Loneliness

I invite you to turn in the Word of God this evening to Hebrews again, but this time chapter 13, Hebrews 13, giving some time to a topical series in recent weeks—looking at what we’ve titled Bible Answers for Inner Battles—addressing some of the challenges that we face in a fallen world. Some of those challenges are very much internal, individual. They can be influenced by circumstances and are differing contexts, but they’re not always visible. You can’t necessarily look at someone in a photograph and say that they are anxious, and you can’t necessarily look at a photograph and say that they are lonely. That’s what we’re dealing with tonight—the subject of loneliness.

And so we’re reading here in Hebrews 13, a text that I’m using as the primary text that I want you to keep in mind in relation to the subject, as found in verse 5. But we’ll read from verse 1, Hebrews 13. And as we deal with these subjects, as we go over them, I recognize that it can be very delicate—I know that—and I am trusting that there is an element of latitude that you give to me in the fact that we address these, and sometimes it can come very close to home. I hope that the Lord ministers to you, enables you to think through these struggles if you’ve experienced them. I think through them biblically, that these are a help to you. The feedback so far has been good, but I haven’t exactly asked everyone. So those who are speaking have been positive, but those of you who may think otherwise may just be holding your thoughts to yourself, for which I’m somewhat grateful. But I hope it’s helpful and helps us to work through some of these things, some of which we may not freely acknowledge. And we struggle even to admit that this is a problem. And I’m feeling this, even sometimes to diagnose it in ourselves, to say that this is what I’m experiencing. So may the Lord help, and I trust it is of benefit to you.

Hebrews 13—let’s read from verse 1:

“Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled; but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. Let your conversation be without covetousness, and be content with such things as ye have. For he hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee, so that we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man shall do unto me. Amen.”

We’ll end the reading there at verse six. What you have heard is the word of the eternal God—a word that you are to receive, believe, and obey. And the people of God said, amen.

Let’s pray.

“Lord, we ask tonight that thou wilt give help again in thy word. As we address some of these matters and we think particularly of the subject before us tonight, we are in full recognition that there is a spectrum of suffering that man may experience that defies the ability of any person to really speak about. There are things we can say, but we must acknowledge that they are really just touching on the surface. And so our dependence tonight—whether it be this issue or any other—is upon the Lord. We need the Lord’s help. I pray that this people, this congregation, would have a robust faith that looks to Christ, that depends upon their God, that prays for the ministry of the Holy Spirit to their own souls, and finds the primary solution for all the angst and all the challenges of this life to be truly helped, meaningfully finding supply in the living God. So I pray, please, please deliver us from mere man-centered ideology, and man-centered helps. We pray that the Spirit of God would teach us to turn towards Thee. Come to us, Lord, tonight. Please aid us, aid the preacher, aid those here to listen. We pray that there would be a knowledge imparted, and more importantly, a presence felt. Save the lost. Restore the backslidden and minister in feeding Thy sheep and Thy lambs, we pray in our Savior’s name. Amen.”

“It is not good that man should be alone.” This is the unusual, or somewhat unusual, observation made by God in a world yet perfect. As God looks upon all that He has made, and pronounces various aspects of it as good, He then declares, it is not good that man should be alone. This experience, then, of loneliness in one sense is not as a result of the Fall. Some of the things we’ve been dealing with—we might say, this is because of the Fall. This was not experienced in any way before sin entered into the world. But it would appear from the language of God in Genesis 2:18 that there’s some kind of loneliness that could be experienced that was not good even before the Fall entered into the world.

Loneliness has been defined as, quote, “The distressing feeling of being alone or separated from others.” Another defines it as a subjective, negative feeling related to the deficient social relations, or to two deficient social relations. There’s a sense in which this isolation, this feeling of isolation, has been experienced by every one of us at some point or other—even if it’s just momentary. Some fleeting experience where maybe, in a particular period of your childhood, you had no friends and you felt isolated and alone. Or whether it be some more extensive, prolonged experience as a result of whatever the case might be, whatever the scenario might be, in which there is a sense of being unseen, unconnected, and unknown.

