Alone But Not Lonely

I had the privilege of meeting the brother who will be sharing the Word with us today. And in all my experience, I had not met a man with the particular gifts and insights that Dr. Mario Rivera brings to us today. He's a man, you know how the Bible says that the eye is the gate of the soul? He's a man that when he looks into your eyes, he sees into your soul. And I mean that sincerely and has the ability of the Holy Spirit to help bring healing to the soul uniquely. I can tell you honestly, I feel that the Lord has anointed Mario Rivera in that realm as much as any man I know. And it's a great gift and also he has a wonderful church in San Juan, Puerto Rico. So he has a very wonderful accent, just like everyone here. A church of about 2,000 members and a church that's vitally alive and sharing the same spirit that we do in Jesus Christ. So let's welcome back for the first time in seven years, Dr. Mario Rivera. Let's give him a hand as he comes. Mario? It is so good to be with the people of God. I find that the church is the most beautiful thing in the world in spite of its weaknesses, in spite of its hang-ups. There is nothing more beautiful in the world than the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I praise the Lord for the privilege of being in his church this morning. And I bring you greetings from Christians in metropolitan San Juan, Puerto Rico, where we are attempting, by the grace of God, to do what you are doing here. Worship the Lord, praise his name, and tell others that there is hope. That there is hope in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And the sermon topic this morning, as you are aware of, is alone but not lonely. I would like for us to turn to the 16th chapter of John, and read from verses 25 and following, through verse 33. John 16, verse 25 and following. And I'm going to be reading from the amplified text. So if your translation doesn't look like mine, don't think that I wrote this one. It's just that it's a different one. Dr. Manfred George Gutzke, a great Biblicist, Canadian, Luina. He was a professor at Columbia Theological Seminary for many years. And one day, I stood and asked him, I said, Dr. Gutzke, what is the best translation of the Bible that you recommend? His answer stayed with me until this day. He said, the one you have in your hands right now. So the one you have is the best. And we'll stay with that. Verse 25. I have told you these things in parables, that is, their language, allegories, dark sayings. The hour is now coming when I shall no longer speak to you in figures of speech, but I shall tell you about the Father in plain words and openly, without reserve. At that time you will ask or pray in my name. And I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf, for it will be unnecessary. For the Father himself tenderly loves you, because you have loved me. And I believe that I came out from the Father. I came out from the Father and I have come into the world. Again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father. His disciples said, oh, now you are speaking plainly to us and not in parables, not in their language and figures of speech. Now we know that you are acquainted with everything and have no need to be asked questions, because of this we believe that you really came from God. Jesus answered them, do you now believe? Do you believe it at last? But take notice, the hour is coming and it has arrived when you will be dispersed and scattered, every man to his own home, leaving me alone. Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. I have told you these things so that in me you may have perfect peace and confidence. In the world you have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration, but be of good cheer. Take courage, be confident, certain, undaunted, for I have overcome the world. I have deprived it of power to harm. I have conquered it for you. Let us bow in prayer. Father, as we come to this part of this worship service, we are so grateful for the praises, for those who played instruments, for those who sang, for those who joined in praise and worship, for the prayers that have been given, offered to you in thanksgiving. And now as we come to thy word, we pray that you will bless us in thy word. Lord, I especially lift up before your throne of grace the shepherd you have placed in this congregation. Lord, and I thank thee for his love. I thank thee, Lord Jesus, for his commitment, for his example, for the way he has ministered to me since we came here last night. And I pray that you will bless him in a very special way. For he gives of himself continually. He encourages others continually. He uplifts others continually. And may, Lord Jesus, at this moment, we bring him before you, that we may uplift him before thy presence, he and his house. For we ask our prayer, not in our name, but in the name of him, without whom we cannot live, and without whom we dare not die, even the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The text that I'm using this morning is verse 32. But take notice, the hour is coming, and it has arrived, when you will all be dispersed and scattered, every man to his own home, leaving me alone. Then the Lord adds, yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me, alone, but not lonely. They were going to leave the Lord alone. He was going to be alone. And what is the difference between aloneness and loneliness? Last night, I spoke on this subject, but as all pastors know, sermons have one characteristic, that they grow. And if you preach the same sermon 12 times, by the time you end up in your list, the last one is going to resemble very little the first one, because it grows. So it's going to grow this morning. And at 11, it's going to keep growing. And then at 3, it grows some more. Then you'll be back tonight. Oh, no, tonight you