Before becoming a pastor I spent a LOT of time traveling around the world. All told, I spent over 3 full years living outside of the US in dozens of other cultures.
As you can imagine, with all that travel I got a pretty deep exposure to just how different cultural values can be.
Like with so-called “Kenyan time.” My Kenyan friends would be fully present in the moment, totally unconcerned with what was coming next, and I’d be like, “Um, GUYS?!? We’re going to be LATE!!!” They looked at me like I was crazy.
Or in India, where values of personal space are totally different. I’d be sitting on the floor during a church service and then some guy would start LEANING ON MY LEG. “Excuse me, sir! Don’t you see this invisible bubble around me?!? How dare you?”
It just kept happening. My individualism vs their collectivism. My guilt and innocence framework vs. their honor and shame. Different table manners and walking speeds and non-verbal cues…. I couldn’t escape the vast chasm between my culture and theirs.
At least, that’s how my travels began. As time went on, however, and I found myself living in places as diverse as urban Cambodia and rural South Sudan and a refugee camp in Haiti, I learned that my culture shock at all these differences was only a part of the story.
I began to notice there were also some really profound similarities.
I started to see how, no matter where I was, everybody shared at their core the same concerns, fears, and longings as everyone else. The need to be loved, the longing for justice, the yearning for truth… These things were simply human.
Even though our outward cultures are vastly different, if you scratch just a bit beneath the surface you’ll see that every human has the exact same core desires. We’re not really so different after all.
SERIES SETUP
And those similarities - that is what this new sermon series is all about. Welcome to “What if it’s true?”, an 8-week series exploring these core longings that all humans share.
What they are, why they are so often left unfulfilled in this broken world, and why we believe at Grace Church that every one of these yearnings can be met in the person of Jesus.
Love
Justice
Spirituality
Truth
Freedom
Beauty
Power
We’ll cover each in turn. I think it’s going to a really rich series. But, before we dive in, I want to take a second to explain our posture as we approach these topics.
If there's one thing I've learned from my travels it's just how limited and small my own perspective can be. And there’s a phrase I’ve picked up which I now say all the time which we’re going to come back to repeatedly in this series:
I could be wrong.
That might sound like a surprising thing for a pastor to say, but I think it is deeply important, especially right now. Honestly, I kind of want to have bumper stickers and t-shirts that say “I could be wrong” just so we can get people to stop being so ridiculously closed-minded.
Can you imagine if everybody approached their relationships, their politics, their faith, their lives with an open-handed posture that acknowledges that I may not, in fact, know everything?
Our world would be like a utopian fantasy, wouldn’t it? Well, we can’t make everyone say it, but here at Grace, at least, we can start modeling a different way to live.
We’re not here to debate. We’re here to explore. And I invite you to join us in that posture.
“I could be wrong, but here’s why I believe…”
So, let’s dive in. Our primary text for this series is the Gospel of John, a book about Jesus in our Bibles that makes some pretty direct claims about what our core heart yearnings are pointing towards.
Please grab a Bible and turn with me to John 3.
BORN AGAIN
Next week we are going to start digging into each of the seven core yearnings I mentioned before. But today, we’re taking a bigger picture view and looking at where these longings come from in the first place and what we believe God is doing about it.
Just a bit of context before we read. John 3 is the story of a Jewish religious leader - a Pharisee - meeting with Jesus surreptitiously at night, to figure out what his deal was.
The Pharisees were the most passionate, zealous Bible nerds of their day, but they found Jesus completely baffling, and Nicodemus is no exception. Let’s read.
John 3:1-3
There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.” Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
Right out of the gate, Jesus hits Nicodemus with a very confusing idea. That if he wanted to see “the kingdom of God,” a.k.a. if he wanted to see the world made right with God’s rule and reign complete, he would need to be “born again.”
Now, the phrase “born again” is familiar to many of us today, but this was crazy talk to Nicodemus. The next few verses show him struggling to wrap his mind around it.
“Are you saying I’m supposed to crawl back in my mother’s womb and be born a second time? First of all, gross. Second of all, what?!?”
Jesus goes on to explain that he is describing a spiritual rebirth. Becoming a new person who is not fueled just by food and water, but a person whose life comes from the very Spirit of God.
For the sake of time let’s skip down to verse 13, where Jesus explains how such a spiritual rebirth is even possible.
John 3:13-15
No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.
Jesus, what in the world are you talking about? A snake on a pole?
Well, here Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus’ vast Bible knowledge by bringing up a story from the Old Testament book of Numbers. It’s totally fine if you don’t know the story.
Basically, after their slavery in Egypt, the people of Israel were wandering in the wilderness when poisonous snakes started making their way into camp and biting people (and killing them). So we read in Numbers,
Numbers 21:8
The LORD told [Moses], “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!”
In other words, when the people are dying, they can put their trust in God’s provision - they can look up - and find life.