And yet in an age in which we live—this connected world in which the world feels, in some ways, much smaller than it ever has before, where we have social media and all the digital connectivity that exists in our present age—yet loneliness, we’re told, is worse than ever. It’s always been a problem, it’s always been a threat, but it’s worse now than ever. And you might say, “How can this be? How can it be in the midst of a world in which, in a moment, I can call and speak to, in real time, my mother, who lives 4,000 miles away?” And yet, still, this problem is more real now than ever. Modern life, rather than helping us in this regard, has actually isolated us. It has presented to us substitutes, that masquerade as being a form of connection and yet not really addressing some of the undergirding need that we have.

There are other aspects, too—things that have changed within our world. Families are much smaller today. And some of you can remember growing up in large families in which there wasn’t really much room in the home. We have these huge abodes with 3,000 square feet or whatever, and four or five people living in them. And we read of times where there’s a family of 17 in a two-bedroom house, and maybe it’s like 800 square feet, and you say, “How did they do it? Well, there was no sense of loneliness, that’s for sure.” And so there have been many changes, even in the space of just two generations—changes that have in some way fed into the problem that is felt and observed in our present world. And it’s brought about changes in other ways, too.

I was listening to a church planter some months ago—he’s been involved in a church plant for a number of years—and he was making his own observation, I think, but it resonated. I think there’s a certain truth to what he was saying. He’s just a young man, and he was saying that 40 years ago what people were looking for was good Bible teaching. There was a real famine for solid biblical teaching 40 years ago. And so, everyone was just looking for a church where the Bible was opened and seriously preached, and if you did that, people felt themselves to be satisfied. He said now there is much more in the way of careful preaching of the Word. At least it’s easier to access—whether it be in person or, certainly as a result of the Internet. We have two or three million sermons, whatever’s on SermonAudio, and other places that we can go for solid teaching.

And so, what people are really craving for now is not teaching, but connection. They’re craving connection. I think there’s an element of truth in that observation. The experience of loneliness is delicate. It’s not an easy one to address. Again, if you’re not in that period or you’re not going through this experience, then you might say, “You know, I don’t think much about it,” but it is, it’s very delicate. To feel lonely is a great hardship. And there are various reasons why it may come upon a person. It may arise through the loss of a spouse, or even the feeling of it may arise through some traumatic experience. And so it coincides with things going on that disconnect you from the world around you, and it doesn’t always mean that there’s no one there. Again, as one of the definitions puts it, in many regards, it’s a subjective thing. And I don’t mean to say it’s subjective in the sense that you’re just imagining it, but it is deeply personal. What might affect one person doesn’t affect another, and yet it’s very real for them.

So, while there may be overlapping experiences that coincide with something like loneliness, often depression is there as well. Real prolonged loneliness will often go hand in hand with feelings of or real experiences of depression. I’m keeping it distinct; I don’t want to mix ideas—and we’ll deal with depression at another time.

So loneliness—and we’re following the same three heads we’ve been doing before—we come then to its character, first of all. What’s the character? How do we understand that?

Well, first of all, it’s more than being alone. Loneliness doesn’t simply mean that you’re alone. Certainly, when you are alone, you might feel lonely. But you may sit in a congregation like this and feel alone. You may be surrounded with familiar faces—those that you know to a degree—and yet feel isolated. You feel as if you’re not really seen; you don’t feel like there’s anything deep or meaningful in the connection, and you feel yourself to be, as I say, isolated.

So this feeling of loneliness is not unique to our day, because when we open the Bible we find that there were others in the same place—people who were going through life, with others around them, and yet still they felt alone. You find it in Psalm 102. Go over to Psalm 102. I think it’s a very helpful portion in relation to this subject. Psalm 102 is given a title: “The Prayer of the Afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, that he pours out his complaint before the LORD.” And so, as the psalmist brings his burden—likely David—look at verse 6 of Psalm 102: “I am like a pelican of the wilderness.” I remember the first time I saw a pelican in the wild. It wasn’t in Northern Ireland; it was in Australia, and they’re all over the place—and you’re right there by the coast, and these pelicans are everywhere. A pelican is a creature that likes to be near the water; it’s at home near the sea and on the sea. Here, the observation is, “I am like a pelican of the wilderness. I don’t belong here. I am like an owl of the desert.” Instead of being in the forest among the trees, I feel like I’m in a desert.

Then in verse 7, “I watch and am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop.” Sparrows do not often move around alone. Usually they’re in groups—many of them—and they’re also a creature that bonds for life. So even there, when a sparrow is alone, there is an intimated sense of loneliness, an isolation that comes through the death of the partner of your life.

