Proverbs 17:17

Discussion Questions

1. When you hear statistics indicating that 12% of Americans report having “no friends”, or that in 2021 the average person reported spending 3.5 hours/week doing things with friends … do you find these numbers surprising? Concerning?
2. What would it look like for you, this week, to introduce some vulnerability to a relationship with someone who’s already a good friend?
3. What risks to “deep friendships” do you see in your life, that might work to make friends difficult to find or nurture? What are some specific things you can to do mitigate these risk factors
4. During this coming week, what can you do to remind yourself to look for opportunities to express friendship to others, by reflecting the love from our relational Lord & Savior?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, and this Sunday is no different. So, if you would like a hardback copy, go ahead and raise your hand and somebody will be around to hand one out to you. And I’m really excited to be leading us in our time in the Word this morning. And before we start, I don’t have many opportunities to speak to all of you at one time, and I just want to let you all know that I love you all so deeply, so deeply. Thank you for this morning. It is a privilege to be able to serve all of you, so thank you for allowing me to do it.

We have been doing a study on the Book of Proverbs for the last four weeks entitled “The Wisdom and the Ways of God,” and I have benefited from it so much. And there’s really three reasons why I have benefited from it personally. One, this is God’s Word and it’s such a delight to dive deeper into it, no matter what book of the Bible we’re studying. The second reason is that I haven’t done many deep dives into the Book of Proverbs on a Sunday morning. So, it has been really impactful for me to learn about wisdom that has lasted for generations and will continue to last on into generations.

And the third reason, and this is by far the most important one, is because I am really dumb, and Lord knows I need a lot of wisdom in my life. Now there’s two different things you may have thought when I just said that. The first is you may have wanted to shout at the top of your lungs: “Amen!” because you have firsthand experience of my stupidity in this life. I think I could actually hear my parents all the way back from North Carolina shouting amen as well. But the other thing you may have been tempted to think is, “Oh, Ryan’s just being hyperbolic and humble. He’s not that dumb.” And what I want to do is share with you a story that proves that no, it really is that bad. The curse is deep.

So back in high school during freshman year, we had to take chemistry and I was terrible at it. I was never really good at math or science. And after four years of taking classes, I don’t think I improved at all. But though I wasn’t good at chemistry, I loved the chemistry lab. Here’s why I loved chemistry lab: if you finished the lab early, you just got to hang out with your friends. And so, we were completely incentivized to rush through these labs as fast as we possibly could. So about halfway through the year, my friend and I managed to become lab partners, which was awesome. We always had a ton of fun. We both were committed to doing it as quickly as we could. And there was one day during a lab when our teacher was explaining what we were doing that we just were not paying attention at all. We were like off in the corner talking, not thinking about anything our teacher was saying, probably talking about what we’re going to do with all of our free time at the end of class.

And finally, it was time to start the lab. So, everybody went to their own individual tables and our teacher told us, “Okay, you are free to start the lab.” And as soon as he said that a student asked him a question. So, he diverted his attention away from the whole room to an individual. And so, we began to start the lab, and here is the first step: We were to take our test tube and in the middle of the classroom was kind of like a large container full of a clear liquid. I did not know what the liquid was. And so, I took the test tube and sprinted, and I was first in line. And so, I’m there holding the test tube in my hand, and I just dip the test tube into the liquid. I get roughly a full test tube full of it. It’s overflowing. And I go back, and I hand it to my lab partner. So now my lab partner is holding this overflowing test tube in her hand. And then something really weird began to happen.

A few seconds in, both of our hands started to tingle a little bit, and then the tingle started to turn into a burn, and the burn was getting worse. And so, it was actually at that moment that we began to realize that everybody in the classroom was wearing goggles, was wearing gloves, and holding their test tube with a pair of tongs. And here we are bare hands in this thing. So, we weren’t sure what to do. And so, I went up to my teacher and I told him what had happened, and he began to ask very loudly, “Did you get any of it on yourself?” At that point, we both turned to my partner who’s just holding it, kind of like making sure that the tube wasn’t overflowing. So needless to say, yes, we had gotten a little bit on ourselves, and we had come to find out that the clear liquid we were holding was hydrochloric acid.

