Receiving Singleness as a Gift

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Sam Allberry
Thank you very much for being here. Thank you for tuning in online. If you’re watching this from home, thank you for finding us and for spending this time with us. Thank you to those of you who are physically here in the room, we are grateful to crossway have sponsored this breakout. So if you were happy with the breakout, go and buy some crossway books, if you weren’t happy with the breakout, go and buy someone else’s, and that’ll that’ll teach them to sponsor bad breakout sessions. So grateful to crossway if you’ve not already lost most of your future pension to buying too many crossway books this week, then you’re not doing it right. On which I have written a book on singleness that they have kindly published. So if you want to look at more than we’re going to be getting into during this time. That would be a way of following up and being nice to our sponsor. See? Great. Well, our theme is Don’t waste your singleness. And I’m not going to waste any more time with preamble The reason we want to talk about singleness is because it is relevant to all of us. It’s easy to think well a topic on singleness that’s good because there are a single people who need to learn about singleness. The passages in the Bible that addressed singleness are addressed to all of us. So actually, God wants all of us to know what the Bible says about singleness. All of us need to hear this. Those of you who are married, there’s no delicate way of putting this. At least half of you are going to be single again. Whether sadly through divorce or through bereavement. Being married now is not a guarantee that you are done with singleness. And better to understand what the Bible says about singleness before you find yourself particularly in tragic circumstances plunged back into singleness, my my grandfather died. Last summer, he was 102. I remembered the golden wedding anniversary he had with my grandmother, they’ve been married for little over 50 years. She died not long after that. So he was actually cumulatively single for about the same length of time that he was married. You could be married for 50 years and still be single for a very, very long time after that. So this is going to be relevant to you whether you are presently single or not. It’s also relevant to all of us because the Bible says the church is a body we’re bound up with one another God’s designed us to be that way. It’s meant to be that way. And so what happens to some of us affects the rest of us, just as is the case with your body. A while ago, I was walking around my home barefoot and I was just walking out of one room and pulling the door shots. Miss timed the closing of the door with relation to the presence of my big toe. And discovered through the medium of pain that the the bottom of the door is just high enough above the ground to clip your toenail if I’d made your eyes water yet, and managed to shear off a fair bit of acreage of toenail. But here’s the thing, it wasn’t just my toe that was affected my body reacted. And noise came out of my mouth of an unusual pitch and tone. My eyes started watering my my other leg thought that hopping would be a helpful way of contributing to the to the situation. The whole point is it wasn’t just the toe that was affected, I was affected the whole body joined in. And when one part of the church is struggling, the whole church is affected. We’re a body as a single person, I have a stake in the marriages in my church being healthy. I need to pray for my married friends. For those of us who are married, you have a stake in the singles in your church being healthy in their singleness. So all of us need to know how the word lands on on all the rest of us and how we can encourage and spur one another on and make sure we’re all flourishing in our faith.

