A Cure for Loneliness |02.11.24| What Your Life Is Missing pt.2
Genesis 2:18-26
Pastor Erik Anderson
We’re gonna be right there in Genesis chapter two.
(…)
It’ll be the end of the chapter beginning in verse 18. And this is what we read this morning. Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground, the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the air and to every animal of the field. But for the man, there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused the deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept. Then he 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 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. This one shall be called woman, for out of man, this one was taken.(…) Therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. This is the word of the Lord.(…) Thanks be to God.”
(…)
Well, as a pastor,(…) one of the things that fulfills me most, one of the things that really gets me waking up in the morning and excited about what I do day in and day out is walking with people as they go through dark times in their lives. As they experience the death of a loved one or as they experience mental health issues or other loneliness, it brings me great fulfillment to be able to help them and bear those burdens with them as they walk through those. And really, one of the things that excites me most is when people can see God and hear God and experience God through even those hard things, those challenging times in their lives. It really brings me more joy than just about anything else that I do in my work. And ever since COVID,(…) there seems to be more opportunities to do that.
(…)
People are just a little bit more lonely. They’re a little bit more isolated, a little bit more longing and searching for something in their lives. And this is something that isn’t new to our society. In fact, there’s a book from 2000 called “Bowling Alone” that outlines an epidemic of loneliness in the American culture. That was a quarter of a century ago.(…) 24 years ago, that book came out. That was just a couple years after the 24 news cycle started. That was before there was any sort of social media, before internet was common in our homes.(…) And by being more connected and by getting more information, by having more connection through social media and the internet, what’s actually happened is not more or less loneliness, but actually more loneliness. People are more lonely today than they were 24 years ago when the book “Bowling Alone” came out. The reference there is that the author was talking about how there are more people who bowl by themselves than ever before at that time. And social media, in fact, makes it worse. It makes loneliness worse. I have a couple of stats here that I found this week. That there was a Gallup poll done in October of 2023,(…) and it recorded that 51% of adults globally experience loneliness on a regular basis,(…) with half of that number feeling very lonely on a daily basis.
(…)
The American Medical Association and the CDC has found that loneliness, regular loneliness, is associated with 29% higher rate of heart disease, a 31% higher rate of stroke,(…) and a 50% higher rate of dementia or other memory care-related issues.(…) Loneliness.
(…)
Loneliness, regular loneliness is associated with those. It’s also associated, they found, with type 2 diabetes,
(…)
addiction, and all forms of early death.(…) So if you die before the kind of normal age range that you should, and you have some illness associated with it, that’s called an early death. And loneliness is associated with type 2 diabetes addiction and all forms of early death. Loneliness is an issue in our life.(…) Loneliness is an issue in our community. It’s an issue in our church and in our families. We probably know people who are lonely. If that 51% of adults globally is in fact true, then that means half of this room experiences loneliness on a regular basis.
(…)
We’re lonely.(…) We feel isolated and by ourselves. And it’s appropriate to talk about that this week, because this week is Valentine’s. We have Valentine’s Day on Wednesday, and this is a time where romantic love is held up. And there are a lot of people in our families and our neighbors and our friends who feel hurt and abandoned by romantic love.(…) We live in a society where every movie and everything that we talk about is talking about marriage and families and kids and that kind of stuff. And there are people in our lives who are widowed(…) or who don’t have kids or unable to have kids or who never married.
(…)
And that can be extremely lonely and isolating. And there are people in all of our lives that are touched by this or maybe you yourself have been impacted by this and you yourself feel that effect of loneliness. But the problem is that social media only makes it worse.
(…)
That the higher, the more you use social media, the more likely you are to experience isolation and loneliness and all the various health issues associated with it.(…) And in fact, 82% of the population, 12 years and older, in the United States uses social media on a regular basis.(…) And the average amount of time on social media is two and a half hours a day.