Now if you don’t know what hydrochloric acid is, I would tell you I don’t either. I’m bad at chemistry, but what I do know is that if you leave hydrochloric acid on your skin long enough, it can seriously burn you and actually leave up to third degree burns. And so, my friend and I were sent to the nurse immediately, we got it all washed off. My friend actually had to leave school that day because her hand got way more of it than my hand did. Thankfully it was treated quickly enough that both of our hands ended up fine. There was no scarring. We were completely fine. The only thing that we had to do was face our chemistry teacher again, which was honestly worse than the burn.

So, this story confirms Ryan Motta is not the sharpest tool in the shed. And I tell you this story because there’s a principle we can all learn from it. Here’s the principle: If you don’t understand the importance of what you have, you are bound to misuse it. Let me say that again. If you don’t understand the importance of what you have, you are bound to misuse it. Because my friend and I didn’t know the importance of hydrochloric acid, we treated it lightheartedly and flippantly when what that moment needed from us was our caution and attention.

Today I get to talk about the topic of friendship with you, and my fear is that many of us don’t know the value and importance of friendship in the Christian life. I believe that the significance of friendship is diminishing in our culture. And like I just said, if we don’t understand the importance of what we have, we are in danger of misusing it.

A couple of years ago, there were a few studies released on the topic of friendship that I want to share with you. The American Perspective Survey did a study in May of 2021 and found that 12% of Americans report as having no friends in their life – zero. Twelve percent. One in every 10 persons does not have one friend. And this is a drastic increase from the 1990s, which reported only 3% of people as having no friends. So, it’s getting worse the further we go along. In a study they did post COVID-19, they reported that 47% of Americans lost touch with at least one to two good friends. So COVID really magnified the problem that we were losing friendship. And not only do we have less friends, but now we’re spending less time with them as well.

The study of the American Time Survey found that prior to 2013, people spent around seven hours per week with those that they considered close friends. But by 2021, the amount of time spent with friends halved to only three hours a week. And it’s worth noting that the average screen time for the American adult is seven hours and four minutes. So, in 2013 to now, our screen times have doubled, our time with friends has halved. And then to cap it all off, a meta-analysis of over 30 combined studies found that 30% of adults in America report feeling lonely on a consistent basis. Here is the conclusion of all of these studies: We are more lonely than we have ever been.

Now there are a lot of reasons why friendship is on the decline in our world, but the one main reason that I want to talk about today is that we don’t often view it as a necessity in our lives. Friendship is the type of relationship that most of us think we have a good grip on. And so, because of that, we never really think about it. C.S. Lewis said, “To the ancients, friendships seem to be the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.”

At best, many people, including myself, tend to view friendship as a fun, optional add-on in the Christian life if you happen to have time in the margins. Anytime life becomes overloaded, one of the first things to get cut is time with friends. I mean, think about how normal this phrase is: “Between work, my kids, my wife, the dog, the house. I just don’t have time for friendship right now.” Now, I don’t want to minimize the busyness we all face, but this statement shows the low value we place on friendship on our list of priorities.

There is a 12th century author on friendship named Aelred of Rievaulx, kind of sounds like a Lord of the Rings character. He wrote, “Absolutely no life can be pleasing without friends.” Is that true? We can all agree friendship is a good thing, but is it a necessary thing? Do we truly need it or is it ultimately something that we can do without if push comes to shove?

Well, here’s what I want to show you today about friendship. Three things. I want to show you why we need friendship. I want to show you what true friendship looks like. And most importantly, I want to show you how Jesus makes friendship possible. So why we need friendship, what true friendship looks like, and how Jesus makes friendship possible. But before we dive into the text today, allow me to pray:

Jesus, thank You so much for who You are. God, I pray today that You would open Your Word to us, and You would open us to the Word. Jesus, that you would help us to see You more clearly, that You would help us to treasure You more. Jesus, that we would have a greater affection for You and the friends You have placed in our lives. Jesus, You are not just our righteousness; You are not just our savior; You are our friend. Let us see that today. In Your name I pray. Amen.

