Only the Lonely
Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.
Well, you can take out your copy of God's Word this morning and turn to Ecclesiastes Chapter 4 where we cover only the lonely Which is more than just a song by Roy Orbison though I did check out the lyrics To only the lonely only the lonely, but I don't have my sunglasses on and I'm alive, therefore making two large differences between me and Roy Orbison. But undoubtedly you probably heard that song before, and Only the Lonely is more than just a ballad of lost love. It is a fitting title for our paragraph, which we're coming to study this morning in Ecclesiastes chapter 4 verses 7 through 12. And I want to admit right from the very get-go, that I am more of what you might call a loner. A loner is somebody who prefers not to associate with others. You may call them a recluse, an introvert, a hermit, or in some cases a jerk, but a loner is somebody who thinks at least he is better off by himself.
I suppose there are probably a few reasons why I have always been more of a loner. One of the reasons is that my dad definitely leaned more toward the loner side of the spectrum. He was my first example as are for most of us, our fathers, our first example of what a man is supposed to be and I kind of got the impression from my dad that part of being a man was more like being an island just kind of isolated and even though he was my dad he had a wife he had kids he had a job and we went to church he was still more of a of a one kind of guy show as a leader so so one One is the example of my dad. One is, even as I have gotten older, as a leader, there is something that draws me to solitude.
You know, there's much less of an opportunity for people's criticism to cause pain if they aren't that close. And as I often like to say, the higher up the flagpole you are, the more your butt sticks out. And it tends to be that more people complain about that and criticize what they see. And so if you just kind of keep them at a distance, it can be less painful, less hurtful.
I think the biggest reason though, that I have to fight the loner mentality is because especially growing up and definitely this is gonna relate to some of you right now, when I was in junior high and high school, at least for the majority of that, I really always felt like I was on the outside looking in. And when I tried to get in to whatever particular group that was, typically my experience was either being ignored or rejected. Now I know most of you can't imagine that just based on the oozing of cool that I have now.
But that was a pretty typical experience for me, again, to be ignored or be rejected. There were a few times when I tried to open up to various people. I distinctly remember a couple times trying to open up to my dad in junior high. And you know, he pretty much didn't want to talk about anything other than baseball. And the couple times I tried to, you know, share my adolescent angst with him, he pretty much didn't want anything to do with it. I remember there were a few times I tried to talk to my mom and apparently, as she will tell you later on, even today, apparently the times I wanted to talk to my mom are precisely the times when she didn't have time.
And she, you know, is sad, not that she didn't make the time, she said that I chose those times to try to talk. Okay, I did definitely have some friends, but I seemed to choose the really good friends who got a lot from me and didn't really give a lot back to me. I even tried some dating relationships as I got older, but ironically most of those didn't go particularly well since I didn't really understand the idea of communication and like you know have a good example of what that was to be like.
I was too busy protecting myself from getting hurt. And before you go feeling all sad for me, I'm not wiping a tear right now I'm cleaning out eye gunk, before you go feeling all sad for me first of all that approach to life is ridiculously selfish. The loner approach to life and all of the things I just described to you are ridiculously horribly selfish. In fact, that mindset was for me entirely about me. And if you find yourself with some of those similar kinds of feelings, you realize that those come because of a focus on yourself. There is not anything selfless or humble or helpful about being a loner. You do realize that. It doesn't matter why you avoid others, even if it's because friends or people close to you, even family members, it doesn't matter what the reason is, even if somebody else has hurt you, looking out for the man in the mirror is ultimately worshipping the man or the woman in the mirror.
And not only is it ridiculously selfish, isolating yourself is stupid. It's just dumb. Can I give you a verse to go along with that? from Ecclesiastes four and look back at the book of Proverbs chapter 18. And in fact, this verse, Proverbs 18 verse one captures both of the elements. I've said that it is selfish and it is stupid. The ESV translates Proverbs 18 one, whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire. It's all about self. And secondly, he breaks out against all sound judgment. You know, you kind of maybe think about being in a cage and just doing whatever you can to get out of that cage, breaking the bars. And in this case, the cage is that of sound judgment. And you're in a good place when you're around others and involved in their lives and they're involved in your lives. And And when you seek to get out of that cage, that's a bad one.
