Single and Singularly Devoted to God

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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Like I did last week, I want to start with another story from church history, coincidentally also from Germany.

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On April 9, 1945, a theologian and a pastor by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I'm not sure if that name rings a bell for anyone, was executed at a concentration camp in Flossenburg, Germany.

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Just two weeks, can you think about this? Just two weeks before the Americans would swoop in and take control of the camp and liberate the prisoners,

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Bonhoeffer was escorted to the gallows and hung for conspiring to kill the leader of the

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Nazi party, the infamous Adolf Hitler. You see, unlike many Christians and Christian leaders in Germany at that time,

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Bonhoeffer was a fearless opponent of the Nazis and of their murderous regime.

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Even though Dietrich Bonhoeffer was, and I didn't know this actually as I was looking at his life, was at a safe teaching position in New York when

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Hitler took over. He was teaching at the Union Theological Seminary. When Bonhoeffer began to hear about all that was happening back in Germany, these troubling developments, he felt compelled to go back to Germany to stand up for what was good and for what was right.

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And about this move, he wrote this, he said, Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies.

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At the end, all his disciples deserted him. On the cross, he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers.

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For this cause, he had come to bring peace to the enemies of God.

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So the Christian too, he says, belongs not to the seclusion of a cloistered life, but in the thick of foes.

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And so that's exactly what Bonhoeffer did. He moved back to Germany, and there in the thick of foes, he preached, he ran an underground seminary that he called his

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Seminary on the Run. He wrote books. He served as a courier for the

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German resistance movement. And then during the latter part of his time in Germany, he met and fell in love with a young lady, also a very similar name to Martin Luther's wife.

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Her name was Maria von Wiedemeyer. And just two weeks after he proposed to Maria, he was arrested by the

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Nazis. He spent his remaining time in a concentration camp there. And at the age of 36, just as he found the love of his life, he was executed.

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Two weeks, if you think about this, two weeks after he proposed, he was arrested.

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Two weeks before he would have been released, he was executed. And so Bonhoeffer lived, as he said, in the thick of foes.

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He lived alone, he died alone. He was a man, I would like to think, acquainted with radical, risk -taking singleness for the glory of God.

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Now the reason I bring up this story is that I want to rely on something that Bonhoeffer said to help all of the single men and the single women in this room hear me out for the next 40 minutes.

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I was talking to someone last week, and they admitted to me that they find it very difficult to hear a married man talk about all of the benefits of singleness.

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And so I'm going to rely, I'm going to lean on something that Bonhoeffer said. And even Nicole and I were talking about it this week,

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I was reflecting on it. I have been married, or I've been in a committed relationship with my wife now for over half of my life.

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And I went back and thought about it. In terms of the number of days of experience that I have being a single man,

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I have seven days of singleness to my credit as an adult man.

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And so I'm probably the least experienced person in the whole room as it pertains to singleness.

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And this might be an obstacle for some people, I recognize that. But I want to quote, this is something that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote when he was a 33 -year -old, single man, just at the beginning of the

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Second World War. He said this, he said, The Christian, even the one who is single, needs another

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Christian who speaks God's word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged.

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For by himself he cannot help himself without belying, that means misrepresenting, the truth.

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He needs his brother as a bearer and a proclaimer of the divine word of salvation.

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So if you're like one of those people that I spoke with last week, that finds it hard to hear about singleness from a married man, at least hear it from this angle.

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Today I don't come to you as an expert on singleness. I simply come to you as a brother to speak the word of God to you.

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To bring the word of God. I'm not going to come with my opinions, but I'm going to come with the attributes of the scriptures, with the sufficient, the clear, the authoritative, the necessary, the inerrant words of God.

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And so even if you don't want to hear me, hear him as it relates to singleness.

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So this week we're looking at 1 Corinthians 7, verse 25. And as we've heard from what

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Lowell read, Paul is moving on from the topic of marriage and contentment to this issue of singleness, or as we see if you're looking at the

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ESV, betrothal. And this is what we find in our text. This is the big idea,

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I think, from our study. Here Paul, inspired by the Spirit of God, puts before us at least four encouragements.