And so David feels this; he feels this kind of isolation, this loneliness—a feeling as if there’s no one around him, no connection, no meaningful, intimate bond; no one with whom to share your innermost burdens, no one who truly makes a study to know you. That leads to this heartache, this feeling of loneliness. As I say, it’s more than being alone. David was surrounded by people for the vast majority of his life, but also, there are emotional and social dimensions. There are different ways in which it is brought about.

So again, emotionally, you might feel it through the loss of a loved one. And you feel a sense of loneliness. You have lived for decades with this person by your side; no one knows you like they do, and you don’t know anyone like you knew them. And then they’re gone, and there is a deep emotional void that cannot be filled.

On the other hand, you might have a similar experience of loneliness—though very different in the feeling of it—when someone, for example, moves away from what is familiar to them. They move to a new city for a job; they don’t know anyone at all; they don’t know even where to begin in terms of making friends. And again, they’ll feel alone. They’ll have the people that they work with, but maybe they don’t really make any connections there. Maybe their worldview collides with theirs, and for various reasons, they may feel this sense of being alone.

So the emotional side might be affected by something that happens to you, and there’s a social dimension to it in which you change your circumstances—and again, you’re brought into this feeling. But whatever the case, it’s all some form of this which we call loneliness.

And then there’s the existential aspect—the existential dimension—in which there can be a feeling of loneliness that you can’t explain, or at least the individual fails to explain. This is what sometimes philosophers and religious thinkers discuss or deal with: you have Pascal’s idea of there being a God-shaped void within man. It’s his way of putting his finger upon the fact that there’s some longing within man that, when he doesn’t have God, is left there; and he may try to fill it with various substitutes, endeavoring to satisfy it through whatever pursuits in this world—and yet he’s going to find at the end of his life a great void. Even through his life, it may come upon him with a kind of pointedness that makes him feel this emptiness in his existence—surrounded by people, even surrounded by his family, deep friendships, and still this emptiness in the soul because he doesn’t know his Maker. Loneliness, in one sense, is a taste of hell itself—not to the full degree, just a taste. Hell is a place where there is the blackness of darkness forever. It is a place of isolation beyond what is imaginable. It is a place in which man is cut off from his fellow man. There is no friendship; there is no communion; there is no fellowship. Sometimes it is said in a sneering, mocking fashion, “All my friends are going to hell; I’d rather be there.” But ye will not have in God’s hell any of the privileges of common grace in this world. Hell is the eradication of grace—the removal of common mercies. Even the sense of connection that may be enjoyed here in this world will be gone.

So that’s something of its character: it’s more than being alone. It has emotional and social dimensions, and there’s an existential aspect to it as well that sometimes is experienced.

So then, what are its causes? Why does man experience the feeling of loneliness? Well, as I indicated already, there’s a sense in which the possibility of, or some fashion of it, was a threat even before the Fall came into the world. But when we begin with thinking about the cause of it—the real deep cause—we have to begin first with its alienation through sin; man’s alienation through sin. It was not good for man to be alone. But at the same time, the deepening feeling of loneliness, the exacerbating of the experience, is brought about through sin in this world. I’m not sure what it would have been like or what exactly is being observed by God in terms of the “not good.” It would seem to me that what God was observing for Adam in an unfallen world was a recognition that here is a creature made in My image. And being made in the image of God means that his relationship to the creation is different than many others. Being made in the image of God means that there are characteristics in man that do not exist in the same way in other creatures—characteristics that no other creature has at all. And in this regard, we feel it and experience it to a degree that is different than many other creatures. And that is a sense of connection, of fellowship, of friendship, of communion.

The triune God, in eternal communion in the persons of the Godhead, has never known isolation or loneliness. God Himself is triune—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—existing in eternal communion, one with the other, perfect and unending. And so when man is made in the image of God, then the capacity for that is there within man. And so the thing that is not good is that man, being made in the image of God, is going to yearn for that which exists in the Godhead—fellowship. So having that sense of companionship, not just through fellowship with God, but through a fellow creature, is brought into the world. But there’s an alienation through sin. Loneliness is exacerbated by sin in this world.

Our catechism tells us in question 19 of the Shorter Catechism: “What is the misery of that estate wherein man fell?” The answer given is: “All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under His wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.” But note that all mankind, by the Fall, lost communion with God, lost fellowship with God, and were brought into a position of isolation from God. Isaiah says in Isaiah 59:2 that your sins and iniquities have separated between you and your God. Sin separates us from God; it exacerbates the problem. It ruptures fellowship and causes us not to know or experience what we can experience when we’re in a world without sin.