You are raging against what is sound judgment. In the New American Standard, it translates it this way. There are similarities, but each translation brings out something a little different. The New American Standard says, he who separates himself, the isolates, separates here, seeks his own desire. He quarrels against all sound wisdom. In fact, you are fighting with other people, or you are at least fighting with what is sound judgment when you get away from everybody. Isolate yourself away, and then the new revised standard version has it this way. The one who lives alone is self-indulgent, showing contempt for all who have sound judgment.
And when we isolate ourselves away and we remove ourselves from companions and friends and family and accountability, we show ourselves to be selfish and to be stupid. And thirdly, it is actually really sad. But what is so sad is that it's your fault. It's not sad for you like, whoa, are you because nobody likes you. woe are you because you're so stupid and silly and selfish for not getting involved.
It's ridiculously sad. In fact, the person in our paragraph back in Ecclesiastes chapter four, especially verses seven and eight, the person in that paragraph is not a person who has just made a mistake or who has been hurt by other people. This is a person who has intentionally isolated themselves who loves the loner life, man listen to that alliteration, that just like flows like water out, loves the loner life, that's not in my notes, that's just magic, I'm kidding, for whatever reason they have purposefully decided to detach themselves and put themselves in this position of loneliness. And Solomon instructs us that no No matter how much you work, no matter how much you accomplish, no matter what great position you achieve or how much stuff you obtain, if you are all alone, you will be an entirely different level of empty.
So not only will life be empty, just in general under the sun, but your life will specifically be empty if it is all by itself. Loneliness is another nail in the coffin that we are living in under the sun. Chapter one was the introduction motto and theme of the whole book that everything generally speaking is vanity. All is vanity, vanity of vanities. There's nothing that can truly satisfy under the sun. And so then in chapter two, Solomon tells us about his experiment to try to find satisfaction. He goes off in pursuit of all kinds of different things and he finds all of those things under the sun emptiness as well.
So the only way to make sense out of that is to recognize as he comes into chapter three that God is sovereign. And when we have a sovereign God worldview, some of the things, some of the pieces at at least start to fit together a little bit better. But even though God is sovereign, we still see some major issues. And halfway through chapter three, we see that there are injustices in the court system. That's no good, thought God was in control. What about all the injustices that we see? That's chapter three, 16 and 17. What about the fact that everybody dies? God is in control, but it doesn't matter whether you are smart, whether you're dumb, Whether you're rich or poor, everybody dies.
That's three 18 through 22. Then as we looked at last time, we were together a couple of weeks ago, moving into chapter four, verses one through three is all about oppression and others who are pushing down and abusing and exploiting other people. And then verses four through six, Solomon describes that envy is what motivates all labor.
Somebody sees somebody else that has something and that's what motivates them to get up off the couch and get to work and to even increase their skill level at what they do. All toil and all skill come from man's envy of his neighbor. What a great life motivating factor is envy. And now in verses seven through 12 Solomon questions, what good is all of this work and effort and labor if you don't have anybody to share it with? Now before we unpack this new paragraph, we do need to finish up our discussion on envy as a reason for work.
I wanted to introduce the new paragraph and we'll definitely get to verses seven through 12 in just a moment, but we did not finish what we started last time.
Obviously we talked about, we talked about his first complaint, which is oppression. We saw his observation of it, his description of it, his conclusion, and what a cheery conclusion we determined it was that it's better to be dead than to have to see and experience oppression. In fact, it would have been even better, or it is better, for those people who never even have existence. That's how painful and difficult the oppression that we see under the sun really is. And then we began looking at the complaint, his second complaint, which was envy as the the motivation for work, his observation, his conclusion which was vanity and then we got stuck at this cutthroat part right here the opposite opposites of envy and there are two opposites to working out of envy you may think of these opposites or at least I like to think of these opposites as being at different ends of a line but how about different parts of a triangle and I showed this slide last time but we We didn't really get a chance to talk about it at all.
