SPEAKER_00 0:00

If uh if you are a guest with us today, uh especially want to say welcome to you. And I know that a lot of folks are out and about because it is Memorial Day weekend, and I don't know if you've got any big plans. Uh my family and I, if it doesn't rain us out, we're gonna have a big uh camp out in the backyard tonight. So um I'll be recovering all day tomorrow from no sleep. Um but uh looking forward to some time with my kiddos. Um but before we move on in the service, I do want to stop and just say thank you. Uh there's a good chance that in a room uh this size, uh that there are some folks who have served our country and our military, and uh every time I come to the Memorial Day weekend, uh I remember sitting as a child in my grandparents' home uh and listening for hours as my grandfather, my papa, as we called him, would tell us stories serving in World War II. And uh and I I miss those times with him, and I look forward to seeing him again one day in heaven, but it reminds me uh of the sacrifices that are made so that we can be in a place like this today, worshiping Jesus without fear or concern that someone's gonna come in and and and uh take us away to jail, like many countries are experiencing while we sit here in our freedoms. And so if you served in the military, have served in the military, are serving in the military in any form or fashion, would you just quickly stand up? We'd love to just honor you this morning. Is anybody with us that's served in the military? Here we are right here. Let's just give them a hand. I just want to say thank you guys, and uh we appreciate greatly your sacrifice. Uh no matter how big or how small, it's it had an impact on our freedom today, and we're really grateful for you. Um so my name's Nick, and I'm one of the pastors here at Point Community Church. And uh if you um if you are new to church or if it's been a while since you've been in church, let me just go ahead and put you at ease. Maybe you walked in the door and you thought, uh, I don't know if I belong here. I feel a little uneasy, a little uh insecure about being in church. Uh let me just say this is a group of people who don't have it all together, who don't have it all figured out. And uh we are learning, we are growing, uh, we are trying to follow a perfect Savior. He's the only one who was ever perfect, thankfully. And so we find much uh, I guess, peace in just knowing it's okay to not be okay, and that we have a Savior, Jesus Christ, who loves us and who has a plan and a purpose for our lives, and and we have the word of God that we teach from every week, not just our opinions, not pop psychology. We teach from God's word because we believe it's truth that is transcendent, and it transcends all generations and cultures and generations. And so we're just really thankful for God's word. We're thankful for uh the opportunity to be here this morning to celebrate who God is and what he has done. And if you've been with us over the past five weeks, you know we've been teaching on the family. It's always fun to teach on the family for a couple reasons. Number one, every time I teach on the family, uh things go crazy at my house. Because you know, when you start teaching on it, then you're gonna get tested on it, right? Uh if you get you start teaching on truths about God's word, then guess what? You teach on marriage, and that week marriage is gonna be a little challenging. I can almost guarantee it. That's kind of like the dial just gets turned up a little bit. Uh you teach on parenting, and the kids are gonna be a little more unruly than normal. God's gonna say, okay, did you get that teaching? I just want to make sure. I want to make sure that you're depending on me, that you are humble, and that you don't think you got this all figured out. And I'm like, okay, God, I get the point. I get the point, right? I'm not, I don't have it all figured out. I'm learning here. Um But thankfully, it's not just about how we can plug and play truths into our life, but how we can continue to have a dynamic, growing relationship with Jesus Christ who leads us in all circumstances, in all situations. And so today, uh, as we think about closing out this series called Rewind, and we even titled the series Rewind, because I talked to so many people who wish that there was a rewind button in their relationships at home. A lot of times they wish they could just go back and like have known a truth that they've now discovered. They wish they had known it like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when they were in their marriage, when they were parenting, and they're like, if I could only preach that to them then, I could have avoided a lot of pain, I could have avoided a lot of suffering, a lot of hardship. And what I'm saying to you is that if you will listen to God's word, if you'll listen to God's truth, then you can avoid some of the pitfalls that people fall into because God's word protects us. It helps us avoid some of those things. Now, I'm not saying that just because you hear it means you'll do it. I wish that were the case, don't you? But I'm gonna at least say that here's some truth. I want to warn you, I want to caution you, I want to encourage you with, and if you will apply it, I can guarantee this that every time you apply what God's word says, and you obey it, there are blessings involved. There are. You may not believe that today, but I'm telling you, we don't obey just because we want to get God's approval. We have God's approval in Jesus. We obey because when we obey God, there are blessings that He gives us. There are blessings that come into our lives because He's way smarter than we are. Right? He's a lot wiser than we are, even though we think uh sometimes we know it better than He does. So this morning we're gonna do something interesting, something that I have never done before as a pastor. I have never spent a whole sermon speaking to singleness, speaking to what it means to be a single according to the Bible. Now, let me just say this. Um I uh grew up in a home where I had both of my parents at home, uh, no divorce there, so I grew up in a nuclear family, if you will, that had both parents intact. Um I grew up and then went to college. I