Mark Freeman: Hello, and welcome to the Grove Church podcast. I'm Charlie Loften, the lead pastor there, and we are so glad that you're joining us. Whether you are a member and you're just catching up on a sermon that you missed or you're someone who's brand new, we are really glad that you are joining us. And if you are new in some way, and I know that a lot of people will do that, we'll listen to sermons first before they visit. I want you to know that we would love to meet you at any point.
You can join us live in our services on Sunday, nine and 10:30 or streaming service at 10:30. Either way, we would love to be able to get to know you. And regardless of why you are here listening to this sermon today, thank you so much for joining us.
Mark Freeman: Alright. Well, hey, good morning. My name is Mark. I'm the small groups discipleship pastor here and excited to be together today. We have we've been at The Grove, my family, for about about twelve years.
When we moved to Northwest Arkansas, this is kind of the first place that we came just as members. And then over time developed into the role and in the position that we're playing now. About that time, we we've got two older boys, but we we had twins. We had really been praying and asking God for for a third, and we ended up with the fourth, the twofer, boy girl twins. And, you know, so they're they're getting to the age now that they're starting to be social, which, you know, again, this is our first girl.
And if you've met Darcy, if there is a social person, she has definitely got whatever that is. And so I'm I'm just trying to keep up with her. It seems like she's you know, the boys never really wanted to go stay the night with people or things like that. We kinda had to encourage it. Now I'm having to kinda rope her in.
She's she's my driving partner that comes down to church on Sundays, and she spent the night somewhere last night, and so I'm just kinda by myself. I'm feeling lonely. I'm like, girl, you gotta what about daddy? But anyway but there's this, you know, with with kids and our encouragement to them to take the effort and make the effort to to go make friends. You know, when I was when I was a kid, small town, we kind of lived outside of town.
And most of the time, you know, my brother was older than us, so I was just kind of a only kid most of the time and didn't have a lot of friends come out and, like, spend the night or do things like that. I remember the first time that I went over to somebody's other somebody else's house to spend the night, and I thought it was just this this huge thing. I mean, I I specifically remember. I don't know why. I but I remember the kid.
I think his name was Randy. He didn't live in our town for very long. He had this white blonde hair. His hair was so blonde that it was almost white, you know, and wavy. And I just thought it was super cool.
And he was also really fast, and so we would race all the time on the playground and he would normally beat me. And I was like, man, this guy's cool. And then he invited me to come over to his house, not just to, like, hang out for a little bit, but, like, to spend the night. Like, I wasn't like, the party wasn't gonna end. I wasn't gonna go home until the next day.
And I just I just thought that was incredible. And I remember I got over there. We sat down in the living room, and Fraggle Rock was on, which if you've not seen Fraggle Rock, I mean, this life can't get any better. One of the reasons I I've been thinking about this story this week is because I tried to introduce the twins to Fraggle Rock, and they didn't appreciate it. Evidently, puppets aren't what they used to be, I guess.
I don't I don't know. But, yeah, so we're sitting there. We're watching Fraggle Rock. His mom is cooking dinner for us, and then she says, alright, guys. Dinner's ready.
Come on in to the kitchen. So we walk into the kitchen. We sit down at the at the kitchen table, and she brings out spaghetti noodles in a big old bowl. We got plates. They start dishing out their spaghetti noodles, and I'm waiting for the sauce.
They start eating the spaghetti noodles with no sauce. I don't know what you do in that situation, but, you know, 10 year old Mark, I saw them eating these noodles. It was really strange. I ran to the restroom. I grabbed the phone, line included, pulled it into the door into the restroom, shut the door, called my mom, and said, you gotta come get me.
These people are crazy. Three noodles with no sauce. And I just stayed in there until my mom got there. I was I was that I was that weirded out by the whole experience. But but ain't it true, like, friendship and the effort that it takes and the awkwardness is something that would keep us from from really pursuing it.
