Sermon Transcript
Genesis 2:15-24. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, you may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.
Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
In recent years, there has been much research into the benefits of feeling like you belong and the detrimental effects of feeling like an outsider. So for instance, there was a 2017 report that found social disconnection was found to create a larger risk to your health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day, obesity, physical inactivity, or air pollution. So apparently, this is not true, don’t take this as advice, but apparently if you have a bunch of friends you could start smoking, put on a bunch of weight, just lay on the couch and watch TV and you would be healthier than a lonely marathon runner. So maybe for some of you, that’s the path to take, right? It’d be easier to make some friends than lose some weight, so maybe think about that or look into it.
Separately, different research, but researchers from UCLA using fMRI scans proved that the brain interprets the pain of rejection in the exact same way that it interprets physical pain. So I’d actually love for us to all raise our hands on this one. Has anyone ever felt left out of something? Yes? Okay, and if you didn’t raise your hand right now, then you’re left out right now.
So do you remember how it hurt when you felt left out? Maybe everyone went to the event you weren’t invited, and then they were talking about it later in front of you, and you wondered, why didn’t they call me? And it hurt, right? Or maybe it’s much less formal than that. Maybe you just tried to talk to someone, and instead of talking to you, they turned and walked away, and you’re like, what’s your deal, right?
Do you remember how that hurt? Well, it turns out it actually hurts. It lights up the same region of your brain as it would if you stepped on a tack. Like, your brain doesn’t know the difference if you were rejected or if you stepped on something sharp. It does the exact same thing in here.
And here’s the really wild thing. A different team from UCLA showed that Tylenol can help. So if you’re feeling rejected or left out and it hurts, you can take Tylenol to feel better. Just like if you stepped on a tack and your foot hurts, you can take Tylenol to make your foot feel better. If you’re rejected and your heart hurts, you can take Tylenol to make that feel better.
We don’t often think of emotional distress having physical ramifications or physical solutions, but our mental well-being is actually pretty tied together with our physical well-being. How about this? A clinical psychologist from University of British Columbia found that if test subjects were given a light shock on their ankles, I don’t know who would sign up for this experiment, but it happened, their brain would register much less pain from the shock if someone with whom they felt an emotional bond held their hand while they received the shocks. So someone holding their hand, their brain was like, what electrical shock? I didn’t feel anything.
That’s amazing, right? So like parents, when you took your little baby to the doctor and your little baby got the measles shot, right, and you’re like, my baby is— I’m gonna have my baby sit on my lap while he or she gets the shot so so that it’ll make my baby feel better, right? And we all did that. That’s a real thing. It actually won’t hurt as much if someone is holding you.
But it doesn’t stop when you’re a little baby. If today, if someone with whom you held an emotional bond was holding your hand while you got a vaccination now, the shot wouldn’t hurt as much. And I’m not talking about you recover from the pain quicker. I’m saying the pain never registers in your brain in the first place. Your brain doesn’t light up as much if someone is holding your hand.
That’s wild, right? How our physical and our emotional are tied together. So literally lonely people hurt more.
How about this? This was quantitatively demonstrated in both romantic couples and Israeli Defense Forces in different training missions. So 2, same principle, 2, we’ll say, very different types of relationships, right? But if couples or military teams felt secure in their relationships with each other, as opposed to feeling anxious in their relationships, they performed better. They performed better in both short-term and long-term goals.
By the way, a secure relationship is defined as when one person feels accepted by the other person or the other team members, and that person has confidence when he or she expresses an emotional need that support will be given by the other person or people. So they feel, I’m accepted in this group or this relationship, I’m supported, and if they do, that’s a secure relationship. An anxious relationship is one where you are always wondering where you stand with the other person. Person, like, do they really accept me? Will they really be there if I need them?
I’m not sure, I can’t tell. That’s an anxious relationship. The secure relationships, again, whether it was romantic or military, right, that’s about as unromantic as you get, secure relationships performed better short and long-term goals. Researchers gave the couples little puzzles to work through, And the individuals who were part of a secure or nurturing relationship solved the puzzle quicker and more accurately than those in a relationship where they didn’t feel supported. The Israeli teams, same thing, did better on training missions if the group members felt accepted and wanted by the other group members.
The couple study was longitudinal, that means over a period of time, so after they completed the puzzle, puzzles, the researchers kept track of them out in the real world. They asked test subjects, what are your goals? Like, where do you want to be in 6 months? And the couples who felt secure with one another, who felt like the other person was emotionally attentive to them, like when I’m freaking out I can tell you about it and you’ll act supportive instead of distracted or uninterested, secure couples accomplished their goals at a higher rate than those who even though they were in a relationship, they’re in a relationship too, but they even though they’re in a relationship, they felt like they’re on their own, like I really can’t depend on the other person for emotional support, the other person doesn’t want me to bother them with my problems, I’ll just figure out my issues myself, those couples didn’t make it as far. So in other words, independent people didn’t make it as far as dependent people.
