Calvary Road Baptist Church
“THE GOD WHO COMFORTS”
Second Corinthians 1.3
How many of you know a young person who always wants to do something? Young people frequently hate just sitting around and doing nothing unless they are terribly lazy or unless they have given up hope that going to do something will solve the problem that ails them.
Years ago, I went to a Wherehouse store (remember those?) and bought an album. It was the first non-classical music album I had ever purchased besides Christian CDs. The title of the very popular album was “American Idiot.” I thought it would be a commentary on the Democratic Party, but it wasn’t. Or, perhaps, that it would be a complaint against the Republicans. But it wasn’t that, either.
I dare not play the song for you, but I want to read some of the lyrics of a song on that album titled “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams.” Notice the words as I read them, and you will understand why I purchased the album:
I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don’t know where it goes
But it’s home to me and I walk alone
I walk this empty street
On the boulevard of broken dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I’m the only one and I walk alone
I walk alone. I walk alone. I walk alone. I walk alone.
My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
‘Til then I walk alone
The song expressed the thoughts of many young people and not-so-young people. For whatever reason, you, too, very likely see yourself as someone who walks alone. You would like genuine companionship, something to banish loneliness, but it’s no good. If people had any idea how to solve their prevalent feelings of loneliness, isolation, and abandonment, songs like this would never have become so popular.
The issue that is lost on most people is that this terrible and tragic loneliness of the soul is not some abnormal problem that is unique only to you. This is not a problem others have solved; you need a resolution. No. This problem has yet to be solved. You’re stuck with it for the rest of your life, just like everyone else is stuck with it.
Let me explain four reasons why you are stuck with this loneliness problem, whether you are young or old, but especially if you are young:
First, BECAUSE YOUR PARENTS CAN DO YOU NO GOOD
I’m not speaking to young people with Christian parents, though they must address the same issues. I am not talking to those whose parents are genuine believers. I’m speaking to those whose parents are not converted. I seek not to dishonor them in any way, but consider this about lost moms and dads:
If lost parents had any solution for loneliness, don’t you think they would have told you what it was? The reason why lost parents never teach their kids how to deal with loneliness, how to deal with desperate loneliness, is because they are plagued with the problem themselves. They don’t have any answers.
If lost parents, or if parents in general, had any answers, would kids be in the mess they are in these days? You could bottle it and sell it if they had the answer. So, I don’t think parents have any answers. The problem is so pervasive and so hopeless that parents never bring it up for discussion, even though it’s a problem everyone faces. It’s the big elephant sitting in the middle of the room.
I once spoke to a young woman. When she was little, her mom and dad divorced. Both parents eventually remarried. I used to think of her frequently. She spent most of her life in a dream world, imagining that her real dad really loved her in a way her stepdad did not love her and she felt lonely the whole time. Terribly lonely.
As well, I know a young fellow whose parents have split up. What a tragic sense of personal loss this guy has gone through. It has terribly messed him up. Oh, how he wants his dad to love him as if that will make his life any better. “If my dad loved me, life would be better.” Who said so? Listen to me now. To oversimplify, a dad who loves is a dad who does not leave. If he loves, he won’t leave because love really means personal time and personal sacrifice.
Do you want to know what those two kids needed to realize that they never, to my knowledge, realized? The fact that their parents broke up makes my case that parents don’t have any answers. Oh, they can teach you how to do laundry, how to read, how to do dishes, and how to keep a checkbook. But I’m talking about the important things in life: how to stay married, how to raise children, and how not to be lonely.
“I’ll make money, and that will solve the problem.” Are you crazy? Millions and millions and millions of dollars. Does that solve any problems for anybody? It may solve one problem. You get to pay the electric bill, but it doesn’t solve life’s real issues and problems. And it’s not just parents who divorce who don’t have any answers (and I recognize that sometimes divorce is not the fault of both spouses).
Moms and dads who stay married are no more likely to have any answers, either. It’s just that instead of hoping that by hooking up with someone else, they won’t feel so lonely, moms and dads, the husbands and wives who stay together, have pretty much given up their hopes of real comfort. They don’t think they will ever find happiness. Why leave this person and go somewhere else because I’m not going to find happiness anywhere? The ones who stay together have a more realistic view of the likelihood of success by merely switching partners.
By and large, married couples live lonely lives of quiet desperation. Listen to me; I’ve been in the ministry for over forty-five years. I have seen it all. As people go their separate lonely ways, live their separate and lonely lives, they used to rendezvous in front of the television set for the Tonight Show, where they would sit next to someone, they said nothing to, but sat lonely still, they were still lonely. Now they sit in front of a monitor, alone. Then there are the controlling spouses who oppose their mates going anywhere and doing anything without them for fear their spouse might discover the predicament they’ve settled into. Meghan and Harry couples.
