Don’t Do Life Alone

Ecclesiastes chapter four. Ecclesiastes chapter four, and we'll be looking this morning at verses seven through 12. Ecclesiastes chapter four, verses seven through 12. If you're using the New King James Pew Bibles provided for you, you're able to find that on page 590.

You're now God's wonderful and perfect and holy word. Then I returned. I saw vanity under the sun. There is one alone without companion. He has neither son nor brother. Yet there is no end to all his labors, nor is his eye satisfied with riches. But he never asks, for whom do I toil and deprive myself of good? This also is vanity and a grave misfortune.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one be warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not easily broken. Thus ends this portion of the reading of God's word. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray. God, we thank you for your word. It was perfect and true. And Father, we pray that you would please, by the power of your Holy Spirit, take away the distractions of this life and the concerns that we may have brought into the room with us. And Lord, we pray that you would make our eyes alive to see what your word says. And God, we pray that you would please incline our hearts to turn our lives to actually embrace what you say and help us to live it out. Lord, only you can do this. And so Father, we pray that your spirit would attend to the preaching of the word. In Jesus' name, amen.

Sermon

Recent survey said 20% of Americans feel lonely every single day. So if you just walk into a mall or go somewhere, find yourself at the state fair this week and you just pick out one person out of every five and you say, how lonely are you? One out of every five will say pretty lonely every day. They may even feel lonely while they're there surrounded by other people.

Family has started to just deteriorate. By the way, that statistic gets even worse when we talk about young people. One in every three young people say they experience severe loneliness regularly. Family continues to disintegrate. The marriage rates in the 1960s have, since the 1960s, have just been going on a downfall. Fertility rates are dropping.

Average family household, I was surprised as I was researching this this week, In the early 1940s, 1900s, early 1900s, the average family size was 4.76 people. So mom, dad, and two or three kids. By the time you get to the late 1960s, it's 3.33. So mom, dad, one kid, and maybe a second. 2021 average household size, 2.51. Two people living together, maybe they have a kid, maybe not. Even the home, we've gone from having a community around us to just being two people. Whether it's children or not, whether it's siblings or not.

This is where our American society is going, but even worse than that, we see in our culture this polarization where if you don't agree with me on exactly my, not just political ideology, but how I want to implement my political ideology, I'm not talking to you. If we don't agree on every single point and every single issue, you're my enemy, you're my other. I'm against you and I can't talk to you because you're gonna mess up my emotional states. There's less social cohesion even as social media dominates.

This is a world we live in, and this is a world that Kohaleth, the preacher, the leader of the assembly in Ecclesiastes is talking about. Relationships, society, friendship, marriage, family. And so that's what I'd like to focus on this morning, because that's where I think the preacher is at in Ecclesiastes. And so I'd like to start with going a little bit further back in this.

Instead of starting at Ecclesiastes chapter four, I want to think all the way back to Genesis when God created mankind. We need to remember that when we are created in God's image, And God is an eternally communicative and relational being. One being, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And one of the things we see, even when God creates the light, or separates the light from the darkness, he makes the dry land, he creates all the animals, what does he do when he creates human beings? Let us make man in us. our image. God spoke within the Trinity, within Himself, to create humanity in His image. And part of what makes us human is that need for relational connection with each other.

This is exactly why when God made Adam and He put him in the garden, He had every type of animal. He could have been friends with the whales. He could have been friends with the dogs. He could have been a cat guy. I don't know, but God looked at Adam and he said, it's not good for him to be alone. He needs a helper. And God made Eve. God's evaluation for humanity is it's not good for us to be habitually alone. Actually, there's a show our kids and I have enjoyed watching.

There's a TV show called Alone. It's like one of these ultimate survivor type shows where they take someone and put them in a really rural area like the Pacific Northwest on an island where it's raining like 500 gallons a minute. And it's just like they're all by themselves. There's nobody else around and they have to see how long can they survive alone. No human contact with anybody else. Just that person carrying their own camera gear. The only thing they can do is talk into the camera and try to live.