Maybe maybe you had some bad experiences like that as a kid and the courage that it takes to to step out of your comfort zone. But as a kid, you know, we just you gotta do it. Right? And and parents, we we're always encouraging our kids, like, this is worth it. It's worth it on the other side of that.
You don't want to be the kid at the lunch table by yourself. That's that's not a good thing. Like, you you're gonna need friends, and so go and make friends. And so so movies like, you know, like The Sandlot or Karate Kid, you know, where new kid goes to a new town and mom's saying, hey, you gotta go you gotta go make new friends. You gotta you gotta go make friends.
And so they the kid steps out of his comfort zone to go do whatever that thing is to make the friendships. But one thing I've noticed is that the parents in those movies, the mama, is she making new friends, though? Is she just saying do what I say, or is she saying follow my model of pursuing friendship? Because something seems to happen when we get older, right, when we're through those adolescent years and everything where it feels like friendship's really important, and then we move on to later in life, and it just gets more complicated, and we've got some scars from the past, you know, of of friends that hurt us, or maybe we've got enough that we're trying to shield and not really not really wanting people to see the deepest parts of us, and so we're guarded in our friendship because now we've lived some life. Maybe I don't know what mean, there's there's some things that it seems like we think that we just kinda graduate on from really pursuing friendship?
And for the purposes of today, I mean, I know we could talk about marriage and the friendship, there's I'm just talking about just just good old friends, not not your spouse. Like, are you pursuing those kinds of friendships? Thinking about Karate Kid, I mean, what if? What if? What What would this movie be like?
You know, Daniel LaRusso's mama, she's hanging out at at the new apartment. She meets a lady that works there who's like a legendary Kenyan distance runner. She starts to train her. She she gets together some friends, make some friends, starts a running club. She goes and and wins the Boston Marathon, you know, marathon marathon mama instead of Karate Kid.
Y'all think it would sell? I think I think maybe it would. But, you know, we don't even track or worry about mama's friendships because we're so worried about Daniel. And as we talk about these these off ramps, this kinda the last week of that of this series, One of the top off ramps to this life, this path that leads to life, we're calling out loneliness. And I know if if you were making your shortlist, maybe loneliness doesn't make the list.
I think it's near the top. And I think it's something that the reason it might not get listed is because it's the silent killer. It's the, you know, the gas leak that you don't see and you don't realize it's happening until it's until it's too late. I think it's the thing that's so rampant that we don't even recognize it, That most of us even the even those of us who have a lot of people around us, maybe you got a lot of people around you at work, maybe you you're more of a people person. Sometimes the people who front as the the most of the people persons are actually inside the most the most lonely and and sitting at the table alone when it comes to the end of the day.
And so we're gonna get into this today and and really try to ask answer ask and answer this question. What is this off ramp of loneliness, and how does it take us off the path that leads to life? And, you know, we've we've worked through some of these other things like like busyness and money and and sex. And I don't know if you've picked it up, but I've kinda picked up a theme as Charlie's been talking about these things. The the billboard the billboards that that draw you off the path that leads to life, that cause you to take those off ramps, it seems like they kinda fall into two different categories.
The the one, they they promise something really, really special and really, really great, and then you take the off ramp and find out that the promise was a lie, that the the thing that's there doesn't really deliver on the thing that the billboard said it was gonna do. I remember in high school, my my parents took my brother and I on a whitewater rafting trip. We were in Georgia, and we're driving through all these roads up in the mountains. And around every corner, there's a sign that says, boiled peanuts. I had somebody correct me in between services that it wasn't saying boiled correctly.
I was saying boiled, and it's evidently, it's it's boiled. If you're not from there, you don't get it. But it it evidently is boiled peanuts. There were signs everywhere for bull peanuts. And some of them were real fancy signs, you know, nice places.
Some of them were like a guy in the back of his pickup truck throwing out some peanuts. Finally, I talked to my parents, I'm like, I gotta try this. Whatever this is, it's a big enough deal here that we gotta eat the bull peanuts. Right? So we pull over.