don't come back. That's all right. But what is the difference between feeling, being alone, and feeling loneliness? Well, aloneness, aloneness, refers more to the physical, to the external. We feel aloneness in terms of people, of places, of things. If you are used to your car, to your surroundings, and you move away, you're going to miss your surroundings. Especially children do that. They are very sensitive to familiar objects. That's why it's so important that when a child moves to a new locality, the old toys are brought to him. The pets that he had there should come with him, so that they will help him adjust to new surroundings. But adults are more sensitive to people, to others. So aloneness always refers to the external relationships, again, whether it's people, places, or objects. Loneliness, on the other hand, has to do with the internal, the psychological, the spiritual. To feel lonely in reality is to trigger within us the sense of inner emptiness, to trigger a sense of worthlessness that we may have carried with us through life. It brings about a sense of coldness because of the lack of the warmth that was brought about by relations. It is a sense of desolation. And desolation, of course, comes from desert. To be in the desert, it brings a sense of dryness, of shrinking of our emotions within us. In summary, it brings about a sense of rejection. And loneliness triggers, more than anything else, that horrible feeling of rejection. When a person feels really lonely, actually, what is happening is that a lot of triggers have taken place. The lack of self-worth, of self-esteem, the self-image. Self-image is what we think others think of us when they look at us. Self-esteem is the values that I give myself. And when the person has a poor self-esteem or self-image, when the person is not very sure of who he or she is, then loneliness is the result of not what produces that, but the result of it. And this is a confusion that many people seem to have. Many people seem to think that because they are lonely, they feel that they are not worth, that somebody left me because I am not worth much. My self-esteem, my values, my inner values, my inner security with myself is shattered because someone left me. But it is the opposite. Somebody can leave me, but if I feel secure, if I know who I am in Jesus Christ, if I have the perfect assurance that I am pleased with whom I am, then it may hurt. I may be alone, but I will never really feel loneliness. And if you grasp that this morning, you will be blessed tremendously. I have met many people, many people who live alone. Many people who live alone. And yet I have been able, by the grace of God, to lead them into understanding that they can be alone, but not necessarily feel lonely. In fact, in fact, after a while, many of them have said to me, you know, I believe the happiest time of my life is now that I'm alone. One of the moments I cherish the most is when I'm able to go to a little town in Puerto Rico. It's called Rincon, it's so small, because Rincon, really what it means is a little corner. I took a group of men there one day for a retreat, and one of them, one of these men that is always bringing something new and making everybody feel good about being where he is, and loved me very much and always kidded me about something. And as we were coming into my little hometown, he said, you know, I just saw a sign saying, welcome to Rincon, you are living in Rincon. But one of the moments I cherish the most is when I go to that place for two or three days by myself, and I go by the beach, and I watch the waves, and I look at that beautiful tropical sky spotted by white clouds, and I look at those seabirds and those palm trees, and I spend two or three days touching me, getting in touch with myself, getting away from the people who want to touch me, and don't let me touch me. And therefore, when I go there, I begin to rejoice. And it is in those moments that I find the most beautiful communication with my Lord. It is no wonder that the Lord Jesus Christ spent all night in prayer many times. And I believe the reason he wasn't during the daytime is because they kept him so busy, he couldn't do it. But he would have done it had he been able to. So, we establish the difference between aloneness and loneliness. And we begin to sense what this loneliness means as we look at Genesis 21, 16, I believe it is. I think last night I inverted the quotation, so if you see some of the folks who came last night, ask them to please bear with me, I do that often. But there we see the story of Ishmael, of Ishmael as a little boy. Abraham was instructed to put him out with his mother. And as they went into the desert, the Bible says that the water they had was consumed. And the mother couldn't stand seeing the child die of thirst. So she decided to put him under some bushes and move away, a distance away from him, so she could not see him. But then the Bible says something that I shared last night. I looked at that verse and it seemed to me that I had read it for the first time. And I assure you that in these 33 years that I have been preaching, I have read the Bible a few times. I'm sure you all have too. And I'm sure you have had that experience, that after reading one verse many times, one day you look at it and it seems to you that somebody just wrote it that morning for you. That happened to me many years ago when I was a pastor in Columbus, Georgia. I was in my study and I was reading in Romans when all of a sudden I saw a text. It seemed that both pages went blank and only that text stood out. And the text was, that is, in thy house. And when I looked at that text, God spoke to me and I called my wife and said, we have to get ready, we are going back to Puerto Rico. She said, how do you know? I said, the Lord just told me. The Lord just told me. And that was 27 years