Sam Allberry
The title is Don’t waste your singleness because I didn’t come up with the title someone else did. But I guess the assumption is, it’s easy if we’re single, to wish away the rest of the time of our singleness so that we can hurry up and get married. It can feel as though if we’re single, we’re actually waiting for real life to begin. And until it does begin we’re just kind of treading water. We’re just trying to you know, let’s just get through this period of singleness and then enter into the grassy uplands of of married life. That being commonly the case that in terms of how we tend to think I want us to To be challenged by God’s word it says surprisingly positive things about singleness. And it would be a waste of our singleness, not to hear those things, and live in the light of them. I didn’t introduce myself. Hi, my name is Sam Aubrey, I’ve, I’ve always been single. I’m in my mid 40s. Now not really expecting to get married. At this stage, God is sovereign. Who knows. But um, I’ve had to sort of think through singleness not just because the Bible tells me to, and not just because I have friends who are single, but simply because I’m single myself and wanting to, to know how to be a good disciple, as a single man. So here are some ways we can not waste our singleness of think I’ve got four points for us, if I don’t run out of time. I still have four points, even if we did run out of time, I suppose. But you just wouldn’t hear all of them. So here’s the first point we need to embrace the goodness of singleness. I think our default setting is often to think of singleness as being negative. And there’s a lot in our culture that would suggest that as as Christians, we believe that that the only appropriate context for for romantic and sexual behavior really is marriage. And therefore, when we talk about singleness as Christians, we’re not just talking about being unmarried. But theoretically able to play the field, we’re talking about being celibate, about being sexually inactive. That’s a very different kind of singleness to the type of singleness maybe some of our secular friends enjoy. And the kind of singleness we’re talking about that we believe the Bible calls us to, is certainly something that to the watching world would either be laughable, at best or harmful at worst. So this is going back a bit now. But if you remember a movie like the 40 year old virgin, with Steve Carell, okay, just the title of that movie tells you it’s going to be a comedy. Because the notion of a 40 year old virgin is comedic, or a movie like 40 days and 40 nights where a man with the tagline never seen the movie, but the tagline is, one man is about to do the unthinkable, no sex whatsoever, for 40 days and 40 Nights. Interesting that they chose 40 days and 40 nights as the as the unit of self denial. But even for 40 days and 40 Nights, according to the movie that is seen as being unthinkable. I dread to think how many multiples of 40 days and 40 nights I’ve gone without sex as a single person, but it would be off the charts for what our culture would think is remotely healthy, survivable, and all the rest of it. And for many people around us our sense of what it means to be human to be real to be who you truly are, is bound up with being sexually expressive and fulfilled. And therefore to deny yourself sexual fulfillment, particularly in the cause of religion, actually is seen by many people as just being dangerous. So we’re not going to get any encouragement from our friends outside the church, most likely when it comes to seeking to live in a way that is pleasing to Jesus in singleness. And sadly, that is often the case within the church as well. It’s easy for that attitude to seep into the people of God and for us as Christians to think well. Yeah, we don’t go with what the world says. But really, you should be married to be a proper Christian. That’s when you kind of graduate in your Christianity, right? I remember being a, this was years ago, being at a wedding at my church, and one of the older guys in the row in front of me turned around and said, You still single? I said, Yeah. Are you still married? And he said, Yeah, I said, Great. We’re both happy. But that’s that kind of

Sam Allberry
either implicit or explicit. You’re supposed to be married by now really, aren’t you? Kind of thing. Probably more directed at women than men, but certainly directed at all of us to some extent. I remember running into someone who I hadn’t seen for over 10 years. This is a while ago, the last time I had seen her. Her kids were teenagers. So now it’s 10 years later, and I saw her and I said, Hey, it’s great to see you. Hey, what are your What are your kids up to? You know, they must be in there like, late 20s or something? And she said, yeah, the first ones got married, the second one is engaged. So they’re both sorted. After Okay, so what am I am I am I unsorted. Am I some unprocessed person that needs to be kind of a loose end that needs to be tied up? lots of examples we could give her that I’m sure if we went around the room, everyone has got their own story of something like that I will pass on one piece of mischievous advice a friend of mine gave me which is I probably shouldn’t say this on the live stream, but here we go. He said, so this is my friend’s fault, whatever results from this comment next time, you know, he said that every now and then a sweet old person at a church wedding comes up and says, Oh, next time it could be you. He says the best way to stop one of the sweet old people at church wedding saying to you next time, it could be you say that to them at church funerals. Just try that out. See how that works.