A guy literally goes out, and he dishes some out of this this big pot. And and you know what they were? You know you know you know have you ever had bull peanuts? You know what they are? They're they're wet peanuts.
Right? They're just gooey, gooey peanuts. And I realized, man, I've been for hours, I've been so excited about what this boiled peanut might be. And then I just found out it's just it's just it's just a peanut that's been in water. And it gets cold really fast, and then it's really yucky.
I don't know. It promised something that it couldn't deliver. It was like like this this fool's gold. And so these off ramps, they'll they'll make these huge promises, and then we'll take it, and then we start to think that life is found there. We're off the path to life.
Now we're over here, and we find out that it just doesn't it just doesn't deliver. The second theme I've seen is this it it tries to make us afraid of something, the the boogeyman. And so instead of staying on this path that leads to life, we we exit because we think it's safer to exit. There's a a fear that's been built up by some billboard. And so now we're on on the exit, and we find out that that wasn't even really something to be afraid of.
You know, it happens to me a lot. Maybe maybe it happens to you, like, the interstate, and there's signs that say road work ahead, and I'm afraid that I'm gonna have to it's gonna slow me down and take all my time, and maybe maybe the bridge is out ahead or something, and then you get up there and there's cones, but nobody working. Right? I gotta slow down to 50 miles an hour for cones? I'm not gonna run over a cone.
Like, this this thing, like, you need to be afraid. You need to be worried. There's you need to be careful, and then there's nobody working out there. Has that ever happened to anybody else? It seems seems like 90% of the time, that's that's what I run into.
There was a sign as you entered into my neighborhood growing up, and I didn't even really ever notice it until a friend of the family was over one time, and he said, know, I came to the neighborhood and I saw that sign that says, slow children, play here. For the longest, I was just mad about whoever put this sign in, they called me slow. I'm not slow. And then, oh, yeah, yeah, just be careful because there's there's children at play here. This this fear that's not really tangible.
And so when we're talking about loneliness, there is this promise that isolation, that going at life alone is is a better play. That that you'll you'll actually be be happier because you don't have to deal with other people and their issues, you know? You get to just make your own rules and kinda run by your own, the beat of your own drum. And there's like safety promise there, and there's an ease promise there, and there's a promise of lack of awkwardness or whatever that you have to work through in friendship, get your feelings hurt, you know, that you put your feelings out there, and then your heart gets broken sometimes in in friendship. It's it's hard, and so to run away from that, that maybe isolation is is better.
That's just not true. Or a fear that, man, if I open my life up, if I really open my life up to somebody else, what are they gonna think of me if they if they really know if they really know the real me? Not the me that I that I tend to make sure everybody sees, but the one that's beneath the surface that I don't let many people see, maybe maybe nobody. And honestly, y'all, I think that's where where loneliness is at its worst. It does its its biggest damage because we're just playing a game, and we're really, really lonely when we look at ourselves in the mirror.
And so this off ramp, these things are screaming at us. Man, it's better to do it by yourself, and man, what if somebody really knew the real you? And and so like like Charlie's been going through this series, you know, each one of these, we've really just been looking at the the core verse. Like, what does what does the Bible say about this, and what is the one that's on the cross stitch? Like, like, this this is the one.
If you're gonna memorize one, this is the one you should memorize. And I think this is at least in the top three. We're gonna look in the book of Ecclesiastes because it speaks directly directly to it, and this would be, again, another good couple of verses to commit to memory. Ecclesiastes is part of the Bible's wisdom literature. Books like Proverbs and Job really deal with the the realities of life, life life in in the real, like like how quickly it goes, how how how fleeting it is, how how difficult life can be, how ridiculous it is to try to make sense of life apart from God, how unpredictable it is.
And so Ecclesiastes calls out these truths, and then it also points the picture to some beautiful things that instead of getting caught up in this unpredictability, here's the things that you really need to give your attention to. And one of those things that it calls out is the beauty the beauty of friendship. That it's it's not just, you know, an add on to an already great life, but it's part of the way that God has created us to live life together. It's critical. It's the thing that we should we should hold on to tightly.