ago. In those years I have experienced moments of great frustration and tears. The first few weeks we were there were wonderful. We were meeting in the living room of my house. The pews were empty paint cans and old suitcases. The offering that morning was a dollar and 59 cents. And I gave a dollar. And I had a beautiful niece called Barbara Ann Rossler. And she said to me that first Sunday, I want you to baptize me. Well, there were no members there. And my heart leapt. I was going to have one member in the church. And that was beautiful. And I praised the Lord for that. And a few weeks later I baptized her. And now I had one whole member in the church. But then a few weeks later than that, my sister Irma came to me with the horrible news. Barbie, as we call her, has terminal leukemia. And the doctor says she will not live long. And, of course, we agonized for many weeks after that. I was in charge of giving her the demeral shots at night for pain until one Sunday morning I closed her eyes not to see them open again until I go to glory and see her. But then that morning I went to preach to a very small group of people. And my heart was torn. And in that moment I experienced loneliness. And I knew what that was about because I began to focus on myself. And I began to ask God the wrong question. The question that we are all tempted to ask but which is always the wrong one. But I said, Why, Lord? Why? Whenever we ask that question, loneliness takes a grip on us. A grip that we cannot move away from. It is only as we change the question from why to what that we are free. Then I stopped saying, Why, Lord? And I said, Lord, what? What do you want me to do with my tears and my ashes? You know, folks, God is the greatest specialist in taking tears and ashes and turning them into great blessings. For God's real purpose with your life on this earth is forming your character so that it will be like the character of His Son, Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul says, Until we all grow into what? Into the stature of whom? Of the Lord Jesus Christ. See, God's purpose is to develop your character. The word character comes from an interesting word in the original because the character was the seal with which a letter was sealed not to be opened except by the person to whom it was addressed. It was also the seal of the emperor upon Edix that he, Edix, Edix, Edix, Edix, who laws that he, whatever it is, he signed them with his seal. And then after he signed them, that meant that not even him could change it. Character is the image of God imprinted in your heart, in your life. And God's purpose with your life is to develop your character. You see, now what is a person of character? A person of character is one whose yes is yes and whose no is no. A person of character is one who is not pocked up by victories nor destroyed by defeats. A person of character is one who when he makes or she makes a commitment, you know and that person knows that that commitment will be kept because there is character. The difference between character and personality is that personality is the sum total of the characteristics of a person that makes him or her stand differently from others. So you can say he has a good personality or she has an excellent personality because of the sum total of the characteristics of that individual character. However, it's what makes that person be who he or she is. And God is interested in character. And that's why God allows suffering. And that's why God allows aloneness. When God is interested in preparing a beautiful gem for his use, he allows that gem to be put through the fire. So you see, as we look into this matter, we begin to discover then this concept of loneliness. For people who don't know the difference and don't know how to handle loneliness, it will become despair. Loneliness, deep loneliness, and a sense of helplessness and hopelessness that is attached to loneliness is perhaps the main cause of suicide. And all of us know the alarming rate of suicide among children and among adolescents in our day today. The fact that young people seek to satisfy needs in so many antisocial ways is an indication of a deep loneliness. In a class of students to which I spoke, one 17-year-old boy about to graduate from high school shared with me and the rest of his friends that he often comes to his house at 5 o'clock in the morning quite drunk. He belongs to what you would call an upper-middle class family. And this is very symbolic of young people. And you ask yourself, why? Why does he come so late under those conditions? Why? Let me tell you why, beloved. Because the place he lives in has just become a house, not a home. The word home comes from the Latin, and in the Latin what it means is fireplace, ogeda, ogeda, fireplace. And a fireplace is symbolic of what? Of warmth. And beware that your home becomes a house. Beware that your desire to get things leads you to change a home for a house. And when the home becomes a house, who wants to live there? It's cold, unattached. There's lack of warmth. And then the young person will go to the street to find warmth, at least in false answers to his own dilemma. I believe that it was St. Augustine, towards the end of the 4th century, beginning of the 5th century, and whom I think we ought to call the real father of modern psychology, but a distinguished theologian who had experienced that loneliness. But I believe he defined the emptiness of people when he said those words that I have quoted, I suppose, dozens of times, and yet I am compelled to quote him again and again because of the summary of what he included. He said, I believe that St. Augustine put the finger right where it needs to be put. But the psalmist, a thousand years before the Lord Jesus Christ came to earth, said it even better than St. Augustine. That beautiful 42nd Psalm that you