” (Proverbs 16:31), signals obsolescence or even invisibility to the man or woman whose greatest treasure is found in this world. Certainly, we don’t give in to our changing bodies without a fight. We exercise and eat sensibly — but we don’t listen to bad advice from advertisers who tell us we can stop the clock. Nor do we chase pleasure and make irresponsible choices in an effort to feel “alive” again.

Embracing the gift of years will look like mentoring younger women, partnering with God in creating the next generation of confident disciples of Christ and students of the word. As we steward our experience and trust God with the reality of our waning strength, we will be poised to serve the body of Christ with a depth of maturity that comes only through long-haul faithfulness.

Grace to finish well will come to us through humble, routine habits of holiness, spiritual disciplines that don’t deliver a big dopamine rush but provide a foundation for a faithful life. Regular communion with God through his word, confession of sin, and receiving daily grace for the “normal” Christian life doesn’t look very shiny unless it is seen in light of Paul’s laser focus:

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13–14)

The prize is not a good reputation or a stellar legacy. The prize is Christ, and the commitment to pursue his “upward call” produces the benefit of a life well-lived. Thanks be to God for the cross, our sacred starting place and our only hope for a faithful finish.

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