people below like basketball and doing other things. He's known by these kids as simply the window. On a dare, one of these students that got named Jamal decides to break into his apartment and see who this guy is. Only Forster catches him and so Jamal runs out leaving his backpack in there. Forster looks into the backpack and finds these journals in which Jamal had been riding and he discovers that he's a budding rider. Well, he edits a number of the stories that he's written and then throws it out the window one day as Jamal is walking by. And that begins a very interesting and mutually encouraging relationship between the two. Forster begins to mentor Jamal into a fabulous ride or so much so that his teachers begin to suspect him of plagiarism. But it also worked the other way as well. Jamal began to help Forster see that he didn't need to isolate himself from the world. But he was missing out on the true meaning and fulfillment in life by doing so. And so he actually helps Forster leave by himself. His apartment ride is bicycle and even travel to his homeland, Scotland before he died of cancer. And usually it's mostly due to Jamal's friendship. That he goes ahead and writes another novel. Well, the movie ends with this young man, Jamal, reading a letter from Forster who has already died at this point. And he says this to Jamal. He says, while I may have waited until the winter of my life to see the things I have seen this past year, there is no doubt I would have waited too long had it not been for you. It's a great heartwarming story about something that is so true. To and basic to humanity that we're designed as relational beings. And where we isolate ourselves from people, we do so to our detriment. We become ineffective and unproductive. And we don't find the depth of meaning and enjoyment that life has there for us. One of the ancient writers of Proverbs put it this way in Proverbs 27, 17 is iron sharpens iron. So one man sharpens another is that effectiveness that comes only as one life rubs up against another individual. In fact, isolation is so detrimental that it has been used throughout history as a form of torture. It was used among the POWs during the Vietnam War. They thought that if we can just isolate them and keep them from seeing for long periods of time, any of the human beings, they will become extremely passive, give up or just become crazy. But the American POWs were ingenious in this respect. They came up with a code simply by tapping on the wall so that they could communicate. And they were able to spell out the alphabet and the North Vietnamese never figured it out. As the one POW puts it, this is an Air Force pilot, Ron Bliss. He said it sounded like a din of runaway woodpeckers in there. They would tell jokes and if you kicked against the wall, that meant you were laughing in response to the joke you just received. He also writes that every Sunday at a coded signal, the men would stand and recite the Lord's prayer together and the pledge of allegiance. Another picture of the danger of isolation is talked about by GK Chesterton and his story, the man who was Thursday. He describes it this way through all this ordeal, his root whore had been isolation. And there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. Listen to this. It may be conceited to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one. Two is two thousand times one. Isolation is dangerous and it's also pitiful and sad. For some of us, we engage in self-imposed isolation but for other people, it's through the bruises and beatings of this life that they have become isolated. Mother Teresa said this, the biggest disease today is not leprosy or cancer. It's the feeling of being uncared for, unwanted, being deserted, and alone. This is a problem. It's always been a problem but it's a problem with peculiarities to our age that are extremely significant. Many of you feel isolated. You may be very connected in many ways and yet you feel isolated. Or there is an area of your life for multiple areas where you can voluntarily, maybe subconsciously, pull back and put up a wall. And the net effect is that we hurt ourselves and we hurt other people. And so in our ongoing series of modern problems and ancient solutions, we want to focus on this modern problem of isolation, its modern peculiarities and how the Bible gives the ancient and ever-important solution to this. Now the book that we're using is the one that Lindsey and William so beautifully read for us earlier from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. Many adults cannot pronounce that word Ecclesiastes. Try to do it about five times in a row. It is a fabulous book. The author, we're not completely certain who the author is. Tradition mostly attributes it to King Solomon, the son of David, King of Israel. Other conservative scholars would say that that's most likely not the case. We don't really know and I don't think it's that critical that we pin down who wrote the book. It's a book really written from the perspective of an old man who has learned wisdom the hard way. By journeying through life and making mistake after mistake, trying to find meaning and substance and value in all that life had to offer, only to find out that it was he said like a chasing after the wind, vanity and meaningless. And one of the areas that he focuses upon is this idea, this concept of isolation. It's like he's saying as you journey through life, you're going to come to many bumps in the road and you need to see the danger signs. You need to see the red lights flashing at you. And this is one of them. Don't isolate yourself from people and don't keep yourself from people who are isolated. That's a dangerous place to go in the journey of life. Stay away from it. Avoid it at all costs. And so let's look at this passage from Ecclesiastes chapter 4 verses 7 through 12. Spound in your order of worship if you do not either have or care to look in your Bible. We want to look first at the problem. How it has modern aspects to it to make it I think even more difficult, subtle. And then we want to look at the solution. First of all, the problem. The picture is given in verse 8 of a really pitiful man. He says there was a man all alone. He had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil. It his eyes were not content with his wealth. For whom am I toiling? He asked. And why am I depriving myself of enjoyment? This too is meaningless, a miserable business. And so it's a picture of a pitiful individual who has gotten towards the end of his life and has worked his tail off has accumulated a great mass of wealth and yet is not content. He's not satisfied. And he draws a connection here. He says, wait a minute, in my self-imposed isolation presumably to devote all his resources to making a lot of money. The net effect is he doesn't enjoy life. Sort of like Ebenezer Scrooge. He's removed himself and