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Four encouragements that I'm going to point out for the single and the unmarried Christian. And these four encouragements that Paul issues, it seems, he's done to maximize both the holiness and the happiness of this single

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Christian that he has in mind. So that's what we're going to look at today. And what I'm going to do, as a married man preaching about singleness, is

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I'm going to bring up some illustrations from church history, from ages past of single men and single women and how they lived their lives and how they reflected on their lives in service to God, even in the midst of their singleness.

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So I'm going to lean on some authorities outside of the Scripture just to lend some credibility to what it is that I'm trying to say as well.

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And so if you're single, I hope, I trust this is going to be good for you. Now if you're married, last week

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I said, if you're single, don't tune me out. If you're married now, don't tune me out. I'm looking at the married people in the room.

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It is very likely that for those of us who are married, if you look at your spouse, one of you is going to die before the other.

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Very rarely do both spouses die at the same time. And so it seems to me that at least amongst us married couples, some of us are going to be acquainted with singleness.

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And not only that, but all of us should be ready to encourage and to help and to understand some of the challenges of our single brothers and sisters.

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So pay attention. And kids, this also applies to you.

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You guys too are going to be in this situation at some point as well. And so pay attention. So this is what we're going to do.

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We're going to look at singleness according to Paul. Singleness according to God. So starting at verse 25,

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Paul says this. Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the

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Lord's mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is.

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Paul begins, if you look at verse 25, with that same expression, peri de, now concerning.

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The same expression that he used in verse 1 he now uses in verse 25. And what he's doing is he's addressing again part of or one of the elements of a letter that's come from the

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Corinthian church. He's answering this question about the betrothed. And that word betrothed is something that we're not that familiar with, but in the biblical sense it's essentially someone that is involved in a formal engagement, a legal engagement.

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But the word that Paul uses there for betrothed is actually a feminine Greek noun.

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It's the word parthenon, and it literally translates to mean virgins. I think it says that in the

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King James Version, that it refers to them specifically as virgins. And that word parthenon is used always to refer to single women of marriageable age in the

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Bible. The only time it talks about men with that same word is Revelation 14 .4. And so it seems here that Paul is addressing this issue or this idea of these single marriageable women.

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And he says, I give my judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy.

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What does that mean? Does that mean that this doesn't belong in the Bible? Does this mean that this is not inspired words from God?

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I think what Paul is doing here is the same thing. If we look back, I didn't point it out last week, but in verse 10 where he says, to the married

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I give this charge, not I, but the Lord. And in verse 12 he says, to the rest

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I say, I, not the Lord. All Paul is getting at here is that he's not saying this is not inspired

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Scripture. It doesn't belong in the Bible. He's simply saying that there are some things that Jesus Christ during his earthly life and ministry taught.

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He taught about issues of divorce, but he did not necessarily teach about issues related to virgins or to the betrothed.

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But he says, I think in view, sorry, but by the Lord's mercy, it is trustworthy.

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It's reliable. It's something that we should pay attention to. And he says this,

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I think that in view of the present distress, it's good for a person to remain as he is. Now, if you were paying attention last week and we looked at chapter seven in verse one where he says, it's good for a man, or sorry, but because of temptation, the sexual and of sexual temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife.

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You might wonder is Paul schizophrenic here? He said, because of this temptation, everyone should get married.

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And now here in verse 25, he's saying that people should remain as they are. What's going on here?

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Why is Paul getting at this? And if we look at verse 26, I think that holds the key. He says,

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I think that in view of the present distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is.

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So if you're familiar with the historical and cultural context of where Paul is going here, historians think that Paul could be referencing a couple of things.

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There was a famine in Greece in AD 51 and 52, right here where the

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Corinthians were, probably right here when Paul was writing this letter, and it was creating large scale food shortages amongst that part of Greece.