So, ye know what Adam does—he runs from God, runs away from His presence, hides. God has to pursue him to restore some measure of fellowship. So there is alienation through sin, but there’s also isolation within society. Some of the causes are the isolation within society—the culture and the society in which we live can amplify the inner torment of loneliness, can make it worse.

Again, we’ve mentioned this, this hyper-connected world in which we live. We might imagine, “Because we’re so connected, how could we ever be lonely?” You can just, you can take up this device of yours and start talking to people. And you can—you know, long gone are the days when kids would play video games on their own. Now they play video games with people across the world, and they can talk to them in real time, and they can strategize with their military efforts and so on in real time. Modern society has brought things that were beyond imagination just a generation ago. And you would think, “How, with such ease of communication, can there be a lack of connection?” And yet there is.

Ye see, God will not allow substitutes to meet the need that He has designed. He undermines every false substitute. And so while we try to place things—so you have, you know, the ultimate substitute of course is religion—we try to replace the true with the false. We substitute it. We try to sew our fig leaves together to satisfy the need of man. And it will not work; it will not suffice. But we do it in other areas as well—we do it relationally, even with regard to a sense of achievement in the world. You have, you know, many video games. (Sorry for those who play video games; I’m not trying to beat on you here this evening, but allow me some liberty.) There is a sense—right? And I speak just FYI: there was no one I knew growing up who was more addicted to video games than me. There were others addicted, but I don’t know of anyone in my childhood who was more addicted than I was, from the period of when the Game Boy was released until my conversion—and that was a period of a decade or more. Even my friends would comment, “You’re addicted to that thing.” That’s true. When I got converted, when I got saved, they threw the whole thing away—everything. Again, not because it was sin, but because it was a substitute for something else that I realized was better. This book became alive to me—one I had never read before. You don’t have time for video games when you’re constantly in this book, and then in prayer as well, talking to God, or trying to find out, as I was hungering, “How do I answer the questions? How do I evangelize? How do I respond to someone who asks me this or that? What are the beliefs of other religions, and how do I answer them from God’s Word?” And so forth. When you’re filled with that, you don’t have time for video games. But while there may be a connection, God will not allow there to be a sense of communion. He always undermines any possible substitute—it can’t meet the need of the person who is craving some kind of connection.

And instead, we read of it here in Hebrews 13: “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled; but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” Is God undermining the twisting of His judgment upon any distortion of His plan? Marriage is a context for communion—of deep intimacy and fellowship—and it has boundaries. And when man tries to twist, when he tries to have some aspects of what it offers or promises and circumvent the boundaries and the commitment, well, he may get away with it for a while, but God will judge. And even in this world, he’ll find that it leaves this emptiness. And then some of the young people know this—the hookup culture that we are in—leaving an utter devastation of soulless young people who are lacking, even now, the very ability to bond. So that when they wake up in their 30s and 40s or whatever, and they say to themselves, “I would like to settle down now after a trail of destruction, after uncommitted fornication,” they don’t know how. They don’t know how to bond. God undermines every substitute.

And so again, while we have all this connection, what are we learning? What are the psychologists seeing? What are the doctors presenting? We have a problem here. Fewer people are going to church, not for the religion, but because they recognize that there’s something to being around people of similar mind, of similar value—a support network, friendships, and connection. Yet, they spent the last generation or two trying to devastate the church and devastate its message, and undermine everything it’s about. No—they’re trying to medicate their way through all the repercussions. They encourage moving—and I say this hypocritically—moving from country to country, state to state, and so on, and not putting your roots down anywhere. I realize at times we have to move, I get it—I’m not against moving altogether—but there’s a kind of moving, constantly chasing, let’s say, a bigger salary, and every time you move, the ability to put roots down more deeply becomes more difficult. And so that transient spirit that comes into you, and the subsequent isolation, becomes worse. And you raise the children—children who think it’s normal to constantly never have any deep, meaningful connection with anyone. Everything’s surface level, and it has ramifications—to this society in which we live that idolizes individualism; that makes an idol of social privacy.

Again, you know, a couple of generations ago there were 17 people living in a two-bedroom house. Now you have young people who, because they have to share a bedroom with one sibling, are like, “I’m moving out.” And we’ve idolized something—we’re chasing something else—but be careful, be careful about what you sacrifice and the ramifications of it.

