Well, I am sure that a lot of you in the room may have watched at one point in time the movie cast away with Tom Hanks in it. Very famous movie, movie that Tom Hanks was in. He played a character named Chuck Nolan. And if you've seen the movie, you know that he was involved in a plane crash and he was the only survivor, but it wasn't just the fact that he was the only survivor. He ended up surviving on a desert or deserted island, like he was the only person on the entire island where the plane crashed, and so now he had to try to figure out how to survive, and that, of course, includes learning how to build a shelter and find food and clean drinking water and how to start a fire and how to avoid disease, and all the things that come with surviving in a situation like that. But one of the most surprising things that came, if you were watching the movie Up, was not just the physical elements of surviving that nearly kills him. It's the aspect of being alone. It's the loneliness and the isolation that was felt so deep within his soul that it began this desperation to have some type of community, some type of relationship with someone else. It's the thing that drove him to begin a relationship with a volleyball, right? I mean, a volleyball was one of the things that survived in the wreckage, and he was able to paint a face on it, and it was a Wilson brand volleyball. And so he named his friend Wilson, and he began to talk to Wilson, and he began imagining that Wilson was talking to him, it was the only community that he could actually experience. And after developing this relationship with Wilson, you may remember that there's a point in the movie where he's out on a raft in the ocean, and Wilson is with him, and he is in a storm, and all of a sudden he loses Wilson, and he jumps off the raft, and however scary it is and whatever danger he was in, he doesn't care, because he's got to get to Wilson. This is his only friend. It's the only person that he can actually communicate with. And he realizes that he's putting himself in danger, and at some point he has to go back to the raft that there's just no way that he can get to him, but it's like this really super agonizing point in the movie where he crawls back on the raft, and I mean, he is literally sobbing and wailing because he has lost his friend that he had been communicating with for years on this Island. It's an agonizing scene, but it really does portray how deeply important friendships really are to us, and how much loneliness and isolation can impact our lives in a super negative way. Many of us would have reacted in the same way if we were put in that situation, but thank God we're not in that situation. We're not stranded on a desert island. We're not isolated from other people. There's many other people sitting here right next to us in this room. We have people in our neighborhoods, we have people in our schools and in our workplaces, and because we live in today's world, we're connected to people all over the world through social media and this thing, of course, called the Internet. So thank God that we don't really have to worry about being lonely today. Or do we? Did you know that the percentage of Americans who say that they have no close friends actually quadrupled between 1990 and 2020 Did you know that 54% of Americans, over half of those of us living in the United States, say that no one knows them, no one knows us. The real us, who we really are. They don't know us well. 36% of Americans say that they feel lonely either frequently or almost all of the time. And that number goes up to 51% for young mothers and 61% for young adults, it's increasingly growing in the life of our young people and teenagers as well. And so yeah, we may not live on a desert, a desert island. We may be more connected to people than we've ever been, but we are lonely. We are a lonely society, and even if we feel like we're connected to people, we don't really feel like we're connected to them, like in a deep way, where we really know them and they know us. It's so bad in our culture, and you probably know this, but a year or two ago, the surgeon general actually declared loneliness as an. Epidemic within our culture. Not only did he declare an epidemic, though, he went as far as to say that loneliness poses the same health threat or same health risk. Get this as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Can you believe that? I mean the health threats of loneliness and isolation pose the same risks as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. How is that even possible? It's not even just the mental health issues, of course, like anxiety and depression, loneliness can even affect us physically. Studies show that loneliness and isolation increases the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure and diabetes and a weakened immune system, not only that, but researchers even say that the most isolated people are three times more likely to die than those with strong relational connections. We expect to hear that kind of thing with medical news and by the things that we're eating and the risks that show up with all that, but not that we're three times more likely to die physically because we're not connected to peopledeeply.So why is this such a big deal? How does it affect us in this particular way. Why does it negatively impact us when we don't have significant relationships in our lives? Well, I think the answer can be found in Scripture, in the very opening pages of Scripture, in the creation account, here's what Genesis 126, says, right off the bat. Says, Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness. Now there's two things that should jump off the page here whenever you read this statement, if they don't already the very first one is it says, Then God said, and whenever he began to talk. He uses a plural pronoun, one God, one in essence, says, Let us plural, make mankind in our image. Why? Because God exists as a Trinity. This is being communicated right off the bat in the opening pages of scripture, and it's the message that is declared all throughout scripture, that God exists as three distinct persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But he's not three persons. He's one God, or not three gods. He's one God, three distinct persons, but of one essence, this is who God is, and what we learn right here off the bat is that God is a relational being in and of himself. God exists in a relationship