so the very thing that he wants to be able to enjoy in these golden years of his life, he can't. He says there's no one to enjoy it with him and this leaves him with a sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness in his life. What you see as the passage develops is that this kind of person who is isolated and alone is only hurting themselves and also hurting other people. How is he hurting himself? Well it says in verse 9, two are better than one because they have a good return for their work. Now any of you who are finance years can relate to this verse. Only I really think if you look at the context he doesn't want us to look at material return here. Why? Because the guy's already said that he's got lots of wealth. Why would you need another person to get more wealth? So he wants us to look beyond that at the return of life and see that life you may go through life and have a return. It may even seem in contrast to many other people a great return, materially, maybe in terms of your health. Any of the things that are status symbols in our culture as to getting a great return of life. And yet if you do so to the detriment of quality relationships in your life, you miss the return. The return, that's the idea. The return of full enjoyment of life making sense and having harmony. But he also hurts others, not just himself in this way. And this is what's articulated in verses 10 through 12. The picture here is of someone on a journey most likely. And whereas interestingly in our day, these days the most dangerous place to be is in the middle of a major metropolitan area. But not in the ancient world. That's where you were safest. It's when you journeyed out in the middle of nowhere on a road that you were most susceptible, you were most vulnerable to attack from thieves and the like. And so he gives three different scenarios in verses 10. It's the person who has fallen down and cannot get up. They can't pick themselves up. This reminds us. Of course, I don't even need to say this. But in all of these, these are pictures. These are to give us a window into the spiritual and relational realm. So the one who has fallen down and can't be picked up by himself is the person that maybe has a debilitating habit. They're addicted to something or someone and they cannot get beyond that on their own. Maybe it's a person who has had a paralyzing event in their life that has really coded their way of thinking about themselves and about life. And it's just cyclical. They cannot break out of it. There's no one to pick them up. There's 11 talks about another problem you have in traveling. And that is at night. You may have underestimated how cold it gets out of the desert. I grew up in the desert and you don't have an appreciation for this living in Houston because it's nearly as hot most of the year during the day as it is at night but vice versa. In the desert, it can be very hot during the day and it drops significantly in the evening and can become very cold. And you need to take that into account. Well, the traveler by himself may not have fully taken that into account. But if he had someone else, the body heat could have simply warmed the person. Now, just a little side note here, I do a lot of weddings. I've worked with college students and we have a congregation full of a lot of young people. And this is frequently picked as a passage for marriage. While that I think is a very fair application of this passage. Most commentators would say that even this verse is not restricted to marriage. I'm just talking about good companionship. And the picture here is of someone lying down and providing body heat to warm the person who has underestimated the cold of the night. The picture, though, is the person that has been shoved out into the wilderness of this world socially. And they are in the cold of the night feeling alone. And they need the warmth of human love to care for their cold. The third picture in verse 12 was one who is attacked and overpowered. The one may be overpowered too can defend themselves. And again, the picture that one on a journey could be ambushed by a band of gypsies or thieves. But if you had another person at least, and then he goes on to say that a cord of three strands is not quickly broken, that's saying, look, two is better than one and three is even better than two. The more people you have, the more opportunity you have to resist the attacks of those who are coming against you. The picture here is that life has lots of enemies that attack us. The world and our own flesh and even the unseen world of the devil. And when you're alone, you are more vulnerable. But with a brother or sister, with the body of Christ, there is help. And yet by this individual isolating themselves, they've hurt themselves and they've hurt other individuals. Now, how does modernity, how does the modern day in which we live exacerbate this problem several ways? First of all, the old, the good old American ethic of being self-sufficient, of being independent. I don't know how I think about these things. But do you remember Rudolph the Red and those Ryan Deere, the cartoon, remember Herbie? I'm independent. You know, that was to be seen as something very commendable. Yet isn't it true that we are very dependent people? And that doesn't mean that you have no ambition, no sense of being a leader. It just means that we are interconnected as human beings designed that way. There's also the difference between the ancient world and our day of moving from an agrarian to an industrialized and technologically driven culture. And in an agrarian society, if you think about it, the family was always together. This is just one aspect of it. But in the industrialized culture, daddy leaves home and goes off and works somewhere else. And maybe even now, mommy and daddy go off and works somewhere else. And so there is this sense of, there's a fractured element to the home. And we are just by nature of our vocation and having to commute for some of you long periods of time that accelerates the problem of isolation. And then there's also the communication and technology, I mean the element to this, that we are prone to thinking of ourselves as the most connected people, the world has ever known through emails, chat rooms, teleconferencing. I mean, you pick up the newspaper this morning and you see New York Times showed President Bush sitting there at Camp David with a few advisors and then other advisors on teleconferencing scattered all over the place. And yet there is an illusion to the, all of those technological advances that we are not nearly as connected as we would think we are. Why? Because technology provides a barrier, provides a cushion that that allows me to, to be only as vulnerable as I care to be, because with vulnerability comes risk, the risk of rejection. And so that distances that factor and creates the illusion there. The net result