(…)
Two and a half hours a day of scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.(…) And there may be some of you here in this room who are a little bit older and you think, oh no, social media is a problem for younger people.(…) 56% of Americans who are 55 and over are on Facebook and those 56% of 55 and older users, they are on Facebook an average of three and a half hours a day, which is higher than the normal average.(…) This is something that affects all of us.(…) The 24 hour news cycle, our political and ideological society right now, it seems like we’re actually just getting pulled apart(…) from each other. We’re pulled into more isolation and more loneliness. It seems like we are told to dislike others, that we’re trained to not trust others.
(…)
And the reality is that we were made for so much more.
(…)
We were made for so much more and loneliness was never supposed to be part of the deal.(…) That’s exactly what we see here in Genesis chapter two. I’m just gonna flip to this verse verse here that we see in Genesis chapter two verse 18. This is what we read. And the Lord God said, it is not good(…) that the man should be alone. This story in scripture comes right at the beginning where it tells this beautiful story of God creating all things. And chapter one of Genesis is this beautiful poetic telling of how God created all things, the land and the sea and the moon and the sun and the stars, how he painted everything, this beautiful, beautiful hues of colors and all sorts of creeping, crawling animals and fish, he created it all. And all throughout Genesis chapter one, every time he creates something, he says, it is good. It is good, it is good, it is good, it is good. And then we get to Genesis chapter two.(…) And he has created man and then he says this, it is not good.
(…)
This is the first time in the telling of how God made the world that something is not good.
(…)
He makes human and he says, ooh, it is not good that this human is by themself.
(…)
It is not good that the man should be alone.(…) And then God says, I will make him a helper as his partner.
(…)
And so the story continues on here that God then he creates all the different animals and he brings them to the man and the man names them all and he kind of shows that he has dominion over all of them and then he gets to the end of the long list of animals and there’s not a suitable helper, not a suitable partner for him. And we have to ask the question why?(…) Why were all these animals not suitable to help Adam?(…) And we have to ask this question, why does he need a partner at all?
(…)
Well, God had actually created Adam to work. As God created all the cosmos and he created the world and then he creates this garden where he puts Adam and he puts Adam to work.
(…)
And he says, and he actually partners with Adam in this and gives Adam a command to take care of the earth, to help it multiply, to help the world be all that it can be. So Adam was actually charged with this job to do God’s work, to be part of God’s work in creating and bringing health and wholeness and goodness out of the earth. And we still see this kind of work to this day. Right now, now that our farmers are through the end of the year stuff and hopefully you farmers are getting done with your taxes at this point. So you know, you got all your loans figured out for the rest of the year. But the farmers out there, we know what happens. When you take seeds of different families and you breed them together, you can get a stronger crop. And then when you plant that crop in a row, you can grow a lot more of that crop and you can feed a lot more people. You can create a lot more ethanol. There’s a lot more good that when humans put their hands and their minds onto something, that we can make the world even better. We can make it stronger, more resilient. That’s exactly what Adam was called to do. He was called to partner with God to help the world be all that it could be and he needed a partner to do this.
(…)
And as God was bringing out the oxen and the cows and all these different animals that are useful for this kind of work, none of them were suitable(…) as a partner because they were all just tools, animals to be supported and taken care of to help with the work. But it wasn’t quite exactly what God wanted for Adam or what Adam needed at that time.(…) So why did Adam need something there with him? For work, but also for companionship. Which is why God put Adam to sleep and he created woman out of him and he said, “Now it is very good.”(…) Because the human had someone like them. Another human to interact with, to know and to love, to talk with, to have the same intellectual kind of conversations, have the same emotional conversations. Someone who is like them that they could interact and have a companion with, who also could partner with them in the work. And that’s why we use our partner, but this word helper, this is one of those times where,
(…)
when our translators translate words, sometimes they just use a word because it’s what we all know, it’s kind of what the church knows. But helper isn’t quite the best word for it, so this is one way that our translators don’t help us. Because the word there denotes somebody who supports and uplifts and actually empowers, is kind of how that word is. So the Holy Spirit is actually called a helper in the Old Testament several times. It’s somebody who empowers and uplifts and enables someone to do something. So helper isn’t quite the right word, but it’s kind of this idea of a supporter, somebody who is empowering you and bringing you up. And this is what the human needed. Needed somebody to be able to empower and lift up each other as they do their work. And after God created Eve, then God said it was very good. Because now Adam had a partner. He had a partner in the work of God. And he had a partner in life.(…) And yes, this passage is about the marriage relationship. Yes, that’s what this is kind of referencing is why we couple together like this. But also it’s about community in general.(…) Because marriage is simply a, it’s an intense microcosm of community.(…) Because good marriages reflect communities at their best.(…) Good marriages have trust.