Okay, so to understand why we need friendship, we actually have to go all the way back to the beginning of the Bible in Genesis. Now, if you are familiar with the Book of Genesis, you will know that it starts off with the rhythm and a pattern – a melody, if you will. “In the beginning there was God, and then God began to create. God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and God saw that the light was good. God separated the water from the land and God saw that it was good. God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, trees and fruit.’ And God saw that it was good.” And on and on, the rhythm of Genesis 1 keeps playing out until verse 26 when God says, “Let us make man in our own image and likeness.” Now, this is distinctively different from all of the other things which God has created up to this point. This new creation, humans, are going to carry out God’s reflection in the world He has just created. So, God creates humans and looks at everything He made, and the rhythm changes a little bit. God doesn’t just say what He has made is good, but now He says what He has made is very good.

But in chapter two, we get a screeching halt to the ebb and flow of what we have read up to this point. It’s like the scratching of a record that is playing. In verse 18 of chapter 2, I’ll have this up on the screen. God says that it is not good that man should be alone. Now it’s worth noting that this is before sin has entered into the picture. So, the question we have to ask ourselves is what was so bad about Adam being alone? What was not good about it? Wasn’t God enough for Adam? As I just mentioned, there’s no sin in between Adam and God, so they are able to enjoy the presence of one another fully. Tim Keller puts it like this: “Adam had a perfect quiet time with God for 24 hours a day.” So, what was going on? Why did Adam need somebody else?

Well, let’s think back to how and why Adam was made. He was made in the image of God and designed to reflect God to the world He had created. But as we know of God, He is one God with three distinct beings. This is what is known as the Trinity, that God is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, which means at the essence of who God is, is relationship and community. Before the world was created, love and relationship already existed because it is who God is. This is why it makes sense when we read in 1 John that God is love, because at the heart of who God is the Trinity is in perfect union, love and relationship with one another. So, if we understand this, we’ll begin to understand why it was not good for Adam to be alone because Adam cannot fully reflect who God is in isolation.

In order for Adam to live fully into the image of the relational God, he is going to need to live in relationship with other people. So, in His perfect wisdom, God created Eve and the Scripture says, “In the image of God, he created both of them, male and female.”

Now, often we think of Genesis 1 and 2 as only about the relationship of marriage, but I actually think it’s so much bigger than that. It certainly includes marriage, but it is not exclusively about marriage. I believe this to be true because if the only way to cure our loneliness and reflect who God is fully through relationship is through marriage, then we run into a massive problem with the person of Jesus who was never married. The Apostle Paul was never married, but you know what Jesus did have? Best friends.

Rebecca McLaughlin in her book Confronting Christianity says this:

“In a biblical framework, therefore, friendship is not the consolation prize for those who fail to gain romantic love. Like marriage and like parenthood, it is another way in which God manifests an aspect of his love for us.”
Rebecca McLaughlin

You see, we were made by God to be in relationship with other people. In fact, I’m going to go as far to say that we are unable to reflect God faithfully in the world unless our lives are lived in the context of other people. Friendship in the Christian life is as important as having a quiet time, praying and fasting. Friendship is a foundational building block to how we have been created by God to live and glorify Him in this world.

In his book Made for Friendship, Drew Hunter says this:

“You are made in the image of the God of exuberant love. You are most like God, and you are most truly human when you want friendship. Your unmet longings for friendship are not evidence of a deficiency; they are signs of your dignity. God made you for friendship.”
Drew Hunter, Made for Friendship

I won’t have this on the screen, but Tim Keller says this: “We long for friendship because we’re made like God. The less you want friends, the less like God you are.” So why do we need friendship? Because we were created for friendship. It is the way in which we reflect the relational God, is through relationships in this world. The first thing about why we need friendship – we were made for it. It’s built into who we are.

