Connect With God

The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. (John 10:10)

The world chases satisfaction it can never catch—but Jesus stepped into our reality to restore the connection we were made for.

A Purpose in His Coming

The New Living Translation records Jesus saying here, "My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life." I'm not sure I know anyone who is not seeking a rich and satisfying life, and I'd guess you don't either. Even one of our founding documents speaks of the pursuit of happiness, which is in many ways the pursuit of a rich and satisfying life.

If you interviewed a hundred people about what makes life rich and satisfying, you'd find common threads but many different answers. Some think richness is found in wealth—an outward look at our nation suggests many believe that. Others pursue power, whether political or in business. Many chase fame, certain that some level of celebrity or status will finally satisfy. Still others look to intellectual pursuits, business achievements, or pleasurable experiences. Whatever it is, just about everyone I know is seeking richness and satisfaction in some way.

Here is the frightening thing: so many of the people we look up to—those who have attained wealth, achievement, or fame after working so hard—do not appear to be satisfied. They tell us in interviews that they worked so hard to reach the medal, the promotion, the achievement, and when they got there, it wasn't satisfying. Many slide into deep despair and depression, because what they thought would bring them joy didn't deliver what they hoped.

But Jesus says, "I have come that you may have life and that you may have it more abundantly." This is one of His purpose statements. We just celebrated His coming at Christmas, and it's important to remember this is not merely a birth. He existed before time began—John chapter one says, "In the beginning" He existed, and then "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Christmas is the celebration of Jesus stepping from one reality into this reality.

The gospels give about six or seven statements of why He came. Matthew 5:17—He came to fulfill the law. Mark 1:38—He came to preach the gospel. Luke 19:10—He came to seek and to save that which is lost. Mark 10:45—He came to serve and to give His life a ransom for many. And here in John 10—He came that we might have life abundantly, richly, with satisfaction. Point number one: Jesus came to the world for a purpose. That isn't revolutionary, but it's important. The reason for which He came must include this idea of abundance, richness, and satisfaction.

Dr. Solomon's Research Report

Three thousand years ago, a man set out to find satisfaction in this world and recorded his findings in a book called Ecclesiastes. It's only twelve chapters—you could read it in twenty or thirty minutes—and I highly recommend it. It was written by Solomon, king of Israel, who set out to scientifically examine where satisfaction is found. Think of it as the research report of one Dr. Solomon.

He began thinking he might find satisfaction in intellectual pursuit and wisdom. His first finding at the end of chapter one: "It is all meaningless, like chasing the wind." I have a dog who sometimes seems to chase the wind, and the other dog looks at him as if to say, "What are you doing?" It's a foolish pursuit. Solomon sought satisfaction in wisdom, and at the end of the day he found it empty.

So he ran a second experiment. In chapter two he says, "Come on, let's try pleasure. Let's look for the good things in life. But I found this too was meaningless." Then in verse three, "I decided to cheer myself with wine"—as if alcohol might fix the problem. It didn't. In verse four he tried building huge homes, owning large herds and flocks, collecting great sums of silver and gold. Verse eight—he had many concubines, everything a man could desire. "Anything I wanted, I would take. I denied myself no pleasure."

Here is his conclusion in chapter two, verse eleven: "But as I looked at everything that I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless, like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere." Sound familiar? This same man wrote, "There is nothing new under the sun." Nothing has changed in 3,000 years. People are still seeking in intellectual pursuits, business achievement, and amassing wealth, and always coming up dry.

In verse seventeen he says, "So I came to hate life, because everything done here under the sun is so troubling." And verse twenty: "I gave up in despair, questioning the value of all my hard work in this world." The scenery and technology have changed, but the problems remain the same. Point number two: the world and all that is in it does not ultimately satisfy. That doesn't mean there aren't joyful experiences or great highs—but every one of them is temporary.

Fast-forward 3,000 years and you get a hit song that's still a hit: "I can't get no satisfaction, and I try, and I try, and I try." A couple decades later, another: "I still haven't found what I'm looking for." Go through the hit songs of the day and you'll find the same theme. This world does not ultimately satisfy.

The Way the World Was Made to Be

Perhaps you're thinking: if Christianity teaches that God created the world—and it does—why did He create a world that does not ultimately satisfy? Why such brokenness and failure? It's a great question. I suggest to you that this world is not as God originally intended it.

If you started reading through the Bible this year, you know that at the very beginning God did not create the world this way. Genesis 1:1—"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." One of the core beliefs of the Christian faith is that God spoke all things into existence out of nothing. And at the end of each of the six days, He looked at what He had made and said, "It is good." Seven times in the opening chapter He says it is good, and the seventh time, in Genesis 1:31: "Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good."

At the center of God's good creation, the final act on the sixth day, God made man in His image—male and female. That means in some way we are like God, made after His form and likeness. And when God created us, the triune God revealed in Genesis 1—the Father, the Son who is the living Word, and the Spirit hovering over the waters—He made us to be connected to Him in relationship. At the very beginning, when everything was good, we were united to God in an unbroken connection.

Then in Genesis 2:18 we read the first negative: "And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him." It doesn't mean it's evil—it's incomplete. God brought all the animals to Adam to name, and Adam realized something was missing; there was no helper comparable to him. So God caused a deep sleep to come upon Adam and from him made woman, and the two were united together as one.

Wanting this goodness to continue, God gave humanity its first command in Genesis 1:28: "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it." He was saying, "I have created you to be in unbroken relationship with Me and with one another, and I want that to continue." Point number three: we were made to live in communion with God and community with one another. We were made for connection.

