You can sit in a room full of people and still feel like the only one. In Genesis 2, Adam is the lone human until he sees someone who is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and the first words from human lips are delight. We were wired for that face-to-face connection, and most of us still know the ache when it is missing.

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Study Questions

The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.

The pastor emphasizes that human connection “awakens delight” in us in ways that nature, achievement, or technology cannot. When have you experienced the kind of “at last, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” delight Adam felt? How does that face-to-face connection differ from what technology or social media can provide, and how do you see this playing out differently across generations?
According to the sermon, spiritual formation requires both the Holy Spirit and “the tension of human relationships.” Which fruit of the Spirit (love, patience, kindness, self-control, etc.) is hardest for you to grow, and how have difficult people or conflicts in your faith community actually helped form it? What makes it difficult to stay in relationships during tension rather than leaving?
First Corinthians 13 says even the greatest gifts and achievements mean nothing without love. How do you currently balance ambition and relational investment? Where are you most tempted to chase success, knowledge, or influence at the expense of loving the people right in front of you—and what would need to change to reflect the conviction that love outweighs achievement?
The sermon critiques how technology—emojis, AI bots, social media—can create false intimacy and substitute for genuine connection, while also affirming that technology has a place as a “front door” to relationships. How are you currently using phones, social media, or AI in your connections? Where do you see technology being helpful versus harmful, and what would it look like to “go touch flesh” more this week?
The pastor calls listeners to move from “rows” to “circles”—from passive attendance to vulnerable, relational community groups—even knowing that human tension will follow. What barriers prevent you or others from stepping into those environments? What is one practical step your group or family could take this week to choose presence over isolation?

Transcript

This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.

Good morning Harvester, good morning to those of you at our Troy campus, good morning to those of you at O’Fallon, good morning to those of you here at St. Charles. We are glad to be here for week number four of A Better Way to Be Human, but before we jump into that, I want to give you a little peek at what’s coming if that’s okay.

Next weekend, we have a student takeover weekend at all of our campuses, but the following weekend, we’ve got a special series that we’re going to be launching. As you came into the room today, you should have grabbed one of these at the door; someone should have given it to you. Everybody grab your postcard, hold it up there. I want you to make sure that you’ve got it. You got it? Everybody got one? All right, there we go, a lot of them out there.

This is for you to know what’s coming but also for you to invite someone to what is coming. On August 16th, I’m going to be starting a brand new series called From Eden to Eternity, and it is going to be a 20-week series. Whoa, don’t miss a week, okay? 20 weeks in a row—I want you here. It’s called From Eden to Eternity because we are going to be starting at the Garden of Eden and over 20 weeks making our way all the way through the Bible to eternity.

The whole series is going to be designed to help you understand what the big story of the Bible is by sharing the entire story because I know you have a Bible. I know you’ve tried to read the Bible but it doesn’t always make sense about how all these stories connect; you don’t quite understand where to start. My hope is that by the end of that 20 weeks, you’re going to have a good understanding of what’s in this book and what it all means.

So I think you need that, but the reason we’re giving you postcards is so that you can pass them out to your friends—your friends who don’t come to church, have a Bible, they’re interested in knowing the Bible but they’ve opened it and they don’t understand it, and so they give up on it. This is your opportunity to resource them on understanding the Bible. Throughout the series, we’re going to have a companion guide that’s going to go with it, with small groups and questions and resources that we’re going to give you to help you understand that word as well.

So August 16th, make sure you’re here for the kickoff of that, and then join us for 20 weeks in a row. It’s going to go all the way through Christmas. It’s going to be an amazing series. But before we get there, let’s wrap up A Better Way to Be Human.

Hopefully, you’ve learned a little something about who you are as we’ve gone through these last four weeks. This fourth week is going to be an interesting one because we started off by talking about how you were made, that you were made in the image of God with value, but then we started beginning to talk about how even though we’re made with value, many of us devalue these bodies and the people that we are.

