On a Reconnection Mission | Sunday, April 25, 2021

Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh... that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. (Ephesians 2:11–12)

We are born longing for a connection with God we cannot achieve on our own—so He came on a mission to find us.

Born Believers

I left you with a bit of a cliffhanger last time—hopefully a hook to keep you with us. In my last talk I shared that we human beings are born believers. We know this is true because every human culture throughout all of known human history has defaulted to religious expression in one form or another, and they still do today. Every culture you study has religious ritual and form that it falls into. Everybody does it.

We also know this is true because all of us are by nature religiously oriented. Modern social science validates this; cognitive anthropologists and clinical psychologists have seen through their research that this is reality. We are not, as many modern atheistic naturalists try to claim, merely socialized into belief. As much as modern atheists hoped that post-Enlightenment rationality and reason would lead to more irreligious societies, the opposite has been true. Yes, some in modern Western culture say they are spiritual but not religious, or religiously unaffiliated—but they are nonetheless religiously non-religious, still groping for transcendence just as the Scriptures say.

The Quest for Eternal Life

People aren't only seeking transcendence—they are trying to connect with everlasting life. Billions of dollars are currently being spent by some of the most well-funded private equity firms on human life-extension projects. Some of the greatest minds in technology, pharmacology, biology, nanotechnology, genetics, gene editing, cybernetics, and cryogenics are working on a cure or reversal for aging. And if they can't reverse aging, they want to upload your consciousness into the cloud so you can live forever in some digital format.

If this sounds like science fiction, it is—but it isn't. Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle; Elon Musk; Peter Thiel; Larry Page of Google—these are just some of the notable billionaires investing in life extension and trying to cure aging. Why? It's clear: we want to live forever. Human beings are born with a desire to live forever and a desire to connect with the divine. We are born believers. It has always been this way, and it always will be. To quote Lady Gaga, you're born this way.

Created for Connection, Separated by Sin

We were created by God to live life in connection with God. He made us in His image, male and female, to experience perfect communion, community, and connection with Him and with one another. But Paul writes in Romans 5:12:

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.

Our disobedience brought evil, brokenness, division, suffering, and death into the world. We are born desiring connection with that which we cannot have because of the effects of indwelling sin—what Christians for centuries have called original sin.

I know there are differing opinions on that doctrine: are we born innately fallen, or do we become fallen by our active participation in sin? Personally I think it's a moot point, because all of us will inevitably sin. And if you think children are born innately good, you've probably never spent much time with small children. We are born desiring connection with God, yet born separated from Him.

Cheap Substitutes That Never Cure

All of our religious expressions—even the non-sacred, "non-religious" religious expressions of 21st-century Americans—are cheap and ineffective substitutes for true communion and connection with God. They never fully cure, remedy, or repair the problem of sin. They don't take away its stain, they don't remove the guilt and shame associated with it, and they don't bring us back into harmony with God and one another.

So we have a huge problem. We have a longing within us to transcend this world and connect with God, yet we are separated from Him. How can we repair the breach? How can we be reconciled? If suffering, separation, and death are the result of sinful disobedience, how can we reverse it?

I hate to break it to you—we can't. Not by our own efforts, our good works, our religious rituals, or our non-sacred practices.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

By the deeds of the law our sin is only revealed; no flesh will be justified. We cannot fix the problem of sin by our own efforts, though humanity has been trying ever since we were sent out of the garden. That is the very nature of religious endeavor—trying to create ways to get back to God.

"Having No Hope"

If we're in this desperate situation, longing to get back but unable to, what then? Are we simply hopeless? In one respect, yes. When I started this series, I read Ephesians 2:14 to the end, but just before that Paul writes that the Gentiles were "without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world."

Let me read that again: having no hope and without God in the world. Hopelessness is part of this story. It's not the whole story, but it's a reality—the bad news we all need to reckon with.

"But God"

Here's the small beginning of hope, also in Ephesians 2:

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world... among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh... and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

That is our hopeless, dead, sinful condition—who we were. But then look at the next two words in verse 4: "But God." Those two words are our hope, and in many ways the whole "Life in Connection" story hinges on them.

That story actually began much earlier than Ephesians 2—earlier than the Gospels, earlier than the prophets who predicted the coming Deliverer, earlier than David, who prophesied that God would show us the path of life in Psalm 16:11. The first light of hope was given immediately after the fall, in Genesis 3.

Disconnection in the Garden

Last week we ended in Genesis 3:1–7. Right after Adam and Eve failed to obey God's command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they heard the sound of God walking in the garden and hid from Him. They had been connected with God before they sinned, but now they were ashamed of their nakedness and vulnerability.

Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9)

That is disconnection. Adam answers, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself"—proof of guilt, shame, and separation. God asks, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?" And Adam says, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate."