And so let's look at it. It's Ecclesiastes chapter four nine to 12, or is the section I'm gonna read. So read along with me. Two are better than one because they have a good reward on their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow.
But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. So do you see how it starts there?
He says says, two are better than one. And I just wanna ask the question, do you actually do we actually believe that? That two are better than one? That you, that I, that we're actually better doing life together, and that do it on your own is is gonna be problematic. And the first thing that he talks about, they're looking at is like they get a good reward on their toil.
They they it's it's it's basic I mean, all of these are just really straightforward easy statements. So as in some ways, this is a super simple message. Right? But think about it a little bit deeply. Alright?
So so two are more productive than one. You know, I can work at something, and y'all, I got stories. If you've been around here very long, you have probably heard me tell these stories of the stupid things I've done by myself. I think the last one I told was about trying to get the the hard top off my Jeep by myself. It's just not smart.
It put me in an awkward spot, and I looked like an idiot to my neighbor who I finally had to call when I was in a really bad spot and say, man, you gotta come help me get this thing off because I can't get it off by myself. I'm a fool. I tried to try to hang a bag swing one time off the top of a second story house and by myself with no ropes, and I almost died. I mean, I got I got stories because this is a problem for me. I I tend to think that the effort that it would take to bring somebody else in, like like that, like if I had if I called my neighbor first and made a plan, and then I have to explain it to him, I didn't wanna go through all that, and so I'm like, how could I just do it by myself?
No, I can't. I really can't. One of the one of the big things don't I don't know if I've talked about this before, but, you know, I've got a business where we bring different products in from India. It kinda started out with furniture. And so the first shipping container that I arranged to move from the other side of the planet here was full of this really heavy hardwood Indian furniture.
And the trucker pulls up, and he pulls up this 40 foot container, and he parks it. And he gets out of the car, and he's like, okay. You you you got, you know, you got an hour here. And I said, oh, this is gonna take me longer than that. He said, well, where's where's your forklift?
And I said, I don't have a forklift. And he said, well, you got some more guys coming? No. I I thought you and I'd do it. He's like, we're not doing it.
I'm about to go to sleep in my truck. And so he's like, you got an hour. So hour passes, two hours pass. I think I hit four hours. At some point, he he jumped out and said, you realize every thirty minutes I'm having to I'm having to double charge you.
Right? I just try I thought I could do it all by myself. Second time, I didn't learn my lesson. I did it by myself again. I just this time, I bought me a ramp so I could I could be more efficient.
It wasn't until and still, I never really got good at this, but it wasn't until a friend of mine, I was telling him about it, he's like, Mark, that's not smart. My dad has a business, and he's got all this this crew. What if I just brought him? I said, no. No.
No. I got it by myself. But he was a good enough friend that he heard when it was gonna land, and he told his dad, and they got the crew out there. And there were, like, 20 guys, and guess what? Thirty minutes, we had it done.
We were more efficient together, but there's some kind of resistance in me to believing that this is true, that two are better than one. Believing that instead of a team where people have different strengths and weaknesses and work together, that somehow I can play all the positions on the field. That's just not true. I don't care who you are. I don't care how good you are.
You've got your strengths and you've got your weaknesses, and you need us. I need I need you. Like, doing it alone, there's gonna be a deficit. Even if you do it really, really well, We need to do do it together. We're two two are better than one.
It is it is just a joke when you try to do it alone. And then if you look at the next part, he says, for they for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls, and he's got no one to pick him up. Again, super simple idea. When you fall down, it's really awesome if somebody's there to to help you up. Really bad if you fall and you and you can't if I fall in and I can't get up.
Right? Like, that's that's not a good position to be in. But my question is, do you believe that you will fall? If you look at the way he says it here, he's like, if they fall, and then he says, when they fall, Do you believe that there could potentially be some sort of fall in your future? A self inflicted fall or a fall that you had not you were doing everything right, and then you got slapped in the face with something, and you're knocked down, and you need somebody to help you up.