Can these moms and dads really help you? No. Kids and young adults don’t deny that you agree with me on this one. Listen to these lyrics from another song on the same CD, titled “I Don’t Care.”
I don’t care.
I don’t care if you don’t.
I don’t care if you don’t.
I don’t care if you don’t care.
Everyone is so full of _ _ it!
Born and raised by hypocrites.
It pretty well sums it up. Born and raised by hypocrites. That’s the way many young people feel about their parents. Don’t tell me it’s not because if these things weren’t true, the songs wouldn’t have been so popular—the songs sold because they resonated.
There are two things about these songs: First, kids who listen to this stuff generally agree with it. Young people think their parents are hypocrites who don’t care about them. Second, this means that other kids are profoundly lonely and don’t believe their parents know how to solve their problems. And they are right.
Why not? Why can parents not help? Mostly, they don’t care. This song is right. As a general rule, parents don’t care. Get a piece of paper and write down what most parents would do if they really cared. There is sentiment, of course. Okay. There is anguish. I am reminded of the parents whose little dog got out, and they got all the neighbors to help them look for their cherished pooch. Then, a couple of days later, when their teen boy came home at 1:30 AM, the parents said, “Where were you? We were worried.” He said, “If you were worried for me, you would have gotten the neighbors out like you did to look for the dog. Who did you get to look for me tonight? Nobody. You don’t care about me. You care more about the dog than you care about me.” And you know, he’s right. But of course. The dog obeys—the dog minds. The dog usually makes less of a mess.
But do most parents give their kids what they do not themselves have, which is comfort against loneliness? No. Parents cannot give their kids what they don’t have. The kids don’t have any comfort against loneliness, and they usually don’t get it from their mom and dad because their mom and dad don’t have comfort against loneliness.
Next, YOUR FRIENDS CAN NOT COMFORT YOU
Notice that I said, “Your friends cannot comfort you.” Some people trick themselves into thinking that doing activities with other people and getting attention from other people is the cure for loneliness. “If I just stay active, if I just go and do lots of stuff, I won’t feel lonely.” Let me tell you when it struck me harder than it ever struck me before in my life.
I was twenty-four years old. One night in 1974, I was at the Red Onion in Redondo Beach. I was standing in the middle of a room with hundreds of people, and then, wham, it hit me: “I am not having any fun here, and neither is anybody else. They are as lonely as I am.” It was a Deja vu moment, an epiphany when I realized that the problem was not unique.
You see, the solution to loneliness is comfort. Even though many know their parents are of little use to them in this regard, they think their friends can help them for some reason. “You know, my mom and my dad don’t know anything, but I will talk to someone eighteen or twenty years old who has virtually no experience in life. That person will know all the answers to the questions.” No. No. Your friends can’t help you. They have the same problem you have.
Let me illustrate from the Bible. Could Job’s friends comfort him? Remember, Job was terribly afflicted by the devil for reasons I don’t think he ever understood. In Job 2.11, we read that his friends found out about his terrible affliction and
“made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him,”
the Bible says. But did they succeed in comforting him? No! Though they were intelligent and articulate, presumably starting out as well-intentioned and long-time pals, they failed to comfort Job. He ended up calling them “miserable comforters.”[1] Do you lash out at people who disappoint you, like Job did? This suggests you imagine friends can comfort you.
What makes you think your friends could do any better for you than Job’s friends did for him? Why are your friends so much more intelligent than Job’s friends, so much wiser, so much more philosophically astute? Friends are lovely, but where are they when you need them? Listen to me now. Do you have enough experience to realize that friends are generally those you can count on until you need help? Until you need them. Don’t get me wrong. I am in favor of friends. I think you should both be a friend and have friends. But friends cannot comfort you and alleviate your loneliness. Not really.
Some guy is lonely and wants to do something, so he calls up his pal, and they rendezvous someplace. What do they do? They sit someplace, and they sit there and be lonely together. And they think that somehow that makes it better. That doesn’t make it any better. Girls are lonely, so they get a boyfriend. Boys are lonely, so they hang out with their buddies. Isn’t it interesting how their approaches to solving their problem are different? And they are different. Men are lonely, so they do the tavern, speed boat, and sports. “I just like doing that.”
I do not deny that people like doing things, but one of the reasons they like doing things is the hope that doing things will help to assuage their loneliness. It doesn’t. And maybe when they figure out it doesn’t, they will keep doing it because they like it. Women are also lonely and occupy themselves to distract themselves from loneliness. If each of your friends has unresolved and terrible loneliness, how can your friends help you? It’s quite simple. They cannot. Your friends cannot help you solve a problem they have not yet solved in their own lives. And you are profoundly naive if you imagine that getting married solves any person’s loneliness issues. That would be a whole other sermon.