Conclusion from all of this: we need each other. Being connected to others, feeling like we belong, like we are wanted, like we can be ourselves, like we matter to someone else— it’s a big deal. Social belonging increases our performance, improves our goal accomplishment, it reduces the amount of physical pain that we feel, and it will actually prolong our lives, so it matters. Legitimate peer-reviewed research has proven it. Whether you feel like you’re an insider versus an outsider, it makes a significant difference.
So how are we doing with feeling like we belong at Bridges? Last week I asked you to fill out a survey, so thank you to the hundreds of you that did, which the survey is supposed to evaluate your sense of belonging to this church. Are you curious the results, how we did?
Well, good news and bad news. About 2/3 of us are on the side of the scale where we feel like we belong, so that’s good news. Bad news, about 1/3 of us are on the side of the scale where we don’t feel like we belong. About 1/3 of us believe there is no sense of togetherness at Bridges. About 1/3 of us believe we do not fit in at Bridges.
About 1/3 of us say we cannot share personal concerns with others at Bridges. About 1/3 of us say we don’t feel related to others at Bridges. About 1/3 of us say we don’t feel that there is a sense of brotherhood or sisterhood here.
So if you feel like an insider, great, you’ll probably live longer. But if you look to your right and look to your left, one of those people doesn’t, which means that person to some degree showed up today wondering things like, are these people really my people? Am I really accepted? Am I actually wanted here? Do I really fit in?
Something like that. It’s relational anxiety. These people don’t want me. And that’s a form of rejection, right? And remember how rejection is coded in your brain?
Physical pain. So for 1/3 of the people in here right now, their brain believes they’re in physical pain.
I’m sorry for those of us in that percentage. If you’re in that 1/3, I’m sorry. We’re working on it.
Something for the rest of us to ask ourselves, How long do you believe people will stick around Bridges if it hurts to stick around Bridges? How long do you think that one-third is going to tough it out?
I think we can do better. I don’t want anybody to feel anxious about how they fit in when they walk in our doors. I want us all to feel like these people are my people, I feel secure with them. That’s what the rest of October is going to be about, how we can actually make everyone feel like they are a part of this, like they are wanted here. Okay, that’s where we’re headed in October.
God, by the way, let us know our need for social belonging long before any researchers started measuring it. So let’s look at our scripture for today. And as we study this ancient account of human origins, what made our earliest ancestors tick, what they needed, as we study Genesis 2, we will probably be reminded of what we already know about ourselves, if we’re honest, and what modern research has verified empirically. But we will see what doesn’t fulfill our need for companionship, What does fulfill our need for companionship, and finally, the one who can empathize with our need. So first, what doesn’t fulfill our need for companionship?
We actually see 3 of these in this passage. 2 of them won’t be any surprise to many of us, but we seem to keep trying them anyway. One of them though will be a surprise to Christians anyway. So what doesn’t fulfill our need for companionship? Food, work, and God.
Food, work, and God. Food, work, and God do not fulfill our need for companionship. So let’s look at these one at a time, but briefly. Okay, food. You don’t need to raise your hand.
Anyone feel— anyone eat when they feel lonely? Anybody do that? How about drink?
How’s that working for you? Do you feel even worse later? Is the emptiness that you’re trying to fill with food or drink, is that getting bigger or getting smaller? Food didn’t solve the need for companionship of the first man. Verse 16, God puts man in the garden and says, you can eat anything you want, man, except for that one tree.
Fill your belly. You never have to worry about there being enough food. The buffet is open 24 hours a day and it’s all around you, right? We’re never going to kick you out of the buffet. You live at the buffet, right?
That’s the dream. That’s my dream. And this is vine-ripened organic produce, right? It’s not picked green and then shipped halfway around the world. It’s top-shelf stuff.
I remember the first time I had a vine-ripened banana I was in Africa on a mission trip, they had banana trees just growing there, it’s like pick a banana and eat it, it about knocked me over it was so good. I was like, this is a banana? I mean, it still tasted like a banana, I could tell what it was, I’m not an idiot, alright, but at the same time it didn’t taste like a banana, you almost needed to call it something else because of how much better it was and God says to Adam, eat all you want, All this is for you. But then the next words out of God’s mouth, verse 17, it is not good for man to be alone. So even with the best food in the world and endless quantities of it, not enough.