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It's also possible that there was impending persecution. This was around the same time that people were saying of Paul and some of the other

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Christians, they're turning the world upside down. If you remember from the very first study that we did in 1

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Corinthians, Paul is probably writing from Ephesus, and it was in Ephesus that there were these massive riots that were rising up against Christians and their teachers.

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Great is Artemis of the Ephesians, if you remember them chanting that in Acts 19. So it could be a famine, it could be persecution, it could be some other kind of distress, but regardless of the circumstances,

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Paul says here that singleness is more advantageous during times of hardship.

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He says in verse 28, those who marry will have worldly troubles and I would spare you of that.

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You see some of the mercies of Paul. He doesn't get into it in detail, but he's saying I want to spare you the difficulty of having a family in the midst of persecution, in the midst of famine, in the midst of whatever this is that we're talking about.

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And if you're taking notes, this is the first encouragement that I want to point out for our single brothers and sisters.

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I'm kind of using the same form as we go through it. It's this. Seize this opportunity.

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Seize your singleness. I'm not going to tell you how good it is to be single. I'm going to tell you how to live in light of your singleness.

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Seize this opportunity to serve Christ wholeheartedly, especially during times of great difficulty.

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So recognize this. As a single man or a single woman, you have a unique ability at this very moment in your life, all you brothers and sisters, to serve

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Christ with a whole heart and without hindrance during times of trial and when the stakes are high.

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So in one sense, your worldly troubles are minimized to some degree, Paul says, because your responsibilities are different.

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Now let me explain. You might go, how does that really work? I have family. I have a job.

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I have commitments. How is it that I don't have worldly troubles? I think the other parents in the room are going to find this helpful or at least humorous.

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But in my household, if it isn't the dead of winter, it's minus 35, the wind is howling, the snow is blowing past the door, and there is an imminent crisis, and we need to get out of the house in the next 10 minutes, in the next 15 minutes.

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I'll tell you where you're going to find our bodies. You're going to find our bodies about 10 feet away from the nearest exit, probably close to the boot closet, because if you've had children, you know that getting out of the house in 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 20 minutes in a snowstorm or even on a warm day seems very difficult.

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As families, we just move slower. It seems that the more that we add people to the mix, the more we add difficulty to the mix.

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We add trouble to the mix. It's a silly example, but what I'm trying to point out is this, that as you multiply, as you add, it adds responsibility.

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And not only that, but in times of great difficulty, one of the best situations you can be in is in a situation when you just need to look after yourself right now.

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You just need to get out alive. You need to move. You need to do whatever it is that you need to do. I think about Francis Bacon, something he said.

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It's so true. He said, children sweeten labors. They make life sweet, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

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Few things make me happier than my family is happy, and few things make me more distressed, bring me more pain than when

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I see my family suffer. And Paul says that at least for the moment, remaining single spares you from this trouble.

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It removes the encumbrances. It lightens your load. You get to travel light as a single man or a single woman.

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A single man or woman has increased capacity for risk -taking service to God.

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You have a certain kind of flexibility, what I call ability and agility, that will almost immediately vanish as soon as you get married.

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As soon as you get married, it's gone. And so like Dietrich Bonhoeffer with his seminary on the run, you can serve on the run.

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So whether it's a pandemic or a famine or a persecution, or maybe if the

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Lord calls you to missionary service somewhere overseas in a hostile country, God has given you something.

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He's given you something that married people do not have or no longer have.

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You may not see it this way, but God has given you a gift in your singleness. I think sometimes when we think about gifts, the gift of singleness, we think about it like a spiritual gift, right?

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It's this permanent thing. You have the gift of singleness or you don't. But maybe it's possible that God has given you the temporary gift of singleness, even for this time.

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If we look back in chapter seven, at verse seven, Paul says this in relation to being single.

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He says, I wish that all were as I myself am, but each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

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And so Paul seems to imply here that to be single, even temporarily, is

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God's gift for you in this moment. If we look at what

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Christ said, he speaks in very similar language in Matthew chapter 19, speaking about eunuchs in Matthew 19, 10, beginning in verse 10, he says this, or I should say, it starts this way.

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His disciples say, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.