love so much, he said it, so seeks for the cooling water in the desert, a new translation says, for you, O God. And then he asked the question, when will I come and be before you, O God? For in the last analysis, the real desire for companionship, the real need of a human being, of every human being, is fellowship with God himself. And when God created man, he knew that man was going to feel the pangs of loneliness. But man was going to focus on himself and he was going to find the emptiness of sin, produced by sin in his life, the emptiness of meaning. And there is no pain so intolerable as the pain of meaninglessness. That's what drove Ernest Hemingway to commit suicide. After having been everywhere in the world, after having participated in the civil war in Spain, and then to Kilimanjaro in Africa, and then hunting lions and whatever, he ended up putting the big toe of his right foot in the trigger of that rifle and blowing his brains out. Because after all of that, there was no meaning to him. And meaninglessness and hopelessness is the key to feeling loneliness, and God knew that, and so he supplied the antidote for true loneliness. For the Lord Jesus Christ, his Son, came and he said to his disciples, and he says to you, and he says to me today, I will no longer call you my servants, for the servant knows not what his master does, but I now call you my friends and brothers and sisters. The Lord Jesus Christ, this morning, this hour, wants to be your Savior. He wants to be your Lord. He wants to be your King. He yearns to be the one who took your place on the cross of Calvary. But you know something else? He wants to be your friend. And when he is your friend, really becomes your friend, you will discover for the first time the antidote to loneliness. He made many promises. The Bible is full of promises. Somebody has said that there are over 40,000 promises in the Bible. I have to confess, I have never counted them. But even if I had only read or heard one, I would have been more than pleased. And that one is, the Lord Jesus said to his disciples at the end of his ministry, when he was going to be taken up, he said to them, and he says to you today, I will not leave you comfortless. I will be with you always, even unto the end of the world. And he has sent the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the vicar of God on earth. The representative of God on earth. And the Holy Spirit is, listen carefully now, on you, with you, and in you. Now isn't that amazing? He is on you. He is with you. And he is on you. And in the moments of aloneness, when the Holy Spirit becomes real to you, and you begin to praise him for his presence, then you know that you may be alone, but you can't never be lonely again. For his presence is sufficient unto you. Let us pray. Father, we are grateful. Grateful for there is an answer to loneliness. But in the awareness of your presence, in the joy of knowing your nearness to us, when our mind can focus away from us into your presence, then we begin to realize that everything makes sense, that nothing can happen to us unless it is approved by you and used for our good and for your glory. And when we begin to rejoice in being with you, we can be alone, but never lonely. And I praise you for that, Lord. So I pray for every man and woman who live alone, and I pray that you will meet their needs with your presence. We thank you that you, O God, did not give us things. You gave yourself to us. And by giving yourself to us, we may never have to experience loneliness. In Jesus' name, amen. Without knowing it, I think Mario has maybe added another message in our series of crises, learning through them. And I have to say, the message grew. I'm looking forward to coming back at 11, three messages in one weekend. Just this week, Mario, I didn't tell you this, just this week I had a phone call that a young man, he's 16 years old, who had come to the North Pole for the first time during strike force, was going through some difficult times, and in fact had decided that he couldn't cope with life anymore. And at that moment, a number of our staff, who are very wonderfully available and gifted to meet the needs of these young people, went to be with him. In fact, he was brought to one of their homes, and he had threatened to take his life, and he had the drugs necessary to do so on his body. That immediate crisis was diffused, but as we dug in a little bit into his life, we came to discover that this is exactly the case, that this young man's mother and dad had separated. Neither one of them really wanted him there. His grandparents, who had been giving him a roof, a house, weren't able to cope with his problems. He was very, very lonely. And in fact, as I speak with you this morning, we're a little, I feel a little desperate for him, because it looks like there's nowhere for him to go, and he's going to be just turned over to an agency. And if any of you here today have room in your home and a heart to work through some problems with a teenager, let me know about it, would you? It wouldn't be an easy task, and I wouldn't do it without the proper screenings and so, but I just have a burden for someone who came to Christ, gave his heart to Christ, and now we don't know what to do, so we let him go, right? He's alone, but I pray that through the body of Christ he won't be lonely. He'll make it. Lord, we stand and give to you our weaknesses and our needs, Lord, thanking you that you're able to take care of us. You're able to see us through, and we can know sweet joy and companionship at every turn. I pray you'd meet the needs of this young man, Lord, that you'd use us to do it, having birthed one into the kingdom of God, Lord, that we not have to let him aside. Help us, Father, to be all that we need to be. He is able, oh, he is able In the time he spends, he is able He is able, oh.