It is not good for man to be alone. Man’s need for companionship was not met by food, which probably isn’t a huge surprise to a lot of us. What about work? Is that enough? Will work fill the hole in your heart where you need companionship?
Some of us act like we think it will, right, especially in Silicon Valley, right? How many of us try to make ourselves feel complete by throwing ourselves into work? How many of us prioritize work over relationships? How many of us left really solid family dynamics or close friendships in other places of the country to move here and do what? Work.
Not to say that work and purpose are not important, they are, they are super important, okay? And work is good. God invented work. God put man in the garden to work the garden, verse 15. Before we are ever introduced to sin or evil, man is working.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with work. We were made to produce and have purpose and drive and accomplishments? Absolutely. But work and purpose aren’t enough. They will never fill the place in our souls that was meant to be filled by companionship.
Some of us can be fooled into thinking the reason work doesn’t completely satisfy us is because we aren’t doing the right type of work. We think if we could change our job, if we could do something more in line with what we were made to do or what feels most natural to us, then that’s when we would be satisfied. And certainly we should all try to find our place in the sun, of course, right? Get work that matches your gifting, pray about what God wants you to do, and that would be another sermon series. But even if, here’s the deal, even if you find the perfect match for you, exactly what God wants you to to do.
It won’t fill the place that can only be filled with companionship. Look, man is doing exactly what God had made him to do. Man wasn’t out of bounds at all. This is before sin comes in the world. He’s doing exactly what he was created for.
And I’m sure the work itself was great, right? But it wasn’t enough. He even has a really prestigious position. He has tons of authority, verse 19 and 20, he names all the animals, he seems to be second only to God, right? Many of us think if I could get to a certain level in my company then I would feel fulfilled, not true.
I mean, being given responsibility over other people if you’re in management or being given responsibility over bigger and bigger projects, it’s great, it’s wonderful, okay, it’s wonderful to be entrusted with those kinds of things, things. I think our souls need that too. But again, no matter how high we are promoted, it won’t fill what can only be filled with companionship. So even if we’re working in the lane God created us to work in, even if we’re growing in responsibility and authority, not enough. It is not good for man to be alone.
Food is not enough, work is not Those probably aren’t big surprises to many of us, but here is the surprising one: God is not enough. I’ll be honest with you, I struggle with this. I feel uncomfortable saying God is not enough. I kind of think I’m going to get struck down right now for saying that, but I’m just submitting to the text against my better judgment, right? Scripture’s in charge, I’m not.
But even if I disagree with it, Scripture’s right, not me. You should test everything I ever say. Look at this. Man is with God. Man has God.
Sin is not in the world yet. And God says something is not good. Typically when we tell the creation story, we get it a little wrong. We say God made everything good, which is true. God made plants, saw they were good.
God made creatures, saw they were good. God made was good. Of course, A+. But then we say something like, so everything was good until man messed it up. It’s not quite true because there was something that wasn’t good even before sin entered the world.
Something wasn’t good before man had messed anything up. What wasn’t good? Man was alone. Now God fixed it. God provided a companion for man.
But it is so interesting, God says it is not good for man to be alone when man had God. Man was not separated from God yet. Man had not been cast away from God because of sin. That doesn’t happen until the next chapter, Genesis chapter 3. Man has God and man doesn’t have enough.
God says man doesn’t have enough. God says it. God says something isn’t good about man’s situation. Even though man has me, he needs something else.
Again, that makes me uncomfortable. I want to say a relationship with God that isn’t hindered by sin is enough. I mean, what else could you possibly need? Well, God says you need more than that. God says you need other people, which brings us to our second point.
If food, work, and God are not enough to meet our need for companionship, what is enough? Huge surprise, I am sure, other people, other people. Our need for companionship is only met by other people.
When God says it is not good for man to be alone, his solution isn’t more of God, right? His solution is, let me make a helper fit for man, verse 18. Then down in verse 23, we find out this helper is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. It’s another human. The helper fit for man, the answer to the problem of man being alone, is another human.
Our need for companionship goes all the way back to the garden. It is not optional. It’s not like some of us have a need for companionship and others of us don’t. It’s not dependent on personality type. It is part of being human.
If you are a human— anybody a human? Yes. It is not good for you to be alone, and the answer is other people. Now I know what some of you are thinking, You’re thinking Genesis 2, when man and woman come together, it’s talking about marriage. It’s not talking about our generic need for human relationships in general.
It’s talking about the specific relationship of marriage, Pastor. Haven’t you read your Bible? And listen, you are absolutely half right. The union of husband and wife is a unique relationship, the joining together of 2 people in 2 one flesh that we see in verse 24 only happens with husband and wife. Verse 24 is absolutely talking about husband and wife for sure, and if this were a marriage sermon, we’d focus on that a lot.