met a girl in my last year of high school named Jada uh Brown at the time, and we got married my junior year of college, and so in essence, my trajectory is one of very much um maybe the norm, we were might have we might have been a little bit earlier than the norm getting married today, but we had a trajectory of where I wasn't single real long as a young man. Uh got married at a relatively early age at 21, and um and and began to have a family three years into that. We started having kids. And so when I stand up here and talk about singleness today, there will be some of you in this room that say uh he doesn't know what he's talking about. Okay, and I get that. You don't have the credibility to speak to this, Nick, because you've got a you've got a spouse, you've got kids, you've got a family. I understand that. I'll accept that, okay? There's others of you in this room, uh, some of you are not only uh not married or yet to be married, some of you have gone through divorce. And so you're dealing with some of the repercussions and the fallout of divorce. Maybe you've even been remarried and been divorced and be been remarried. Listen, again, there is grace in this room today, wherever you are. Okay? But you may think, I don't understand where you're coming from. And the truth is, I don't understand where you're coming from fully. I can't. Because in my humanness, that's not been my experience, and so I'm not gonna act like I've understand your storyline. There's others of you in this room that have been widowed uh by death or some sickness suffering in your life that's caused you to lose a spouse, and so there may maybe that's your experience. Maybe that's been your journey. And let me just say to you, if that's your journey, I don't fully understand or comprehend what you're going through. I've watched my grandparents, uh, my papa, who I mentioned earlier, I watched him um pass away, and and my grandmother deal with that for a short season. Uh uh, and then then she also went to go uh to heaven and her life ended. Um, and I and I I look at that story and I think about what it would be like in my own world to lose Jada and to do life apart from her. I can't even imagine uh doing that. I know God is sufficient, I know he is gracious, I know he can comfort, but it would be hard. So but just on the front end, I want to say I know there's those three groups in the room of the yet to be married, those who are uh those who've gone through divorce, and those who have been widowed. And we're not going to, just this here's a disclaimer, we're not gonna be able to uh talk about every issue this morning that you might be facing, every challenge that you might be facing. We're not gonna be able to speak to all that this morning. In fact, I encourage you, if you have not already and you're part of Point Community Church, to find a life group. Get connected to a life group. It's a great place you can have some conversation about what God's word says. And I encourage you to get into that context. Maybe you can ask some of the questions or even challenge one another to look at God's word and what his wisdom is about your particular circumstances. But what I do want to do is just as we've done with marriage and just as we've done with parenting, I want to give you a biblical framework for singleness. So, what's a biblical framework for singleness? How do we understand singleness in light of what the Bible teaches us? And the truth is that 100 years ago, this message would not have been near as needed as it is today, because a hundred years ago, you might not know this, but in the United States, amongst the population of 18 and older, 90% of the people were married. 90% of the people in the United States were married, if you were over 18, uh, about 100 years ago. Anybody have any idea what the percentage is today? It's roughly 57%. So now we've come, we've come a long way from 90%, right? We've moved down the trajectory to where we're about 57% married. Now I'm gonna say something about this at the end, but that doesn't mean that people are still not having relationships anymore. Uh that they're not uh still sexually involved in relationships, in fact. Uh many people are living and doing things like married people, but not getting married officially. And so we see a lot more of that. So that's part of why this uh stat shows up the way it does. It's such a low percentage of the culture, 57%, is because a lot of people are just living like they're married but not really married. Okay. So I think this is very important for the church because we believe that God's put us here to be a voice to speak on behalf of God as he speaks to us about what we should think about singleness, about how we should approach singleness. So this morning I'm gonna go ahead and ask you to get out your Bible because, as I said, you don't want to just hear my opinion on these things. You need to hear God's word on these things, you need to hear God's truth. So if you get out your Bibles and open to 1 Corinthians chapter 7. Now, anyone who's been in church very long, uh, if you've heard a sermon on marriage, at some point you may have heard something from 1 Corinthians 7, but it's a very interesting passage. It's uh it's it's actually kind of strange uh in some ways, unless you understand really what Paul's driving at, you might feel like that Paul's anti-marriage, um, which is not the case. Just let me go ahead and make that caveat up front. Paul is not anti-marriage, but Paul is trying to instruct uh a culture, instruct a people that are living within a culture in Corinth, and he's trying to address some things because if you know anything about Corinth, and maybe you've never uh never heard of that place before, for that matter, um in that culture it was a very sexually promiscuous culture. Uh there were a lot of issues, there were a lot of struggles, even inside the church, which isn't different from today, right? People inside the church have problems just like people outside the church, right? We're not exempt because you go to church on Sunday. And so inside the church, they were having some challenges, they were having some problems, and Paul's trying to speak into that, and he's speaking to a group of