If that's not gonna happen for you, then I guess you don't need a friend. Raise your hand if it's not gonna happen to you. Right? We know enough about life to know that a fall a fall is coming. When you fall, you need somebody to help you up, so you better you better pursue friendship now before the fall.
So when the fall happens, there's somebody to come and to help you get up. I another thing I'm horrible about. I got all the examples of how I mess up in all these things, but, you know, we we do this little ski trip, and, you know, I put helmets on the on the kids. I see other adults with helmets on. Mark doesn't put a helmet on because guess what?
I don't think I'm gonna fall. And then every year, there's there comes a moment where I where I fall, and I think to myself, self, you should probably wear a helmet. How stupid would I feel if I fall, hit a rock, and because I just didn't simply put a helmet on, I'm I'm, you know, unable to take care of my family anymore, or I'm unable to work, or I'm even out for like, how how stupid would I feel? Just just put a helmet on because you know a fall is coming. Insurance.
When I say that word, somebody should say, bleh. You know? We we all we all hate that it's true. When we're writing that that premium check, when we're setting up the draft for our car insurance, our our house insurance, our life insurance, maybe you don't hate it as bad as I do, but I absolutely I absolutely hate it. Because there's some place back in my mind, like, I'm not I'm not really gonna use this, so this this money is just it's just wasted.
Well, hear it from somebody who over the last year had a hailstorm that I had to replace a roof, and I was sure glad that we that we had insurance. Had a had a car that was totaled. Man, sure glad that we had car insurance. Now, recently had a total loss house fire. I sure am glad.
Even though I hate insure I mean, I sure I sure am glad I paid those premiums. Right? I sure am glad I paid those premiums. And we would be we'd be in a really bad spot if I hadn't paid my my house insurance, and and we had a a fire loss. And then Terry just told me when she walked up, I guess a rock hit the window this morning.
They cracked our windshield on the car. So you know what? I'm really glad I got insurance. And whether whether it's hit you recently or whether it's around the corner or whether it's your friend that's gonna get hit, we are going to fall. Again, some things that happen to us, some are sin that we've gotten ourselves into that it's self inflicted wounds that we knocked ourselves down.
And we need somebody to come along and say, man, that's not good. Let me let me let me help you up. I've noticed this. I don't I don't normally watch a ton of NBA games, but, you know, in the playoffs, it's just a whole lot of fun to to watch. And one of the things I've caught recently is whenever somebody falls down on either team, whatever game you're watching, somebody falls down, man, those those guys can get up.
They could get up on their own strength. You know, it's rare that when somebody's really hurt, they just can't get up. But what do they do every time? They wait and sit there until one of their teammates comes over and gives them a hand and helps them up. Now there is probably all kind of symbolism to that and things that they've discussed that they know, I don't even know what, but there is a and it's probably part of strategy of taking a breath and taking their time or whatever, but it is an obvious thing that pauses every game, that a friend comes over, a teammate comes over, and helps this guy up.
Woe to the one who doesn't have anybody to come and help them up. That's what Ecclesiastes says. So this false hope that we're talking about, when it comes to loneliness, the false hope is this this hope of self sufficiency, that it's actually achievable and that people are actually happy there, and it's just not true. And the false fear is that that if people really knew you, they wouldn't like you or they wouldn't they wouldn't wanna be around you. And so because of these things, we we jerk the wheel, and we end up by ourselves.
And then look at those last two things that he says. Again, verse 11, he says, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? I just asked that question. How can one keep warm alone?
There's a reality. The the human body we're not we're not made for the cold. There is a desperate need to have another and there's this exponential warmth that happens when when two people are together. There's both the, alright, let's go camping, and man, I need somebody with me because it's gonna be cold, and then there's just life is life is cold. The elements are tough, and there's this this strength when there's two.
There's this comfort when there's two. We're not intended. God this this whole thing doesn't work alone. And then that that next one, he says, and though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.