Each corner is opposite from the other two. Maybe not in the precise definition of what it means to be opposite. Okay, come on. Give me a break. I'm a youth pastor, not a mathematician. But I'm thinking about it in this way, okay? So you have envy clearly in one corner. These are the motivators for work. Envy is clearly one of them. What is another opposite or what is one of the opposites of working because of envy? Well, it's being lazy. If you recognize the dissatisfaction and the emptiness and the vanity that comes from people who are working and getting skill in their work just because they want what somebody else has, if you realize that that's bad, well, what could you do?
Well, you could just drop out of the whole stinking rat race. You can go off and just do nothing. And in case you're thinking, well, who would do that? Well, how about all those people you see wearing the big old sweaters, Birkenstocks and socks? No criticism against people who wear Birkenstocks and stocks necessarily. You know the kind of people I'm talking to. They don't cut their hair. We have a lot. You go to Seattle tomorrow after school and you're going to see the people who have recognize the atrocities of big corporations and people stepping on each other to get to the next rung of the ladder. You go and you look at those people and they're just lounging around drinking coffee with their guitar.
Again, they got the big old wool sweater on and the corduroy pants that haven't maybe ever been washed, let alone ironed, wearing the Birkenstocks. These are the people and they look like different things. That's just the kind of people we have around us who have just dropped out of life. They have just left that whole business world and the work world and for them they have decided to be lazy. It's so bad, this cut throat dog eat dog world. So we're just not going to do anything. And that certainly is one response. But can I tell you that Solomon anticipates that as a response and he throws in a little proverb here.
Look at chapter four, verse five. Is that a good way to respond to what we see in all this oppression and envy? Well verse five, the fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh. are at least two negative parts in this verse about the those dropping out of life. One, just the fact that they're called a fool does not mean that Solomon thinks this is the great approach to take. The fool is the one who recognizes, hey, everybody else is working for bad motives, so we just won't work at all. That's a foolish response. And a foolish approach to sit back on the couch and fold your hands continually in scripture in particular in the book of Proverbs, which has much to say about work and its opposite laziness is this idea of folding your hands.
It's just sitting back, leaning back in your chair or on the couch or whatever, folding your hands and doing nothing. That's the universal symbol for doing nothing or for being really cool in a rap video, I suppose as well. But this is the second corner of the triangle. The first opposite of envy is just to be lazy. It's a proverbial way, this folding of hands just don't work at all. Just be lazy. However, as the proverb continues, this is the second reason why this is not a great response or approach. Not only does he call them a fool, The only thing the fool has left to eat is himself. Dropping out and deciding that not working is the best response to all of the people who are working for the wrong motives, that basically means you will starve to death.
I mean, maybe you're gonna find somebody who takes pity on you and feeds you, you know, slop for a while, but you don't work. In Solomon's day and age, you know, you don't raise crops or raise animals, take care of them, you have nothing left to eat but your own flesh. One commentator calls it, they become cannibals of themselves. And basically this is a guaranteed way to destroy yourself, to take this approach. So envy eats at you internally as a motivator and and laziness literally starts to eat at you physically because you can't even sustain life. So neither one of these, by the way, are the good way to go about life.
Doing everything from envy or deciding just to drop out and be lazy, there's nothing positive about this. These are the fools. So what is our option? Well, I think actually opposite to both of these certainly opposite to envy is the idea of contentment. And ironically, you may not believe this. I didn't make that up. I wish I was that smart. It actually comes right from verse 6. Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind. Now the only reason that you could have a handful of anything is if you were working and the handful of quietness means you're going about your work, you're doing your labor and it's not something that you're busting your rear to get done and staying up late and getting up early every day burning the candle at both ends so to speak.
A handful of quietness means you are working and you're getting enough to get by. have a handful and that is way better than two handfuls of toil and striving after wind, going back to the envy as a reason, as a dissatisfaction and discontentment with everything that you have.