And people go nuts. They go insane. And as they have these dialogues with the camera, you can imagine like a GoPro or something sitting there, they're just talking into the camera, and inevitably the thing that breaks most people is, I just miss my family too much.

My wife's about to have a baby, I gotta get back home. My mom's got cancer, I need to go love my mom, I can't do this. And that relational aspect is what pulls at them and makes them, I gotta go back. And even, the amazing thing is, when they do get back home, even the winners, what's the first thing they wanna go do after they take a shower?

Go see their family. And all of a sudden they have bright smiles and they're happy because they get to see people, even when the boat shows up to pick them up off the land. Take them off the island. They're happy to see other people because God made us relational beings. God made you to be in community with other people.

And so in verse seven through eight, he talks about a specific type of lonely person in verses seven and eight. We talked about this a little bit last week, but these sections bleed over and are connected with each other. But look with me at verses seven and eight. This person who's self-centered and striving for something. Then I returned and I saw vanity under the sun.

There is one alone without companion. He has neither son nor brother. Yet there is no end to all his labors, nor is his eye satisfied with riches. But he never asks, for whom do I toil and deprive myself of good? This also is vanity and a grave misfortune.

We talked about last week that this guy's like Ebenezer Scrooge, right? He's just constantly working, constantly building up his own wealth, doesn't care about anybody else, never stops to realize, and you have to think about the Old Testament culture of this time, who gets to inherit your stuff when you die? your son, or your brother. This guy doesn't have anybody to inherit his stuff. And yet he's working himself like a dog. He won't stop, he won't enjoy people, he won't enjoy the good things that he has. He just keeps working, working, working, working, working, amassing all this stuff and never asking himself, why am I doing this?

What is it good for? This is what you can imagine like a CEO, right, who puts his work above everybody else, puts his work above his entire family, loses his family, lives in the penthouse of some apartment by himself, and as he's there at the top of the tower, he works 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 hours a week, amassing great hordes of wealth, and he never enjoys it for a moment. Never stops to ask, what am I doing with this?

In lore, in child's books, you know what that character would be? A dragon sitting on top of its treasure. It's not going to share with anybody. Actually, if you get near it, it's going to kill you with fire-breathing breath. But instead, it's just going to hoard and hoard and hoard and just wait on it until it dies. This is this sad picture that The preacher says this is also a vanity and a grave misfortune.

This is a guy who's just gotten one, you know, climbed the ladder, gotten ahead of everybody else, but when he gets to the top, nobody else is there. I was talking to one of my professors, a church history professor, his name is John Woodbridge, and Dr. Woodbridge was at some big conference out on the East Coast somewhere, and there was a professor who was the chair of a humanities department at an Ivy League school. And for some reason, Dr. Woodbridge and this guy end up in the same taxi, and they're driving to some place, and Dr. Woodbridge asked him, he said, so what's it like when you get to the top of the ladder? Because if you know academia, if you know what it's like to be in a college or university setting, everybody is always trying to get the highest position they can in the university.

And so he asked this guy. I mean, he's in the highest position in his department at an Ivy League school. And he says, what's it like to be up there? And his answer was sobering. Do you know what it's like to climb the ladder and get all the way to the top? Do you know what's there?

Nothing. The guy evaluated his entire life, his entire career, all the pushing, all the studying, all the manipulating, all the power plays, all the everything, to get where he was and realized... A valve. Vanity. It's like a grasping for the wind. Being lonely and rich is a riddle that ends with vanity.

So that's what he says in verses seven through eight. But then he compares it to a better thing in verses nine through 12. And that's where I want to spend the bulk of our time this morning. Verses nine through 12 is a blessing of companionship. There is a blessing of companionship. Look with me at the first picture in verse nine of a working buddy. Verse nine, there are two are better than one. because they have a good reward for their labor. Teamwork is a good thing when both people want to play on the same team.