married people and single people, and he's trying to give them some practical instruction on how this should work, on how we should see it. Now, before I read the text, let me just remind you there's two primary cultural views of singleness today. Two primary views. Um they come in different forms and fashions, but there's really two prevailing views. Number one is this it's more of a traditional or eastern uh view of marriage and singleness, and that's the idea that singleness is a sickness. Singleness is a sickness. Or another way to say this is that if you're single, something's wrong with you. You've got issues if you're single. Now, um how this shows up, it's it's interesting, it's quite interesting actually. If if you've lived in a rural area before, like a small town USA, uh people still hold this view in a lot of ways. And so if you come from an urban area where there's a lot of singles and you go back home to a rural area, in fact, I think a lot of singles just try to stay in their urban areas because when they go back home, they get asked this question Why aren't you married yet? What's wrong with you? Where why can't you get married? Um and here, that view is being shaped by this traditional view that singleness is a bad thing, and so you need to get married. And if you're not married, something is not right. Okay? So that's one of the views that's a prevailing view. Again, Eastern, traditional, kind of a rural view of singleness. The second view of singleness is more of a western view, a modern view, an urban view, if you will. And that says that singleness is actually safest. Singleness is best, it's superior. It's better than being married because you've got to keep your options open. You've got to keep yourself free from being tied down, from being anchored to a marriage. You don't want to get married because then if you get married, you know, like they're gonna tell you you can't do stuff, and it's gonna cost you a lot of money, and and you're gonna have kids, and those kids are gonna cost you a lot of freedom and financial security. And so this view of singleness is one that says, like, hey, like, hold on to it. Cling to your singleness, right? So it's kind of the opposite of that rural view, it's opposite of that traditional view, and it actually says you should just stay stay single. Don't don't don't just go moving quick. And this is actually showing up in that uh the average age people are getting married in the United States is now starting to push close to 30 years of old, 30, 30 years of age. Did you know that? I mean, that's that's much later than what it used to be. So now people are getting uh they're waiting longer and longer to get married, closer to 30. Why? Well, because again, there's a lot of information that feeds feeds into this that's kind of anti-marriage oriented. That marriage is a bad thing. Marriage can can hurt you, it can hem you in. Now, here's the challenge here. Let me just say this again, kindly, gently, but firmly. There are a lot of singles who are engaging in relationships that are in is sexually promiscuous. I'm gonna talk about this at the end, sexually promiscuous relationships, and they act like it doesn't cost them anything. They act like it's not not hurting them. And so they're like saying, hey, I'll commit some sex to you, I'll commit my physical body to you, but I just don't want to commit to saying I want to actually be married to you. Okay? I want the benefits, I just don't want to have to actually give you uh more than more than just uh sex. And if something else comes along, I want to be ready to go, you know. I mean, I don't know what woman wants that kind of relationship. I don't know what kind of man wants a relationship that just says, hey, look, I'm in this just for benefits for me, but as soon as it gets bad, I'm gone. Okay? But that's where some people are. And I'm just saying to you today that if that's where you're at, like, don't don't think for a minute that that living that way comes without a price. There's a price tag. Because we are wired as human beings with emotions and and and mental capacity and physical capacity that's all connected, interconnected, and interrelated. And there are there are consequences to giving yourself sexually to someone but not giving yourself fully engaged into a marital relationship. There are consequences, and again, I don't I don't want to get into that off into the weeds for a long talk on that this morning. In fact, we should do a whole sermon at some point about sex, and I know all of you guys would love that, and everybody would come, right? Um, but we need to talk about that because it's powerful. But that's what we see. So let's look at the text this morning. I'm only gonna read the second half of 1 Corinthians 7 to you, because I I could read the whole chapter, but I'm just gonna read the second half. You're gonna have to hang with me. It's gonna take a minute. It's on the screen above me. If you don't have a Bible, there's also some Bibles under the chairs if you need one. And if you don't own a Bible, take that with you. It's a gift from us. Here's what it says 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 25. About virgins, I have no command from the Lord, but I do give an opinion as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. Therefore, I consider this to be good because of the present distress. It is fine for a man to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loose from a wife? Do not seek a wife. However, if you do get married and you you have not sinned, that's good, right? We haven't sinned if you got married. And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But such people will have trouble in this life. And married people look at each other and they say, Yes. And I am trying to spare you. And I say this, brothers, the time is limited, so from now on, those who have wives should be as though they had none, and those who weep as though they did not weep, and those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice, and those who buy as though they did not possess, and those who uh use the world as though they did not make full use of it. For the world in its current form is passing away. And we're going to come