Third, YOU CAN NOT COMFORT YOURSELF
I do not say this to dismay you, to discourage you, or to send you into a fit of despondency but to show you the truth of the matter. I am a bit of an expert on this aspect of loneliness, having been a lonely guy for many years. My mother, whom I miss terribly, was a tragically lonely woman. Oh, the awfulness of being a lonely old lost woman or a lonely old lost man.
Some people hope to comfort themselves by being (listen, I’ve got you in my crosshairs) workaholics. They spend astonishing hours at the office or in the shop, trying to compensate for feelings of loneliness and isolation by covering it up with a compulsion to work, a drive to succeed, a fanaticism for perfection in some endeavor, or plain busyness.
Some gals are so lonely that they become promiscuous to try to make themselves needed, loved, or even liked. Another girl marries a guy, hoping that throwing herself into marriage will alleviate her loneliness. But does it help? No. It doesn’t help. So, she throws herself into the lonely task of being a devoted mother, a conscientious housekeeper, and a dedicated mother to her children. And this is all good. But what she is doing is distracting herself from her profound loneliness because the man she loves and dotes on does nothing for her loneliness. He can’t. He hasn’t solved his own problem yet—and vice versa.
My mother was my first love. As I said, I miss her terribly. But I studied my mom for many years, and I know what made her tick. So disappointed in marriage and having no idea what to do about picking the wrong man, my mother became reclusive, isolating herself from most people and working very hard to convince herself that she preferred being alone. Not true. That is not true at all. It’s just that she could not handle the disappointment of having her hopes raised by friendships and then dashed again with disappointment because she looked to friends to meet that need. So, she worked hard to convince herself that she preferred to be alone. The day she moved into her place in Quartz Hill, she had me type up a letter and stick it on her front door, saying, “Don’t you dare knock on my front door. Don’t you dare call on me. Don’t you dare bother me.” Then she wondered why her neighbors didn’t take to her immediately. She attempted to satisfy her own need for relief from her loneliness. But it didn’t work. It never works. It’s a ruse, a trick of the mind, a self-deception.
How do I know? Remember, I am an expert at loneliness, having been so very lonely for so many years. Very lonely. The prophet Jeremiah writes, in 8.18,
“When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me.”
So, if Jeremiah could not comfort himself against sorrow because his heart gave out on him, how can you expect to do better? Are you an anointed prophet of God? No.
It pains my heart to see people so lonely. I ache for you inside because I know what it feels like to be as lonely as you are, to be as frustrated by unsuccessful attempts to make it better. I have already tried and failed at almost every scheme and gimmick you try. Nothing that your friends could do, and nothing that you can do, can make matters better. No chance. No chance. I would reach out to you privately, but my experience is that so many are grievously offended by my attempts to discuss the matter. I do not want to offend you privately, so I preach to you publicly.
From our text, Second Corinthians 1.3, we see that God is the God of all comfort. Turn there, and let’s read together. When you find the passage, stand along with me as we read God’s Word:
3 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;
4 Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
Do you see your problem, my friend? God is the God of all comfort. There is no comfort for loneliness apart from God. But God only comforts us, so we often use other Christians to provide comfort. And since you who are not Christians are not us, you are not a Christian, meaning there is no comfort from God for you. None.
This Brings Me To Our Final Point: IN YOUR SINS, GOD WILL NOT COMFORT YOU
Your parents cannot comfort you if they are not Christians because they are not comforted themselves. Your friends cannot comfort you if they are not Christians because they are not comforted themselves. How can they give what they don’t have? And you certainly cannot comfort yourself if you are not a Christian. You can preoccupy yourself. You can distract yourself. You can bother yourself. You can be intellectually dishonest about these things and try not to think about them, but you cannot comfort yourself.
Even if your parents or your friends are Christians, they cannot comfort you. This is because all comfort originates with God, and His comfort is only for His Own. That lets you out if you are not a believer in Jesus Christ. Since you are not His Own, there is no comfort for you. Thus, while you are in your sins, you are doomed to a lifetime—no, you are doomed to an eternity of loneliness.
Consider this: When the Lord Jesus Christ suffered and bled and died on Calvary’s cross, He was not comforted by the Father. He was not. When He became sin for me, Who knew no sin, the Father forsook Him. On the cross, the Son of God cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”[2] Why did God forsake His Own Son? Habakkuk 1.13 tells us the answer:
“Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil.”
If God the Father did not comfort His Own Son in His great affliction because He was bearing my sins (and the Father looked away from Him), why do you think God the Father will comfort you in your sins? If He wouldn’t comfort His Son, do you think He will comfort you? If He poured wrath on His Son, don’t you think He will pour out His wrath on you? If the Father forsook His Son for sins, He will surely forsake you for sins.