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This is in response to Christ's teaching on divorce and singleness, or divorce and the permanence of marriage, excuse me.

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But Jesus said this to them. He said, not everyone can receive this saying, but only to those whom it is given.

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It was given, for there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

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Let the one who is able to receive this, receive it. And so the reality is singleness is a gift, whether you like it or not, that at least for the moment in time,

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I exhort you, I encourage you to humbly receive from the sovereign hand of difficulty.

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It's a gift to leverage in times of difficulty. When I was thinking about this, a person came to my mind that exemplifies what it means to be single and to serve

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God during hardship. Has anyone ever heard of David Brainerd? Does that name ring a bell? Okay.

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David Brainerd lived in the 1700s, in the early 1700s, and he was, he grew up in kind of the

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New World, Northeastern United States, and he went to, I believe it was

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Yale, and he was kicked out of Yale for criticizing one of his teachers.

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He said, I think he said that they had less grace than a chair, something to that effect.

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And it was reported to the dean and he was expelled from Yale. And so he could never go on to live this life that he had always pictured

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God had made him for. And so instead, he went to serve as a missionary amongst the tribes in that Northeastern United States, the

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Stockbridge, Delaware, and Susquehanna tribes. And he remained single for his entire young life, but he used this gift to serve

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God and to bring the light of the gospel to a people that had absolutely no knowledge of the gospel in that time.

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And if he didn't keep careful journals, we would know absolutely nothing about David Brainerd, but thankfully he did.

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And in his journals, we find a man who was continually on the move.

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He went from one village to the next on horseback or on foot. And he was a man really of peculiar holiness.

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When you think about someone who is committed to the Lord, you hear stories about him going to villages and preaching the gospel.

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And there were these immature believers amongst the, you know, what they were called, the American Indians at that time.

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And they were weeping and they were saying, we just wish that we could die so that we wouldn't sin again.

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And David Brainerd tells a story in his journal of one time when he climbed, he was on his travels and he felt the urge to pray.

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And he got down on his knees in a snowbank and closed his eyes and began to pray and lost track of time.

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And when he opened his eyes, because of the heat of his body, all the snow around him had melted. He had been in the snow so long praying.

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That was David Brainerd. But he endured great hardship as a single man.

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And he saw that as his calling. He said this in one of his journal entries. He said, I cared not where or how

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I lived or what hardships I went through so that I could but gain souls for Christ.

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There are very few men that can't care about hardships or where they live or how they live.

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But that's how David Brainerd could live as a single man. He said, while I was asleep, I dreamed of the things, of these things.

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And when I awoke, the first thing that I thought of was this great work of gaining souls to Christ.

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All my desire was for the conversion of the heathen and all my hope was in God.

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And so David Brainerd, this single young man, poured himself into God's service, knowing that God had given him a gift, opened a door for him to live exactly how he needed to live, to live on meager rations, to sleep on the ground underneath his horse, to do whatever he needed to do to bring the gospel to these people.

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And David Brainerd died of tuberculosis when he was 29 years of age. But because of his journal entries, his good friend,

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Jonathan Edwards, you might have heard of Jonathan Edwards, one of the last American Puritans. He's become one of the most influential

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Christian missionaries since the Apostle Paul. So if you look at a list, I'm not sure how many people here know a lot about the history of world missions, but if you look at the list of all the people that were inspired to go onto the mission field because of David Brainerd, it reads like a who's who of world missions.

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On that list we see people like Robert Murray McShane, David Livingston, Andrew Murray, Jim Elliott, and you remember

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Jim Elliott and his fellow missionaries that died in Ecuador, and then even

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William Carey, who they consider the father of modern missions. All of these people were inspired by David Brainerd to bring the gospel, to use

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Brainerd's words, to the heathen. Few married men could live like David Brainerd did.

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God used a single man, essentially, to change the face of world missions.

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And I would like to ask you, what risks is God calling you to?

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What risks, yes, what risk is God calling you to as you live a single life? What can you do now that you can't do when you're married?