Now that we have established why we need friendship, let’s move on to our second point. We must figure out then what friendship looks like. And to do that, we’re going to spend some time looking at some verses in the Book of Proverbs. There is a Scottish pastor named Kent Hughes who wrote a book on Christian friendship. Listen to how he describes the Book of Proverbs. This is awesome.

“There is no book, even in classical literature, which so exalts the idea of friendship, and is so anxious to have it truly valued, and carefully kept.”
Kent Hughes

This won’t be on the screen, but C.S. Lewis wrote to his lifelong friend, Arthur Greaves, “Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly, to me it is the chief happiness of life.”

The Book of Proverbs is full of practical wisdom about what friendship looks like and what makes it so great, but here is what I love about the Book of Proverbs. It’s also honest with us that there’s a lot of brokenness in our friendships too. So, what I want to spend time looking at is the beauty of what friendship looks like, but then also what the proverbs revealed to us about the brokenness of friendship. So, let’s take a look at the beauty of friendship.

The first thing I want to show you is that friendship looks like vulnerability. Proverbs 17:17 says this… And you can flip in your Bibles and kind of try to keep up or I’ll have all of the verses up on the screen.

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”
Proverbs 17:17

A brother, like all family, is someone that you have no choice over. A brother may be obligated to be with you in adversity by association of who they are in your life, but a friend chooses you. A friend is someone who loves you in every season of life when they have no requirement to do so. When there is someone in your life who chooses to love you at all times, both good and bad, when it is easy and when it is hard, that person is a friend. But in order to be loved in every season, it means we must be honest with our friends about what we’re going through.

So often we avoid being vulnerable with our friends because we don’t want to appear weak. And also, there is a lie lurking in the back of many of our heads. This lie tells us this, if they really knew that gross and shameful part of your life, they wouldn’t choose you anymore. Because of this lie, we hide, and we project a false version of ourselves for protection. Rather than risk being rejected, we put on a mask and pretend we’re doing better than we really are. We think things like who would want a friend that is an emotional wreck all of the time. And so, when people ask us how we’re doing, we give a quick, “I’m doing great; how are you?” And we move on to subjects that are less sensitive and less costly.

But here is the tragedy of our lives when we try to project a false version of ourselves that we think is more likable than the real version of ourselves. When someone becomes our friend and begins to get to know us, they are actually growing more fond of a fake projection. And the tragedy is to project, to pretend, to avoid vulnerability is to reject love altogether because in order to be loved, you must be known. To know that somebody knows every aspect of who you are, and they choose you anyway. That’s where love begins.

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.”
C.S. Lewis

What if we were people who took the risk of being vulnerable with our friends? I can’t promise you that every time you reveal something to them, they will react perfectly, but I can promise you that true friendship is only possible when we allow others to see us as we really are. And to do that, we must let down our guard and invite others in and give them an all-access pass. I also want to mention that I am not suggesting that you share every detail of your personal life with every human being you come into contact with. That’s weird. Don’t do that. Don’t be that person. What I’m talking about is the risk of being vulnerable in the context of a friend that you know and trust. We must be willing to be vulnerable and allow others to freely love us in all seasons of life. The first thing friendship looks like is being vulnerable.

The next thing friendship looks like is honesty. Proverbs 27:6 says this,

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.”
Proverbs 27:6

A friend is someone who is willing to be totally honest with you even if it will hurt you in the moment. We live in a world full of simple pleasantries and flattery towards one another. The prevailing thinking of the day is, as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else and you enjoy doing it, then who am I to tell you right from wrong? You do you, I’ll do me. Now, I’m not suggesting that this church just sprints all around Nashville and just find strangers and tells them how wrong they are about everything that they believe in the name of honesty. Not saying that, but it is also true that in the trusted security of genuine friendship, we must have the ability and the freedom to be totally honest with one another.