And really it comes right out of chapter 2 verses 24 through 26, enjoying the process. Enjoying the process as a gift of God, it doesn't mean that you don't work, it means that you do work, but you're thankful for anything God has given you like the job in the first place and any paycheck that he gives you from that is what he wants you to have. And so you're content with that.
And this is, like I say, the opposite not only of envy, it's the opposite of laziness as well. Instead of being motivated to work by envy or avoiding work altogether, this person works and just enjoys the process as a gift of God and everything that God gives them. They're not constantly strategizing and at least complaining about how much they don't have but they keep working, being thankful for what God does give them through that work.
A wise man will hate all form of envy but the answer is not to become a work hermit or to wear Birkenstocks and socks. That's not the answer. The answer is to work and be content with what God gives. Well, that finishes up his complaint on envy as a motivator. So let's jump into verses seven through 12 and try to unpack what Solomon here bemoans as the fact of loneliness in life. As we've seen with so many other parts in the book of Ecclesiastes, he starts out with just a simple observation. In fact, let's read all of verses 7 through 12. We'll come back and go verse by verse. Again, I saw vanity under the sun. One person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches so that he never asks, for whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?
This also is vanity and an unhappy business. Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil, for if they fall one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him, a three-fold cord is not quickly broken. And first what we see there at the beginning of verse 7 as well as the beginning of verse 8 is his observation of loneliness.
That beginning phrase, again, I saw, introduces another observation on life and introduces us to his next complaint. We are back now into the world of getting as much stuff as you possibly can. We're back into the world where this person driving along their camel has the bumper sticker. How do you stick a bumper sticker on a camel? Carefully. We're back to the world of he who dies with the most toys wins kind of mindset. And here we have this person who has no other. That's the description. One person who has no other. In fact, you could translate the beginning Hebrew here as there was one, but not a second. That's another way to say we have a loner. Somebody in isolation. Somebody with no companion.
no partner. And this particular person, this one person, not two, this particular one person, for him, his description is there is no end to all of his toil. This is the workaholic. This is the loner workaholic, and he's always working because he's never satisfied. His eyes are never satisfied with riches. So again, our description here, the person that we're examining is the one who's all by himself, yet there's no end to his toil, never satisfied with his riches. This is the person who is in the never ending cycle of wanting and working and getting and wanting more. So working more to get more and still wanting more to work to get in that never ending and pretty empty cycle.
is not a person by the way who's enjoying the process. This is not a person who is obeying chapter 2, 24 through 26, or even at the end of chapter 3. Look back at verse 22. This is just a one verse summary of the superlative prospect of joy in toil. This is what it should be like, verse 22 of chapter 3. So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work for that is his lot. The guy we're examining here in chapter 4 verse 7 is not that guy who's enjoying the process, he is just not satisfied with the result. He's always wanting more, not applying what we've already seen. And so not only is one problem for this guy that he's not enjoying the process, I mean he's missing that very basic thing itself, what makes this particular guy unique in his not enjoying of the process is that he He has isolated himself away from everybody else.
I mean, we've already seen Solomon try to find satisfaction in work or in getting stuff. He's already told us that that's vanity. So why bring this character, why talk about this dude? Well, it's because what this man uniquely offers to the book so far is that he is all by himself and doing it only for himself. He has no other. Maybe that means he doesn't have a friend. Maybe that means he doesn't have a wife. Maybe that means he has no business partner. The passage does not specifically tell us that he's missing any one particular relationship per se. It just says he has no other. As the rest of the paragraph goes on, it's not really identifying just one other missing relationship.
It's not like if this guy just would have had a wife, that would have been enough. Or if he just would have had a business partner, that would have been great. He had no other in particular. It does tell us though he had not even a son or a brother. Those are at least the two closest male relationships to him that probably would have benefited from his inheritance. So not only does he not have anybody while he's living his life right now, there's not even anybody close enough to him that is going to get what he's worked for. He doesn't even have a son or a brother who could inherit all the stuff that he's getting.
He's got no one to share it with now or when he's dead. Nobody else is around him. In fact, his only friend, and it's a mean girl kind of friend, is money. That apparently is his only companion. Otherwise he's isolated, partnerless, companionless. Meet Mr. Loner. also known as Mr. Miser.