(…)
Good marriages have mutual respect.(…) Good marriages are safe for both partners.(…) Good marriages have a common purpose and a common work that the husband and wife are working together on.(…) And humans, we are meant for this kind of community and work. Because the best communities are the same thing. They’re a place where you can have trust. They’re a place where you have mutual respect. They’re places where you have safety. There’s places that you have common purpose and work. This is community at its best. We humans are meant for community and we’re meant for work. We’re meant to have a common purpose. We’re meant to have a common work. We’re meant to work shoulder to shoulder with other people. Which is why, to kind of rephrase, there’s an old Jewish rabbi who has this nice little saying about why God made Eve out of Adam’s rib. And to kind of play on that a little bit, it’s that God didn’t make Eve out of Adam’s head so that she could lord over him, or out of Adam’s back so she had to follow him around. But instead she made him out of his rib. To be shoulder to shoulder with him. To work with him, to work alongside of him.
(…)
This is what we’re made for.
(…)
And when we have this kind of common purpose, and when we have this kind of community where we can trust and have mutual respect and a common goal, this is when we see loneliness and bitterness begin to melt out of our lives. And this is actually exactly what the church experienced way back at the beginning. So we’re gonna go back, we’re actually gonna read from Acts two, which is a verse that Pastor Drew read last week for us. So if we jump up to Acts chapter two, this is right after the Holy Spirit descends on the apostles. They go out and they proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. 3,000 people receive the good news of Jesus. And they all begin to kind of organize in churches. And this is what it says. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship and to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
(…)
All came upon everyone because many wonders and signs are being done by the apostles.
(…)
All who believed were together and had all things in common.(…) They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had need.
(…)
Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts. Praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
(…)
Here we see that the early church did something a lot like Adam and Eve did.(…) Where right at the beginning, God was on a mission. God had work to do.(…) God was trying to establish his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. God was building what this Bible, the scriptures called new creation. He was making a new earth, a new way of being human. Jesus came, he took on flesh and he died on the cross to show us a new way, to make a path for us so we could have a new way to be human, a new way of living as humans. And we had this new community now, this new church, this new humanity that God had established in the church. And what they experienced was healing. Was people being freed from poverty. Was restored relationship between ethnic groups. And that they had the goodwill of all people. It meant that they were doing good in their communities.(…) And the people in the communities would look and say, you know what, having Christians here is a net positive. It’s a good thing for us to have Christians in our communities. That’s what they experienced. So they actually joined in God’s work(…) of building the kingdom, of instituting this new creation because the Lord was adding to their numbers. They were proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. They were offering this healing. They were rescuing from poverty. They were restoring relationships. They were doing good. And people became new humans and joined this new community, this colony of heaven, this colony of new creation on earth.(…) And Jesus was working hard to build this new creation.(…) Jesus was working hard to remake and renew all things. And the church was working with him as the garden, just like in Genesis chapters one and two.
(…)
And Jesus is still at work today.
(…)
This is still what Jesus is doing today.
(…)
He is still trying to make new creation. He is still trying to plant new creation in every heart. He is still trying to invite people into a new way of being human. A way that is free from sin, a way that is free from the guilt and the punishment of sin, a way that is free from the guilt and the punishment of failure, but is instead a place of forgiveness and wholeness and healing. A place where people are freed from the constraints of poverty, freed from their addictions, freed from their greed.(…) That is what God is doing. And he’s relentlessly working to bring this new creation day by day by day. And believers, the apprentices of Jesus,(…) get to join him in that work.(…) That’s the common purpose that we all have, is to work with God as he makes this new creation, as he frees us from our sin and gives us peace and joy and patience and goodness.(…) And we get to offer that to others.