But listen, the loneliness that we see in verse 18 isn’t only talking about the desire we have for marriage. The problem of being alone in Genesis 2 speaks to a fundamental need which must be met whether we are married or not. If you say the problem with being alone in verse 18 is only solved through marriage, then you’re saying people like Jesus, Paul, who were not married, they must have lived their whole lives alone, and the only way they could ever cease being alone is if they got married. Which isn’t true. We all need companionship, that’s what God is talking about in verse 18, but we are not all called to be married.
The widow, the widower, people like Paul and Jesus, lifelong singles, God provides for them to have fulfilling relationships but not through marriage. Their solution to their aloneness is something other than marriage, and the solution that we see in Scripture is the church. The church is supposed to solve man’s loneliness problem. Notice here in verse 24, the plan is for man and woman to leave father and mother and be united to each other. Great.
But Genesis 2 is not the only time that leave father and mother comes up in Scripture. Jesus repeats it in Mark 10:29. Jesus says, anyone who leaves fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers for me will receive back 100-fold more in this lifetime. Jesus says, if you leave fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers for my sake, okay, so not for the sake of getting married, that’s not why you’re leaving fathers and mothers, you’re leaving them for my sake, if you do that, you’ll get back more than you lost. You’re not leaving fathers and mothers in order to be united to husband and wife like in Genesis 2, you’re leaving fathers and mothers for Jesus, Mark 10:29, and you’re getting back 100 fathers and you’re getting back 100 mothers.
What’s he talking about? It’s the church. The church becomes our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers. The church is supposed to fulfill our relational needs. That’s what it’s supposed to do.
So listen, if you’re a single person or even if you’re a married person, please don’t read Genesis 2 as only speaking of marriage. It’s speaking to a more foundational relational need for companionship than that. And Jesus says one way that need is met is through the church. Next week we’re going to talk about how through the church we meet each other’s relational needs, actually how Scripture commands us to do so. It’s not optional.
It’s not, again, based on personality or type. We all have to do it. But for now, we just want to get some preliminary concepts. One, we have relational needs. 2, those needs are only met through other people.
They are not met through food, work, or God, or anything else. They are met through other people. Now finally for today, the one who can empathize with our need, particularly if you have a lack of relationships in your life right now, especially if the church has burned you. I pray this gives you some comfort. If you’re in the one-third of people that don’t feel like you fit in here, I hope this gives you some comfort.
Genesis 2 is a bit ominous when God says, it is not good for man to be alone. It’s a bit ominous because God knows full well what happens in the rest of the biblical story. I almost wonder when God said those words in Genesis 2 if there was some grief in his heart knowing the profound loneliness that Jesus would later experience. Jesus, if you remember, on the night he was betrayed, he was overwhelmed with sorrow, so he takes his buddies Peter, James, and John away from the group and asked them to stay awake with him while he prays because he’s freaking out, right? He’s about to be crucified and he wants to be with his closest guys, but they let him down, right?
They promptly fall asleep instead of staying awake with him, and Jesus comes back and says, please guys, just stay up with me. They fall asleep again. When Jesus wanted his friends the most, they weren’t there for him. He’s alone. Then he was betrayed by another friend, deepening the loneliness.
And then the rest of his crew abandoned him as he was carried off to be executed, more loneliness. Then on the cross, he was forsaken by the one who had always loved him, ultimate loneliness. So if your closest friends didn’t support you when you needed it, if you’ve been betrayed, abandoned, if you’ve been forsaken by the one who you had always been able to count on, Jesus has been there too. And he went through all of that so that he could always be with you, so that in your loneliness, which isn’t good and we need to fix it, and that’s what we’re gonna do in October, but even in our loneliness, we won’t ever be truly alone like Jesus was because he was cast out for our sins we are brought near to the heart of God through faith in him. The one who forsook Jesus did so in order that we will never be forsaken.
We will never experience the level of isolation Jesus endured because we will never be cast away from God through our faith in Jesus Christ. Even in our deepest, most lonely moments, we will not be as lonely as Jesus. And because he went through that desertion for us, we can always at least have the confidence that we are walking with God. We are not walking by ourselves. Let’s pray.
Father, may we be as upset as You and as grieved as You over the problem of loneliness.
Lord, when You saw man alone, you moved to a solution and it was another person. Lord, I pray that all of us are similarly moved to end loneliness and isolation that we see around us. Lord, may we be given companionship where there is a need for it in our hearts. May we work to do so in the hearts of others. And may we always trust that You are with us because of what You endured on the cross.
We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