Sam Allberry
Here’s one very simple and significant reason why we mustn’t demean singleness and imply it means we’re living a lesser kind of existence. Jesus was single. Okay, we could just end the session with that statement. Actually, the most complete and fully human person who ever lived was never married, was never in a romantic relationship, and never had sex. So here’s the thing, the moment you imply any one of those things is essential for being a complete human being. You are saying our Savior was not complete in his humanity. First, John has a word for that kind of thinking, and it’s called antichrist. So this matters. Paul himself, you will know was was single and again he spoke of singleness in, in surprisingly two areas, very positive ways. So if you’ve got a Bible to handle on a device, or if you’re under 30, and have these verses tattooed somewhere, First Corinthians seven, and I’m old enough to make jokes like that now. First Corinthians seven verse 28. And following Paul has an extend this whole chapter is amazing. Paul has all kinds of things to say about marriage and sex and singleness. Listen to what he says about singleness in First Corinthians seven verse 28. He says, if you do marry you have not sent Okay, good to know that there have been times in church history where we’ve super spiritualized singleness and kind of implied that your sub Christian, you’re letting the team down. If you get married, Paul is saying no, no, that is not the case. If you marry, you’ve not sinned, we have freedom as believers. And if a betrothed woman marries, she has not seen yet. Those who marry will have worldly troubles. And I would spare you that. Now remember, this is the same Paul who spoke of marriage in the most superlative terms. Elsewhere in the New Testament. This is the Paul who talks about marriage being a picture of Jesus in the church, it’s hard to have a more exalted view of marriage than Paul gives us in Ephesians five, but Paul also knows that even that the best and happiest marriages in this life will have troubles. So he says, I would spare you that. Now here’s what we need to know both marriage and singleness have their own ups and downs. But the danger is we forever compare the downs of singleness with the opposite of marriage. And it might not occur to us that there are ups of singleness. And that there are downs of marriage. Marriage is hard. I’ve been a pastor long enough I’ve been a friend of married friends long enough to know that that is the case. I’ve seen marriages fall apart. I’ve seen people lose their spouse in untimely and tragic ways. I’ve seen parents who’ve had to bury their own children. I’ve seen parents whose children have walked away from the faith there are particular pains of marriage that as a single person I’m spared. We can sometimes have a romantic view of family life. I know sometimes when I visit my my friends who have family sometimes I go around there and it’s all I’m kind of sweet. The kids are being precocious and cute. And I’m kind of like I’m feeling broody. I want to have a family. There are other times I go around and it’s, it’s, you’re in the door 30 seconds before you realized this was not the day to turn up with the household. Okay, World War Three is well underway in this home and you’re thinking, How long do I have to stay before it’s rude for me to leave? So there are certain troubles Paul says that will be associated with marriage. That’s not all there is to say about married life. But it is one of the things Paul wants Christians to know about married life. But there’s not just the the downs of marriage, we need to factor into our thinking there are the ups of singleness. So verse 32. And following, Paul writes,

Sam Allberry
I want you to be free from anxieties. Isn’t that great, Paul? Thanks, Paul. Actually, we appreciate that. Paul wants us to be free from anxieties. And actually how we think about singleness is going to be bound up with this. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And he repeats the unmarried or betrayed a woman is anxious about the things of the Lord how to be holy and body and spirit. But a married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I love the the mutuality there. It’s not just that the wife is thinking of how to please her husband, but the husband is thinking how to please his wife. Paul then continues verse 35, I say this for your own benefit not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord. For saying, if you’re married, life is necessarily more complex. It should be you are going to be pulled in more than more directions. That is the way it’s supposed to be. You have now an additional person’s worth of concerns that you’ve got to factor into everything. But he says in verse 35, that actually if we are unmarried, we can serve the Lord in a way that is undivided. It doesn’t mean we don’t have any constraints or any other people or any other commitments we should do. That’s part of the joy and cost of friendship of having brothers and sisters who are part of our lives and be a part of theirs. But it will be more straightforward. How we can serve the Lord. Actually, this can happen in a number of ways. As a as a single person, there’s a certain amount of flexibility. I’ve seen families with small children trying to leave the house you know you’ve got child a is ready. Choose a wrong coat is on the front door, they’re ready to exit the door. Child B is missing somewhere in the house child see turns up but dressed as Batman. By the time you’ve located child, B child a now needs the toilet and is having to get the coat off and the shoes off and everything else. And you know a whole day has passed and you’ve not actually walked out of the door yet. For those of us who are single, it’s it is a bit more straightforward. We can turn on a dime if we need to. Similarly, we have a capacity for friendship as single people that we wouldn’t have if we were married. We’ll talk about more about this in a moment. But actually, it’s easier for me if someone needs me, it is easier for me to drop everything. Grab a bag or jump in the car and go and see someone. It’s it’s one of the privileges you have as a single person sometimes is is being available in a way that would be harder if you were married. We get to serve people in that kind of way. Now, the fact that we are less divided as singles is a is an opportunity. It’s a danger in that it is very easy to make our singleness self centered. It’s very easy to think well okay. being single is great because I only have to do what I want to do when I want to do it in a way that I want to do it. That is not meant to be the point of singleness. As you were to use that availability and flexibility as much as we have it for the Lord. It’s not undivided devotion to Me. It is thinking how can I use this time of my life for as long as it is? How can I most use that for Jesus Christ? In fact, here’s a good question to ask what could I do for Jesus Christ now that I couldn’t do if I was married? Let’s maximize that. So marriage is meant to be seen as a You’d think back in in verse seven of this chapter Paul refers to both marriage and singleness as gifts. As things that are intrinsically good. Now sometimes I think we get our thinking about the gift of singleness. Wrong. I think sometimes, people speak of the gift of singleness as if it’s some capacity for being really good at singleness. So when I’m single, but I don’t have the gift of singleness. And notice the implication the gift of singleness is some spiritual superpower to help you cope with being single because, by implication, singleness sucks. And so I’ve got to have some special gift to cope with being single.