Last week we talked about how some of us don’t devalue who we are but rather we overvalue who we are. We assume that we’re the best thing, we’re God’s gift to creation—that we got this pride that we struggle with. Today, what I want to talk about is something a little bit different. I want to talk about the special uniqueness of humanity in that we are people who love each other. That when we come face to face with one another, there’s a special connection that we have, and that’s we’re both image bearers, we’re both humans, we both have the same flesh and bone, and so there’s some kind of connection that we have. When you bring two humans together, something special happens.

Now the problem is today though, there’s so many obstacles between us as we’re trying to connect with one another, isn’t there? Take cell phones, for example. Cell phones created to bring us closer together with one another, and we can contact and communicate with so many people now through our smartphones. The problem is that we’re beginning to hide who we are through our cell phones.

You know what I’m talking about? Any emoji users out there? You just love the emoji keyboard; you love sharing what your emotion is through the little smiley faces and the little images, right? Now just so you know, those were created to display and represent the emotion that you are actually feeling in the moment. The problem is this upcoming generation—they are messing with our emojis and they are starting to reassign definitions to normal emojis.

I’ve been talking to my daughters about this. They send me emojis and I don’t know what they’re communicating to me through the emojis. I send an emoji to them and they get offended somehow by the emoji that I’ve sent them back.

So for example, I’ve gotten this emoji from one of my daughters. Anybody ever received this one? They send it to me, and my father heart just sinks because my daughter is communicating, “I have died.” And in her last breath, she was letting me know. That’s what I assume it means—that I have died. But what they tell me it actually means is not that; it means that’s hilarious. Somehow that’s hilarious.

Or how about this emoji? Maybe you’ve gotten this one from your child. You say something and you were just kidding, and all of a sudden, you get like the tears, and this tells me that what I have said has just devastated them. My daughters are in tears. But what they tell me it actually means is that’s funny. What you just said, that’s hilarious. And that somehow means funny, that’s laughing.

How about this one? This one is a simple one. Just at the end of every text, I’ll just put that like, I’m saying this with a smile on my face because I’m happy. That’s what this should mean, but they tell me what this actually means is I’m irritated. So if my daughter sends me this, whatever I have said, she’s actually doing this. She’s hiding her emotions behind it.

How about this one? Dad’s in the room, favorite dad emoji—what does this mean, dad? It means I heard you, I got it, check, perfect, I’ll do the task, I’m like logging into my brain, we’re good to go. That’s not what it means. What it means when you send it to your child is whatever. Now in the 90s, we would do this. That means whatever. This means I’m good, but this means to a kid, “You do not matter to me. Whatever you said, I don’t really care about, whatever.” Doesn’t make sense to me.

And then there’s this one, which is just super confusing to me. It’s hot outside and my makeup is dripping, I don’t know. But really what it means when a child sends it to a parent is this: Whatever you said is embarrassing, but I’m pretending that I’m fine. I get this one after illustrations like this, where my daughters are like, and they’re hiding away.

Now we’ve created these symbols for human emotion to try to connect us better, but what the symbols are now doing is they’re actually hiding what we actually feel and we’re putting on fake faces to people that we can’t even see.

It’s an interesting time to be human. It’s an interesting time to be human. We’re texting instead of talking. We’re asking Alexa instead of asking each other. We’re advancing the species, but at the exact same time, we’re losing our humanity. We’re beginning to lose the uniqueness of being face-to-face with one another. Stuff that you can’t transmit through text, you can’t transmit through even a phone, like actual facial expressions, like tone, like presence. We’re missing out on the awkwardness of human interaction. I think there’s a place for that too—where the silence is just awkward and we don’t know what to say, but still, we’re both in it together in the moment. We’re missing out on handshakes and hugging each other around the neck, and no emoji will ever replace that.

Now, I’ll tell you this: I think technology is a worthwhile thing. I think technology is a beautiful thing. I text my family. I call my family. I use a smartphone. I use chat GPT and AI. I’ve married couples who have met through technology, and technology has a place. Technology can connect us from greater distances. It has that ability. In fact, right now in this moment, we are connected to three campuses through technology. It has a place to connect us.

Later on this week, there’s gonna be people watching this on YouTube or listening to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify Podcasts, whatever it happens to be. It has a place to bring us in connection, but technology can’t be the place that we’re going to. It can’t be the destination. It’s good for connection. It makes a poor destination.