But society can also struggle even to deal with some of the challenges that people face—and how to really come near and close to people. The problem, then, is exacerbated by man’s inability to truly minister to one another in the great trials of life. Go to Job 19. In Job 19, there are trials that come into our world—providences that may befall us—that can make, can bring even more division or separation or isolation, so that a society can struggle to truly minister.

Now, here’s Job again speaking, and we’ll begin reading at verse 13:

“He hath put my brethren far from me; mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me; my kinsfolk have failed; my familiar friends have forgotten me; they that dwell in mine house, my maids, count me for a stranger; I am an alien in their sight. I called my servant, and he gave me no answer; I entreated him with my mouth. My breath is strange to my wife, though I am treated for the children’s sake of mine own body. Yea, young children despise me; I rose and they spake against me; all my inward friends abhorred me; they whom I loved are turned against me.”

You can see how what befell Job isolated him from his nearest and dearest. Maybe it was simply that they did not know how to respond or what to say; maybe the chorus of public opinion—that Job was under divine judgment for some sin—had so taken them that, for fear of that judgment touching them, they gave him a wide berth. Whatever the case, society failed Job in this way. His own family was unable to truly meet the need he felt within his soul. His breath was strange to his own wife. It’s an awful feeling. And sometimes society is just shallow; it’s deliberately shallow. That would seem to be the kind of experience that the prodigal had, wasn’t it? He goes into the far country and wastes his substance in riotous living. It would seem that he was probably having the time of his life and had much company and a sort of friendship. But when the famine came and everything was spent, we are told that no man gave unto him—no one. That’s when he begins, after a time among the swine, to rethink and come to himself.

But it’s not just out there—it’s not just alienation through sin and isolation within society. There are also the habits and thoughts of the individual. Sometimes, as we mentioned, loneliness is subjective—it’s something within the person. And because of that, at times it arises within the heart and life of the individual, and it’s being fed by them. Now, there may be reasons why. Some of you may know the feeling of, what we’d say, feeling burned. At different times, maybe it’s your employment—you’re poured into this job, worked for this employer, given blood, sweat, and tears to a project, to the job in general—and over time you begin to feel as though you’re burnt, becoming bitter, angry, and upset because of the way you’re treated, the lack of appreciation, or other factors that play into it. And so you walk away; you walk away. Sometimes you walk away not just from the job; you walk away from the career because you’re done with the whole system. You want nothing to do with the whole environment. You don’t even want to put yourself under another boss doing the same thing. You’re just done with the whole thing because everywhere you look, it’s the same.

So you get done with it—maybe it’s teaching, or maybe it’s accounting, or perhaps it’s pastoring or something else—you’re just dumb. And while the things that have brought you to that point may be legitimate, they’re true, it’s actually happened, this occurred—yet, what is going on? The dialogue within the mind is, in itself, sinful and wrong, and it’s feeding into the sense of isolation. It has been driven and fed by pride. It brings about a sense of bitterness or, as we looked at last time, even self-pity. Experts warn that it can be easy for some to feed on their own lowliness and then push others away, wallowing in despair. And again, it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy, as it were—because you’ve been burned and hurt, you’re pushing people away, you’re building walls and burning bridges instead of doing the opposite. So sometimes we have to take a good, long look at ourselves. Am I to live then constantly in a spirit of suspicion? So that it’s not just that one person did this and another said that, but you start to say, “They’re all like this, and it’s never that way,” and you push out the very possibility of something better.

Sometimes loneliness is exacerbated by our own doing, and sometimes it’s something we cannot change. Ask yourself, if you’re going through it, is there sin involved in the loneliness that I feel? Is there sin involved? Did someone, or did I, sin here? And if not, then you look at it and you say, “It’s a trial appointed by God. What am I to do in a trial?” That brings us then to the cure—how do we cure this? What is God’s way of helping us in those, whether they be short or long seasons, of a feeling of loneliness?

And again, when you read some of the material, one of the similar things that you come across is how difficult it is to really put your finger on—what is it? The first cure, I want you to take to heart, is God’s covenant promise, Hebrews 13:5. I like that. I like the way the apostle doesn’t just say something, but he puts it in the form of a quote. This undergirds all that God says to His people: “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” Now, some wonder, “Where exactly is he drawing from here?” and so on and so forth, but that’s not really the issue.