Now, this is really hard because to use the language of the Proverbs, “Doesn’t it sound more fun to receive kisses than to be wounded?” The enemy will only say kind things in order to flatter us in our way of thinking, but we don’t need false flattery in our lives. We need the truth that will sanctify us more into the image of the Son. Therefore, we must seek out friends who are willing to be honest and tell us how it is when we need to hear it.

A good friend is someone who is willing to tell you what you need to hear to avoid walking off the cliff that you have no idea is coming. A bad friend is the one who lets you walk off the cliff you don’t see coming because they are too afraid of offending you. More often than not, our friends can give us a much clearer picture of the blind spots and sin in our lives than anyone else. Rather than live in a posture of self-defense, we must be open to the honesty of our friends. Trust that when they have advice that hurts us, it’s not because they just want to hurt you, it’s because they love you. Not only do we need these kinds of friends, but we need to actually want these kinds of friends and we have to be these kinds of friends for other people. True friendship looks like honesty.

The third thing friendship looks like is advice. Proverbs 27:9 says,

“Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel.”
Proverbs 27:9

A friend is someone who offers you encouragement and wise counsel. It is someone who you will truly listen to because you trust them and believe they have something worthwhile to say to your life. But because we know that all wisdom starts with the fear of the Lord, we must have friends in our inner circle who constantly point us back to Jesus. We don’t just need a good one-liner that looks good on a bumper sticker. We need to be reminded of our deep need and dependency on Jesus that apart from Him we can do nothing that is good.

When you are confused about what to do in life, a true friend is someone you can talk to that will listen to you and offer advice. And a word of warning here, please listen before you offer advice. I am enemy number one of just jumping in to share what I think. But gosh, a lot of our friends just need an ear to listen and then we can speak into their lives. So, friendship looks like advice.

And lastly, friendship looks like physical presence. Proverbs 27:10 says,

“Do not forsake your friend and your father’s friend, and do not go to your brother’s house in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away.”
Proverbs 27:10

We live in an age where relationships from a distance are more possible than ever. However, we should never let that replace embodied friendship where we live. Notice that the text says that it is better to have a friend who is near than a brother who is far away. This does not mean that if you have a friend, a close friend who lives in another state, that it is a bad thing. What this proverb is letting you know though is that that shouldn’t be the finish line for your friendships. Embodied friendships matter in our life.

A friend is not just someone who offers you advice, they’re someone who holds you when the walls of your life come crashing down. On the day of calamity, when your reality gets flipped on its head, a phone call with a friend is good, but is it not better to receive their embrace? Is it not better to have them in the room and cry alongside of you as you doubt and question yourself? Our friendships should not merely take place online, but in the physical presence of other believers where God has uniquely placed us in the world. This is what the beauty of friendship looks like. This is God’s good design for friendship.

Who wouldn’t want to be fully known and fully loved? Who wouldn’t want to know the truth of the danger of lurking sin in their life? Who wouldn’t want sound advice that points us back to Jesus from a friend who is present with us? Though this is God’s good design, we live on the other side of the fall. And like all of God’s creation, friendship has been broken, and the Proverbs are honest with us about that. So, let’s take a quick look at how the Proverbs revealed to us the brokenness of friendships in our lives.

The Proverbs revealed to us a good friend is hard to find. Proverbs 20:6 says this,

“Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?”
Proverbs 20:6

For some of us, we feel the brokenness of friendship in the search for friendship. To find one who is faithful is easier said than done. As this proverb states, it’s easy for many people to think of themselves as a faithful friend. It’s much harder to actually be a faithful friend.

One of the hardest realities for me after graduating college was how hard it was to make friendships in a new city. In college it seemed so easy and so simple and so natural. All of my best friends just lived two doors down. This is awesome. Friends who are in the same season of life as me, friends who are thinking the same things as me. But then I moved to Nashville and got a full-time job, and it was so much harder to find friends because one, the energy. I have to muster up the energy after a workday to go out and find friends. Not only that, but I learned quickly that just because somebody else lives in Nashville does not mean they live close to you. What is up with that? Everything’s 20 minutes away at least. It makes no sense. But listen, we must not let the tiredness of the search prevent us from finding good friends.