But I can't tell you how many times I've been thinking, oh, I could just do this job by myself. It'll get done quicker. It'll get done better. And I don't have to bother anybody else. But every time I think that, and I go outside in the garage, and I work on a car, inevitably, I have to yell for one of the boys to come outside and help me. Because I can't hold the part up here and get the wrench in here, because the stupid nut just keeps falling down. I need somebody to just hold the light or put the thing there.

It's a blessing to have friends to work with. It's a blessing to have a return for your labor that you can share with others. Car repairs are easier when you have a son. I gotta tell you, I love having a boy who's heavy enough to sit on the mower because now that means I can trim while he mows. It's a blessing. It's a blessing to have somebody else that you can work side by side with.

It's a blessing to have somebody that you could study for, for an exam with. I mean, you could think of your times in schools, and I remember times even, I was on the ship, I had my one really good friend, Brian Vogel, and I were trying to get this different qualification, and so at night, he and I would just sit there and quiz each other, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. We were working for the same goal, and we were helping each other to get to that same place, and he was a blessing to me. And I don't know if I would ever pass that test without his help.

Right, we get to work together. This is part of that companionship that God made us together. Two are better than one, for they have a good reward for their labor. That's why it's such a wonderful thing that God didn't just make us asexual, right? That we don't just independently reproduce, but it's good that a family has a mother and a father.

Right now, I don't, this is one of these weird things in our culture, and I want to tread somewhat lightly, but yet speak boldly here. Being a single mother is hard. Extremely hard. And I feel sorry for any woman who has to be a single mother, because that should not be the case. We should be able to acknowledge it, but I have a fear that even in our modern society, we've taken single motherhood as like, well, here's this single mom, and she can make the dinner, and she can raise the kids, and she can go to school, and she can have her career, she can do all this stuff, and I'm sitting there going, Man, I wonder how much easier that would be if there was an actual functioning family.

That when she gets tired, somebody else can make the food. When she needs a break, somebody else can help with the kids. Right, like, it's good. Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor. They're able to share the fruits of their labor together. They're able to enjoy the good things that they work hard for. There's a huge blessing.

And I'm not just gonna say this just like speaking poorly against single moms or something like that. I wanna say that even for, there's a culture amongst, and I know it's not here in our church, but I'm just telling you, as you go out into the world, this is what you're gonna find in American culture. There's this form of masculinity that's rugged, individual, and the guy can just do everything by himself, and he doesn't need to get married, and you're good enough on your own, and it's like, Dude, that's a recipe for disaster and selfishness and dying by your lonesome. That's not what we were made for.

So there's a blessing. There's a reward for their labor. As you work hard, there's a blessing. It's just a peculiar type thing. There are statistic after statistic after statistic that what seems like the People who want to push a lot of money to destroy the family will want to make you think that you can make more money on your own. It's actually quite the opposite. Family units who stay together, who work with one another, tend to earn far more money over the lifespan of their family than one individual by themselves. It's just a statistical norm. That's how God has made society to work. But notice it's not just for economic reward. It's not just for that type of working support. But notice in verse 10, there's a rescuer to help you. Verse 10, for if they fall, one will lift up his companion.

But woe to him who is alone when he falls. for he has no one to help him up. Just this week, I read an article of this. Look at this amazing drone technology, because there was a guy missing in the woods, and they scanned all the woods, and they found his helmet somewhere, and this was a doctor who had gone hiking solo, fell off a cliff, and died. It was a month until they finally found his body. He had fallen, alone, no one there to help him up.

I mean, this is a big rule in hiking is you go with other people. And even if you're gonna go hiking, you call somebody and you say, hey, this is where I'm going, this is the trail I'm going on, because if I don't show up by the time that I'm supposed to be at the inn, I need you to come and get me out. So even though they may not be physically present, somebody knows where you're supposed to be, and they're able to go help you.

And this idea of falling down is a dangerous thing. I mean, there's a reason why elderly people have a thing that hangs down from their neck, right? Because if they fall, they're able to click the little button and an ambulance shows up. There's a reason why if you're wearing different watches or carrying phones in your pocket, that if you get into a crash or you get into a fall, it'll call the police or call your medical person right away. because falls are dangerous things. And so God made this beautiful thing of companionship, that when you fall, somebody else is able to help you up.

