Who Gets the First Word?

Every morning, before my feet even touch the floor, I have a decision to make. It’s a small one, one that takes less than a second, but it shapes the entire trajectory of my day: phone or prayer. Who gets the first word? Who gets my attention first? Will I acknowledge the Lord? Ask Him to guide my steps? Or will I begin my day with a bombardment of dark chaos and the tyranny of the urgent? 

I’m not saying technology is evil. I’m not suggesting our smartphones are inherently sinful and to be really holy we need to ditch our devices and go back to using carrier pigeons or handwritten letters. We’re Lutheran, not Amish. Isn’t that right, Jedidiah? Technology’s just a tool, and it can be bad or it can be used for tremendous good. A lot of us read the Bible on our phones, and we use them to stay connected to our extended families, our friends, take photos, pay our tithes. I’m all for keeping my phone.

But I’ve definitely noticed I pay too much attention to it. 

It doesn’t make sense based on how careful we are about other things. We’re absolutely obsessed with what we feed our physical bodies. We read the nutrition labels, we count macros, we monitor our protein intake, and fight over which healthy ingredients are actually healthy. We’re always asking, "What am I putting into my body?" but we hardly ever think about, "What am I putting into my mind? What am I feeding my heart, my thoughts, my soul?" 

Most of us, the first thing we consume every morning isn’t breakfast… it’s information. Before we pray, before we open the Bible, before we pay any attention to God, we listen to the world’s noise. We check our messages, our notifications, scroll through social media, catch up on the news to see what terrible things happened while we were asleep. 

But all that information is actively shaping us. The mind has a diet just like the body does, and whatever we repeatedly shove in there becomes the spiritual, emotional, psychological atmosphere we live in. If you feed your mind fear every single morning, it’s going to learn to expect danger around every corner. If you feed it comparisons with other people all day long, it’s going to forget how to be grateful. If you feed it non-stop outrage and conspiracy skepticism, then anger and cynicism become your baseline normal, and if you feed it constant anxiety, peace will feel completely foreign to you.

When you start the day… Who gets the first word? 

I read an essay by a guy named Michael Becka the other day that stuck with me. He said "every time we scroll on our phone is a prayer." Kind of sounds ridiculous at first, but think about it… every time we open a feed and start looking through it, we’re directing our sacred attention somewhere. We’re basically looking at that screen and asking, “Show me what matters. Show me what's important. Show me what I should care about today. Show me what is real.” And it always answers.

The algorithms answer. They’ve been meticulously engineered to study our habits, learn our interests, exploit our deepest fears, and keep our eyes glued to that screen. It knows exactly what makes you angry, what makes you anxious, what makes you feel special, and what it takes to keep you scrolling. The problem is that the algorithm doesn’t love you. It doesn’t care about your peace of mind, your spiritual well-being, or your relationship with God. It isn't trying to help you become more faithful, patient, kind, or Christlike… it's just trying to keep your attention. So, it gives you more of whatever keeps you looking—more outrage, more fear, more comparison, more validation, more temptation.

We end up living inside a highly polished, digital echo chamber. A funhouse mirror that makes everything look just the way we like it. Our opinions are reinforced, our assumptions are strengthened, and our biases are confirmed. We become even more convinced that we’re absolutely right about everything! Living in the pretty little world we’ve curated where we're always surrounded by voices telling us exactly what we want to hear. We love it. It’s not healthy and everyone knows it. But we love it. Governments are scrambling to make laws to protect us from the evils of social media.

Rah! Let’s get the pitchforks and attack the tech companies!

No, it’s not their fault. Human beings have always done this. Long before there were smartphones, there was human pride. Long before there were algorithms, there was sin. Long before social media feeds, there was a fallen human heart desperately seeking self-justification. The tech companies didn't create the problem; they just exploited our brokenness and figured out how to monetize it. Ever since the Garden of Eden, our default setting has been a desire to be our own God, determine our own truth, and to define reality on our own terms. God made man in His own image and we’ve been returning the favor ever since.

That’s why Paul’s warning to Timothy sounds so remarkably modern.