This verse also reminds us of the gratitude we should have when we do have good friends. If you have them, cherish them. “A faithful man who can find?” If you found it, praise God and keep that friend.

Next, Proverbs reveals to us that our friendships can be surface level.

“A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
Proverbs 18:24

This proverb says that we have a tendency to compromise for many shallow relationships in place of a few deep friendships. We are tempted to settle for surface level or fair-weather relationships that involve no risk or investment at all. They give us companionship without the vulnerability and honesty we desperately need. They serve as more of a distraction to avoid in our heart rather than the life-giving gift God intended friendship to be. We will sit around with others and talk about sports, politics, the weather, music, work, but never the nature of our own soul. We will talk with people we have never met before online and share very close aspect of our lives. But when in the physical presence of other believers, we retreat emotionally.

I heard somebody say that we prefer 5,000 followers on Instagram instead of five true friends. We will befriend others when there is something in it for us, but the second a friendship begins to cost us something with no reward to be gained, we flee the scene. We are people who settle for the shallows when friendships as deep as the ocean are on offer. Looking at the life of Jesus, He had 12 close friends and three really close friends. When it comes to friendship, we should truly focus on the quality over the quantity. We are called to be friendly towards everyone, but we can only experience true friendship with a few.

I heard someone say it like this, “Friendships are more like submarines than they are cruise liners. A cruise hangs out on the surface and can hold thousands of people. A submarine can go extremely deep, but it can only carry a few. So it is with true friendships.”

Next, Proverbs reveals to us that our friendships have a strong influence. Proverbs 22:24-25 says,

“Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.”
Proverbs 22:24-25

The truth is that who you surround yourself with is who you will become. It’s embedded into our human nature. Whether we like it or not, we are creatures that reflect and imitate our surroundings. This means that our friendships have a tremendous influence on the course and direction of our lives. Hang around with fools and you will become a fool. Hang around with those who are wise, and you may become wise yourself. This power can be used in a beautiful way that builds you up, but it also has a shadow side that can tear you down. If we’re not careful with the friends we choose, it may lead us to a place we had no desire of ever going to.

And lastly, Proverbs reveals to us that we may seek isolation. Proverbs 18:1 says,

“Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.”
Proverbs 18:1

When you want to live a life where your desires call the shots and nobody can tell you otherwise, you will live a life of intentional isolation.

As Jim mentioned a few weeks ago, our culture worships at the altar of autonomy. We want to call the shots, and we don’t care for any person, belief system, or institution to control the way we think and believe. So, in an effort to avoid any threat to our autonomy, the cleanest and most effective way to do so is to just cut off friendships altogether. Get rid of them. And the thought of a friend who knows the real you and can call you out sounds restrictive and suffocating. Not only can true friendship be seen as a threat to our desires, but it can also slow us down. We live in a culture that is at a constant sprinting pace. We are running from opportunity to opportunity in the hopes that we will arrive at whatever is considered the good life. And as many of us know, the more people you bring along, the slower and more potentially frustrating the journey will be.

For you parents, think about what road trips used to be like before kids. A five-hour road trip was a five-hour road trip, but now that five-hour road trip with kids is like 6, 7, 8. It just keeps going on, and it can be like this with our friendships too. So, to avoid slowing us down and calling us out, we may be tempted to avoid friends altogether. We may prefer isolation.

All right, after hearing all of the ways in which friendship has been broken, you may be feeling discouraged right now. You may feel discouraged because maybe one of the deepest hurts in your life has come from someone you considered a dear friend. Maybe you feel discouraged because this has caused you to realize that in many ways you have fallen short as a friend or maybe you feel discouraged because you so deeply long for close friends and your search has constantly returned void in your life.