(…)
You see, most of us think that fulfillment,(…) that the good life, that the cure for loneliness and bitterness comes from the numbers of life.
(…)
We think, oh, if I could just spend more time with my friends, if I had more time, a greater number of hours with them, then I wouldn’t be so lonely. Oh, if I only had this relationship, instead of that relationship, I wouldn’t be so lonely. Oh, if only I had this amount of dollars and not my amount of dollars, I would have fulfillment and goodness in life. If only I had that truck or that house, or only if I had that idealized family that I want, then things would be good. We get wrapped up and consumed by the numbers of life.(…) And we think that by having more of the numbers, whatever that might be, we think that we’ll have fulfillment.
(…)
But we are more rich, we have more access, we have better food, better cars, better everything than ever before, and yet we’re more lonely,(…) and we’re less fulfilled than ever before.
(…)
Because the numbers cannot fulfill us.(…) The things that we think ought to fulfill us can’t, and they never will.
(…)
One way that I’ve heard this done really well is by a gentleman named Jerome Tang. He is the head men’s basketball coach for Kansas State University.(…) This is a university, a lot of my family has gone to this university. I’m from Kansas, and just super glad that Jerome Tang is part of the program there. So he’s the head men’s basketball coach. Last year he won the James Naismith Coach of the Year Award. Just a really, really great guy. Also a man of faith. So he was a youth pastor for several years while he coached high school before he became an assistant coach at Baylor, and then he worked his way up and got the job at Kansas State University. But just a really, really, really good man who is an apprentice of Jesus, like you and I. And he has charge over all these student athletes, and his goal is not to win games. His goal is to help his young men become better men. That’s his goal.(…) And his goal is to help raise these young men into great men. That’s what he wants to do. And so the way that he talks about it, he says if you wanna have success, you have to win, and he uses this acronym of win to talk to his kids. And this is what the acronym is. First you have to know your why.(…) How has God designed you? What has he designed you to do? What problem has he asked you to fix? What’s your why? This is what he says to his young men. And then the next thing is you gotta figure out your inner circle. Who are the people that you let into your life? Who are the people that you let speak into your life? Who do you spend time with? You gotta get that right. And once you get your why right, and once you get your inner circle right,(…) that’s when you succeed,(…) and then you can focus on the numbers.
(…)
This is how Jerome Tang talks about it. Get your why, your purpose.
(…)
Find your inner circle, the right people, get the right people around you, and then you can worry about the numbers.
(…)
I think this is an excellent way that he is able to coach young men in this.(…) Because Jerome Tang knows something, because he’s followed Jesus for a long time. He has a lot of wisdom. But he knows that fulfillment doesn’t come from the numbers.
(…)
Confilament comes from your why and your inner circle.
(…)
But many of us, our why is the numbers.(…) For many of us, the reason that we do things is to get more financially secure, or to make sure that our kids had what we never had, or to make sure that we can do X, Y, and Z when we retire, or to get to go to that trip and to that location, to we work hard and we just kinda spin our wheels because we think, oh, if I just keep getting my, the new job, or keep getting my paycheck up, then I will finally have fulfillment. But that’s not how we get fulfillment. Because there is a right why to have in your life. And there’s a wrong why to have in your life. There’s actually lots of wrong why’s. And there’s only one right why.
(…)
There’s only one right purpose that each and every one of us was truly designed to do. Whether you are a coach, whether you are a grocery scanner, whether you are a farmer, whether you labor as part of a union welding, whatever it is, whatever you do,
(…)
we all have the same purpose. Because it is bred into us. God has designed it into us.
(…)
And this is our purpose.