back to that section, because that can be a little bit confusing, and I want to explain what Paul is trying to address there. I want you to be without concerns. An unmarried man is concerned about the things of the Lord and how he may please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the things of the world, and how he may please his wife, and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or a virgin is concerned about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy, both in body and in spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the things of the world and how she may please her husband. Now I'm saying this for your own benefit, not to put a restraint on you, but because of what is proper, and so that you may be devoted to the Lord without distraction. But if a man thinks he is acting improperly toward his virgin, if she is past marriageable age, and so it must be, he can do as he wants. He is not sinning, and they can get married. But he who stands firm in his heart, who is under no compulsion, but has control over his own will, and has decided in his heart to keep his own virgin, will do well. So then, he who marries his virgin does well, but he who does not marry his marry will do better. A wife is bound as long as her husband is living, but if her husband dies, she is free to be married to anyone she wants. Only in the Lord. But she is happier if she remains as she is, in my opinion. This is Paul again saying in his opinion, and I think that also I have the Spirit of God. So that is a lot to take in. And again, I didn't even read the first 24 verses of this passage, right? And the point being is that Paul is really trying to give some interesting uh commentary because uh in his day, in his culture, people weren't really speaking about this issue. Uh as and so Paul says, like somebody's got to speak up and tell this. And he even says in the text, this is my opinion, but I am a man filled with the Holy Spirit. I am a man who feels called by God to preach and to pastor people. And so I want to speak as one with authority, but I want to tell you what I think you should do and how you should live. I want to give you a biblical view of singleness, just really three primary points about singleness that we can take from the from this text and from the Bible as a whole this morning. Number one is this marriage and singleness are both God's plan A. Marriage and singleness are both God's plan A. Now, have any of you ever said this to a single person? If you're patient, one day you can be happily married like me. Anybody ever said that? Hopefully not. Probably so though. Probably some of us have said that. Uh you just need to wait for God to bring you the right one. Anybody ever said that? What is a great girl or guy like you doing not married? Or what about this one? If you will just be satisfied in God alone, then God will bring you a spouse. And the single person's thinking, isn't that cute? So sweet of you to tell me that. Married person. Right? So anybody who's been single for a length of time and waiting to be married, wanting to be married, like sometimes the stuff we say as married people, it just foolish. We're trying our best. We probably should just keep our mouth shut. Right? That'd probably be better. But all four of these things that I just said, they imply that singleness is God's plan B. Like that somehow singleness is lesser than being married. It's lesser value, uh, it's it's it's less important, it's less significant, and by all means, God couldn't possibly want you to stay single. But that's kind of in the face of what the Bible says. Now, if you go back through the Bible, you look back in Genesis 1 and 2, and we said this during the week on marriage. We said, listen, scripture clearly articulates that it was not good for man to be alone, right? So God created a helpmate. Adam got a helpmate in the person of Eve. So, and they complemented one another. Adam and Eve were different. Adam and Eve had different strengths and weaknesses. They were able to complement each other and how they functioned in life. And that still is true that men and women are different, they're not the same. They are the same value. Catch that? They are the same value. Men are not more important than women. Women are not more important than men. They are the same in their value and their worth because they were both created. We in this room were all created in the in God's image. And so we have inherent worth and value, not based on our role or how we perform, but on how God created us, right? But here's the Thing. God gave them not only to each other to complement one another, but He even gives them a specific instruction, a direction, an imperative. And that imperative was this be fruitful and multiply. Be fruitful and multiply. Come together, compliment one another, be fruitful and multiply. As in, make babies, in case you're wondering what that means. Make babies. Multiply. Fill the earth with more people and more people who can worship God. And I joked about this, but my wife and we've we've followed this one pretty well. Okay? We're doing pretty good on this one. We got half a dozen in our house, okay? So we know, like, this is part of the imperative God gives is to be fruitful and multiply. But here's the thing: when you look at the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, and all that's going on in the Old Testament, I can't speak to all of it this morning, but you'll see this thread that anyone after this point who was unable to have children, or anyone who was actually single and didn't have a spouse, like many people in that culture would look at them as if they were cursed by God. Because God gave them this imperative, be fruitful, multiply, and you're supposed to be together. And then after that point, you see these stories where you know even Abraham and Sarah, who God gave the ultimate blessing to. God said, I'm gonna bless you, I'm gonna make you into a great nation, your descendants are gonna be as numerous as the sands on the shore and the stars in the sky. And he gives them this blessing. And Sarah is like barren, she can't have a kid. And Abraham's like, I don't see how this is gonna work. In fact, he even tries to