Sam Allberry
But you wouldn’t do that with marriage, you wouldn’t say, Well, I know I’m married, I just, I don’t think I’ve got the gift of marriage. No think gift is not some special spiritual superpower or capacity. The gift is the state of being married or the state of being single, that is a gift. It is an opportunity to taste the goodness of God, and to be a means of that goodness, to the lives of other people. So if you’re married, there’s a way of, of experiencing the goodness of God in your marriage and of making your marriage a means of blessing. If you’re single, there’s a way of seeing your singleness as a way of tasting the goodness of God and making your singleness a means of blessing to others. So we can we can receive singleness as a gift, it doesn’t mean we have to pretend it’s easy. It doesn’t mean we always have to pretend we like every waking moment of it or that there’s no pains and difficulties. Just as with marriage, when there are challenges in marriage, you don’t then decide marriage as a bad thing. So let’s receive singleness is a gift. Number two, let’s pursue healthy community. I think one of the biggest fears people have about singleness is that it will mean isolation. I was just doing a panel with Rebecca McLachlan and Jackie Hill, Perry. Rebecca said at one point, I don’t know if she said this in the panel before it or after it. So I’m just gonna share it anyway. But she said loneliness is the one form of suffering. No Christian should ever have to experience.

Sam Allberry
So we need to really think through what the Bible says about intimacy. In our culture, our secular culture has has virtually collapsed intimacy and sex into one another. So they can’t conceive of any form of intimacy that isn’t ultimately to do with sex. And so when, for example, we hear earlier generation speak about very, very deep and rich friendship. We tend in our own culture to roll our eyes and think, Oh, well, they were obviously gay. Because we don’t really have a category for intimacy that isn’t ultimately sexual. It’s a very Western way to think it’s a very recent way to think it’s a profoundly unbiblical way to think. Because we’ve put all of our sort of eggs in the basket of the romantic and sexual relationship we’ve, we’ve downgraded friendship. As we’ve turned friend, from a noun, into a verb, haven’t we? For those of us on Facebook, if you if you add someone so that they can see your homepage, you’ve, you’ve made a friend, according to Facebook, that is a friend. Okay, someone who can see a picture of you knew where you grew up, and knows roughly what you do now, that according to Facebook is the definition of friendship. It’s a pretty pathetic definition of friendship. If you have 500 of these friends, what you have 500 of is not a friend. So we need to hear what the Bible says about these things. And this is what the Bible shows us, you can be having lots and lots and lots of sex and not be experiencing intimacy. I think that was probably true for for men like King David and King Solomon. Perhaps one of the reasons David spoke in such super relative terms of Jonathan’s love for him and of how much it meant to him is because David had a very screwed up view of women and wasn’t actually experiencing intimacy. Whereas with Jonathan, he was You can have lots and lots of sex and not be experiencing intimacy. Similarly, the Bible changes you can have a lot of intimacy that has nothing to do with sex. Jesus experienced intimacy we know that he did live with with a 12. We know that within the 12 there were the three Peter, James and John with him he was especially close. We were also told at times that John was particularly close to Jesus, that Jesus was not someone who was kind of relationally aloof and above it all. Similarly, with with Paul, it’s easy to think of Paul as being this kind of lone ranging, you know, church planting machine who just traveled around the world planting churches all by himself. Next time you’re wandering around the book of Romans, have a look at chapter 16. Okay, it looks like it’s the end credits to the book of Romans, because there’s a whole chapter of names and thank yous and all the rest of it, and it’s easy to kind of just skip over it and do the Netflix start the next episode immediately and just skip to First Corinthians one. But Romans 16 shows as Paul was actually in meshed in a in a in a deep web of relationships. But there’s a lot of intimacy reflected in Romans 16, Paul often speaks in very familial terms of the people that he’s been laboring with. Paul was not on his own. In the Bible, friendship is a deeply rich category. It’s not a superficial thing. The book of Proverbs has has some amazing things to say about French if you want to sort of have a little bit of homework after this session, just read through the book of Proverbs, and make a note of every proverb that speaks about friendship. According to the Book of Proverbs, A friend is someone who knows your soul. It’s not just someone who have some superficial interest in Commonwealth it’s not just someone that you you see a lot in a way that makes them feel familiar. It’s someone who knows what is going on on the inside of your life. And proverbs shows us You can’t be wise in God’s world without friends.