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Paul continues in verse 29. He says this, this is what I mean, brothers. The appointed time has grown very short.

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From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none.

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And those who mourn, as though they were not mourning. And those who rejoice, as though they were not rejoicing.

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And those who buy, as though they had no goods. And those who deal with the world, as though they had no dealings with it.

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For the present form of this world, he says, is passing away.

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What Paul has in mind here is the second coming of Christ. So he's dealt with the hardship, the distress that they're dealing with.

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And now he's going to address the second coming. The present form of this world, he says, is passing away.

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And the gravity of this inevitable event should thrust us forward with a sense of urgency in our serving

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God. And this is a theme that we see all through the New Testament. If you think about it, all of these warnings that the end is coming, that the end is in sight, and so live in light of that reality.

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In 1 John 2 .18, John says this, children, it is the last hour.

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In Romans 13 .11, Paul says to the Romans there, he says, besides this you know that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

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He writes, the night is far gone, the day is at hand, so then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

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Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the

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Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desire.

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I think about that line that he says there, so often, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

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Christ's coming is nearer to us now than when we opened this service. Christ's coming is going to be nearer to us now at the end of this service than when

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I'm speaking. In 2 Peter 3, Peter writes there in verse 10, but the day of the

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Lord will come like a thief in the night, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

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Then he says, Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, since the world is passing away, to use

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Paul's language, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?

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The coming of Christ should not only be a source of future hope, both for singles and for married couples.

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It isn't just a source of hope, but it's a source of motivation to serve the

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Lord, to be holy as He is holy. Hear what Paul's saying in verses 29 -31, is that the reality of Christ's imminent return should have a profound impact on our lives, on the way that we live and how we live.

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One commentator writes this, he says, The day -to -day affairs of this world are not eternal.

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The world as we know it is not going to go on forever. As much as we like it or as much as we don't like it, it's not going on forever.

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He says this, But passing away, Christians should prioritize their lives accordingly.

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And so what this means, as Paul points out, is that we should have an eternal perspective.

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This eternal perspective that informs our marriages. It informs the way that we relate to our wives.

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It informs the way that we relate to our husbands. It informs the way that we mourn. We don't mourn as those who have no hope.

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It informs the way that we rejoice. It informs the way that we buy things. Paul says,

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In our dealings with the world, how we use the things of this world. And so my second encouragement as part of this is, single brothers and sisters, seize this opportunity to live fully in light of eternity.

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I was thinking about it this week. One of the most precious commodities in all of the world.

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Maybe I'll ask the kids. Kids, what do you think the most precious, do you guys know what a commodity is?

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Maybe thing. What's the most precious thing in all the world?

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God? Yeah, God is. I'm thinking God is even outside of this world. He's above this world.

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He's beyond this world. I'll tell you what. The most precious commodity in all the world.

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It's not money. It's not houses. It's not clothes. It's not cars.

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It's not gold. It's hard for me to say this, but it's not even books. It's not even books.

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The most precious commodity in all the world and in your life, outside of God, is time.

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It's time. With every passing hour, this world and everything in it is passing away.

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And so is our opportunity to fully and faithfully serve

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God with all of our lives. James asks, in James 4, verse 14, he says, what is your life?

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Kids, what do you think the answer is? He asked that question, what is your life? He says, it's not a tree.

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It's not a stone. It's not even a puddle. He says, what is your life? Your life is a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

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We're here, and then we're gone. Our life is but a breath.

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And brothers and sisters, our time is short. Every hour that we have left in this life is priceless.

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It's of inestimable value. I'm sure that if we were to track down, it sounds like a weird project, but if we were to track down every wealthy man and wealthy woman in the world and find them on their deathbed, if we could trade them all of their fortune for time, almost all of them would take it.

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All the money in all the world can never buy us more time.

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But if you're a single person right now, I know you don't believe me. You really don't.

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I'm not well -versed in singleness, but I can tell you I'm well -versed in marriage and in parenting.

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You have more time now than you could ever. It's like Scotiabank.