circumvent the process and says, I know what I'll do. I'll just take her servant, and we'll just have a baby together. Maybe that's what he meant. Not a good idea. Don't assume you think you know God's plan in your life, okay? It's a dangerous thing to do. And they did. He took his servant, caused all kinds of problems. They have a baby, Ishmael, but can you imagine the tensity, uh the tension in that family, as Hagar has this baby and Sarah still hasn't had one. It's a mess, right? God is smarter than us, God's wiser than us. But here's what happens: God does open up Sarah's womb. She does have a baby eventually, and now she's blessed, and then they do have generations of descendants. But the point being is this is as you look at the Old Testament, you consistently see this theme that if you're not able to have a kid, you're barren, that you are cursed. But when you get to Isaiah, the book of Isaiah, Isaiah was one of the main prophets during the Old Testament times, and he was speaking to the people of God in Isaiah chapter 53, one of the most famous passages that is a prophecy about Jesus. Here it is, way before Jesus ever shows up on the scene, and Isaiah is talking under the empowering presence of God in his life. He's talking about Jesus coming. And he says this in verse 8. He says, Jesus will be like one who is cut off from life. The actual language there is the idea that he will have no physical descendants. He will have no ability to have children. He won't have any kids. He won't be fruitful and multiply. So is Jesus in sin? Is he lesser? Is he wrong? Is he bad? Is he evil? Because he didn't have children? Because he didn't get married? Absolutely not. Here's Jesus, the epitome of what it means to be human, fully complete, fully perfect, and yet what? He was single. So any singles in this room that think that you need a spouse to be complete, look no further than Jesus. Jesus was complete and he was sufficient in and of himself because that's what God's plan A was in Jesus. Or even the person Paul who is writing this letter, he was single. And we're going to talk in a minute about the benefits of that. But Paul was single. And there have been other people, other great Christian leaders, other great men and women of God who have been single. And I would say to you today, I would submit to you today that it was God's plan A for them to be single. And we should celebrate that. And we should encourage that when it's right. Because just a word here. It's better to be single than to control your relationships, manipulate relationships, and pursue a relationship in such a way that you idolize that person and idolize that relationship and get unhealthy and miss God's best for you. So marriage and singleness are both God's plan A. In Isaiah 64. Children of the forsaken one will be more than the children of the married woman, says the Lord. So what is he saying about Jesus? He's saying, yes, he doesn't have physical descendants, but what? It's got so many spiritual descendants. So even if your deal, women in this room, particularly, I know men aren't as apt to be this way, but women in this room, if you're like struggling because one, you want to get married and have children, or maybe you are married, but you're unable to have children, know this that God can still bless you with descendants. They may not be physical descendants, but they may be spiritual descendants. Be encouraged. He says, Sing. Sing. You are still blessed. You're not cursed. You can still be blessed by God in other ways. So, Matthew 19, just one other passage to point you to. Jesus is having a discourse with his disciples and he's talking about marriage. And he says it's better not to marry than to marry and divorce. That's what he says. He says it's better not to marry than to marry and divorce. And his disciples say, Well, who can hear this stuff? I mean, this is hard, Jesus. This is intense teaching. That's pretty harsh. That's pretty direct. And Jesus even says in Matthew 19, I just want to read this out to you because I think this is important that God has a plan sometimes in singleness when he says this. But he told them, Not everyone can accept this saying, but only those who it has been given to. For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb, just case you're wondering what a eunuch is. Again, they can't have children, right? They're unable to reproduce. There are eunuchs who were born that way. There are eunuchs who were made that way by men, for like serving the king and things of that nature. And then there are eunuchs who have made themselves that way. For what purpose? Because of the kingdom of heaven. There's actually people who've chosen not to get married so that they could serve God more fully. And that was God's plan for them. But I want to take this a step further. Not only is marriage and singleness both, both of those God's plan A, but marriage and singleness are both a gift from God. They're both a gift from God. Now, I remember in college having some of this discussion. Again, I was already in a relationship with Jade at the time, but I remember having some discussion about this and thinking about, okay, so it's a gift to be single. The people are a gift to be single. Like, if I can just be real honest, I was like, I don't want that gift. I hope I don't get that gift. Like, that's kind of my that was kind of my my take on it. But it's the wrong idea when we think of it that way. Like that it's some present, you know, that's brought to you, and here you open it up, oh, I'm gonna be single. This is great. Okay? That's not how it works. What it's saying to us is that whatever circumstances God has put us in, we can trust in his sovereignty and we can enjoy his grace. That's what it means to be content. That's what it means to really rest as a human being in who God is and what he has for us, is to say, you know what? I don't have to have a marriage relationship to be fulfilled. I'm gonna trust God in your sovereignty and I'm gonna rest and enjoy your grace. And what is his grace? His grace are all these amazing gifts that he has given us. Namely, first of all, our salvation. That he has given us eternal life with him forever and purpose and meaning in this temporary