Somebody else is able to rescue you. And if we want to kind of move this into the spiritual realm a little bit, not just that physical falling, But there are times that even in our lives we start making choices that we're like tying our own shoelaces. We start to trip up and we start to fall and we desperately need somebody else to speak truth into our life.

Hey, you're making a fool of yourself. I need somebody like Pastor Micah Ramsey who will tell me, Brian, you're being an idiot. You need to not do this. You're falling down. He's telling me the hard thing because he doesn't want me to land on my face.

There's a few people in my life who could do that. The elders are one of them, mom, Olivia's mom is one of them, and my old pastor is one of them, right? Do you have people in your life, companions, that aren't just there because they're able to affirm you in all your feelings, make you just, okay, whatever makes you feel good, or do you have people who will actually help you when you're falling? It's a huge blessing. It's a huge blessing to have somebody who's able to rescue you when you need help. But the third picture he gives in verse 11 is somebody who's in the trenches with you. Look with me at verse 11. And again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one be warm alone?

I went through this kick where I really enjoyed military history, and I would watch all these documentaries, and I'd read all these books on World War I and World War II. I really like reading autobiographies, especially of the World War II period. And one of the things that came up time and time again with trench warfare, whether it was in World War II or World War I, was just how bitterly cold it was in Europe in the winter.

And guys by themselves would freeze to death. And so they would buddy up, and they would get together, and they would share their blankets, or they would share their trench coats, and they would light a little fire, put it over their heads, let the smoke get out a little bit, but try not to let the flames go. But the point is, they had to keep each other warm. And if they didn't, it was very likely they wouldn't wake up the next morning. This is this picture of that. Even our body heat with each other. As we get close to one another, we're able to share the warmth of each other. But there's a fourth picture as well in verse 12 of this companionship.

Look with me at verse 12 of the three-strand cord. Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand them, and a three-fold cord is not quickly broken. this idea of a three-strand cord had become basically a proverb in the ancient Near East. By the time that Solomon is writing this, it's basically a proverb. Whether you're in Assyria or whether you're here in Israel, this is this idea that it's really hard to break a three-strand cord. And the point is, if you have one buddy, that's great. If you have two companions, that's even better. If you have two people who are able to go at it with you, that's even better.

I remember, I'm giving you guys all sorts of stories today, I'm sorry about that, but when I first got on this ship, we went out to sea for the first time, and I got put on line duty, and so you just get a couple hundred guys, and all you're doing is you're pulling this massive carrier, right, it's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tons of metal, and you're just pulling it to the shore. The tugboat has gotten you there, but now you need to actually get yourself right next to the pier.

And I was amazed. We have all this technology, we have all these winches, we have all this stuff, but it still relies on ropes. And as we handled these ropes, I mean, they're like this thick, and I was looking at these ropes, and all it was was a bunch of smaller ropes woven together into one larger rope. And as we were heaving, you know, heave, pull, heave, pull. We're pulling and pulling and pulling, just slowly bringing that gap. It was that rope that we knew wasn't going to snap, wasn't going to break, but could pull this entire ship right next to the pier and keep us there, even when the wind and the rain would start coming. Even though the tide would go up and the tide would go down, the ropes would stay strong. Because it wasn't just little flimsy ropes. It wasn't just one or two strands. It was a multi-braided rope. There's greater strength, and this is just a practical truth, right? Some people even treat their religion with God, like me, myself, alone, in the Bible, in God, and I'm good. That's the abnormality. That's not the normal. That's not the way God intended his people, his church, his body to be designed.

We need one another. We need to care for one another. We need, because even if one strand might break, the other two strands can hold and can continue to carry the weight, continue to pull, continue to stay strong for the other person. So it says, even though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not easily broken.