(…)
You were made, designed to experience new creation. That’s just the biblical way of saying heaven,
(…)
now and after death.(…) That’s what you were experienced to, that was what you were made to experience. You were designed to have the fullness of heaven, the fullness of new creation.(…) And right now we get it in our emotions, in our spirit.(…) Our bodies are gonna fail, our bodies are gonna get sick, we’re gonna die, and our eternal life is not designed to do that. We’re gonna get new bodies in the resurrection that don’t get sick, that don’t die. But the interior life we get to have now, Ephesians chapter one verse three, says that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. They’re all ours now.(…) That means that you can have all the peace, and the love, and the joy, and the patience, and the kindness, and the goodness, and the faithfulness, all the fruit of the spirit. You get to have all of that now, just like you’re gonna have that in heaven.(…) Just like you’re gonna have that in new creation, it’s all yours now.(…) God has already given it to you. The Holy Spirit has already fulfilled you with those things.
(…)
You are made to experience new creation now, and after death.(…) You are also made to work with God as He makes new creation now. Because He’s doing it in you, God is always scheming and bending your life to give you all the goodness, and joy, and patience, and love that He desires for you. He is always working on you in that. He is always scheming and bending your life to have that fulfillment, to have that good life. He is always at work. St. Augustine called God the hound of heaven, because He is constantly stalking and chasing us down, and He will have good things for us.(…) He demands it, and He tirelessly works on you to give you those good things.(…) And we are called to work with Him as He makes new creation in other people.(…) We get to offer others what God has given us in abundance.(…) We get to offer peace and joy and love in everything that we do.(…) We get to show others these little snapshots of heaven, little snapshots of new creation, a forgiven sin there, a kind word here, a gentle reproach when someone has done something wrong there. These are moments and snapshots of new creation that we get to offer because we have them in abundance.
(…)
And three, you are made to do this work with others.
(…)
You’re made to do it with others.
(…)
That’s why we gather on Sunday mornings,
(…)
because we are all participating in hearing this work of God.(…) We’re trusting it and believing it, and we’re working together to make it happen. And then we get sent out of this place to work with God out there. We gather in our life groups to kind of regroup and talk about it again and kind of continue to cultivate the garden in our hearts and how we might cultivate the garden in other people’s lives as well.
(…)
This is our why. This is why you exist.
(…)
And it does not matter what job you do. It does not matter what kind of family you have. It does not matter what your family looks like. It doesn’t matter what kind of past you have. Every single one of you has this purpose.
(…)
And this is the cure to loneliness.
(…)
This is the cure to bitterness.
(…)
Finding our purpose in Him, finding our why, and committing to it with other people.
(…)
You see, God has done a great thing for us. He has offered us peace with our past by forgiving our sins. He seeks you out even when you wander away from Him. He is always scheming and bending your life to produce more love and more joy and more goodness and more faithfulness and more self-control.
(…)
And we get to participate in what God is up to.
(…)
We get to join Him in that.
(…)
We’re called to be a people, to be a church that is doggedly committed to the work of Jesus Christ and doggedly committed to each other, making sure that we ourselves are experiencing this new creation, working together as we are apprenticed by Jesus and learning more and more to become like Him.(…) We’re called to be all in,(…) all in on God’s work and all in with each other, committed to each other. We’re called to be a church that leaves the 99 for the one, just like He said He is. He said, “I am the Good Shepherd, “and I will leave the 99 to go rescue the one.” We understand that our purpose is bringing those who feel like they are far from God, who are hurting and suffering under sin, and we get to bring them the forgiveness and the peace and the freedom of the family of God. And we do this because we have something that everybody is longing for, even if they don’t know it yet.
(…)
We have something that everybody needs.
(…)
This is the place, this is the people,(…) where others can find purpose, they can find direction, and they can find a community that loves them unconditionally(…) and desires to see everyone, our friends, our family, and our neighbors know that they are loved and that they have peace and that they have freedom and that they have joy because Jesus Christ is chasing them down, and Jesus Christ wants to give it to them, and He is the King, and He is victorious, and He will have His way.
(…)
That’s the good news for us, that the Lord is seeking us out, and we get to seek others out as well.
(…)
Amen.