existence that we live in. He's given us that. It's his grace. He doesn't have to give us that. None of you in here get anything. You don't, I'm I know this is gonna shock you. You're not gonna get any extra brownie points with God because you showed up this morning. You're like, well, great, I'm staying out next week. I'm not coming back, you know. Like, I'm not going to church. Why go to church? Here, here's the deal. We come here to church not because we get extra salvation points. We come because we are have already received God's grace and his mercy. Now, if if you're if you're here and you don't believe in Jesus Christ and you're still searching this thing out, you're trying to seek and discover, let me just make sure you understand that we do not believe in a performance-based Christianity that you perform so that God loves you. No, we believe Jesus Christ has performed for us and we accept his gift of salvation. Okay, so that's his grace, that's his mercy toward us, that's his kindness towards us, and we can enjoy that and be satisfied in that so that we know we are complete even if we never get married. We are complete in that singleness. Because of God. So, let me just say a couple things to this. Paul, in that passage, I brought it up a while ago and said we're gonna come back to the point that he was trying to make when he said, listen, if you're if you're whatever state you're in, like just stay there in that state, stay in that process. He's trying to speak to this issue of being content. But here's why. Because number one, Paul knows that there's a greater reality, there's an eternal reality going on. That we live in what's known as the already but not yet kingdom of God. Now let me let me explain what I mean by that. Jesus came, and when he came, he brought in the kingdom. He's the king, right? He is the king. That's what the scripture teaches us. But when he came, he came and he served and he suffered so that we could have life. And when he came and he left, sin still remained. Like we still sin, there's still consequences, there's still sickness, even though Jesus came and he healed sickness, even though he came and he uh he uh helped uh alleviate pain and suffering, there's still sickness in the world, there's still hardship, there's still relational disconnect, right? Men and women in this room? There's still things in this life that show us that it's not all fixed yet, even though Jesus has already suffered and died to give us forgiveness of our sin and life. So what that tells us is that the kingdom has come, but it's not fully come. And Paul is saying to the people in Corinthians, hang with me. He's saying to the people in Corinthians, listen, don't put your hope in all of your temporary circumstances. Whether you are married or you're not married, whether you have a lot or you have a little, whatever you, wherever you find yourself, don't put your hope in what is temporary. This is why singleness is a gift, because there is a tension, there is a tendency in us that when you get married, you will idolize your spouse. You will elevate your spouse to the place of Jesus in your life. And here's what happens. If you idolize your spouse, now, now listen, here's what's funny. None of us in this room would go, hey, you're you're Jesus. Right? In fact, you probably say you're the devil before we would say they're Jesus. I mean, let's just be honest, okay? I think you're more like the devil today, okay? But but here's the point I'm making. When you try to get your satisfaction, your ultimate satisfaction, your worth, your value from what your spouse thinks of you, you are idolizing them. When you are looking to them to meet all of your expectations, when you are looking to them to meet your needs, you are idolizing them. You are saying, I want you to be my rescuer, my messiah, my functional savior. Now, if you're single, you don't have that. You know, you could maybe make your hope for a future spouse become your functional savior. But in singleness, let me remind you this Paul says, he says, people who get married, they have many troubles. And I want you to avoid these. That's his exact quote. And here's what he's part of what he's saying is that if you get married, singles be encouraged by this, you know, there's some hardships that are going to come into your life from being married. Now, I would be careful how how hard I press into this because I'm a married man. My wife's in this room. I'm thankful. And those hardships, they press me into Jesus in a different way. But if you're single, you can rejoice and say, hey, I don't have to deal with those things. Be thankful for that. It's okay. It's a gift. But lastly, marriage and singleness can both point people to Jesus. Can both point people to Jesus. Again, marriage we've already talked about. Ephesians 5, Paul drops a bombshell, and I know this is a bombshell for all of you today in some ways, but basically what Paul says in Ephesians 5 is he says, marriage is not ultimately about you. It's not about you getting your needs met, it's not about you being happy. Marriage is ultimately a picture to the world of who God is and what he has done. That's what it's designed to be anyway. And so when you try to make it to be something other than what it is, than what God intended it to be, you're gonna be frustrated, you're gonna be angry, you're gonna get really depressed and discouraged. But what we were reminded of is that singleness is also a picture to the world of what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus of the gospel. It can point people to life in Christ. And here's the primary reason, a primary way it does that. Because we are first and foremost children of God, children in God's family, both now and forever. Are you tracking with me? My primary identity is not husband. My first and foremost identity in life is not Nick is husband. My primary identity as a man is not daddy, it's not pastor, it's not friend. My primary identity as a follower of Jesus is a child of God. And if you are single, you have an opportunity to point people to that reality in a way that a married person will struggle to because a married person can many times again get sidetracked, get distracted, as Paul says in the