The Shadows of Shame & Loneliness

Reading

Genesis 2:25 NIV

Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Genesis 3:6–8 (NIV)

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Introduction

I want to once again say that we are building our messages one on top of the other. If you were not here for our very first gathering, it is so important that you hear that message. It really sets the tone for all other messages in our group time.

You can listen to these messages on Apple or Spotify podcast.

With that, let’s go all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

Text

Here in the text we see that God created Adam, Eve, and a garden for them to care for. The garden was a place that represented God’s perfect ecosystem, where God communed with man. Man cared for his wife. Together they populated the earth. They had dominion over God’s creation and this was a microcosm of God’s perfect order here on this earth.

I want you to think about these words - they were naked and they felt no shame.

Of all of the feelings that Adam and Eve were free from, God inspires the writer to put the word shame in text.

What is it about shame that was worth writing down, and why is it a shadow that we have to fight against?

Shame

Let me first tell you what shame is not so that you can properly understand what it is. Shame is not guilt.

Guilt is a symptom of shame, but it is not shame. You feel guilty as a result of shame, but guilt is what is produced by shame.

So what is shame?

Shame is the sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with me.

If you have ever been through something that was difficult or a hardship; shame is thinking that what you went through is because something is intrinsically wrong with you.

If you were abused as a child shame will make you think that you were abused because you are a bad person.

That is shame.

If you have gone through a divorce, shame will make you believe that you are an unloveable person.

If you have been doing things behind your parents back quietly and in secret, shame will make you think that you are a dirty person.

That is what shame does. It causes you to internalize a feeling that you are broken. You are damaged. You are a person that no one could love. You were a child that was unworthy of a father. You were a person that was not meant for education.

And what happens after that belief gets into the core of who you are is living in a shadow of shame, with all that unhealthy repercussions that come with that shame.

Why Don’t He Want Me?

I want to show you what shame can do to a person.

In this scene that we are about to watch a son has been reunited with his absent father. A father who has been out of his son’s life for 15 years suddenly shows up and promises his son to take a trip together and make up for lost time. When it was time for the father and son to leave, the father suddenly drops his son once again and his son has to pick up the pieces of his Dad once again walking out the door.

[MOVIE CLIP]

OK, that’s a hard one to watch.

But for some of you, it’s been even harder to live.

You’ve felt the sting of rejection and you took something that was done to you, and believed the lie that it was your fault that it happened.

You believed that someone else’s brokenness was somehow caused by you, and shame has led you to believe that you were the problem.

Shame Causes Chaos

Let’s go deeper men…

If shame takes a foothold in your life, here is what will happen next. Shame will cause chaos. It will take all that is beautifully created and ordered, and turn it into chaos and disintegration.

Let’s look back at the garden. It was the perfect environment before shame came in. Once shame came in man and woman hid themselves from God. That is the symptom of guilt. The Bible says that their eyes were opened.

What were they opened to?

They were opened to the opposite of what is beautiful, creative and ordered.

Their eyes were opened to sin, anti-creation and disorder.

Shame is a corrosive force against the creative order of God. It is anti-creation.

What we see in the garden story is that when shame had separated Adam and Eve from God, a sacrifice was made in the garden to cover their shame. God performed the first sacrifice for the atonement of their sin and he took the skins of the animal that was sacrificed for them and he covered them.

And in the larger story of God’s plan for humanity, Jesus became the sacrifice for our sins. He gave his life to remove the sting of sin so that our relationship with our God would be restored.

What does that mean for you?

Shame has been broken. Shame has been defeated. Shame does not have power over you.

Juneteenth

But Pastor, if I’m free from shame, why do I still feel it?

I want you to think the Juneteenth for a moment. On June 19th, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston Texas to announce to the Western Confederate States that all people living in slavery had been emancipated.

They were emancipated 2 years earlier… but news had not yet arrived to them yet. They lived 2 years under slavery even though they were already freed.

And there are a lot of men living in the shadow of shame even though the savior has already died for them and has freed them from the grip of shame.

So I want to speak this into this room, and I want you to get this into your spirit right now.

You are not supposed to carry shame.