Well, you did it, Adam—that'll cause some division when you throw your wife under the bus. But he doesn't only blame her; he blames God: "the woman You gave me." Adam is swinging and missing at every pitch.

The First Glimpse of the Gospel

As this unfolds, God speaks about the resulting curse, beginning with the serpent that deceived Eve:

Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle... I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:14–15)

This is poetic language, but its interpretation is simple. Satan deceived Eve by twisting God's word. So God says: there will be enmity between you and the woman, and one born of the woman—a male child at some future point—will deliver a death blow to Satan, crushing his head, though He Himself will be superficially wounded in the process. A crushing blow to the heel is far less an issue than a crushing blow to the head.

Our hope is built upon the promise of deliverance from God the Father, and this came immediately after the fall. For you theology nerds, verse 15 is what theologians call the proto-evangelion—from the Greek protos (first) and euangelion (gospel)—the first mention of the good news of hope for hopeless humans like us. Life in connection with God was broken by sin in Genesis 3, but God promised deliverance, salvation, and reconciliation.

A Rescue Mission

For that to happen, there first needs to be a rescue mission, because we cannot reach up or build our way to God. On Palm Sunday I gave a message from Luke 19 about Zacchaeus, the tax collector. Jesus called for him and dined with him, and the multitudes challenged Jesus, seeing this tax collector as a worse sinner than any of them—tax collectors were synonymous with adulterers and extortioners. When they complained that He went to be the guest of a sinner, Jesus explained:

Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. (Luke 19:9–10)

Jesus came to earth on a mission to rescue lost, sinful, hopeless humans—and it is His joy to do so. God is not up in heaven doing a divine facepalm over our condition, frustrated that He has to sort out our mess. That is not the picture Scripture gives.

The Heart of God in Luke 15

A few chapters earlier, in Luke 15, Jesus tells three stories that reveal the heart of God toward lost things like you and me.

Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him. And the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, "This Man receives sinners and eats with them."

This is amazing: sinful people—or maybe the people who knew their lostness—drew near to Jesus. Something about Him attracted broken, lost, sinful people. Hopefully there is something about His people that does the same. Unfortunately that hasn't been our experience in American culture for a while, and that might tell us something about how we are perceived—and how we might need to change. Jesus attracted sinners and was repelled by the most religious people.

So Jesus tells them three stories. The first:

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing... I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.

The second:

What woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?... Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

Jesus came from heaven to earth to find and rescue lost, sinful, hopeless humans—disconnected people—to bring them back into the connection we were created for.

The Lost Son

The third story is the prodigal son, a favorite of many.

Then He said: "A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.'"

The younger son squandered everything in prodigal, wasteful living. When a famine came, he joined himself to a citizen of that country who sent him to feed swine, and he would gladly have eaten the pods the pigs ate. But when he came to himself, he said, "How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father." He resolved to confess, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and am no longer worthy to be called your son."

But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

The father called for the best robe, a ring, sandals, and the fatted calf: "For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."

The Other Son

Many lost sons and daughters identify with this story. But if you're paying attention, the story keeps going—because storytellers never add a character for no reason. The older son was in the field and, hearing music and dancing, learned his brother had returned and the fatted calf had been killed.

But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him.

The older son protested that he had served for years and never been given even a young goat, yet "this son of yours" who devoured the livelihood with harlots got the fatted calf. The father answered, "Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found."

Remember the context: Jesus told these three stories to very religious people who were angry that He was spending time with lost people. Sometimes the really religious people forget that Jesus came on a mission to find and rescue the lost, and they get angry when lost people show up. Jesus is on a mission to reconcile people to Himself—"the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." He gives us a vision in Revelation 5 and 7 of multitudes of lost people reconciled to Himself, and He calls us to the same mission: to live life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus. That is our mission and vision at Cross Connection Church.

Closing Prayer

Father God, I pray that You would cause this mission, this purpose, this vision to be in our hearts, and that You would stir us to want to follow You in this, to imitate You in this, and to be those who are reaching out to the lost people of this world. We live in a culture where people are constantly trying to better themselves—through diet, exercise, meditation, all kinds of things—but none of those things will ultimately satisfy, overcome the stain and shame and guilt of sin, or restore us back to You.

We are surrounded by people in desperate need of Your good news. I pray that You would cause us, Your people, to be in some way more attractive to lost people, that they would be drawn to us and want to know about the love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, and self-control—the fruit of the Spirit—they would want in their own lives. Do a work in us. And just as You came to this earth to seek and to save that which is lost, help us to be compelled to join You on that mission—to live life in connection with You, with one another, and to extend this abundant life to the people of this world. Every person we meet desires it and longs for it, so stir us to share this gospel with others. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.