text, by the relationship that they have and the roles that they have. There are so many people in this life who idolize marriage as if if they could only get to marriage, they can only have that, they would be happy. And all the married people say, no. Don't buy that, right? Here's the thing marriage is a temporary institution. It's temporary. Matthew 22, verse 29, the Sadducees are trying to press Jesus on the resurrection, and here's what it says Jesus answered them, You are deceived because you do not know the scriptures. I love it how Jesus is so direct. You don't get it. You're dense, okay? You don't understand the scriptures. For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. Now again, I know some of your brains are for the rest of the time, you're gonna be following that thought, like trying to figure out what that means. I get that. But let me just simply say this: in heaven, it's not gonna be about marriage. It's gonna be about being with Jesus. Our eternal family, and I know this is hard for some of us in this room, our eternal family is more significant than our biological earthly family. I know we say things like, you know, I said earlier, I can't wait to be with some of my family that have died and are already in heaven. It's gonna be awesome, but you know what's cool? I'm gonna feel just as much connection with every one of the people who believe in Jesus when I get to heaven. Because we are all children of God, first and foremost. He is our Father. He is our father, and we have a family identity in Christ Jesus, and it's not just a temporary one, it's an eternal one. And so, single people in the room, leverage this, lean into this, recognize that you are not alone. And specifically, single people in this room, whether you are divorced, whether you are widowed, whether you're yet to be married, do not run away or isolate yourself from the people of God. Press into the family of God. Single moms in this room, we as a church want to embrace you and help you in your plight. Do not parent your children alone. Press into the family of God. Women who are struggling to be satisfied without in your singleness because you believe that there is a Mr. Ride out there, and if you could just meet him, everything would be better. Listen, press into the community of people. Find a life group, find a mentor, find people who will speak into your life. Do not make decisions disconnected from community. It's dangerous for married people, it's dangerous for single people. Do not make big decisions about your relationships apart from the people of God speaking truth into your life. Because you will make an emotional decision and you will marry the wrong person. In essence, you will marry the person who's broken and sinful that you thought was not gonna be broken and sinful. And then you will pay the consequences of that. This is why people who typically get divorced once get divorced again and get divorced again as they get remarried, because they keep thinking there's gonna be somebody who's gonna fulfill all their needs. Point being this morning. Singles, singles, let me let me just lovingly say to you, you are not incomplete if you were single. You're not. And God can use you. Notice in the text in the Bible, the scripture reminds us that in the Old Testament, God gave marriage as an institution to multiply, to fill the earth with people. But what's the New Testament imperative? What's the New Testament instruction? To go and to make disciples of all nations. Listen, it requires marriage to meet that first requirement of multiplying babies. But the second one, the mission to make disciples, does not require for you to be married. In fact, there are many, many people who are much more effective at taking the gospel to the nations because. Why? Because they're undistracted in their devotion. They're unhindered by some of the things that marriage brings into your life. There are things that right now as a pastor, I have to like put aside because you know what? My first flock, my first uh community of people that God's called me to lead and shepherd is my family. So there's things that I have to say no to so that I can say yes to what God has put into my life to prioritize. But if you're single, there are things that you have the ability and the capacity to do that people that are married can't. I know we don't talk about this a lot, but it's true. People like John Stott, people like uh uh Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, these guys have written amazing stuff and they were single men. And they would have never gotten that stuff done if they had six kids like me. Not saying I would get it done if I, you know, if I was single, because I'm just not that same kind of guy, but I'm just telling you right now, like, there's no way they would have gotten done what they what they got done if they had a family. Lottie Moon, I mean, I can just name off all these different, uh, these different folks who have spent their lives in other countries giving themselves to the sake of the mission because they didn't have a family to drag around through that. And and honestly, again, if you're a woman particularly, you're gonna marry a guy, and according to scripture, your job is to come along and support him and to encourage him, and and and you gotta find a way that your two agendas gotta work together. And sometimes that's gonna push you a direction you may not want to go. So just know that on the front end, getting into this thing, right? Don't give up your singleness so easily. And don't think that your singleness is gonna hinder your ability to accomplish the work God has for you. A couple of final encouragements this morning. A couple final encouragements. Because I can't speak about singleness without speaking to these two things. I just, as I prayed about it, as I was processing it, they're inherent in the text, and I think it's important for you to hear me. Number one, single people, and this goes for married people too, but singles in this room, avoid the trap of sexual immorality. Avoid the trap of sexual immorality. I said this earlier, so I don't want to repeat myself again, but sexual temptation will jack your world up. It will. As we like to think about