He goes by both names. We've already talked about what the loner is, somebody who prefers to be away from the company of others. A miser specifically is a person who hoards his wealth and spends as little money as possible, and you know that from like seeing Scrooge, right?
Scrooge is this guy. is this guy who is so busy making and collecting and hoarding his money, they doesn't have time for anybody else, in fact, doesn't want to be with anybody else. One commentator I read described it as, this is a guy who has enough money to buy everybody in the restaurant dinner, but nobody wants to have dinner with him. And in fact, he doesn't want to be having dinner with anybody else, though he has all the money, he could buy. You know, Scrooge has a tight wad, a penny pincher, Mr. Loner, Mr. Meiser. And he's so busy in all that he's doing that he never even stops to ask the question, why am I doing this? He never stops and asks, for whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure? That is really sad. I mean, you want to talk about the bottom of the barrel kind of sad. This guy is so consumed with himself and getting stuff for himself.
He's all alone and he doesn't even pause to think, what am I doing? I am alone.
I've got nobody to share this with. I'm depriving myself. I'm working hard and I've got nothing. What's really interesting, I think, about this particular question is, what person is this question? That is, in English we have three persons. Here's our parenthetical English lesson of the day. In English we have first, second, and third person. So far in the verse, what person has he been using? So far in the verse he's been using third person, that's the he or the she or the it or the they. So far he's been describing this person, this general somebody else. But his question here moves to what person? There's third person which is the other people. There's second person which is addressing somebody else or a group specifically you or y'all. And then there's first person which is I or we. And he has moved from this very general description of this loner to now asking what seems like a very closely connected and personally impacting question when he says for whom am I toiling and while certainly he is
putting words in the mouth of this other person he could have said this another way he could have just continue on with the description of this person rather than turning it into a question and including himself at least by way of of close connection. And there is no doubt for all the people who were around Solomon himself in his life as king, we really get the picture of a pretty lonely guy. A thousand women and all kinds of servants, no doubt. And yet, I think we see at least a little bit of his own emptiness and loneliness because he was so focused on satisfying himself that he got no joy from his relationships.
The question that is never asked by this person is a window into then one of the essentials of life and that is companionship. Friends. Connection to other people more than just with yourself in the mirror. Are you ready? This is all the brilliance I have for all day long. I'm about ready to give you one to grow on, and I'm not Kim Fields with my braces on, for those of you who know what I'm talking about. This is it. I'm not going to save this brilliance for my blog later on. I'm sharing it with you guys right now. Are you ready? Life is not meant to be lived alone. God has not made us to be loners, at least completely and finally.
Though some of us may have more bent toward that side of the spectrum, God has not made any of us to live our lives alone.
You who seek isolation and solitude purposefully all of the time, you are seeking your own desires and you are raging against all sound wisdom. It doesn't matter how much stuff you get and how cool people think you are, if you are all by yourself you will be miserable. So is this person. What good is it to have the biggest bank account if you've got nobody to buy anything for from it? It's no good. What good is it to have a huge house with great toys and nobody to share them with. I mean that just is connected to this loner, miser guy. Friendship and serving and sharing, I'm busting out the analogy right now, friendship and serving and sharing are meant to be the threads that weave together a comforting and warming blanket for our lives. They are meant to be comforting, consoling, helpful things, friendship and sharing and serving other people. If you isolate yourself, the blanket of your life is going to be full of holes. Well, and so his conclusion on loneliness comes at the end of verse 8. It's pretty
simple. He's given this one, oh it seems like a hundred times already. This also is vanity and an unhappy business. Vanity, the Hebrew word habel, occurs over and over and over again in the book. Only two times does this phrase unhappy business show up. We saw it back in chapter 1 verse 13 that God has given men an unhappy business to be involved with and here then we have it specifically applied to the idea of loneliness and isolation and companionlessness What is that? It's being by yourself. This is no good thing. Martha Stewart, this is no pleasant, pleasant circumstance or situation. It is empty and it is unhappy if you're all by yourself.