Well, to your discouragement, I want to introduce you to a friendship that is unlike any other friendship. It’s a friendship that goes beyond any earthly relationship you’ve ever had. He’s a friend who knows you better than you know yourself, and yet freely chooses to commit Himself to you. It’s a friendship that can heal every scar of betrayal while simultaneously making you a better friend yourself. This friend I’m referring to is Jesus, who when He lived on this earth, carried the title Jesus, Friend of Sinners.

As Kevin reminded us last week, Jesus Christ is the embodiment of the full wisdom of God, which means Jesus is the image of what perfect friendship looks like. Jesus is the friend that you can reveal everything to, and He will never leave you or forsake you. Not only does He still choose you and love you, but He is the friend who made a way for your sins to be completely forgiven because of His sacrifice on the cross for you. Jesus is the friend who is so gentle with us in our hurts, but in love will faithfully wound us with the truth of our condition. Jesus is the friend who always gives us the exact counsel we need in every situation of life. Jesus is the friend who has promised that no matter where you go, He will be with you forever and always.

Church, the title of Jesus being our friend does not diminish His glory and holiness; it magnifies it. The God who is the creator of all that we can see and know, the God who can part the sea and make the sun stop in its tracks, the God who can heal the leper and walk on water, the God who knows every hair on your head and every day of your life has invited you to be His friend. This is not some Sunday school slogan. This is the reality of our lives. The King of kings has invited you not only to live under His rule, but to be united with Him in friendship forever, to be friends with Jesus is no light thing. It is nothing but pure grace on display.

“He who would be happy here [Earth] must have friends; and he who would be happy hereafter, must, above all things, find a friend in the world to come, in the person of God.”
Charles Spurgeon

And like many things, Jesus actually expands our definition of what friendship looks like in the Gospels. In John 15:12-13, Jesus tells his disciples,

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
John 15:12-13

Drew Hunter in the book Made for Friendship commenting on these verses says this,

“These familiar words are more profound than we may realize. On the eve of his death, Jesus wanted his disciples to know that the cross was not only the great demonstration of love, but also a cosmic act of friendship. He said, ‘Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.’ The cross was history’s most heroic act of friendship.”
Drew Hunter

You see, at the very heart of the cross is the greatest act of friendship this world has ever known. Jesus is laying down His life for you and for me, His friends. And once by faith, we enter into this friendship with Jesus, we begin to realize that He has not only invited us to friendship with Himself, but with other believers too. Jesus not only died so that friendship with God was made possible, but He also died so that we could have friendship with one another made possible too. The cross not only purchased you access to a perfect heavenly Father, the cross also purchased you access to the family of God where lifelong friendships can be made that glorify the one who made us for friendship.

So, to leave you with something extremely practical, I want to ask you about the state of friendship in your life. Whether you’re married, single, young, old, new here, been attending here for a long time: What would it look like for you to have a proper value of friendship and make it a priority in your life? I pray, I so deeply pray, that our church would be full of deep friendships that display Christ to a lost world. But most of all, I want to ask you if you have entered into a friendship with Jesus Himself. If not, what aspect is holding you back? I beg you, before you leave today; talk with me. Talk with one of our pastors about what friendship with Jesus looks like. This friendship with Jesus only gets better the longer you are in it, and the beauty is it is a friendship that will last us for all eternity. Church, let’s pray:

Jesus, thank You so much for this day, and thank You for these friends. Jesus, You are more beautiful than we could ever imagine. Jesus, Your grace goes deeper than we could ever imagine. God, for many of us, we can understand that Jesus has died for our sins, but what is so hard for us to understand is that Jesus wants to be our friend. God, I pray that this reality would sink into our hearts, into our lives, as we sing this last song, God, as we live out the Christian life, that Jesus’ friendships would be truly valued and honored for what they are. God, a reflection of the relational God who is love. God, help our church family to look like the kind of friendships you describe in John 15, laying down our lives for one another. Father, I ask all of this in Your precious and holy name. Amen.