But if you are God’s own, if you are a child of God, He will comfort you. Consider David as he walked toward the giant, Goliath, all alone but for a sling and five smooth stones. His king could not comfort him. His older brother could not comfort him. The armies of the nation of Israel standing on a hilltop could not comfort him in the valley of the shadow of death. He was alone. No one could comfort him but God. Yet we read in the 23rd Psalm:
1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
Did God comfort David? According to David, He did. Did the Lord Jesus Christ comfort His disciples? Yes, He did. Did He promise to always make sure they were comforted? Yes, He did. By one means or another, God makes sure that His Own, even when we are sometimes called upon to stand alone, are always, always, always, always accessible to God’s comfort.
The Lord Jesus Christ said, “I will not leave you comfortless.”[3] But what He said has no application to you so long as you reject the Gospel, so long as you remain in your sins, so long as you refuse Jesus Christ.
People turn this way and that way to alleviate their loneliness. Oh, I know that sometimes other motives drive us. However, loneliness is the key to understanding their behavior for so many people.
Why do they compromise themselves? Why will they do what they know is wrong? Because they are lonely. You are lonely. And you will try just about anything, do just about anything so that you won’t feel lonely.
A lonely girl is easy prey for a boy. A lonely boy can be easy prey for a gang, whether they wear bandanas, whether they get tattoos, whether they are on Greek row at the university, or whether they are in the military. They are all gangs, in some sense.
A lonely geek can be easy prey for the temptation to be a workaholic, an Internet gamer, or a porn addict. A lonely woman who has been unsuccessful in finding relief from loneliness can be a sucker for feminism.
Don’t you see? Everything from the herd instinct displayed by gangs and teams and fraternities and military personnel to the cliquishness in other social circles has to do with feelings of loneliness. But none of those activities helps the lonely. None of that does any good. If anything, they make the lonely even lonelier because they never deal with the root problem, sin.
Even Church attendance is only a temporary solution. A guy or a girl feels lonely and accepts an invitation to attend Church or some Church function. That’s wonderful. There are nice people at Church, so the lonely person decides to attend ... hoping that the loneliness will disappear.
Granted, for a while, the feelings of loneliness have diminished somewhat. There are new friends, new activities that don’t make you feel so guilty, and new truths to consider. But loneliness does not really go away. Not even in Church.
Why not? No comfort. No comfort of the soul. You can hang around Church people all day long, but so long as you are in your sins, the God Who refused to comfort His Son for my sins will refuse to comfort you for your sins.
So, though Church attendance is right and proper and sound, no one who is lonely finds comfort in Church. What you see in Church is the Gospel of Jesus Christ being preached, Christians who will minister grace to you by the loving and truthful words they speak to you, and a challenge to seek salvation from your sins. That’s what you find at Church.
Do we have lonely people attending Church here who find no comfort in their loneliness? Yes. It breaks my heart to say yes. But they are the unsaved who attend here for one reason or another but who have not yet found comfort for their souls in Jesus Christ.
Would you come to Christ? If you come to Christ, you would find “the comfort of the Holy Ghost,”[4] you would find the “comfort of the scriptures,”[5] you would find the comfort from other Christians,[6] and you would find comfort from ministers of the Gospel.[7]
If you would come to Christ. Otherwise, my friend, dear sir, kind lady, a young person whom I feel fatherly toward, apart from Christ, you are doomed. There is no other comfort for your soul. None.
Thrash about doing this, thrash about doing that, you will find no comfort. You couldn’t get it from your mom and dad because they don’t have the answer. You can’t get it from your friends because they don’t have the answer. You can’t get it from yourself because you don’t have the answer. The only place you find comfort is from the God of all comfort, through His Son, Jesus Christ.
So, dismiss what I say. Become socially more active. Work harder in the shop. Stay longer hours in the office. Buy a jet ski. Develop a hobby. Start working out at 24-Hour Fitness. Get married. But what you are really trying to do is find a remedy for the loneliness of your soul. It will not work that way. Take it from me, one of the loneliest guys in the world, before the Lord Jesus found me.
And since then? I have a Friend who sticketh closer than a brother. Come to Jesus Christ, my friend. Come to Jesus Christ now.
Turning now to you who are believers in Christ, who may not be experiencing much comfort, I have a word for you. My message tonight for believers will be advice for securing the comfort God makes available to us.
__________
[1] Job 16.2
[2] Matthew 27.46
[3] John 14.18
[4] Acts 9.31
[5] Romans 15.4
[6] 2 Corinthians 2.7; 7.13; 1 Thessalonians 4.18; 5.11, 14
[7] Ephesians 6.22; Philippians 2.19; Colossians 4.8; 1 Thessalonians 3.2
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