You have been freed from shame, and it’s time for you to start living like you are!

The Shadow of Loneliness

Now, there’s a second shadow that we have to expose because they are ugly cousins who like to play together.

Loneliness.

It’s a different shadow, but it locks arms with shame, and we can overcome the both of these with the same solution so lets expose loneliness for one moment.

I know that you think there’s no way loneliness is a legit shadow, but here’s what you need to understand.

Loneliness can be strong predictor for illness and death.

When people are lonely, sleep doesn’t restore them.

Lonely people are at an increased risk of dying of heart disease, cancer, or a stroke.

We opened up our message talking about Adam AND Eve.

God looked and saw that it was not good for man to be alone.

Too many men are dying in the shadow of loneliness.

Loneliness is unhealthy solitude. It is unordered isolation.

And so we men, need to return to the order of God. We need to find our identity in Christ. We need to pursue the call of God in our life. We need to find a wife to love and to serve and to protect. And we need to raise children to know God.

This is how we push back against the cultural moment that we are in right now!

Did you know there are parts of our country that have more dog parks than they do parks for kids? Places like Seattle have literally deconstructed the family unit, and applaud their neighbors for not having kids.

Men we need to return to the plan of God.

But, the loneliness that I am talking about tonight is the absence of a brotherhood. Men, you need community beyond your wife. You need men to sit with.

Escapism

In the scriptures we read about men who sit at the gates of the city. That phrase, “at the gates of the city,” is a reference to a time when men would leave their house and live in brotherhood. It was healthy, God-centered, and God-ordered masculinity that looked after the affairs of the city. Men who would come together to stand in the gap for the needs of the city.

Earlier this year I had the chance to go to Washington DC with my son and step into history. We stepped into the homes of people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. We stood on the fields where men fought and shed blood for their country. Men of courage. Men of honor.

These were a brotherhood.

I was so moved learning about our nations early political figures. In those days there were no such thing as a “Career Politician.” If you were a gentlemen, which means if you had money because you owned and operated a business, you were expected to serve in congress. You were expected to make a difference. That was your higher calling in life now that you had enough resources to not have to work.

Let me read to you the ages of the men, the brotherhood, who were behind the American Revolution.

James Monroe 18

Aaron Burr 20

Alexander Hamilton 21

James Madison 25

Thomas Jefferson 33

John Adams 40

Paul Revere 41

George Washington 44

We’ve got men in their 20’s who still don’t want to get a drivers license and move out of their Mom’s basement.

What happened to the courage of our men? What happened to strength of our brotherhood? Where have all the good men gone?

I’ll tell you where… Men are lonely because they are distracted.

Distracted by:

Smartphones - We are so consumed by the pocket computer that we rarely look up at the world that is around us and the world that is passing us by.

TV Screens - Men are being sucked into shows that are designed to be addictive and they will binge watch episodes. We’ve lost our ability to wait.

Windshields - This is a bit different, I know, but what I mean by this is too many men take the best of themselves to the office in the morning, and by the time they get home from sitting in a one hour commute they are a shell of the man that their wife and children need.

So men, we have to stay present to our families and we have to stay present to other men in our life.

Vulnerability - Our Cure

So what is the fix Ps Josh? How do we overcome the shadow of loneliness and the shadow of shame?

The answer is two fold, you need a brotherhood of men that you can be vulnerable with.

You see the way to defeat the shadow of shame is to bring it into the light of God’s word. Men, you need other men to talk to. You need people in your life to be vulnerable with. And, while this is happening you are also pushing back against the shadow of loneliness.

A brotherhood gives way to vulnerability, and vulnerability gives was to freedom.

What I’m about to say is going to feel controversial, but stay with me… Religion does not replace a brotherhood.

I’ll just go to church, and I”ll serve on the team, and I’ll make every event! But Pastor don’t ask me to do life with other people.

My friend, James said it this way, “Confess your faults to one another so that you will be healed.”

Religion void of relationship is a counterfeit to God’s design of community.

God Delights In You - Conclusion

The story of Mephibosheth.

It is a picture of how our God picks us up when we have been dropped by others, and he now seats us where we belong. Together, at the King’s table.