Technology is a good front door to relationships, but it cannot be the relationships. Technology can extend connection, but it should never become the sole connection.

You know, our goal at Harvester Christian Church is to connect people, connect people to the Lord. We want them to encounter Jesus, but then we want to connect you with each other in community. And so, yes, we have an online ministry. We have online media. We have services online, but our whole goal for that is not for people to connect to the media itself. And it’s sure not just to connect with the person who’s standing on the stage.

My goal as your lead pastor is not for you to have some kind of connection with me. My goal is for you to be face-to-face connected with God and then embrace the connections with the people around you. That is what we’re all about here.

You know, one of the things that I have people ask me all the time is, why don’t you just teach every weekend? Like, why do you take so many breaks? I teach about 32 weekends a year, and the other 20 whatever weekends, I’m off the stage. And you know why I’m not teaching every single weekend? It’s not because I’m lazy, but it’s because I’m a human. I don’t know if you guys know that about me. I’m a real person, and I need connection.

And as much as this is good, this is a faux relationship right here. It’s a false sense of intimacy. It’s a false sense of relationship because, like, if you don’t notice right now, I’m the only one. Me and one other baby, and I love when the babies talk because it makes me feel like I’m not alone. I’m the only one talking in the room. Nobody’s talking back to me. And so it is so important for me to not be standing up here.

On the weekends where I’m not standing up here, I get to be shoulder to shoulder with you, face to face and hear you talking. In the hallways, I get to be at our Troy campus. I get to be at our O’Fallon campus, face to face and not just on screens, not just on stages. I need it. I need to be face to face with other humans. And you know what? You do too. You need to be face to face with other humans.

A Better Way to Be Human is this: to be together in the flesh. A better way to be human is to be together in the flesh.

So let’s talk about the uniqueness of humanity. Grab your Bibles, open up to Genesis chapter two. The first thing I want you to know about humanity and the uniqueness of it and the beauty of it is that human connection, it does something to us. In fact, here’s what it does. Human connection awakens delight. Human connection awakens delight inside of you.

We’ve been in Genesis chapters one, two, and three these past few weeks, looking at the creation of mankind, the creation of Adam and even Adam’s and Eve’s sin. But what we haven’t looked at yet is the moment where Eve was created and what that did in the heart of Adam. Up to this point in Genesis chapter two, Adam is the lone human in the garden of Eden. He’s the lone human.

There’s other animals and all the animals have pairings. All the trees have other trees of likeness. Other fish have other fish of likeness. But if Adam looks around, he’s the only one of his kind in the garden. And so he begins to name the animals. He begins to name the trees. And as he’s doing so, he’s looking for a relationship, which is a little awkward for me. He’s like going up and like, “You’re a lion, are we a thing?” “No, I’m not feeling that.” “You’re a tree, can I relate to you, tree?” “No, I can’t really relate.” And so there’s this loneliness that he’s beginning to experience in the garden, which is interesting because God’s in the garden with him.

How is he feeling loneliness with God there with him? It’s almost as if when God created humans, He didn’t just wire them for connection with Him. He also wired them for connection with each other. But in this moment, there’s no each other in the garden of Eden. And so God goes to work.

Genesis chapter two, verse 21: “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made it into a woman and brought her to the man.”

Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.”

Now, the interesting thing about this passage is this: this is the very first words that humans ever speak. This is the first time that Adam speaks in the story and in the narrative here in Genesis. And what does he speak? He speaks, “This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.”

Now, if you’ve got your Bibles open, I know some of you guys have your physical Bibles. In your physical Bibles, that passage is indented a little bit on your page because what the English text is trying to convey to you is what’s happening in the Hebrew. What’s happening in the Hebrew is that this is more than just a sentence. This is prose. This is poetry.

The first thing that ever comes from human lips is an exaltation of delight. This ecstasy that comes out of the heart. And he’s not just excited because she’s naked. I’m sure there’s a little bit of that in there, but he’s excited because he looks across and he sees someone who is fundamentally in nature the same as him.

At last, his heart screams out, “At last, bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” This has awakened something in me. There’s some kind of delight as I stand across from another human. This is what my heart has been missing.