In 2 Timothy 4:1–5 He says:

“I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: (This is the charge) preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

In season or out of season means we don’t follow the whims of culture or whether people want to hear it or not. This is a warning that people are going to reject sound teaching—make up their own truth, which isn’t truth at all. And the problem doesn’t only get blamed on false teachers… the people who only hear what they want to hear are just as much to blame. They don’t want to be challenged or hear hard truth. They reject it because they want something else—something more to their liking. They actively look for teachers who will tickle their itching ears—voices that validate their personal opinions and desires and help them live in a world where their assumptions are never challenged. They build their own personalized spiritual feed.

We expect the Bible and our choice of preachers to only say what we already believe. The greatest danger facing the Church today isn't that we treat our phones like a Bible; it’s that we treat our Bibles like a phone. We open Scripture and we start scrolling, looking for the parts we already agree with. We highlight the verses that support our politics, underline the passages that confirm our pre-existing worldviews and favorite doctrines, and we get all excited about sharing the Bible verses that make us feel right—and show how someone else is wrong.

The difference between most denominations is just what parts of the Bible they underline and what parts they redact. I hope one of the reasons you come to NewChurch is because we do our best to underline the whole thing. Just believe it all. Let whatever verse happens to be in front of us jack with us.

Because otherwise, what happens when Scripture actually challenges us? When it confronts our lifestyle, corrects our theology, or exposes our hidden sins? What are we going to do then? Suddenly get very creative? Explain it away? Contextualize it out of existence… or we just skip over it entirely until we find a commentary that tells us it actually means something else? We’re not supposed to treat Scripture the same way we treat social media: keep what we like and hide what we don't. If we only believe the parts of the Bible that we already agree with, we don’t actually believe it’s God's Word at all. Everyone agrees with the parts of the Bible they already agree with—duh!—even unbelievers do that! The true test of whether you actually believe this is the objective Word of God isn't when Scripture agrees with you; it’s when you really, really don't like what it says, but you believe it anyway.

True belief and true repentance are born in that friction. In the parts you don’t like. When it says you should forgive someone who has deeply wronged you, or when it says to repent of a favorite sin — one you really enjoy. When God commands you to trust Him when things aren’t going the way you want. When He reminds you that He’s in control when things feel very out of control, and you desperately want to take the reins from Him. And we really struggle with this one… when He tells us that our feelings and opinions and cultural wisdom are not right… our modern sensibilities. When He reminds you that He’s the ultimate authority, not you. He’s God, and you’re not. What do you do when there are only two possibilities: either God is wrong, or you are. Do you fight Him? You can’t win an argument with God. No, this is when we have to cry out with the Apostle Paul, Is God wrong? "Absolutely not! Let God be proven true, and every human being a liar." Let God be true, even when I disagree, even when I’m tempted to think I’m nicer than Him or smarter than Him… even when I wish He had said something completely different.

We absolutely hate this because our flesh wants to be God. We want everything to neatly fit in that little God-shaped box we made for Him. Our human nature, the Old Adam, doesn't mind going to church or being religious, as long as God stays in His place… manageable, domesticated, and never contradicts us. We want a God who’s just like us, which is why Psalm 50 has one of the most terrifying rebukes in all of Scripture… Verse 21, God’s like, “I watched you do all these terrible sins…

"You did these things and I kept silent. So you thought I was exactly like you. But now I will condemn you and state my case against you!" Psalm 50:21

Oof. This is God calling us out... “You thought I was exactly like you.” That’s the essence of idolatry. We make a god who conveniently shares all our opinions, votes the same way we do, and never challenges us. But a god who never disagrees with you isn't God at all—it's just your own reflection in a theological mirror. If your God never makes you uncomfortable, you're not worshipping the Creator; you're just worshipping yourself. God will always challenge our smug little comfort.

Hebrews 4:12 says:

“His Word is a living, active, double-edged sword that pierces to the division of soul and spirit. It cuts, it exposes, and it judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

If God’s Word never offends your pride or corrects you, you haven't actually heard what He has to say. He will always point out something in us that needs to die. 