Again, this seems like the weirdest way for Jesus to put things until you think about where his story was going next. Jesus, just like that snake on a pole in the wilderness, would soon be lifted up on the cross.
And those who are dying can look up to his sacrifice to find life. New life. A fresh start. They can be born again. A spiritual rebirth.
“The Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.”
PERISHING
So with those images in mind - second birth and salvation from deadly snakes - we now come to verse 16 (one of the most famous verses in the Bible) where Jesus finally speaks plainly about all this.
John 3:16-17
For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.
First of all, it’s worth pointing out how shocking it is that God’s love for the world takes priority over the well-being of his Son. It says he “gave” his one and only Son. He didn’t just send him. He gave him - he gave Christ up to death for our sake.
Why would he do this? Well, look at verse 16. He did this so that we would not “perish” because of how deeply he loves humanity. But what does that mean? Well, in the original Greek of this passage, the word for “perish” is
apollymi - to destroy, lose, ruin, bring to nothing, perish
It has a range of meanings. Everything from destruction to death to loss to the downfall of a nation.
For example, in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, when the son returns, the father says, “my son was apollymi (lost) but is now found.”
When there’s a storm on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples all yell, “master, we’re apollymi! We’re ruined!”
It’s even used to describe wine or bread that’s gone bad. Imagine a moldy loaf of bread - it’s apollymi - it’s wasted. It’s ruined. It’s perished.
I tell you all this because there are other words in Greek to talk about literal death. Which is why I read apollymi as not just death but the death of potential. Of what could have been.
A nation that might have endured. A son that might not have left home. A loaf of bread that might have been enjoyed. Lost potential.
God gave his Son so that we might not perish. This is about more than just death; it’s about who we’re meant to be.
This brings us back to those 7 core yearnings.
We were meant to live in a world of justice. Right? There’s a reason we get so outraged when people take advantage of us or when life isn’t fair.
There are many different cultures around the world, but we all share this core wiring. From an early age people have finely tuned justice meters, and yet we all know our world isn’t just. apollymi - we are perishing form a lack of justice.
Another example. We all cherish beautiful things. It doesn’t matter what culture you’re from. A jaw-dropping sunset, a breathtaking piece of music, a baby’s smile…
We yearn for that kind of beauty, but look around - more often than not our world is filled instead with ugliness.
We are creatures who long to be known and loved. And yet our world is full of hatred and isolation. We yearn for truth, but we’re surrounded by lies.
Put simply, left to our own devices we are perishing. It’s the death of our potential. This is not who we are meant to be.
I think we can all agree that our world is broken. But when it comes to the solution to that brokenness, here’s we start to see things differently.
Some religions say that if you follow a strict set of rules or achieve some kind of enlightened state, then the brokenness of our world won’t apply to you.
Secular humanism seems to hold that the answer can be found in science and reason, by just changing our societal structures.
And there’s plenty to learn from all of those traditions. But here’s where I’m going to say the thing.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think we can rescue ourselves from perishing through human effort alone. The snakes are biting our feet and we’re dying here.
Again, I could be wrong, but I believe that there is one way for us to experience the kind of life we were meant for. What Jesus calls in v.16 “eternal life.”
This isn’t just “living a super long time.” The New Testament theologian N.T. Wright puts it this way:
Eternal life = Life of the age to come
Yes, it’s endless. Yes, it’s life after death. But more than that, it’s purposeful life. It’s a life beyond ourselves.
It’s a New Creation kind of life - an Eden kind of life. Abundant and peaceful and overflowing. A kind of life that brings life to others…
That’s the life I believe we were created to have. Yes. We’re perishing. Our core longings are unfulfilled. But, because of the sacrifice of Jesus, the life of the age to come is now possible.
We can look up to his sacrifice and be reborn.
The moldy loaf of bread can be made fresh again.
The prodigal son can be welcomed home again.
The disciples’ savior can make the sea calm again.
From perishing - from lost potential - to eternal life. The life of the age to come… Now and forever.
“This is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”
WHAT IF IT’S TRUE?
That offer of life - of an alternative to perishing - is what we’ll be exploring throughout this series. And we’re going to look at each of these core human longings in turn.
Love
Justice
Spirituality
Truth
Freedom
Beauty
Power
And as we do, we’re going to come back to that key phrase each time.
I could be wrong, but here’s why I believe that Jesus offers the love we’ve been longing for. The justice our hearts crave. A spirituality bigger than our own selfish desires…
In all my travels I have yet to find an answer more beautiful and compelling than a God of self-giving love who moves into our brokenness and gives us a way out of our self-absorbed perishing. A God willing to suffer and die so that we can recover our true potential.
I could be wrong. We definitely don’t have all the answers, but in this series we’re asking a simple question that I believe could very well change our lives. What if it’s true?
Are you perishing? Are your heart’s longings left unfulfilled? Is your potential being squandered by the brokenness of our world?
Perhaps looking up at Jesus – putting your trust in him – can help you discover the life you were made to live…