It Was Never Just You and God
The Loneliest Moment in Human History
America is getting lonelier. Back in 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General put out an advisory calling loneliness and isolation a public health epidemic. He compared the health risk of not having enough real connection to smoking about fifteen cigarettes a day. Nobody in this room would watch a friend smoke fifteen cigarettes a day and say nothing. But we watch people go home to empty houses every Sunday afternoon and we don't say a word about it.
Think about how strange that is. We live in the most connected moment in human history. I can pull a phone out of my pocket and talk to somebody on the other side of the planet in about four seconds. We have never been able to reach each other this easily. And we have never been this lonely.
This morning I want to show you one passage. It says that God puts lonely people in a house. Not someday. Not once you get your life sorted out. Right now. God places the lonely in families. He gives them a home, an address, a place to belong.
Two Kinds of Grief
We call it loneliness, but loneliness is only the feeling sitting on the surface. Underneath it, almost every time, is a loss. And a loss you are carrying around is not just loneliness. That's grief.
The first is the grief of never having had. As of 2021, twenty-five percent of forty-year-olds in this country had never been married. This is a real grief for people in this church.
It's the wedding invitation with the blank line for "plus one," and you look at that blank line a lot longer than anybody knows. It's the question at the family reunion. Every year. Same aunt, same question. Underneath all of it is a lie that we have been swallowing for a long time. The lie is that our lives would finally be right if we could just find "the one." That we are incomplete without a spouse.
That assumption does not survive five minutes of contact with the Bible. Paul was never married. And Jesus was never married. If being unmarried makes a person incomplete, then the most complete human being who has ever lived was missing something. He wasn't. So let's stop building a church culture where you have to arrive in a pair to feel like you fit.
The second is the grief of having lost. Naomi knew this one. Anna knew it too. Luke 2:36-37 tells us she was widowed at a young age and lived alone until she was eighty-four. Do that math. That is somewhere around sixty years of waking up alone. To have known the love of "your one," to have built a life on it, and then to have it stripped away. That is its own kind of pain, and some of you are sitting in it this morning.
The World's Two Answers
Answer one: go find somebody. That's the loudest one. Every song on the radio, every movie. You're lonely? Go find your person. But that answer fails anybody who never finds the one. And it fails the widow who had one for forty years, because she did what the world said. She found somebody. She loved him well and she buried him.
Answer two: convince yourself you don't need anybody. You get hurt enough times, and you decide you're done. You're fine. Except that answer has a shelf life, and what it turns into is bitterness.
And God ruled on this one in chapter two of the Bible.
Genesis 2:18: "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone.'"
The very first thing in all of creation that God ever called not good was a man by himself. So if you're sitting there telling yourself you're fine alone, understand that you're arguing with God about it.
Now here's the tension. Genesis says it is not good to be alone. But Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7, says it is good to stay unmarried. So which is it? Both. And the reason both are true is this. God's answer for being alone was never marriage. It was a household.
God Places the Lonely in Families
Psalm 68:5-6: "Father to the fatherless, defender of widows, this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families; he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy."
Look at where these verses sit. Verses 1 through 4 are a war cry. Enemies scattering. Wax melting. And starting in verse 7, God goes marching out through the wilderness. Verses 5 and 6 are wedged right in between a war cry and a military march.
The psalmist stops a victory parade. He stops it, in the middle, to tell you what the Commander in Chief does. This is a psalm about God's overwhelming power. And the very first concrete thing that all of that power actually accomplishes, the first item on the list, is a home for somebody who didn't have one.
In the ancient world, "father to the fatherless, defender of widows" was how kings advertised themselves. It was on the monuments. And this psalm takes that title away from the king and hands it to God.
I need to say something carefully. God does not promise us that we will never be lonely. It's not in there. Christ was lonely. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He asked His friends for one thing. Stay awake with me. And they didn't. So when you say, God, I am so lonely, understand something. You are not telling Him something He doesn't understand. He has been in the room by Himself too.
Loneliness is not a sin. It's not evidence that you don't love Jesus enough. It is real, and a lot of us live with it. But here is what the psalm teaches. It was never just you and God.
The word translated "families" is actually the word for house. A physical house. God doesn't just hand out warm feelings about belonging. He hands out an address.
Which Family?
If God sets the lonely in families, then we ought to ask the obvious question. Which family?
Ephesians 2:19-20: "So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God's holy people. You are members of God's family. Together, we are his house."
Listen to what Paul is actually saying to a room full of Gentiles who had spent their entire lives being told they were outsiders. You are not strangers here. You are not foreigners here. You are members of God's family. And then he says it plainly, together we are His house.
There it is. Same word. House. So Psalm 68 says God sets the lonely in families, and Ephesians tells us which one.
Church, God has a plan for the lonely people in Colfax, Indiana. That plan has a mailing address. It's this one. You are sitting in it.