Well, that leads to the third element in this passage, which is Solomon's education about loneliness. And what I think is so unique is that in all of his complaining so far, he's pretty much just done that. He's made an observation and he's given a conclusion. He said, this is bad and it's empty. Maybe he's then gone on to describe a little bit about how bad it is, but in none of his complaints so far has he stopped to then maybe offer some education or some instruction or some exhortation about what is positive. He's done a great job at the Eeyore negativity. He has done almost nothing except for the enjoying the passage process, enjoying the process passage. Except for that, his head has pretty much been underneath the water and yet he comes out of it in verses 9 through 12 to give us some education on loneliness or about loneliness and moving to a whole new slide for these.
Oh, this is the same as it was on the last one. This is where we are. First he gives us an assertion about it. We are at the school of Solomon. He gives us a very simple assertion. Two are better than one. Dum, dum, dum, dum, dee dee dee doo. That's actually the first line from Only the Lonely. If you look up the lyrics, that's what it says. Dum, dum, dum, dum dee dee doo. Two are better than one.
Though he has not given us much hope or much encouragement on the other complaints. And though he does not in this education guarantee us a method for getting friends or having companions, he at least is exhorting us to the benefits of it so that we for our part would not go out of our way to isolate ourselves. And he simply says, two are better than one. This is a better than proverb. Back in chapter four, verse three, he gave us one of these already, but better than both is a typical way to express wisdom. Better than this is this. Better than one is two. Does he have any proof? Well, here's his at least initial explanation in the second part of verse 9. Two are better than one because... here's the reason, the explanation, because they have a good reward for their toil. Now the word toil here is very unspecific, though it seems like the language is kind of economic. You kind of maybe even get the impression of two farmers compared to one. Maybe that would have hit some people. You know
two farmers who are plowing the land and planting the seed and reaping the harvest, they can do more than one can. That is actually not brain surgery. that two are better than one. In fact, two brain surgeons are better than one. Two brains. Well, any brain, like one brain instead of none, would be better for some of us. But two brains would be even better than one. It might look weird, but if we had that kind of capacity, two are better than one because they have good reward for their toil. The point is simply that whatever you do, whatever your goal, you accomplish more through cooperation with somebody else.
Working together is satisfying and fruitful. And the next three verses illustrate it even more. And so in fact, we see Solomon's illustrations in verses 10 through 12. First of all, our accidents. Two are better than one when you have an accident. I'm not making it up. Verse 10, for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Now all of these three illustrations, including this one, come from the idea of taking a journey. It's more than just walking from your house to the neighbor's house. This is like going on a journey maybe from one town or city to another.
three of the illustrations and this one on accidents definitely starts here if you fall. If you have fallen and you can't get up and you do not have the medic alert necklace around your neck, you can't get to the phone. If you have fallen, it is helpful to have somebody else there, right? Good. I'm glad we have that down. Now we're obviously to get from this idea that a serious fall has taken place. This is not like just you have fallen and skinned your knee. Obviously you can get back up on your own, but if you're on a journey and maybe it was dark and you fell into a pit and you're all by yourself, what are you gonna do?
Nothing. If you fall off a cliff or you roll your ankle, break your ankle or break your leg, not paying attention to where you're going or not being able to see where you're going, if it's just an accident. If you are all by yourself, you are in tough luck, baby. You have no help, no solution. As if the point was not already made, Solomon clearly communicates the negative of this solitude or isolation as well, but woe to him who is alone when he falls. Mr. T. would say, I pity the fool who is alone when he falls. You can't get enough Mr. T. illustrations into a sermon. I believe that even Mr. T. has a medic alert, one of those, underneath all the other gold chains around his neck in case he's fallen from the weight of all the necklaces.