it, that sex is like fire and it's really good on a candle wick, it's really good in a fireplace. But if it gets outside of the constraints that it has, it will burn your house down, it will mess your world up. And that's what happens with sex is when you think sex is no big deal and you just are gonna participate in it, there are consequences that you may not see today, but you will experience long term. Because it's emotional wreckage that comes when we use sex outside of the confines of marriage. God's given us that instruction. He loves us. He's not foolish, he's not trying to hold out on us, he's not trying to keep us from enjoying life, he's actually trying to help us experience the way it was intended to. And maybe you're thinking to yourself, I'm a Christian guy or girl, and I'm staying faithfully pure in my my walk. What do I do with this desire that I have, this sexual desire inside of me? And the truth is that I know that sexual desire is a hard thing to work through. Especially because just a word here single dudes that I talk to, they always say, Well, if I get married, then my sexual problems will go away. Like, you know, I'm no longer gonna lust if I can just get married. They act like, I guess, like their wife is just gonna have sex anywhere, anywhere, anytime, you know. I don't know if that's part of it. But listen, just because you're married doesn't mean your sexual problems go away. And for your single people out there, don't buy that lie. But also don't give yourself away to just anyone. Don't give up what God has entrusted you, the gift of your sexuality. And if you are divorced or widowed, don't think you get a pass on this either. Some people say we've already been there, done that. So it's no big deal. It's not true. I don't know if you guys understand this or realize this, but one of the fastest growing percentages of sexual promiscuity in our culture is among those who are 60 and older. Did you know that? The highest number of STDs are spreading like wildfire amongst people who are 60 and older. Why? I know some of you are like, that's just not good. Can you do something to erase that image from my brain? Sorry, I apologize. No, here's the deal. Because we are created with this desire, and it doesn't go away. I asked them older guys, you know, when I was a young man, I'm like, hey, so does it ever go away? They're like. And if you use it outside of that, it will mess your world up. And I'm not playing. God's not playing. In verse 9, he says this in chapter 7. But if they do not have self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with desire. Literally, the words in the Greek there are your loins are on fire. Okay? Everybody's red now. Listen, I'm just telling you, Paul says, listen, if you can't control your body, get married. And I'm not just talking about to anyone. But pursue that. Ask for God. Ask for God to help with that. It's okay to pray that prayer. But know that being married does not eliminate sexual challenges, difficulty, impurity. For those people that are dating for a long, long time and are just kind of putting other things in front of it. I just encourage you, like, commit, cross the line, get married, okay? Because you're making it hard on yourself. If you're not struggling physically and you've been dating for a long, long time, um I'm kind of wondering what's wrong with you. I'm I'm I mean, I'm not mean that bad. I just seriously, like, if you can truly say there's not this physical struggle going on, like, probably shouldn't marry that person, I guess. Second is this, and we'll close. Do not buy in to the one narrative. Again, whether you are unmarried, divorced, or widowed, sometimes we can buy this idea that there's just the one out there. It's sold to us. We hear it in movies, we hear it in music, we see it in pop culture, there's the one. I'm gonna maybe come across a little um harsh here, but I don't mean to. I just like don't buy the lie that there's only one person on this planet you can marry, and then everybody else is not the one. And if you find that one, then everything's gonna be great. Again, it won't. Pray, seek God, pursue God. God will bring somebody alongside of you, and and and and hopefully, by by uh his grace, if you really have a heart that says, I want to get married, I really desire marriage, and you present that to God, that God will either take that desire away from you or he will fulfill that desire with the right person. But here's the thing: once you get married, like you're married, commit to this thing. Love is a choice. Stay committed in your marriage. Because there's a story in scripture in John chapter 4. We don't have near enough time to really unpack this story. John chapter 4, where Jesus is with his disciples and he's walking along and he's at a well, and there's this woman, she's a Samaritan woman. And as she's there at the well, he starts having a dialogue with her, and come to find out, and Jesus says this without her saying anything, he says, you know what? You've been you've been pursuing basically your satisfaction in men. You've had four marriages, and the one guy you're living with right now is not even your husband. But he says, I have something for you that will satisfy you, and you will never thirst again. He's not talking about water, he's not talking about like physical thirst. He says, I will satisfy your soul and what you're longing for in all those men that you're not going to find. Married people, single people. Everyone in this room, catch this. There is only one who can satisfy your soul, and his name is Jesus. There's only one who can really meet your deepest needs, and it's not a spouse, it's Jesus. And I don't say that just like lightly or as a cliche. I'm saying to you that if you are longing for something in this life, that is in you by the very nature of how God's made you to desire, but there is nothing that will satisfy that desire but Jesus. So maybe you're searching for that in some relationship, maybe you're searching for that in money, maybe you're searching for that in accomplishments or approval or whatever. Jesus alone will satisfy. He loves you, he offers you life, he offers you hope, he offers you meaning, and he will complete you. He will.