When you read your Bible—from Genesis to Revelation—the message throughout the entirety of Scripture is this covenantal principle of God’s presence with His people. When He comes to Abraham, He speaks to them in terms of a land promise and the seed, and so on. There is always an undergirding in so many of the records given to the patriarchs: God will be with them. I was reading to the seniors just on Thursday, where again Jacob was making his way to Egypt; he goes to Beersheba, offers sacrifices, and God’s word to him is, “I will be with thee.” God is constantly saying to His people, “I will be with thee.” He instills in the godly such a sense of the demand and need for this that you have expressions like Moses, where he says, “If thy presence go not with us, we cannot carry on hence.” We’re not interested in going forward unless we know God is with us.

When David is communing with God and living his life before God, doing what he should, we read—just last week—of a time when self-pity came over David when he said in his heart, “Saul will certainly kill me. Saul’s going to get me. I’m a dead man.” That’s David not walking close with God. When David walks close with God, what he does is he inquires. Oh, there’s such a difference—there’s such a difference between saying in your heart and inquiring of the Lord. When he inquires of the Lord, what is his chief desire? “Art thou with me here, Lord? If we go up to this battle, art thou with us?” And he gets the word that comes back: “I’ll be with you.” I mentioned it before—it’s what O. Palmer Robertson calls the “Emmanuel principle.” He traces it in his book, Christ of the Covenants—this singular truth that undergirds everything from Genesis to Revelation: God is with His people. Why is He with you? Because He cannot but be with you. He is promising fellowship. It’s not merely that He’s there like a companion; it is this whole idea. It is the opposite of loneliness. It is fellowship; it is communion; it is relationship. God is saying—He is undergirding, from Genesis to Revelation—“Hear me now, I will be with you. I will be with you.” And when God speaks, it’s enough that He says it once. But this is the principle you see throughout Scripture. Again, Genesis has it. Exodus has it. Leviticus has it. I can’t think off the top of my head, but probably Numbers has it somewhere, too—I just can’t think of it right in this moment. Deuteronomy certainly has it. Joshua has it. What’s the promise to Joshua? “Go, Joshua, I’ll be with you.” Everywhere you look in Scripture, God is saying, “I’ll be with you.”

We come to the great language of the prophet, Isaiah 41:10:
“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”
And it’s everywhere, beloved—everywhere you look. And then Jesus comes on the scene. Jesus. Emmanuel. God. With. Us. John 1 tells us that He tabernacled with us. Everywhere you look—and when I go away, oh no, you’re going away. “Can we go with you?” No, you can’t; but I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you, and I will send the Comforter who will abide with you forever—right to the end, even as recorded in Revelation. But He’s there, in the midst of His people. This is the truth.

You ask yourself, some truths in God’s Word are mentioned once, maybe twice; other truths, like I say, you’ll struggle to find a book where they don’t exist. And you ask yourself, “Why, Lord? Why do You keep repeating the same thing?” Because I need You almost every time I open my Bible to hear this. I know you need to hear it. I know you need to face the challenges, the difficulties, the strife, and hardships of life with this undergirding supporting truth. God is a God who keeps covenant with His people, and He will never leave them. That the blood of Jesus Christ shed on Calvary is not just for putting away sin—To what end is it dealing with sin? To what end does it clothe me with righteousness? So that I can be in fellowship with God and God in fellowship with me. It is to reverse the curse, beloved; it’s to undo what Adam brought into this world through his sin. It’s to give you some sense of fellowship with your Maker that will be yet perfected in a time to come.

And so He has given things—He’s given marriage here where we can enjoy a certain intimacy of fellowship that exceeds other relationships, but there it is, dissolved, superseded by a fellowship that is far, oh, hear me—far greater, because we start thinking about it here, and we look at it through our puny, finite minds, and we have known some semblance of the joy of the marital bond. We start asking ourselves, “How can heaven be heaven without this? What a day that will be.” David testified—oh, how did he know it? He sang it. It’s the reason why we sang Psalm 27: “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.” How do you know that, Paul, or David? How do you know that? Because He has promised it. Read the Psalms. What is he craving? The presence of God—God fulfilling His covenant promise to him.