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You're richer than you think. You're richer than you think. And too often what happens is you get to the point where you're married and you have a family, and you look back and you say,

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I wasted that all. I wasted it on TV.

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I wasted that on hobbies. You have a whole new host of things to waste your time on. The world and social media and a million other things is monetizing your time.

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Give us your time so that we can make money off of it. But Paul says that this cannot be.

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We cannot be undisciplined with our time. I'm single man and woman. You cannot be undisciplined in the way that you spend your hours and your minutes and your days.

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Our time is too short. It's too short to be captivated by the fleeting pleasures of the world.

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John writes this in 1 John 2. He says, Do not love the world or the things in the world.

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This is in verse 15. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

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For all that is in the world, this is what they're marketing, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life, that's a business plan today, is not from the

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Father but is from the world. And the world, John says, is passing away along with its desires.

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But whoever does the will of God abides forever. So brothers and sisters, single men and women, how are you using your time?

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Would you classify it as a disciplined use of time? Or are you wasting your time?

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To my married brother and my married sisters, how are you using your time?

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Are you living in light of eternity? To borrow from Paul's illustration, if we go to Romans chapter 3, where he talks about building out of gold and silver and precious stones and wood and hay and straw.

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Are you building with your time out of precious stones and of gold and of silver and of stone?

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Or is everything that you're building with your time going to be burnt up when it is tested by fire?

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Will it be a complete loss? When Nicole and I were younger, I remember that we used to have to go to the bank to re -sign our mortgage or to open up a new account or do something like this.

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And there was this one financial advisor, I don't know if you can remember this, this one financial advisor that at these appointments would always hound us about RSPs.

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It doesn't matter how young you are, get an RSP, save for your retirement.

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I remember she would say, try to compel us, it will pay off if you just start when you're young.

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I have nothing against RSPs, but I'm going to give you even better advice than that lady at the bank.

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While you're young, start storing up treasure in heaven.

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While you have youth, serve God, be disciplined with your resources, be disciplined with your opportunities.

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Think and pray, what do I need to say yes to? What do I need to say no to?

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Be disciplined with your time and with your attention during this season of life that God has given you.

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Approach singleness with a stewardship mentality. If I were to give you $100 and say,

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I need you to do some official church business with that $100, you would likely treat that very fearfully.

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You would have a sense of stewardship. I need to make sure that I spend this rightly, I need to keep the receipts.

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God has given you much more than $100. $100 can't buy an hour of your time.

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God has given you a life to live. Don't take what God has given you and bury it in the ground.

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Invest it, invest it.

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Go and glorify God. Keep an eternal perspective. I think about the exhortations in scripture, do not work for food that perishes, but for food that endures to eternal life.

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Think about Christ's words in Matthew 620, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.

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The decisions that you make today regarding your time and your money and your priorities will pay dividends.

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You're creating patterns, even now. It's going to pay dividends in this life, to some extent, and massive returns in the life to come.

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Amy Carmichael. I've used a male example of singleness. I'm going to use a female example of singleness.

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In December 1867, Amy Carmichael was born in Belfast, Ireland. She was the oldest of seven children, and when she was about 16 years of age, she came to faith in Christ.

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She saw that he was the savior of the world and found forgiveness in him. And very early on in her life, she began serving the poor, the most poor and destitute people.

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And even though her family themselves were quite poor, at one point they declared bankruptcy. Even as they moved around from place to place, everywhere that she went, she found a people to serve.

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And one day she became convinced that God was calling her to the mission field. And so she started in Japan.

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And there in Japan, she was serving God all alone. And she came to this day when she just had, she came to her breaking point.

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She says this, one day she went to a cave to seek God alone in prayer.

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She writes, I had feelings of fear about the future. That was why

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I went there, to be alone with God. And Amy recounts how she felt.

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She said, she felt as if the devil kept whispering, it's all right now, speaking about her singleness, about her being alone.

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It's all right now, but what about afterwards? You're going to be very lonely.

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That played over and over in her mind. And she said, it's as if the devil painted a picture of loneliness that she could still see well into her adult years, well into her aged life.