Sin Destroyed Everything

Clearly, something is amiss thousands of years later, because that communion is lost. Genesis 3 tells us why. The serpent, more cunning than any beast of the field, came to Eve and asked, "Has God indeed said you shall not eat of all the trees in the garden?" There was one tree God had forbidden. She replied that they could eat from all but that one, "nor shall we touch it, for the day in which we do, we shall surely die." The cunning serpent said, "You shall not surely die."

There we have the temptation and the fall. The thief came to steal, to kill, and to destroy—and that is exactly what he did. As man rebelled against God's command and partook of the tree, that rebellion—called sin—brought brokenness. God, who had been in unbroken connection with man, steps into the garden in the cool of the day, and His words are, "Adam, where are you?" There is now a brokenness in that communion.

There is also a brokenness between man and man. At the end of Genesis 2, both were naked and unashamed. But immediately after their sin, they knew they were naked and made coverings for themselves. Shame entered in, and division came. Point number four: sin destroyed everything. The goodness of creation was gone, the connection between God and man was broken, and the oneness God intended between human beings was devastated.

In Romans 5, Paul says, "Therefore, as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men." All 7.4 billion people on this planet are born into the brokenness, and we see it every single day. Here in Southern California, we try to barrier ourselves from the brokenness, and for a time you can. But eventually it gets through. Sometimes it touches us at a distance—in the news of Syria over the last five years, the terrorist attack in Istanbul, the Fort Lauderdale Airport. Sometimes it comes closer—two young children dying in a fire in Escondido last week. Sometimes it comes into your own family, with a death or a diagnosis of cancer. Sin has brought division, destruction, and death.

And yet within every one of us there is a residual desire for the way it was—a longing for life before the fall. So we seek for it in this world: maybe in intellectual pursuits, maybe in wealth, maybe in pleasure. Follow the worldviews of man across the centuries, all the way down to the nihilism of the 21st century, and you find people trying to create meaning for themselves—and finding no satisfaction in it, under the sun, in this realm.

Jesus Came to Restore the Connection

But Jesus said, "I have come. I have stepped into this world from another world. I have come that you may have life and that you may have it more abundantly." That is good news—what we call the gospel. Point number five: Jesus came to restore the broken connection. He came to bring life. That is what we as a church are all about: this good news of Jesus restoring the broken connection, seeking and saving the lost, giving His life a ransom for many.

That's why our mission, as printed at the bottom of your bulletin, is life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus. We begin each year here. Today we consider life in connection with God; next week, life in connection with one another; and the week after, life in connection with the world. But notice, this life comes through Jesus.

In Romans 5:17, Paul writes, "For if by one man's offense death reigned through Adam, much more those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ." Verse 18: "As through one man's offense judgment came to all men resulting in condemnation, even so through one man's righteous act the free gift came to all men resulting in justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience many will be made righteous."

Listen again from Ephesians 2:13: "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were afar off have been brought near"—how?—"by the blood of Christ." "For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation... so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross." He brings us back to God through what He did on the cross.

The Longing in a Post-Christian Culture

There is not a person alive who doesn't desire, at the deepest level—even if they cannot articulate it—the satisfaction that comes only from communion with God and community with one another in Jesus Christ. Everyone you know at work, at school, in your family, even if they don't know God, has this sense that this is not all there is.

We're living in what's called a post-Christian society. According to Pew Research, 23% of Americans today—almost a quarter of our population—are unaffiliated with any religious group. And yet even among them there's a desire for something more, and we see it in our culture in fascinating ways. Among the leading shows on Netflix right now are Stranger Things and The OA. What are they about? This world is not all there is; there's something behind the reality we live in. In The OA, the only way to reach the other side is through near-death experiences. Pop culture keeps saying: this is illusory, this is not all there is.

Last June at the Code Conference, Elon Musk—founder and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, founder of PayPal, an avowed atheist—was asked whether we might be living not in reality but in a simulation, one big computer game. He said, "I've thought a lot about that, and I think it might be true." His reasoning: forty years ago we had Pong—two rectangles and a square, "bink, bink." Now we have photorealistic games nearing a point where they are indistinguishable from reality, and virtual reality is becoming so real that the mind struggles to distinguish it from the real world. Because we've come that far in forty years, Musk said, it's not unthinkable that some higher race or greater intelligence created this simulation, and the probability we're in one is "one in billions."

A lot of Christians wonder what to do with that. But here's what we say: you're actually closer to reality than you think, because this is not all there is. There's a world more real than this one, more tangible than this one. Once we had a connection to that world, but it was broken—and we all know it's broken, and we all desire that connection to be made again. The Creator of this "simulation" stepped into this world to reconnect us to Himself. Two thousand years ago, the man Jesus Christ came to give life, and that more abundantly. There is a higher intellect who created us, placed us here in what He made, and desires that we be connected with Him—and Jesus came to make that connection. Life in connection with God, one another, and the world comes through Him.

Closing Prayer

Father, I thank You so much that You loved us to the point that You sent Your Son to step down into this world to deal with the problem of sin that was keeping us from coming to You, and to make the way open for us to return to You again. Thank You that Jesus demonstrated that love, that while we were still sinners You died for us, so that we could be brought back into connection with You. I pray that we who have been united together with You again would be able to bring that good news to those in our world who are experiencing the brokenness and desiring so much more than what this world has to offer. Give us boldness to share the good news as we interact with people this week.

If you have been seeking satisfaction and richness in the things of this world—through intellectual pursuit, wealth, pleasure, or some other thing—and you realize it's not there, know that you will never find it in this world. It comes only from a relationship with God and all the benefits that flow from it. If you'd like to receive God's forgiveness and grace and be reconciled back to God today, simply receive the free gift He offers.

Father, I pray for Your church, and I ask that You would empower us by Your Spirit to be bold witnesses, for there is a growing sense in our nation that this is not all there is and a desire for so much more. God, give us the passion to share the good news with them. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.