When Adam looked at the animals, he didn’t get that kind of delight. When he looked at nature, he didn’t get that kind of delight. I don’t know if you’re a nature person like I am. I love being out in nature. There’s something about nature that just draws me close to God. It awakens this delight in me about who God is.

And that’s important. I think that’s part of what nature does—what God’s creation does. It points to who He is. But it doesn’t awaken a delight like this. This is a delight that only happens when you’ve been alone, you’ve been isolated, you felt like you were the only one in the world, and all of a sudden, somebody sees you.

Have you ever experienced that delight where you’ve sat down with someone and you’re like, “I think you get me. I think you understand what’s happening in my heart. You understand what’s happening in my mind.” Mountains and clouds and sunsets, they don’t understand. You know what understands? Bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. Human connection awakens this delight.

And I’ll tell you this, there’s nothing else that will do that. There’s no technological advancement that will replace the delight that comes from bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Not a smartphone, not an emoji will ever convey that.

Some of you, you’re looking for something in the world just like Adam was at first. Well, maybe it’s a pet. Maybe it is nature. Or maybe I’ll just pour myself into working the Garden of Eden.

Adam poured himself into his work. Maybe some of you are doing that. You’re pouring yourself into your work, thinking maybe if I can just get to the top of this company, maybe I’ll finally have delight. If I can finally reach my goals, maybe that’s where delight will come.

For those of you who have reached your goals, you know this to be true. You reach those goals and the delight’s not there. The delight’s not there.

Some of you, you’re trying to find that delight through social media. Maybe it’s through gaming. Maybe it’s through long-distance relationships. But I’ll tell you this, nothing, nothing beats face to face.

Human connection, it stirs something within us and it’s a delight unlike others.

Another thing that human connection does is it produces tension. Human tension produces fruit. Human tension produces fruit.

Flip over to Galatians chapter five. Galatians chapter five, the Apostle Paul, he’s writing to the church here, and he’s got some pretty strong words for the church in Galatia. They’ve got some relationship issues that are going on, and he spends the first part of the book just basically yelling at this church in Galatia.

But then he finishes it off by reminding them that they have the Holy Spirit within them, and if they’ve given their lives over to Jesus, there’s something special within them. It’s the presence of God inside of them and it’s this presence that begins to, or at least it should begin to, produce fruit.

This fruitfulness creates image bearers into the likeness of Jesus. That’s the intent of the Holy Spirit.

So he talks in Galatians chapter five, verse 22, about the different markings of a person who is filled with the Holy Spirit. He says, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

Now, the interesting thing about these fruits is that these fruits require two things to grow out of you. If you want to be loving and joyful and peaceful and patient and kind and all the other ones, you need two things for that to happen.

Number one, you need the Holy Spirit within you. But I want you to know, that is not enough. The other thing that you need is human relationships around you.

You need the Holy Spirit within you and the tension of human relationships around you. It’s the combination of those two things that forms you.

You cannot develop patience without people who get on your last nerves. You need those kinds of people plus the Holy Spirit to grow patience in you.

I mean, look at all of these fruits of the Spirit. They’re all relationally based. They happen in relationship. You want to be loving? You gotta be around people to love. You want to be more peaceful or more kind? You need things that test your peace and test your kindness.

One of the conversations I was having recently, not about relationships, was with a friend who goes to church here, Brett Gibson. We were just talking about people who are now getting into relationships with AI bots, and they’ll just set up the chat GPT or whatever it is and begin to talk and have a conversation with an AI bot.

And it’s pretty human-like because they display empathy, they display understanding, they speak kindly back to you. But what we were talking about, and he said this, and it’s like, I never thought about that, but that’s true. He said that the problem with an AI bot is that it displays so much empathy in relationship that it begins to train the human that this is what humans are like.

You know what I’m talking about? I mean, you talk to an AI bot and you ask it a question and it says, “You know, that is a great question. You’re intelligent. I would maybe think about it in this way, unless you want to think about it in another way.” And then you can respond back to the AI bot, “You’re wrong.”