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And she said, I turned to God in a kind of desperation and said, Lord, what can

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I do? How can I go to the end? As if to say, how can I be alone forever?

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And then the words of her King James Bible in Psalm 34, 22 came to her mind. None of them that trust in me shall be desolate.

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None of them that trust in God, even if you're single for all of your life, will be desolate.

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And for all of her single life, Amy Carmichael said she held onto those words when she felt lonely.

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I trust in him. He will not leave me to be desolate. She held onto those words and then she served

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God as a single woman. After a time in Japan, she moved to India where she gave herself this little woman from Ireland to preaching the gospel amongst the

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Indian people. She rescued little children from slavery. They were bound to be prostitutes at the temples and they would take these children away and take care of them in hostels.

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She established hospitals to care for the sick. And then in the last 20 years of her life,

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I don't know how old she was, but she became severely injured. She injured her ankle somehow and there was other illness.

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And she spent the last 20 years of her single life until she passed away in bed.

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Total bed rest. Imagine kids being in bed for 20 years. That would be really tiring, right?

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Well, during that 20 years that Amy Carmichael was in bed, she wrote 37 books, almost two books a year for the last 20 years of her life.

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And countless poems. One of the poems that she wrote was this. Think about this as it concerns this idea.

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All that grieves is but for a moment. All that pleases is but for a moment.

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Only the eternal is important. Another writing on that bed.

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She wrote this. She said, We have all eternity to celebrate the victories, but only a few hours before sunset to win them.

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We'll move on to verse 32. I better turn my page.

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In verse 32, Paul says, I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the

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Lord, how to please the Lord, but the unmarried man, sorry, the married man is anxious about the worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided.

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And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit, but the married woman is anxious about the worldly things, how to please her husband.

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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

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Lord. Here Paul wants single men and women to be freed from the anxiety of married life, freed from the anxiety of family life.

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And he says here that being free from marriage does this.

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It frees you up, in verse 32, to please the Lord. It frees you up, in verse 34, to have undivided interests.

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It frees you up, in verse 34 again, to be holy in body and in spirit.

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In verse 35 he says it frees you up to undivided devotion.

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This is the third encouragement I want to give you. Seize the opportunity to live a life of undivided devotion to God.

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What Paul is talking about here, when he says devotion to God, when he uses that term holy in body and in spirit, he's talking about this sanctified life.

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You could call it the consecrated life. A life given to seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness of living for God with all of your might.

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God has freed you up at this moment. It's not an accident that you're single right now.

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And the reason why he has freed you up right now to be single is to live for him all the way.

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Sold out, pedal to the metal. So much of this world,

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I don't know if you think about singleness culture in the world, but so much of the world tacitly assumes that singleness equals selfishness.

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When you're single, you think about it, right? When you're single, you get to sleep in. You determine how late you stay up.

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You determine how late you get to sleep in. You determine your leisure. You determine your recreation.

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You determine whatever it is. And I read an article. I just wanted to read what people were saying, the benefits.

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As I'm coming from a biblical perspective, the benefits or the blessings, maybe the promises or encouragements towards singleness.

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I wanted to see what the world said about the benefits of singleness. One of the articles I read said this.

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Being single frees you up to have time to focus on yourself. Being free gives you time to explore new hobbies.

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Being free gives you time to have, or time and ability to have promiscuous sex.

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Being single gives you extra time for shopping. It gives you extra time to redesign your house and this whole list of other things.

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And Paul's mind, in Paul's mind, the assumption is not that singleness equals selfishness.

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It's not that singleness equals me and my desires, but that singleness equals holiness.

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That singleness equals devotion. Singleness equals having hours available to read and to study the

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Bible. Singleness means freedom to serve others. To serve others in the church and in the family and friends.

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To serve your parents, to serve your grandparents. Singleness in young adulthood means you get to give the best and the brightest and the most energetic of your days to serving

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God without restraint. I don't know if anyone here likes the book of Ecclesiastes, but the author of Ecclesiastes writes this in chapter 12, verse 1.