Sam Allberry
So those of you who are married please hear this. You need friends too. I’ve seen marriages implode because there was not friendship outside the marriage.

Sam Allberry
No friendship in the Bible is a is a deeply rich category. Derek Kidner in his commentary on Proverbs talks about how the Hebrew word for friend is closely related to the Hebrew word for secret because the friend is the person you tell your secrets to. That’s what makes a friend a friend. They they know what’s really going on. They have the scoop.

Sam Allberry
Jesus has this view of friendship to I’ve got a list of verses that I would never believe in my life. We’re not for the fact that they really are in the Bible. And one of them is John 15, verse 15. This is amazing. Jesus gives us it. Just along the way he gives us a definition of friendship here. Jesus says to His disciples, no longer do I call you servants. For a servant does not know what his master is doing. It’s not that there’s no aspect of us being servants of Jesus we are but that is not the entire category of how we relate to Jesus. Because part of what defines only being a servant is you don’t have access to information you just told what to do. You don’t need to know what your master is up to. You just need to obey what your masters told you to do. You don’t have clearance. So Jesus says, I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know what his master is doing but I have called you friends for and whatever Jesus says next is going to show us what is defining a friendship to him. So he calls his disciples friends, because I’ve added you on Facebook. Because I’ve given you my contact details now, I have called you friends because all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. Friendship for Jesus is defined by this disclosure because I have disclosed all of this to you, that makes us friends. Jesus is saying I’ve let you in on what’s actually going on. In fact, I’ve, I’ve let you in on everything all that the Father has given me to share I’ve shared with you, I’ve not hold held any of it back. I’ve let you all the way in on what’s going on. That makes us friends. Now he’s talking to the disciples in the in the upper room there in John chapter 15. But those disciples have then been authorized by Jesus to let us in on the things that he led them and not. So we also are now friends with Jesus. He spilled the beans to us. So here’s the question based on that view of friendship, How many friends do you have? A friendship is defined by actually these are the people who really know who really know what’s going on inside of me. People who know the worst things about you. People you can confess your sins to James chapter five says, confess your sins to one another. We don’t only confess our sins to God, we need to do that. But James is actually we need to be doing that on a horizontal plane as well, who can you have that level of sharing with? That is friendship. That actually is intimacy because intimacy in the Bible is being deeply known and deeply loved at the same time, is what we were made for.

Sam Allberry
So one of the things we need to do is to recover this biblical view of friendship and to cultivate it in our churches. If the only form of intimacy that is available within our churches is within marriage. Then our churches will not be healthy. I was talking a few years ago to a pastor who was takes a very different view of human sexuality to me. And he says, if if you don’t allow his language was if you don’t allow gay people to marry, you are dooming them to a life of loneliness. And I said, if the only way of not being lonely in your church is to be married, your church really stinks. If it’s marriage or loneliness, that’s a don’t go to that church. So as well as thinking through what the Bible says about intimacy, we need to think through what the Bible says about the church being a family.