Who do you find your life intertwined with? Who do you find your daily life, your weekly life intertwined with? Is it just you and yourself? Or do you find your life that you reach out to companions, you try to strengthen them, you try to help them, you try to care for them? And are you being helped, cared for, and loved by other people? A three-strand cord is not easily or quickly broken. And so some practical applications, I just want to give you some quick practical applications.

First Point

First, is we should be a community in action. a community in action.

When I was a boy, growing up, my parents' pastor, Bob, not the guy who got married, or got murdered, that was Cheyenne, but Pastor Bob was from South Dakota. And Pastor Bob's dad, Pastor Bob's dad died when he was a boy. And they lived out on a farm. And this is not a story uncommon for many of you who would live in the agricultural and breathe the agricultural world. His dad died in the early summer. The crops were already in. His mom had no clue how to harvest everything. He didn't have any older brothers. He didn't have any uncles.

And all of a sudden, As the crop became ripe and ready, all of a sudden, eight different combines showed up at the fields. All the different grain bins, or all the different grain carts, and all the tractors, and all the trucks. And in one day, they harvested all the family's fields. And they stored them in their bins, keeping accurate account, and making sure that this widow was going to be cared for, Because that family was a part of their community and they were going to love her and care for the children.

Second Application

Do we come together when times are hard? When tragedy strikes and things get difficult, do we band together? Or do we just say, well, that's too bad for them? We should be a community in action. Secondly, second practical application is marriage. Marriage should be marked by a sacrificial love. Marriage should be this bond, this interwoving or interweaving of people's lives together.

I mean, this is one of the things that Pastor Snap said at Olivia and Mai's wedding, right? You guys, it needs to be Brian, Olivia, and Christ, and the three-strand cord needs to be tightly woven together. But even both of us, as he was preaching, needed to have, we needed to have the scriptures actually applied in our real life. And I think every marriage struggles with this, right?

Because husbands are called to love their wives like Christ loved the church. Sacrificially giving up of himself for her, caring for her, loving her, washing her in the water of the word, discipling her, providing for her. This is this idea that this is this Christ-like love of a husband to his wife. And the wife in Ephesians 5 goes on from there, and Paul says that the wife is to submit to her husband. But this isn't like under compulsion, this is willingly, lovingly saying, I'm gonna support that man. I'm gonna care for him, I'm gonna be his helpmate, I'm gonna be his companion, I'm gonna love him and care for him well. And this is why I was so thankful that Elder Turner, he said, and I will tell you of a better way, that better way in 1 Corinthians 12 was leading into the great love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13. Love does not seek its own. Right, but, Companionship, a relationship that's built and woven together in love is meant to strengthen each other and bring God glory.

And so spouses, I hope that you will read this, and instead of thinking to yourself, by the way, this is a real deal, right? As I've talked with people who have gotten divorces, they'll say, I'd be better if I was alone. No, most of the time not. Most of the time not.

Spouses are there to support each other, hold each other accountable, give each other assistance, sanctify one another, keeping your vows seriously. In sickness or in health, riches or in poor. No matter what comes, hell or high water, until death separates us, I'm committed to you and to this relationship. We're gonna build each other up until one of us is in the grave. Do we take our marriage vows that seriously as this companionship that God has built into the need of society? Thirdly, practical application is Christian fellowship. Have you ever heard of all the one another or each others of the scripture?

It is amazing as you read through the New Testament how many times you get this reflexive idea of not just you do to them or they do to you, but you all need to do this to each other. I'm just going to read a few of these. This is not exhaustive. I'm not giving you the full list, but you need to love one another. honor one another, greet one another, welcome one another, show hospitality to one another, live in harmony with each other, be at peace with one another, be kind to each other, forgive one another, bear with each other, comfort one another, confess sins to one another, pray for one another, exhort one another. Do you see how many one another's there are?

Right, it's because God didn't design us to be Christians alone, but in a fellowship, in a community where we support and love and pray for and exhort and try to do everything we can to see the other person prosper in this life and in their faith. And it's largely out of fourth sacrificial love. A sacrificial love. A lot of military stories today. I guess I'm in a story mood, that's fine.