with him self. God is a relational being. He's in a constant state of relationship. Here's what Wayne Grudem actually says about the Trinity. He says the distinction between the person persons in the Trinity is not a difference of being, but a difference of relationships. This is something far removed from our human experience, where every different human person is a different being as well. Somehow, though God's being is so much greater than ours, that within his one undivided being, there can be an unfolding into inter personal relationships, so that there can be three distinct persons. Again. In other words, God is a relational being in and of himself. There is a constant relationship going on between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Many of you have seen an image similar to this. You can just kind of visually Think about it this way, that if God exists as a father and as the son and as the Holy Spirit, then he's three distinct persons, but he's only one God. He's of one essence, and the Father is in constant relationship with the Son, and the son is in constant relationship with the Father, and the Father is in constant relationship with the Spirit, and the spirit is constant relationship with the Father. And then the same thing happens between the Son and the Spirit. There is this constant relationship that is always going on with the God of the universe. And so that's the first thing that should, again, have jumped off the page at us when God said, Let us make mankind. Now. The second thing that I hope you'd see here is that God, who exists as a relational being, says, Let's make mankind, and let's do it this way. Let's make him in our image and in our likeness. And so my point is this, if God is a relational being in and of himself, and he creates you and his image and in His likeness, then guess what? That makes you a relational being. If he exists in a relationship with Himself and He creates you in His image. Then you were created as a relational being. You were designed to be in relationship with others. We even see this in Scripture, in the very next chapter, as we go on in the creation creation account says the Lord God said, it is not good. It is not good for man to be alone. Now, a lot of us take this as a marriage text, that God, based on what happens next, is talking about the marriage relationship, and he certainly is talking about the marriage we learn a lot about that relationship, but it goes way far above and beyond that. Because if you stop and you think about what was going on, those of you who have read your bibles before, and you've read the creation account, you know that up until this point, when God was creating the world and everything in it, that every time he finished creation, he kept saying and it was good. And he'd finish another part of the creation. He go, and it was good. And he finished the next one and say, and it was good. And then by the time he gets all the way to human beings, to mankind, He says, not only is it good, he says, It is very good. There's nothing wrong with Adam. I made him very good. And yet, at the same time that Adam was made very good and perfect, in this moment, the Lord declared, it's not good. Not only was Adam made perfect and made very good, but think about this. Adam was in God's presence. He was walking in the garden with God. He was created very good. He was walking with God. Sin had not entered the world. Everything was good, except everything wasn't good.It wasn't good.Here's the way that John Ortberg writes about it in one of his books. This is really great. He says, What is striking is that the fall has not yet occurred. Here. There is no sin, no disobedience, nothing to mar the relationship between God and man. The human being is in a state of perfect intimacy with God. Each word he and God speak with each other is filled with closeness and joy. He walks with God in the garden in the cool of the day, he is known and loved to the core of his being by his omniscient, love filled creator. Yet the word God uses to describe him is alone, and God says that this aloneness is not good, apparently, according to the writer of Genesis, God creates inside this man a kind of human shaped void that God Himself will not fill. No substitute will fill this need in you for human relationship, not money, not achievement, not business, not books, not even God himself, even though this man was in a state of sinless perfection, he was alone,and it was not good.And so when we see again that the Lord said it is not good for man to be alone, we are talking much more than about a marriage relationship again, certainly he's talking about that, but the implications go far beyond this. This is about God being a relational being, and us being made in His image. This is about us being wired to be in relationship with others. It's in our D, in a and that is why such negative effects are on our lives, or why we experience such negative effects when we're not in relationship with other people. It's why people go crazy when they're alone and they're in isolation from other people. It's why we're affected mentally and emotionally, and why we're even affected physically while we're more likely to get sick or die early whenever we're in isolation or we are lonely, because God created us in such a way where we need capital in E, D, we need other people in. Our lives. You need community. You need friends in your life. So that's why, as we continue this series called rhythms of grace, where we're looking at spiritual disciplines and these rhythms that the Lord leads us into, not only should we be expecting him to lead us into this rhythm of reading and meditating on Scripture and the truth of what is found here, and communicating with him and talking with Him in prayer and being aware of his presence all the time and listening for his voice to experience him intimately. We should be expecting him to lead us into this rhythm of connecting with others. This is not an introvert or extrovert idea. There are certainly those of us who God created to be a little more extroverted and or a little bit more introverted than others. But regardless, at some way, shape or form, we were all created to be in relationship with others. Think about Jesus. Jesus was born into this world, fully God, but also fully man. And Jesus lived his life in relationship with other people. Why? Because Jesus was fully human, and humans, as we studied in Genesis, are