Sam Allberry
We often use that language, so many to describe church, the church is having a family, meeting the church, having a family gathering, come and join our church family. But we use that language because it’s, it’s just what we do. It’s the language we’ve heard and we just repeat it. We use it. It’s that makes us sound friendly. I wonder if we use it? Because it’s true. So here’s here’s a place for us to look at Mark chapter 10. Verse 2829, and 30. Mark 10, verse 28. We just had a rich young man, Jesus called him to leave behind certain things in order to follow him. He didn’t want to do that. So he left Jesus sad and dejected. Peter being the emotionally intelligent disciple decides this is the moment to tell Jesus how amazing he is as a disciple. So he begins to say to Jesus in verse 28, see, we have left everything and follow gee, you know, you can hear to the Peters tone of voice going, you know, don’t worry Jesus, because didn’t work out with him. But look, you’ve got us, and you are welcome. What a relief to you. Mark tells us Peter began to say this because only Jesus stopped him from carrying on too much. Jesus interrupts him in verse 29, and says, Truly I say to you, which is, I think a polite way of saying, Peter, shut up. Okay, I’m about to say something significant. Now, truly, I say to you means someone’s going to embroider this one day on a pillow. Listen to this promise, there is no one who has left house or brothers or or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life, Jesus, assuming people will leave things to follow him. That’s, that’s basic discipleship. Jesus is always honest about that. Jesus, moreover, is assuming the most costly things to leave will be familial and relational. There will be some people for whom following Jesus means they do have to leave behind their people, their place, their kin, their family. Thankfully, that is not the case for for the vast majority of us. But there will be some for him even, you know, for following Jesus means means leaving all of that. And as Jesus looks at that the prospect of that level of sacrifice, he doesn’t say less than something and have to leave behind all of their their kind of community and people and background. And it’s just going to be terrible. But don’t worry, you get heaven. No, Jesus says, even in this life, it’s worth it. He says, no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my second gospel, will not receive a hundredfold now, in this time, say however much we leave behind for Jesus we receive from him far more. And again, Jesus cast this in familial and relational terms will will receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, brothers and sisters, mothers children, lands, he’s not saying that, hey, if you come to me, you will have you will get a property portfolio. He is saying, If you come to me, there will be houses that are going to be open to you. There’ll be places you have a key to where you can let yourself in and know you will always be welcome there and people will be pleased to see you. There will be people who will mother You and father you. There will be those who come alongside you and be brothers and sisters to you there will be those who look up to us as children do to, to receive and learn from you. There will be places that you know you belong to now here’s the thing, this, this promises of this promise of Jesus is unusual because it depends on us to fulfill it. It’s easy to read those verses and go, Well, Jesus is amazing. I’m glad he makes that promise. That’s really good. I’m glad those people have that promise from Jesus.