But as I was thinking about different Medal of Honor recipients and why they got the Medal of Honor, I was thinking about this guy who, in World War II, at the Battle of Pearl Harbor, he was on a ship, he was a Navy guy, so automatically that makes him a good guy, right?

But he's on the ship, and as his boat is bombed, The water's flooding into the compartment. The ship is gonna go down. He knows it's gonna go down, because it's hit the main engine areas. He starts getting everybody else out. Gets everybody else out of the main space. Gets them out, gets them out, gets them out. And at the last moment, he doesn't step outside the door, but on the inside of the door, he locks the hatch.

He allowed himself to die. so it would take longer for the ship to go under so other people could get off the ship and live. He didn't do it because he loved himself and wanted the fame and the glory. He did it because he wanted other people to still have a good life. He wanted other people to live.

Do we live our lives so that we can be the miser in the penthouse with all of our goods and stuff, or do we live so that other people may flourish, other people may grow? Why do you school your kids? Why do you give money continually and continually and continually to kids who do nothing more than run out their clothes and grow out of their shoes? Do you not do it because you love them? Do you toil in your labor and you pour out your goods, you pour out your money so that the others, those that God has blessed you with, can grow and succeed, have good things?

Each one of us have parents like that who has sacrificed for us. Maybe it wasn't a parent, maybe it was a grandparent. For some of you, I do not envy you. Some of you all are teachers, and you pour out your lives, and you have poured out your lives, and poured out your lives, and poured out your lives for little kids who, if they were students like me, I probably would have quit 10 years ago. But for some reason, you keep doing it. And for some people, it's because it's a job. A lot of other people, it's because they know that this is what's going to bless the next generation.

Why would you invite people over to your house for a meal? Why would you be kind to the other person in the other pew? Why would you show up for calling hours in a funeral? Why would you bake a meal for somebody who's not part of your family? Why would you give somebody a ride when their car is broken down? Why would you do anything good for anybody else? because it's your blessing to bless others. That's how we get to be like Christ.

So there are, okay, so there's some practical stuff, but I wanna talk about challenges to friendships, right? We live in a, man, it's just hard. It's hard to have friends, right? We live in a church where that Christian fellowship may be pretty difficult, because some of y'all live like 45 minutes south, and some of you live like all the way in Timbuktu that way and that way, and how do we get everybody together? That's a really hard thing. That's a really difficult thing, and that's where we gotta figure out, how do we practically love one another?

And I hope that the Lord's Day is a huge Sabbath delight for you. We're able to come and eat and fellowship and talk, and it's like one day in seven, you're a bit, you know what? Work's gonna be whatever work is. Farm's gonna be whatever farm is. But I'm gonna come to church, and I just get to eat some good old food in the basement, and I get to see people who are just gonna love me. This is one of the blessings of not forsaking the assembling, but coming together so we can encourage each other.

But there's also this danger, and I wanna warn you of this danger of disconnection with friendship. There's a challenge to friendship, and that's disconnection. And that disconnection is almost like a pseudo. It's a lie, it's an in place of connection. You may have 4,000 friends on Facebook. But if people aren't sacrificially loving you, if they aren't actually caring for you in your life, challenging for you, I'm not saying long-distance communication is inherently bad or inherently sinful or inherently nothing. What I'm saying is that it doesn't make up for real-life in-person relationships.

And we're entering into a new era where something is even more dangerous than that. I get this ad. I was really confused by it. I got an ad when I was watching YouTube for an AI video girlfriend. I was like, what in the world? So I clicked the little three dots, like show me why I'm seeing this ad. Do you want to know why I was part of that ad target? Literally, all it said was male. Because I'm a dude, I get that ad. That's where the world is wanting you to go.

You don't actually have to have that real connection. You don't have to sacrifice to be in a relationship with someone. You don't have to deal with the emotional disconnection, and the tension, and the tiredness, and the drama. You could just go have your AI girlfriend, and life will be good.