But thanks be to God, that death is a good thing, and it’s never the end of the story. In the hands of our Heavenly Great Physician, the purpose of that double-edged sword isn't to harm us… it's life-saving surgery. The purpose of God’s Law is kindness, it drives us to repentance so that we can be healed. It’s His kindness that leads us to repentance. He kills the Old Adam, our old sinful self, so that He can make us alive in Christ. He tears down our fragile, self-made idols so that we can more fully know the true, living God.

He exposes our deep sin because Christ carried that exact sin in His own body on the cross. His Word crushes our miserable self-righteousness so we can be clothed in Christ’s perfect righteousness, which He gives to us as a completely free gift. This is the beautiful, comforting rhythm of Law and Gospel. God doesn't confront you because He’s angry or hates you… He confronts you because He loves you too much to leave you trapped in the echo chamber of your own self-delusion.

The same Savior who demands your total surrender is the One who goes to the cross to pay the debt for your rebellion. We don’t have to have everything figured out. It doesn’t have to make perfect sense to us. The Christian life isn’t simple or easy. We don’t trust in our ability to get it right or to understand it, we trust the definitive character of the One who speaks to us from the cross and the resurrection.

So what difference does any of this make? Back to our original question: Who gets the first word? When you wake up tomorrow morning, whose voice are you going to allow to shape your day? Will it be the tech companies and their algorithms, the morning news, the social media feeds, all the endless stream of human opinions? Or will it be the living God?

Before you start scrolling to ask the world what you should care about, maybe hear from the One who spoke the world into existence. Before you ask the internet to define who you are, maybe listen to the One who gave you a new identity in baptism and bought you with His blood. Before the world starts telling you what you should fear today, maybe listen to the Savior who says, "Don’t be afraid, I have overcome the world."

Before Instagram tells you whether you're beautiful enough or have enough attention.

Before LinkedIn tells you whether you're successful enough.

Before the news tells you what to be afraid of.

Before politics tells you which tribe you have to belong to.

Remember God already told you who you are.

You are His beloved child. You are baptized. You belong to Christ.

And stop searching the Bible just to find confirmation for your opinions. Instead, look for Christ. Open God’s word expecting correction, look for His promises, and expect the Holy Spirit to speak truth into your life. Wisdom. Hope. Repentance. True saving faith isn’t about when the Bible agrees with you; it’s about when you submit to it even when it doesn't.

Tomorrow morning, my phone will still be sitting right there on the nightstand. The notifications will be waiting, and the algorithms will be so eager to tell me what I should think and how I should feel about everything. But before I pay attention to a single word from all that noise, I need to lift my heart up to the Lord. Good morning, Lord. Say the Lord’s Prayer. Before I look to my shiny black glass portal to the world and ask my phone to, “Show me what matters. Show me what's important. Show me what I should care about today. Show me what is real.” I need to remember what Christ has already told me. What He’s done for me. Who He says I am. Who He says He is. I need to hold on to all these things. I need to let God be true and everything else fall into line after Him. The algorithm doesn’t love you but God does. Let Him have the first word… and the last. Amen.

Prayer

Heavenly Father,

We confess that we are often distracted by countless voices competing for our attention. We listen to the world, to our fears, to our pride, and sometimes even to ourselves before we listen to You. Forgive us for the times we have wanted a god who agrees with us rather than humbly receiving Your Word.

Thank You for speaking to us through the Holy Scriptures and for sending Your Son, Jesus Christ, to bear our sin and be our Savior. Thank You that when Your Word confronts us, it does not leave us in despair, but points us to the forgiveness, mercy, and life won for us through His death and resurrection.

As we leave this place, give us ears to hear Your voice above every other voice. Let Your Word shape our hearts, guide our thoughts, and direct our steps. Remind us to turn to you daily, knowing that our identity rests not in the opinions of the world but in Your promises.

Have the first word in our lives, Father, and have the last word as well. Keep us in Your truth until the day we see You face to face.

We ask all these things through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.