And it’ll say, “You know what? You’re right, I am wrong. In fact, here is another option,” and it displays such human empathy that it trains the human to think that this is what relationships are like.

And then we go into other relationships and we tell someone, “No, you’re wrong,” and they respond, “No, I’m not.” And then what happens? Tension.

What do I do in the human tension? And what typically happens is, “Well, I abandon this relationship. I’m out. I experience tension. I no longer need you.”

And the problem with this is that spiritual formation requires the tension of people who disagree with us.

If you are going to develop forgiveness, then you need to be in relationship with people who have potentially hurt you. If you’re going to develop kindness with people, you need to develop it in relationship with people who you have every reason not to be kind with.

If you’re going to develop patience with people, you need to develop it with people who are pressing in on you all the time.

It’s the Holy Spirit within us and the friction of human relationship around us. This is what helps us to become the image bearers of God more and more, and we can’t do it without the tension of human relationships.

But I get it, human relationships are hard. They expose our selfishness, and they expose your selfishness. It interferes with my preferences. Human relationships interfere with your preferences.

Human relationships require empathy. It requires us to step out of ourselves and see things from someone else’s perspective, and maybe consider that that person might be right and I might be wrong.

That’s a difficult place to get to. But I’ll tell you this, this isn’t a flaw in God’s creation of humanity. This is part of His creation of humanity. It’s part of what forms us and molds us. It’s the crucible of human relationships.

And those who lean into that tension, instead of running away from it—finding a new friend, finding a new church, finding a new community—it’s those who press into that; those are the ones who will produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Human connection requires the tension that produces fruit.

Third one: human love. It’s a unique part of being human that we can love one another. And I want you to know this: human love outweighs achievement. Human love outweighs achievement.

I say this for a lot of those of you who are more driven in the room. So it’s a lot of you women; it’s a lot of you men who are career-minded, achievement-minded, success-minded. There’s a part of you that would be willing to sacrifice relationship and people to access some kind of achievement, some kind of level of success.

In fact, instead of relating with people, you’ve used people to get to positions, or you’ve tried not to, but maybe you’ve looked back and you have.

There’s this assumption that if I’m not good at relationship, maybe I put that aside and I’m just good at what I’m good at. I’m gonna get smarter, I’m gonna get stronger, I’m gonna get better, I’m gonna have more authority, I’m gonna have more success. And if I can do that, then maybe I will fill that hole within me. Or maybe I will be worthy of somebody else’s love.

Here’s what I want you to know: love outweighs achievement by far.

First Corinthians chapter 13, speaking of the Holy Spirit and the gifts that He gives us and our desire to be more, the Apostle Paul says this:

He says, “Let’s, for a moment, assume that you have more. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I’m a noisy gong or a clinging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing, I am nothing.”

You know, I think we’re chasing more, some of us. And we think it’s gonna be fulfilled in achievement. We want more knowledge; if I can just become smarter. We want more influence. We want more success; we want more power. We want more speed through life. We want to unlock the mysteries of this universe. We want to build technologies that push the limits of human achievement.

But if we accomplish all of that, individually or collectively, and we never learn how to love the person sitting across from us, you know what the scriptures say we are? We’re nothing, we’re nothing.

If we can access endless knowledge, we know everything, we know all the facts, we know all the trivial things of this world, but we can’t carry a connection in a conversation with somebody sitting across from us without looking at our phones. We’re nothing.

If we can extend human life, but then never use those lives to love other people, to never use our hands to care for the poor, never use our presence to show compassion to our neighbor, you know what we are? We’re nothing.

If you gain thousands of followers on social media, and you have no one to share your life with, what have you gained? If you reach the top of your field and you sit there alone at the top of the mountain, was it worth it?

I know some of you are scared to death to reach your last day and have nothing to look back on and say, what have I accomplished in this life? Was I successful? You think that’s the question you’re going to be asking yourself? You’re going to be counting your trophies and counting your medals.

Can I tell you what you’re going to be counting on your last day? You’re going to be counting your relationships. The mountains you’ve climbed are going to mean nothing. The relationships you’ve built are going to mean everything.

Human love outweighs achievement by far.