Paul, at the end of his life in 2 Timothy 4, rehearses his own experience of being abandoned, and is able to say, “Notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me.” I was alone, but I was not lonely. I think I’ve mentioned this before, somewhat humorously, when Albert Macaulay—whom I learned open-air preaching and evangelism with, a godly, sincere, gentle man—said that when people, often because most of his 50-odd years of preaching in the open air (he did it on his own sometimes, on the street, on doors, on his own), sometimes people would say to him, “Albert, there you are, on your own. How do you do it? You’re always on your own.” And Albert would say, “I’m never on my own. There’s always at least five of us.” And they would look at him and say, “Five? What do you mean?” He says, “Yeah, there’s always the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the devil, and me.” God’s covenant promise. And you may feel lonely—I don’t. Again, the same man that we’ve referred to on numerous occasions, David: “I am desolate and afflicted. I am desolate.” This is real. But he comes to God. And that, therefore, is your encouragement, beloved. Please, go first. Remember God’s covenant promise. He’ll not leave you. He’s always there. “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” And so you come to Him, and when you feel that way, you come and tell Him, and ask for the solution to be found in Him. “Come, Lord, and help me; give me thy presence.”

Secondly, not only do we find the cure in God’s covenant promise, but we find the cure in Christ’s sympathetic friendship. I want you to think not just of God’s covenant promise, but of the sympathy of the God-man, Jesus Christ. He took our nature, beloved, and in so doing became intimately acquainted with the spectrum of the suffering of this life. And we read in his own experience, sometimes we can see—it’s not explicit, but I think there’s an applied sense of perhaps some of the loneliness that He could have experienced. There had to be a sense of isolation even in His childhood, when He was going to the temple—of course—and Mary and Joseph figure out He’s gone; He’s not among us. “Where is He?” And they go back, and they find Him there in the temple asking questions and so on. And He says, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” And it tells us that they didn’t understand what it meant. Here He is on mission, Savior of the world, telling His parents, “Surely my parents will understand.” But they don’t. And so there’s an isolation for a boy, just 12 years of age—to feel isolated, like entering into his mission, feeling the weight of his mission early on, embracing it, accepting it and all the ramifications of it—and his own parents don’t fully get it. Isolated, living in the home, misunderstood.

When He begins His ministry, and He goes to the very place where He grew up, again He is immediately rejected. They’re ready to put Him to death, shove Him off a cliff—a sense of isolation. Stated even broadly, He came onto His own and His own received Him not. So the Lord knows how to sympathize; He knows how to come near to His people. And I want you to think about that. I want you to think about the humanity that is now in heaven. Oh, consider this: that thy nature is in heaven. That Jesus Christ, the Son of God, bears thy nature there at the right hand of the Father as a mediator between God and man, able to sympathize with thee, understanding the trials of this life. And then remember Him as thou thinkest upon the most awful experience of isolation and loneliness, hell itself—we’ve already mentioned it—and consider how He endured and suffered that there on Calvary. Thy sin laid on Him, the judgment of God being imputed to Him not because of sin of His own, but by virtue of His place as surety of the people of God, taking responsibility to reconcile us to God—He then is abandoned and cries out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And in that cry, thou art hearing words meant to encourage thee in terms of the substitutionary implications of them. “Why hast thou forsaken me?” is, by implication, saying to thee, “Ye will never forsake me.” It’s Hebrews 13:5. Because He was forsaken—because my sin was imputed to Him—therefore, I will never be forsaken. And He saw the worth of it, the worth of taking thy nature and living in this world that would reject Him; that He might be despised and rejected of men, and a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, so that thou might never feel the full, full awfulness of isolation and loneliness. And He encourages us then, sympathizing with our life, our journey through life. And we’re called to be witnesses. We’re called to serve God. And He says, what doth He say? “Lo, I am with you always. Wherever you go, I’ll be there. Call to the mission field, I’ll be there. Going through some trial within thy own home, I am there. Lo, I am with you always.”