I don't care how big a boy you are, somebody can take you out. And guess what? You can only see here. You know, you're six, but behind you, you can't see, so somebody can attack you and you not know. Life can attack you and blindside you and you don't see it coming.
So we gotta go back to back. That's the way life works. That's the beauty of friendship. We go back to back, we protect one another, and if I've got your six and you've got mine, now we protect one another. Now we can we can thrive.
But without it, I am exposed. I'm exposed to the elements. I'm exposed to the hardships of life. I'm exposed to to the enemy. I I am exposed.
And so friendship isn't just something that's a a gimme or an add on, it's a necessity. You know, thinking about Sandlot, which I'm assuming everybody's seen the movie Sandlot, so if you haven't, I'm sorry. But this, you know, this this boy, he moves to a new town. Poor guy. I mean, he can't throw or catch a baseball.
But all the kids in the town, they all play baseball and love it. His mom encourages him to to pursue friendship. And so that guy I mean, y'all think about how crazy this is. That guy, he goes out to the to the sandlot, and he stands out in the outfield watching these guys play baseball, and he wants and desires friendship so bad. He's so courageous that he's willing to go out there and make a fool of himself, to get to be a part and to have those friends.
And, you know, eventually, they're throwing up on the Ferris wheel and everything's great. That's the way boys bond. But but at first, it takes a tremendous amount of courage, and and he has to work through the sauceless spaghetti, you know, and all the awkwardness to to build genuine friendship. But then when he has it, then when he has it no. I was just thinking that, like, that movie, like, at the end, he's grown up, he's an adult, and he's but he's got these friendships.
And the most beautiful thing is he's got these friendships are so vital and important to him. Now that's the way on the path that leads to life, the ancient path. This is the way God set things up. This is this is wisdom. And I don't care if you're 10 or if you're 70.
Right? This is it doesn't change in its importance. In fact, I bet we could make a case that it only gets greater than I need true friendships. And to be honest, you know, I'm I'm your small groups pastor, and this is the thing that I struggle with the most, which I guess, it'd be great, but but the truth of it is, there is nobody in this room who who's struggling or who struggles with this that I don't know exactly what you're feeling. It is daunting.
It takes courage. There is that voice that promises isolation is better. That's that there's that voice that promises that a fake facade and protecting from people really knowing the true you, that there's safety there. And I can tell you it's a lie. And this place, the reason we've got You Belong on the wall out there, this is a place where we're not trying to play games.
Like, I want to know the true you. I don't wanna wanna know the fake you. Take the fake you somewhere else. We are we are we are real here. I want to know the true you.
And I want to believe that and see and you experience and I experience with our relationship that when things go wrong, I got a brother there, I got a sister there to help me up, that I'm not that I'm not alone, that doing life by myself is gonna just exhaust me, and it's gonna be less less fun and also less productive, that we we need one another. And so I just throw out this challenge. I don't I don't know where it finds you this morning. I don't know what parts of this God has used to to convict or touch buttons in your in your heart, but I bet there's a step. I bet there's a step towards friendship that you could make today, that you could make this week.
And by God's grace and his power, let me let me just ask him that he would do that. Father, I I do. I think that this is a yeah. I mean, alright. Yeah.
I can make friends. Like, that just that doesn't seem like a like a big thing. And at the same time, if we're really honest, it's a it's a massive thing that most of us are are deathly afraid of. And and there are reasons. We've all got stories.
And some of us have given up, have given up on that kind of friendship. And some of that's even related to the church. Maybe we've, you know, not experienced true friends, honest friends in church settings. And so there's some bad feelings there. And I'm asking you that you would just give us a renewed desire, a renewed passion, a renewed strength, a desire to seek it, and that we would be a place, this would be a place where we're doing life together to your glory.
Mark Freeman: We're better able do And understanding with culture or theology, those kinds of things, you can check out our cultivate that. Podcast. It's on the same feed, however you found this particular podcast. So again, this is Charlie, the lead pastor at The Grove, and thank you so much for joining us.