This passage in verse two ends by saying, “If I have all faith so as to remove the mountains but have not love, I am nothing.”

And so I would tell you this too: let’s assume your connection with God is as strong as it can be. You can sit in silence, in solitude, and experience God. You have this faith, this knowledge of the scriptures, and you look around, and you have not love—a love for humans, a love for God? Your faith alone isn’t enough. You need faith with God and with humans.

One of the things that we try to do here at Heart to Heart and what we try to do here at Harvester is try to connect people beyond this moment.

I recognize that there’s a lot of value in gathering together as a community. There’s a lot of value in opening the word of God and reading it together, but there is a lot more value in opening the word of God facing one another. Everybody right here is turned around facing me, and so one of our goals is to get you into environments, whether it be our courses or our classes or our community groups, whatever it happens to be, where you can turn and face one another, where you can experience human relationship.

And I know some of you have jumped into community groups before, and you’ve experienced human tension. That’s good for you. Stay in the group or rejoin a group. Some of you have come to classes in order to just gain the knowledge from the class, but then you’ve connected with people around tables. That’s part of the goal—that you connect with people around tables.

Rows are fine, but man, circles are so much better. It’s so much better to get out of spaces like this and get into places where there’s human connection.

My son, he is a Fortnite player, and one of the things that they do in Fortnite is they put on the headset, and he just talks to his friends, and they shoot people for fun, cartoon people. But on occasion, they’ll run across somebody, some other gamer who is just shooting all the people and winning all the matches and games.

One of the lingos that I’ve learned recently is that for that kind of person who was so extremely good, you’re supposed to tell them, “Go touch grass.” Go touch grass. And it’s basically a way of saying, “You spend too much time on the computer. You spend too much time inside in your room playing video games. Go outside for a minute.”

And church, can I tell you this? Go touch grass. Better yet, go touch flesh.

Shake someone’s hand before you leave today. Grab someone around the neck and give them a hug. Look them in the eyes. That’s bone of bone. That’s flesh of flesh.

I want to make a bold prediction about the future of humanity to wrap up.

We’ve talked four weeks about where humanity is going and some of the dangers of it, and I just kind of want to give a prediction of where I think it should go.

The future of humanity is not in becoming more artificial. That’s not where the joy of humanity’s going to be found.

And I think there are generations coming, and we’ve all experienced this, that we’re kind of sick and tired of artificial. And we want authentic. Sick and tired of talking to a screen and texting on a screen. I want people.

The future of humanity is not becoming more artificial. It’s in becoming more human. It’s experiencing tone. It’s experiencing connection. It’s experiencing tension in awkward spaces.

It’s experiencing sitting at a dinner table across from someone and hearing their story from their voice.

The future of humanity is in a people who see the image of God in every person.

The future of humanity is in a people who receive their bodies as not a curse, but as a gift that God created, a gift from God.

The future of humanity is in a people who choose presence over distance, who choose relationship over isolation.

A people who value love more than knowledge, more than influence, who value love more than achievement.

The future of humanity is in a people who look to Jesus as the image of the invisible God, the Son of God who put on flesh and dwelt among us, right next to us.

And I’ll tell you this, if you want to know what it means to be human, I’ve said it time and time again, here’s the answer: if you want to know what it means to be human, look to Jesus. And if you want to become a better human, follow Jesus. It’s a better way to be human.

Amen? Amen. Would you stand with me and let’s pray.

God, we gather together across all of our campuses with people right next to us, with beating hearts and breathing lungs. God, our prayer is that you help us to see one another, not just be around each other, but to see one another. To walk in life with each other, to experience the delight of being with someone who is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

And then God, my prayer is that together, as we seek you, as we see Jesus, as we sense the Holy Spirit in each of us, that we begin to recognize that every single one of us is uniquely created in the image of God and has a dignity and a value that’s worth knowing and getting to know.

Teach us to love one another. And through that love, God, I pray that you form us. Help us to become more loving and peaceful and patient with one another, more gentle with one another, more kind towards one another.

God, remove the barriers that are keeping us from being human. Help us to see each other and help us to see you.

It’s in Jesus’s name that we pray. Everybody say it: Amen, amen.