When you have an accident, it is great to not be by yourself. Secondly, when you face adversity, it is good to not be all alone. Verse 11, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? Now this, I admit, is going to be tough for most of us to think about because we have REI. And at REI, you can get everything you need to stay warm all by yourself out in the middle of nowhere. I mean they have just amazing kind of thermal undergarments. They have just some terrific sleeping bags you know that you bundle yourself up and you can stay warm and it reflects your own body heat. But in Israel at this day and time they did not have REI. And so it would have been very common especially on a cold winter's night as people were traveling from one place to next that they would lie very close together that their body heat would reflect and help keep both of them warm.
I don't think that this has specifically to talk about a man and his wife. Obviously that could be the case, but on this journey, this picture of traveling, you get the impression that it's just, you know, a couple people out on their way and they're lying very closely together to keep warm. that adversity and whether it's being cold or it's something completely different, this is just an example, an illustration of how two are better than one. The third illustration that he gives, not only accidents and adversity, but even under attack. Verse 12, and though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. This is another serious peril that you might come across on a journey. If you're all by yourself, away from the protection of a city or a town and just people, a higher population, you're all by yourself. Robbers, bandits, attackers, undoubtedly would consider you easy prey if you're all by yourself. You are able to, or better able to fend off, or at least give aid to if you're not all by yourself.
He throws in at the very end of verse 12 an interjection. After his assertion and explanation, those three illustrations, he throws in this at the end, a three-fold cord is not quickly broken. It's kind of a proverbial, just quick, one more climactic kind of thought, hey, here it is. If one is bad and two is good, hey, three is even better. Three is even better. idea that it communicates is that relationships and connection and dependence, interdependence on one another is an important thing. There is strength to be found when you are not alone. There is something about family and community and I think specifically for us church body life that begs for interaction and interdependence and avoidance of isolation. Before we finish this morning, I want to remind you that friends cannot replace Christ. Solomon's observation here on loneliness and his education of the benefits of companions and companionship cannot be understood apart from God. The fact is that no friend, no spouse, no partner can provide the things that only God can provide.
Do not take his instruction and his complaint here about loneliness to say that a friend or a group of friends or a husband or a wife is the ultimate answer to every hole and longing in your heart. There are things that another human cannot provide under the sun. If it was true that all you needed were friends, then pagan people who wanted nothing to do with God would be able to have a great life. There would actually be something under the sun that would not be vanity.
The companions and the friendships and the relationships are great to enjoy as they are given by God, not instead of God. You got to believe that. God does not intend to be replaced by our human relationships. However, there are some of you who are selfishly removing yourselves to the fringe in all kinds of places you are, whether that's your class at school, whether that's from your people at home, your family, whether that's in your small group. Some of you purposefully remove yourselves to the fringe and then you complain that nobody's reaching out to you when it was you taking the steps to get away anyway. Whether it is because you think others will get in the way of what you want to do or because you think that they won't let you in, you are raging against all sound wisdom to avoid other people.
You will be nothing but miserable and life under the sun will be nothing but vanity and an unhappy business. And so friends can help you enjoy the process as you look to Christ together. Man, that would be a great theme for the year, I think. To look to Christ, but to do that together. Somebody write that down. I'll finish with this. How about we ETP with GGF? different than BFF, best friends forever. GGF, enjoy the process with God given friends. I didn't really need to turn that into an acronym, but I thought it was a fun way to end. The point is that isolating yourself away from other people, whether it's because they hurt you or it's because you think they'll get in the way, that is so empty to be all by yourself.
You can get all the stuff that this world has to offer. You've got nobody to share it with, nobody to enjoy it with. You, of all people, will be most unhappy and miserable and have a way to describe the emptiness and vanity under the sun like nobody else. Don't do that. Two are better than one. A threefold cord of things together is not easy to break.
Take advantage of your family, of your small group, of your friends as God given and look to Christ together. Father, help us to do that. In particular, I think of those who either already are isolating themselves or think that that's a better approach. It's not, being alone is not happy.
While we don't want to replace you or substitute another person for you or in your place, Still, we ought not to look to you all by ourselves, but together. Help us to do that in this ministry, to be a place that is friendly, showing ourselves to be friends, and obviously looking to you ultimately as the one to give us happiness and meaning under the sun. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen. This coming Wednesday night, we will have 1.28 again.