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He says, remember also your Creator in the days of your youth. Remember your

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Creator when you're young and when you can live on five hours of sleep without a massive headache the next day.

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Remember your Creator when you have time. Singleness gives us the time and the space to seek

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God and to know Him. This next passage from Isaiah 56 is not a flattering one because it speaks about eunuchs.

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I'm not saying there are any eunuchs here, but I want you to grasp the principle here. In Isaiah 56, verse 4,

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Isaiah says, For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant,

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I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters.

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I will give them an everlasting name that shall never be cut off.

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Singleness gives you a chance to seek God and to know Him so that when you meet that person in the world, perhaps that God has for you, you're ready, you're solid, you know the

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Word of God, you've studied it, you've memorized it, you know the God of the Word. If ever there was a single person who modeled undivided devotion to God better than anyone else in all the world, it was our

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Lord Jesus Christ. He went before you in your singleness.

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It was Christ who said, Here I am, I have come to do your will,

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O God. It was Jesus Christ who lived and died for the glory of God. It was Jesus Christ, a single man, who was tempted in all things.

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Young men, Jesus Christ, a single man who was tempted in all things and yet was without sin.

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It was Jesus Christ who set his face to Jerusalem knowing what waited for him. It was

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Jesus Christ in John chapter 17, verse 19 that said, For their sake, that's for the sake of the church,

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I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth.

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It was Jesus Christ with an eternal perspective who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.

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He went to the cross for you that you'd be freely justified and only freely justified but freed to live not for yourselves but for him, for him with all of your might.

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The last encouragement I want to give in verse 36 is this. Paul says, If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly towards his betrothed, if his passions are strong and it has to be, let him do as he wishes, let them marry.

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This last encouragement is seize the opportunity to be married if God provides. Paul tells us in verse 38 that he who marries his betrothed does well.

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Paul repeatedly stresses this. If we look back at the text in verse 28, for instance, he says,

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But if you do marry, you have not sinned. And if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned.

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We talked about this at length last week. So I'm not going to go into great detail. But I just want to give you a couple of principles just to maybe refresh our memories about it.

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In verse 39, Paul says, A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives.

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But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes. So just remember, as you're looking, that permanence of marriage, you want to find that man or that woman that you're going to be with forever.

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And then he says this, To whom she wishes, only in the

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Lord. I think the NIV translates that he must belong to the

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Lord, which maybe is a bit of an overspeak there, but essentially says what

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Paul is getting at. When you marry, marry that person that's in the Lord. Marry that person that has that same mindset as you, that sees these texts like this, and says,

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I want to serve God. I want to know Him. I want to walk with Him all of my life.

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So I'll conclude with this. God's commandments are not burdensome.

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His commandments are never burdensome. His Word is never burdensome. The same God that inspired this text is the same

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God that will empower you to obey Him according to this text.

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And so when you encounter difficulty, when you encounter discouragement, come back to this text.

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How am I to live? How am I to live in light of my singleness? Or if you come across someone else, another single person that's discouraged, remind them.

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Go back to 1 Corinthians 7. This is the benefit. This is the gift that God has called us to now.

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And then remind yourself. Remind yourself of the whole cloud of witnesses that have gone before you.

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The Bonhoeffers, and the Brainerds, and the Carmichaels. Remind yourself of that cloud of witnesses.

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But remind yourself, too, of the witness of Jesus Christ. I said already,

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He has gone before you in your singleness. He's not only acquainted with your temptations,

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He's not only sympathetic of your weaknesses, but He has gone before you.

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And brothers and sisters, He is sufficient. He is sufficient. It's not like Jerry Maguire, where a man or a woman completes another man or woman.

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There's no one in this world that is going to complete you. The only one that will complete you is the

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Lord Jesus Christ. I'll finish off with this quote from Sam Alberry. He's the guy that wrote that book that I was talking about.

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He says, if marriage shows us the shape of the gospel, we get to see the gospel acted out in marriage.

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He says this, singleness shows us its sufficiency. The gospel is sufficient for your singleness.