The Cross and the Household
I want to close by taking you to a hill outside Jerusalem. Jesus is dying. He has hours left. And in the middle of that, He looks down.
John 19:26-27: "When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her, 'Dear woman, here is your son.' And he said to this disciple, 'Here is your mother.' And from then on this disciple took her into his home."
Jesus was single. He had nowhere to lay His head. His friends had all run off. By any measure the world uses, He was the loneliest man on that hill. And one of the last things He did before He died was give two lonely people a family.
That is Psalm 68:6. Not an empty promise on a page. The Son of God doing it with His last breath.
What We Do About It
So what do we do with a God like that? We become the house. And that is exactly what I'm asking you to do this week. Two things, and which one is yours depends on where you're sitting.
First. If your table is full on Sunday afternoon, put one more chair at it. Invite somebody to join you. Most of you have a leaf for that table sitting in a closet somewhere that you haven't used in years. Go get it.
Second. If you are the one who always gets invited, and you always say no because you don't want to be the odd one out, or because you don't want to be anybody's charity case, or because it's just easier to stay home, say yes once. One time. Let the family of Christ love on you this week. You cannot receive a household with your arms folded.
Some of you walked in here this morning and it has been just you and God for a long time. Longer than anybody in this room knows.
So hear what your God calls Himself. Father to the fatherless. Defender of widows.
And hear what He does about it. He sets the lonely in families.
It was never just you and God.
Small Group Questions
ICE BREAKER QUESTIONS
When was the last time you felt genuinely lonely, even if you were surrounded by people? What made that particular loneliness stand out? What (if anything) helped?
Think about a "family" you belong to that isn't your biological family, a friend group, a workplace, a neighborhood, a small group, a church. What makes it feel like family? What specifically has been done (by you or by others) to make it feel that way?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Pastor Nate opened with the U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 advisory calling loneliness a public health epidemic, comparing the health risk to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. He said: "We have never been able to reach each other this easily. And we have never been this lonely." Why do you think this is? What has all our connectivity failed to give us? Where do you see this loneliness epidemic in your own circles?
Pastor Nate distinguished loneliness from what's underneath it: "Loneliness is only the feeling sitting on the surface. Underneath it, almost every time, is a loss... A loss you are carrying around is not just loneliness. That's grief." What loss might be underneath your loneliness (or someone's you love)? Why does it help to name it as grief rather than just loneliness?
Pastor Nate named "the grief of never having had," noting that 25% of forty-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married, the highest on record. He listed some quiet forms this takes: the wedding "plus one" blank line, the family reunion question, "the slow assumption that something must be wrong with you." How can the church be more aware of this quiet grief? What do we sometimes say or do that unintentionally deepens it?
Pastor Nate confronted a lie: "Our lives would finally be right if we could just find 'the one.'" He pointed out that Paul was never married, and neither was Jesus. "If being unmarried makes a person incomplete, then the most complete human being who has ever lived was missing something. And He wasn't." How has this lie shaped your view of singleness (your own or others')? What would change in the church if we stopped implying marriage is required for completeness?
Pastor Nate named "the grief of having lost," using Naomi (who came home empty) and Anna (widowed for about sixty years). For Anna, "sixty years alone, and her most important day was still ahead of her." How do we honor both realities, the real grief of widowhood AND the truth that God is not finished writing someone's story? What would you say to someone in year sixty of that grief?
Pastor Nate said the world offers two answers to loneliness that both fail: (1) "Go find somebody"—which fails those who never find "the one" and widows who had one. (2) "Convince yourself you don't need anybody", which "hardens into a wall" of bitterness. Which of these two worldly answers have you been tempted toward? What has that pursuit actually produced in your life?
Pastor Nate showed a tension: Genesis 2:18 says "it is not good for the man to be alone," but 1 Corinthians 7 says it's good to stay unmarried. His answer: "God's answer for being alone was never marriage. It was a household." How does understanding "household" (rather than marriage specifically) as God's answer to loneliness change the way you think about singleness, widowhood, and church community? How does it change what we're building at Colfax Christian Church?
Pastor Nate walked through Psalm 68:5-6 and pointed out that verses 5-6 are "wedged right in between a war cry and a military march." In the middle of describing God's overwhelming power, "the first item on the list, is a home for somebody who didn't have one." What does it tell us about God's character that His power's first accomplishment is a home for the homeless? How does this reframe what we think God's power is FOR?
Pastor Nate said something many needed to hear: "God does not promise us that we will never be lonely... Christ was lonely. In the Garden of Gethsemane... He asked His friends for one thing. Stay awake with me. And they didn't." How does knowing Jesus experienced loneliness change your relationship to your own lonely seasons? Why is it important to hear that "loneliness is not a sin"?
Pastor Nate ended with two challenges: (1) "If your table is full on Sunday afternoon, put one more chair at it." (2) "If you're the one who always gets invited, and you always say no... say yes once." Which of these two is YOUR challenge this week? Why is the response you resist the response God is likely asking of you?
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