And thirdly, the third cure—it’s not only God’s covenant promise, or Christ’s sympathetic friendship, or the church’s spiritual bond. You see it again in Hebrews 13: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” When we are told, “Let brotherly love continue” (verse three, especially), remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them. What? Bound with them? How? How art thou bound with them? Because of thy union to Christ. Great words of Galatians 2:20: “Christ liveth in me.” Oh, what truth is there: Christ liveth in me. And therefore, since Christ liveth in me, I am united to all in whom Christ liveth. And so thou sayest, “I love the personal aspect of Galatians 2.” ‘Tis quite rare in Scripture: Christ liveth in me. I am now crucified with Christ—He is talking there personally about His own experience of justifying grace. Christ liveth in me. But thou canst say it, brother, and thou canst say it, sister: Christ liveth in me. And we can all then with one harmonious cry say, “Christ liveth in me. Christ liveth in us.” We are therefore joined together by virtue of Christ in thee. And so the church’s spiritual bond is to be of encouragement so that we may recognize what God has done for us. Psalm 68:6 says, “God setteth the solitary in families.” He makes provision. If we find ourselves isolated, then we are to find the deepest friendship among the people of God. Go to Ecclesiastes 4 very quickly. (Time has gone—please bear with me just one moment.) Ecclesiastes 4, verse 9: “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor.” For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat; but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Two are better than one. I know better, too, than those who are both joined to Christ and in Christ.

And so, beloved, I say, recognize the church’s spiritual bond. See the theological truth and follow out the practical implications. We are bonded together in Christ. Therefore, let me work on the union and the fellowship that we enjoy by investing the effort—giving myself to the people around me. We are to be a family, not just an organization; these are spiritual brothers and sisters. And sometimes, sometimes—as you know within your own family—there can be challenges in the household. We all know this; we all know it. There may be some exceptions. You know, the only child who grows up in some environment where tension is restricted and limited. But if we have even one sibling—never mind many siblings—and there’s, it’s hard; there’s a lot of forgiving, and there’s a lot of overlooking, and a lot of, well, all right. And this is it within the body. I think I’ve mentioned this before, Melanie, when our own children start to squabble for the first time—mention no names. It didn’t take until the third and fourth for that to begin; they started to squabble. Melanie, only child, raised just with her mom, really, in the home most of the time—just the two of them. She’s seeing these, and always having this in her view: “Oh, I would love to have had a brother or sister.” Of course, I would say to her, “Just be careful what you wish for.” Kind of in jest—I am joking. There’s blessings in it, of course, but there’s challenges in it too. And as you’re looking at our own kids squabbling—like, “What’s wrong with them?”—I said, “This is where experience is helpful. This is normal. This is normal.” And we have to help them through it. We have to correct them, discipline them, talk to them, guide them, and teach them what it is to give and take and be kind and loving, and so on, so that they learn it, right? They learn it in the home. And yet we are to learn it in God’s house too. We’re to learn it here. This is God’s answer, in part. It’s not the whole thing. Thou canst not forsake God. Thou canst not say, “He’s promised to be with me and never leave me” and then just forget God. He is the main aspect of helping thee with this feeling—going to God and knowing that He knows and seeing there at the right hand of the Father, Jesus Christ, the sympathizing Savior. But it’s also seeing around thee the people, the people that God has appointed that may help and support thee in this issue—and investing in it, loving them even when it’s hard.

So, may the Lord help us. And if thou art feeling this, let me just say broadly upon everything that we’ve been dealing with so far, these are inner and real battles—I get it. Sometimes the one thing thou just needest to do is simply talk. Please don’t understand that in me addressing this, I’m addressing it so that thou never comest to me and mention this; rather, see the opposite. I get it. I’m going to sit down and talk and pray with thee and open God’s Word, and the Lord has the answers.

Let’s bow together in prayer. Let me just say to remind us all, we have a terrible habit of looking at people and imagining that everything’s fine. May the Lord help us not to be so, to make such assumptions. If God puts someone on thy heart—if there’s someone that pops into thy mind—I encourage thee to respond. The devil’s not in the business of planting ideas that might lead to the encouragement of another believer. So when someone cometh to thy mind, it’s good to let them know. It’s good even to indicate, and it’s something I’ve had to learn—I had just one little thought—letting someone know you’re thinking about them can minister to them.

“Lord, help us. Give us the heart of Christ. Give us an understanding of the frailty of our frame, and help us, Lord, to first find in Thee the answer for all of the ills of life. Deliver us, O God, from this feeling, and especially when we succumb to it in a way that is unhelpful and multiplies sin. We pray that we would be able to submit to Thy providence at all times, but we also pray that we will seek the Lord while He may be found and call upon Him while He is near. So enable us. Bless this people with Thy peace and Thy joy, and strengthen us for the week that lies ahead. Bless our fellowship; draw very near to us all. May the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of all the people of God now and evermore. Amen.”