Connecting To New Life (We Are Better Together)

Connecting to New Life

(We Are Better Together)

Brad Bailey – September 9, 2018

Intro

It’s great to see you this morning… and to be together.

I imagine that if asked “WHAT did you come to?”…when you came to church this morning…and “WHY did you come here this morning?”… there would be a variety of answers. Each would probably be a good one. But I sense there may be more than we usually grasp.

My desire this morning is to help us capture why we gather… to see what God sees.

When I consider the most basic “WHY” that leads me here, it’s this:

Nothing has come into this world and truly engaged the real nature of our existence… like the person, purpose, and power of Jesus.

Most historians would agree.

But it’s also true on a personal level.

Imagine for a moment… someone entering your life and telling you that they know who you really are… perhaps accentuated because you never even knew who your parents were…or your ancestry… and one comes into your life who has the answer.

That is why we are here.

Jesus came to restore our relationship with our true source of life and identity… our true Father…the Creator of the universe.

Something in our souls may sense we are being drawn… drawn to what can make sense of our longings… but something in our souls may also sense it causes us to face the problem we know is true as well.

We may realize that we have actually rejected the very Father who is good.. and come seeking you. You might think: I rejected Him? Denounced Him?

Jesus says in essence: Precisely…and if you recognize that… you will receive the very purpose of my life… to reconcile you… redeem you.

He declares your true identity… (even told some disciples… he had a new name for them… as a way to awaken that their whole identity was beyond what they had known.. He declares a new identity… not dismissing their earthly reference points or personalities…but revealing something much larger that rooted their lives.

He declares a new home … in the heavenly realm… that is where you ultimately live.

He declares a new family…which is everyone who receives this new life. Your earthly family was created to be a great source of temporal life…and love… but the new life I give you restores your place in existence… a place created long ago… the place you belong.

Eph. 1:5 (NLT)

“His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His

own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ.”

We all long to belong… and Jesus reveals why:

You were created for community… to belong in eternal community… which shares new life with God.

This is what the “church” is.

The church is that which is united in Christ and the new life that exists in him and through him.

He is offering new and true life…and that is a lot to take in. How do connect with this new life … new identity… this new home and family? when Jesus is not simply here in bodily form? How do I we reorient life as we know? He said his presence… and truth would now continue and go forward embodies in all who receive him…and that is what the church is.

Our connection to new life in Christ is a shared life. Jesus commissioned the church to bear his life-giving presence and purpose.

What bean was a viral movement. This is what we are given in the account of Luke in the Biblical Book of Acts.

Acts 2:41-47 (NIV)

Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Quite a powerful description.

It’s describing what we could call a VIRAL movement… something expanding in a way that defies control. (It’s actually quite amazing f one stops to realize that the known world had already seen how power controlled human life… there were Pharaohs over Egypt…and now Caesars over the Roman Empire. It was the solidifying of military and political force… that controlled the world. Jesus… said…God’s kingdom is not ruled by such forces of human control. He came to peasants. He gathered a few ordinary lives. And he set forth something that would transcend all human empires. And this is what described it’s movement. It spread through this viral connection.)