I can promise you, life ain't gonna be good. You're gonna be more lonely, and more sad, and more tired, because that personal connection will not be there. But there are personal barriers as well. Let's get out of the AI weird world and back into the real world. Personal barriers that can challenge our friendships. Sometimes we avoid friendships just because we do. We don't know why, we just do, right? Somebody gets a hold of us and we're just, we're tired, we're lazy, or we don't even know why. We just leave that text message unread. We just don't call back. We just don't know why. Just doesn't happen.

Sometimes we just fill our lives with so much stuff and so much busyness that we're so busy about the busyness we forget that people are the main business. Sometimes we put up personal barriers and personal boundaries because of covetousness and envy. We're filled with all this busyness because we're just trying to get too much stuff, or we want to avoid certain friendships because We're actually envious of that person's reputation, power, wealth, reputation. I've met people like this who they don't, they have this friend and God bless them with this companion and yet something changes in their friendship and it's almost like they become intimidated by the other person.

And they start to decrease the communication and isolate themselves. For some it's fear. Some people are naturally fearful. Fearful of being vulnerable. Maybe you've been hurt before. Maybe there's trauma in the past with relationships. Fear of being rejected, right? If you make yourself vulnerable to somebody else and they turn their back on you or they hurt you.

And so, how do you protect yourself? I'm just not going to get into any more relationships, period. I'm not saying run headlong into every relationship, right? Here's actually a very clear thing I'm going to encourage you. You can't be friends with everybody. If you are trying to be friends with everybody, you are being friends, true friends, with nobody. You can't be friends to everybody. You just don't have enough time in the day. You don't have enough resources. You don't have enough energy. You can't be close friends with everybody. You can be friendly with a lot of people, but who are the core people who are your true companions in life? Invest deeply in those relationships.

Lastly, I want to bring us to quite a remarkable passage.

We're going to move from Ecclesiastes and go to the book of John. John chapter 15. We're going to end here. John chapter 15, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the last of the Gospels. John chapter 15. And as Jesus is talking this long paragraph, or this long section to his disciples, he says something amazing. Look with me at John chapter 15, verse 11 through 16, or through 17.

These things I have spoken to you that your joy may remain in you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. Now notice this. You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. What did he just command them? To love one another. And then this shocking thing, his disciples had called him Lord, Lord, Master. And notice what he says in verse 15, how this relationship is changing.

No longer do I call you servants, For a servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends. For all things that I heard from my father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear good fruit and that your fruit should remain. And whatever you ask the Father in my name, he shall give you. These things I command you, that you love one another. He starts off with this, my love should abide in you and your love should increase and do what I command, love one another. He ends with this idea of love one another.

And what's sandwiched right in the middle? You're my friends. Jesus surrounded himself. with 12 of the closest acquaintances, 12 of the closest companions. Jesus didn't come alone, but Jesus came and gathered to himself 12 of the closest friends, even knowing one would betray him. Do we model Christ? Christ has poured out his love for us. Love no greater than even sacrificing of one's own self. Out of that love, Jesus loved you so much that he died on the cross for you so that you may love others. Don't go at life alone. You weren't designed for it. You weren't commanded for life alone. And Jesus actually tells us quite the opposite.

Closing Prayer

Part of abiding in him is that fruit of love, a love for one another that's modeled after him. Let's be more like Christ as we love each other and we bask in the love that he has poured out on us. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much that you have loved us Lord, you loved us even while we were yet still sinners, dead in our transgressions and sins, and yet you loved us. You made us alive together in Christ Jesus, for by grace we have been saved through faith. It's not of our own works, Lord, we can't brag of it. You loved us when we were ugly.

But Lord, we pray that you would please help us to abound in love. As we soak in Christ, as we live our lives in Jesus, as we remain united to your Son, Jesus, we pray, Father, that you would please help us to love. Lord, we pray that we would love within our families and love within the Christian community. Where we fail, Lord, you know it, forgive us. And Father, we pray that we would confess to one another and continue to love each other. We pray these things in Jesus's name, amen.