created with a need, wired to be in relationships, not just with God, but with other human beings. Jesus, being God, was always in a perfect relationship with the God of the father, the God of the universe, right? But now he didn't have the relationship with the human beings, being fully human, and so God provided friends for Jesus. We even see it. But this in the way Jesus talked about the disciples, he mentions this in John chapter 15, beginning in verse 12, my command is this. He says, Love each other is I have loved you Greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends. If you do what I command. I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends. Jesus experienced friendship with other human beings as a human being. All throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus was in this rhythm of spending time in community with close friends, and we know that the moment that you and I say yes to Jesus, the moment we put our faith and trust in Him to be our Lord and Savior, to rescue us from our sins, not only are we completely forgiven, but he also comes to dwell in us, and then he begins to express his life through us. And if we see Jesus was in a habit of connecting with friends, and now he dwells in us and expresses his life through us. Guess what she we should expect him to be doing in and through us, leading us to find friends, friends that we do life with, leading us into this rhythm of connecting and experiencing community with other people. It is a work of Jesus in and through us, that happens once we come to saving faith in Him and are made into new creations in Christ, a Cistercian monk actually described this way when talking or writing in his treatise on friendship, he says, and so in friendship, are joined honor and charm, truth and joy, sweetness and good will, affection and action. And watch this. And all these take their beginning from Christ. They advance through Christ and are perfected in Christ. Christ begins our friendships, brings us in union with other brothers and sisters in Christ advances those relationships and friendships, and perfects those relationships and friendships. So when we talk about a rhythm of connecting and being in community with other people, because we are not talking about a golfing buddy. We're not talking about somebody you play bridge with, or 42 with, or play cards with, or that you go shopping with. It's fine to connect with other people through hobbies, but this type of friendship and the type of connecting that we're talking about here in this rhythm that Jesus is going to lead into, goes way beyond connections we have with people over similarities or hobbies and things that we like to do together. We're talking about a bond that runs. Way deeper, because Christ centered community, Christ centered friendships, are connected deeply at a spiritual level. The apostle Paul even writes about this in First Corinthians 12, he says this beginning in verse 12, the human body has many parts, but the many parts, oh man, technology. You technology human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we all have been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same spirit the moment that you say yes to Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in you. The moment I say yes to Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in me. And now, not only are we connected in a relationship with God and we'll spend eternal life with Him, we're connected with each other in a spiritual sense. Do you see how deep that connection runs? You can be friends with someone who doesn't know Jesus, and we should be in relationship Jesus will lead us to be in relationships with those who haven't said yes to him, but you will not experience a deeper friendship with someone unless they also know Jesus, because you can't be connected at the very deepest level of the core of your being when you're in community and fellowship with someone who doesn't know Jesus, because you wouldn't be sharing the same Holy Spirit. On that level, there's something significant that happens when he joins us together as brothers and sisters in Christ, and we enter into that community where we allow the Holy Spirit who dwells within each of us to guide where we go in the intimacy and the type of relationship that we enjoy with each other. And so as Jesus leads us into this rhythm of community and living in community, it will be, it will be an expression of this spiritual connection that we have with other brothers and sisters. Now, what does it look like? What is this rhythm? If we're talking about this expectation of Jesus to work in us and through us, to lead us into this rhythm of community and friendships with others who know him as well. What does it look like? Well, we'll talk about that in just a second, but I do want to answer one other question that some of you may have and be thinking about from last week if you were here, because as we talked about different rhythms of grace and spiritual disciplines that the Lord uses to allow us to experience our intimate relationship with Him. You may remember that last week we talked about how we should expect Jesus to lead us into this rhythm of silence and solitude. And so this week, it seems to be the exact opposite of that. And in your mind, you're going so what is it? Should we expect Jesus to lead us into silence and solitude, or should we allow him to lead us into community?Yes, yes, you should.It's a both. And this was the way that Jesus experienced and had this rhythm of where he pulled out of community with others, and experienced silence and solitude with God and being alone, and then he stepped back into community with others, and we should expect that same rhythm in our life as well. But again, what does it practically look like if we enter into this type of community. Jonathan Holmes wrote a book on biblical friendship, and he highlights four things that we should expect the Lord to produce in us and through us in these kinds of relationships that we see from Scripture. The very first thing that we should expect is constancy, this idea of loyalty and this idea of being devoted to each other steadfast and faithful. Proverbs 1824 says there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother, and certainly we see that kind of relationship that Jesus experienced in his relationship with the disciples whom He called friends. There was a devotion there there was loyalty, there was a steadfastness, there was faithfulness. And so when we enter into these kinds of relationships, we should expect Jesus to lead us with this constant, faithful, loyal dependability, where we're showing up over and over and over again in our friends life, and they're showing up in our lives as well. The second thing that we should expect in these relationships is for the spirit to produce a spirit of of candor, where we're going to tell the truth. Proverbs, 27, five and six, says, better. Is open rebuke. Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. When a friend wounds you by saying truthful things in love, sometimes it's actually better for you than them, just flattering you all of the time, Jesus certainly called out the disciples sometimes in his friendship with them and guys, he will lead others to do the same thing in our own lives as well. We need people in our lives who love us enough to tell us the truth and aren't just going to flatter us all of the time. And so we should expect constancy. We should expect candor in these kinds of rhythmic relationships that he leads us into, we should expect carefulness, not in a cautious sense, but being full ofcare, full of care for ourfriends and the individuals that we're in relationship with. We see this all throughout the New Testament, whenever we're talking about the church and the relationship that we have with each other in the one another. Passages we're told over and over again, care for one another, love one another, serve one another, offer hospitality to one another, carry one another's burdens, pray for one another. These are all the things that the work of the Spirit does in us and through us, and will lead us to do, to care forthe people that we are in relationship with.We expect a spirit of constancy, candor, carefulness. And then fourth, and lastly, counsel. Proverbs, 27 nine says, oil and perfume make the heart glad, but the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel. There have been a lot of sermons, lot of videos that I've listened to a lot of content, a lot of things that I've learned along the way, and there are a few things that I remember from some of those messages. They were pretty instrumental in shaping me and helping me to see things in a different way. But I can tell you much more about the times that I sat across a table having coffee with a friend who seemed like they understood this and were a little bit further down the road than me in saying, You know what,I just don't get it.I don't understandand the Spirit spoke through them to teach me something about God and His character, or my new identity in Christ and how this applied to my life as a dad or a husband or in my job, it was through a relationship with someone else that counseled me according to biblical truth, where the light bulb moments went off for me, and my guess is that that's true for you as well. Most of us, when we're asked about our testimony and we said, well, tell us about your spiritual life, almost every single one of us at some point in time will go back to a person. Well, there was this one time I had this coach whenever I was in high school, and he invited me to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and he began to teach me and model for me and show me, or there was this one friend who showed up in my Sunday school class, and we just really hit it off. And then all of a sudden, we were hanging out and the Lord, and you just go on and on, and there's probably someone in your mind right now that the Lord has used to shape you and bring you to the point where you're at right now. God works through other people to counsel us and help turn the lights on for us and understand how some of these things work. And so these are the things that we should expect in our relationship, if the Spirit is guiding them, that he's going to lead us into these rhythm of constancy and being faithful and and showing up in each other's lives, that he's going to use people to be candid with us and honest and actually tell us the truth in love. And we're open to receiving those things. We're not going to push back and we're not going to try to justify ourselves and our actions. We're just going to receive and listen for the Holy Spirit, because we know this person, we trust this person has our best interest in mind. We're going to allow the Spirit to lead us into a spirit of carefulness, where we're caring for each other and allowing them to speak counsel and. Give wise advice to each and every one of us. Guys, you were created to be in community. God said it is not good for man to be alone.Are you experiencing community? Areyou experiencing community in this way?What's the next step that Jesus is asking you to take in this direction? What's the next thing? What rhythm of grace, unforced grace, is he leading you into? Do you have a Sunday school class yet? Do you have a group of people that you meet with outside of here that you can actually learn and grow and develop relationships with and ask questions and talk about, do you do you have a trusted friend that you can go maybe it's you are in a Sunday school class, and that's not the step he's asking you to take, but you're going, there's 48 people in here. How do I experience that with 48 people when I show up for one hour with them? And so he's going, but you know what? You've really connected with this person or these two or three people in that Sunday school class, maybe I'm leading you to take a step further in community with them and get into a rhythm of meeting with him or her or them in a smaller setting to experience these kinds of things. My guess is that the Lord's leading you to take a next step in this area of connecting with other people and developing biblical friendships living in community with others as he speaks to you about those things, my prayer is that you will be open to His leading and that you will allow him to enable you to take that next step and then begin to experience him in a way that you can't really experience Him unless You really are in relationships with other people. Because even though God was in a perfect relationship with Adam, again, he said he was alone, it was not good, and that need was only filled when another human being was put on the planet next to him. And maybe that's what God is doing, even in your own life. He needs to put that other person in your life to fill that need as well. Let's pray and ask him to do that this morning.