Sam Allberry
But we aren’t meant to be part of the means by which Jesus fulfills His promise. We are meant to be the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and sons and daughters and homes and lands that Jesus is promising. And our churches are meant to be. So here’s the thing. If someone is at your church, and because of their faith in Jesus, they do not have the kind of community and intimacy that they would have had if they were still an unbeliever. Jesus says that person should be able to say as a result of being in your church, I’ve got far more community than I ever had before. I’ve got more intimacy in my life and not less. I’ve got more family in my life and not less, even if they actually had to leave their entire family to follow Jesus. So that makes sense. So here’s a question as you think about your own church, fellowship that you belong to. If someone came to faith from a background where they would not be able to go back to their community, if they became a follower of Jesus, if that person becomes a follower of Jesus at your church, would they realistically be able to say, You know what, I have more family than I ever would have had before. If the answer to that question is, well, our churches great and lots of things, but actually, we’re not that good community and a family. We’re calling Jesus a liar. Similarly, if we’re thinking to ourselves, well, our churches have kind of, we’re a bit crazy, but we are actually a family with dysfunctional family, but we are a real family to each other. Then our churches are living proof. The following Jesus is worth it so one of the questions for us to ask whatever our status in life, married single, whatever our age or level of Christian maturity. Who can I be perhaps something of a spiritual father or mother to who is further behind me in the Christian pilgrimage that I can just encourage in some way I’ve learned some things along the way that I could I could encourage them with, who was there around me that I can be a brother and a sister to that I’m kind of naturally at a peer level with that I can kind of let’s link arms and, and journey together who is there that actually I can look up to, and learn from and seek their wisdom and their counsel who I can become a son or a daughter too. If we all come with that mindset, the words of Jesus will be shown to be true, and fewer people will be lonely in our churches. I need to be much quicker now. That was number two. Number three is we need to rejoice in the perfect Bridegroom, Jesus when He comes in. In the New Testament, He doesn’t just call himself the Messiah. He doesn’t just call himself the Savior. He doesn’t just call himself the Redeemer. He calls himself the bridegroom. Because all through the Old Testament God shows himself not just to be the big center of power in the sky but but a groom, a husband, who makes covenant promises to his people. And throughout the Bible, we realize God’s people are not just his his fan base are not just his, his groupies his servants, they are his bride. The Bible begins and ends with a marriage. It begins with Adam and Eve getting together in the Garden of Eden, it ends with the wedding supper of the Lamb, and his bride, the Church and that first marriage is a signpost of that ultimate marriage. The reason we have this thing called marriage is to point beyond itself to the ultimate union that all of us were created for which is to be in a love relationship with our Creator. And Jesus comes to this world and among other things, he announces that he is the bridegroom. He has come to start putting rings on fingers, we are pledged to Him as His people. So here’s the thing, whether you are married or not now doesn’t ultimately matter. What matters now is whether you are in Christ, whether you are betrothed to him. If that is the case, then our marriages now can become a signpost to that ultimate marriage.

Sam Allberry
If that is the case, then our singleness now becomes a way of anticipating the state that Jesus says all of us will be in in the age to come when we will neither marry nor be given in marriage, because we will have the thing that all marriage points to. And our singleness now can be a way of saying to a world that is so utterly confused and crazed when it comes to sex and romance that Jesus is so real, and so sufficient and so good. I can have him now and not be married, and I have plenty in life. But if you marry someone thinking that person is going to answer all of your emotional, relational, spiritual and friendship needs, you’re going to be a nightmare to be married to. Because you’re putting on that person what is only designed to be found in Jesus. Jesus being the bridegroom dignifies marriage it also shows that marriage is an ultimate because it points beyond itself. And if marriage shows us the shape of the gospel, singleness shows us its efficiency. There may be days when I’m thinking I’d like to be married, that would be nice. But ultimately, I have in Christ all the very best human marriages pointy. The ultimate consummation will be the people of God, beholding Jesus face to face, becoming like him. That is the deepest union we can ever experience. That is ultimately what we’ve been created for. So turns out we had three points. This afternoon. We need to recognize that singleness is a good thing we need to embrace it as a gift If someone gives you a gift for your birthday or for Christmas and you open it up and you kind of go, kind of don’t like that. That’s not a very good attitude to have. And if God gives us the gift of singleness, it may not be the gift that we would have chosen. But if we find ourselves being single and receiving the singleness as a gift, we can be thankful. We need to lean into healthy and biblical forms of intimacy. So cultivate deep friendships. And one of the great things about singleness is actually you can have a capacity for friendship you wouldn’t have if you were married, there’s a depth of friendship my married friends have that I didn’t get to enjoy that intimacy that comes with having one person that knows you know, all of your life. But there’s a breadth of intimacy that I can have as a single person that my married friends can’t have. And we can rejoice in the perfect bridegroom and the marriage that we have in Christ. Let me close in prayer. For the helpers to receive your words with with gladness and gratitude. Help us to understand what the Scriptures say, to live in the light of those things. Above all else, Lord, help us to rejoice in Jesus and to live for Him. Because we pray in His name, amen.