is what George Barnas says in his study last year that many people admit to lacking relational connections and meaning in life. Those are two factors that are critical to gaining joy and fulfillment in life, which is precisely what Ecclesiastes tells us. The common solution is to keep busy and to stimulate ourselves with a variety of new experiences. That way we are not so likely to feel the pain of those fundamental holes in our life. People have discovered that if they fill their gaps with commitments and excitement, then they will lose, then they are less prone to feel the emptiness of loneliness and aimlessness. Of course, that just prolongs the inner despair that eventually cannot be suppressed any longer. So that's the problem that the author of Ecclesiastes presents to us. What's the solution that the Bible gives? Well, this passage sort of hints at it, like the Old Testament does so frequently, that there is a better return waiting for you where there is community. We have to always remember how we use the Old Testament. The Scripture is written before Jesus is Christ. It's like when you're in the Old Testament, it's like you're in this magnificent room, a very beautiful room. But you've just woken up, maybe you had amnesia, and you don't know where you are. What home you're in. You're just in this beautiful room. You have to look out the window, and as you look out the window, it dawns on you during the White House. This must be the Lincoln bedroom, and all of a sudden the meaning and the richness of where you are takes on extraordinary value. We must take this passage as any in the Old Testament and look through it at what we find on the other end, the New Testament, the Holy Gospel, the good news about what Jesus Christ brings to there. What we see, of course, is that all relationships, every single relationship you have of the human being, emerges out of the relationship. Every relationship you and I have emerges out of the relationship. The man in Ecclesiastes was asking the question, who and why? Who is there that I can enjoy all this wealth with? And why am I depriving myself of the enjoyment that would accompany that? But the Bible teaches us that the who and the why question are answered in the relationship between the human being and their creator. The origin of the problem, of course, began in the beginning of the Bible. Even before the fall, God told Adam after he created him, without another human being, he said, it's not good that you're alone. And so he created the woman to be with him. But then immediately Adam and Eve rebelled. And you notice the contrast. Let me read to you what it said at the end of chapter two, right before the fall of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve says, the man and his wife were both naked and felt no shame. That is, there was harmony. There was complete understanding and vulnerability without risk. After the fall, after they sinned, it says, then the eyes of both of them were open. They realized they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. They hid themselves from the Lord God. And then as God confronted them, they resorted to blame shifting. So there's not much new under the sun as the author of Ecclesiastes would say. They moved and moved their entire race with them from ecstasy to astrangement, from adoration to accusation, from peace, shalom to pain. The picture you get throughout the Bible is that sin is inextricably tied to relationships. Sin separates us from our creator, that prime relationship and then from the other. It pushes us away. It's sort of like, this is probably an offensive picture to some of you, but it's sort of like bad breath. When you come up against someone with a sense of breath, it pushes you back. That's what sin does. It's foul. And it distances us from other individuals and our God. But the gospel is the incredible news. It means good news. It's the incredible news that though we have isolated ourselves voluntarily from God, he did not. Even though he could have and should have isolated himself permanently from us, he entered into our life, into our world. That the beautiful truth is that Jesus is the one who has stumbled across us as we have fallen down and are unable to get up. And he rescues us through his life, death and resurrection. Jesus is the one that sees us as cold and shivering in the night of the world and warms us by his gospel love. And he's the one that daily defends us against the enemies of our soul. Why do you think people have been so struck? This is an obvious question to many of you, but why is it that people have been so struck by the firefighters and police officers who went into the towers and gave their lives? I think it's because there is something in the human heart that is moved like little else moves it, that cries out for human beings to sacrifice themselves for the well-being of another. During the opening ceremonies at the first Astros game since the attack the other night, some of you saw the ceremonies, firefighters from Houston and police officers paraded onto the field, and I lost it when I saw the banner of the firefighters were carrying. Did you see that? On it was this quotation from the Gospel of John chapter 15 verse 13, greater love has no one than this that he laid down his life for his friends. You see, that's what Jesus Christ has done. We isolated ourselves from him, and then we were in the fix of eternity, doomed to perish, and he ran into our burning house, and rescued us, and gave himself for us, and in the process died. There is no greater love than that, and it's that love of friends that reunites us to him in the relationship that gives us the energy to move out of ourselves and make a grand difference in the world full of isolated people. We love, the apostle John said, because he loved us first, that chemical spiritual reaction in our heart gives us the ability and the desire to do what we want to do, but fail to do because we've distanced ourselves from other people. This church must be a place for isolated people. The people that society has cast aside should come in here and find the warmth and love and defense and support that Jesus Christ gives. We are the body of Christ, and as you and I increasingly look to that symbol that reminds us of his love for us, the cross, as that is listed high above us, it should be the daily reminder that we are the ones who were lost, who were caught in a pit, who were dead, and cold, without warmth, that we might be re-energized to take that love to those around us in need. Let's pray. May there be in each person in this room a maximization of the return of their life that as they move out of isolation into community that we all might enjoy fully the life you have ordained for us, and we know this emerges, Lord, and flourishes out of the beauty of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in his name we pray. Amen.