In the busy world in which we live, we make all sorts of excuses for not connecting with friends. Too busy, too tired, too many hurts from the past … let’s be honest, too selfish. But being alone is hard work because, as it turns out, we were never made to be alone.

 

We’re Created for Community

It’s always exciting to kick off a new series of messages and starting today we are going to be talking about friendship. That’s why I have called this series “A Friend In Need is a Friend Indeed.” It’s a saying that most of us have heard of many times before and it’s well … it’s so true. There are some people who, right now, who are living their lives without a friend in the world – or so it seems to them right now. Sometimes that happens because we isolate ourselves and sometimes it happens, well, for a whole bunch of reasons that are completely outside our control. And sometimes we are just not sure why it’s happening but we feel so desperately alone.

Well, over the next few weeks we are going to explore this whole thing about friendship, because whether we realise it or not, we are made to have friends. We are made to be a part of a community; part of a family and we are made to connect with people who are our friends. And there is a reason for that. It’s not just a quirk of fate as the primeval slime evolved over eons to become thee and me. No, that’s just stretching the imagination a bit too far.

The reason we are made to connect with other people is that that is exactly what God is like and you and I – the thing that makes us different from any other creature or species alive is this: you and I are made in the image of God. And that as it turns out, is the whole reason that we are meant to be in close relationship, at least with a few other people.

It has always blown me away how the first few words of the first verse of the first Book of the Bible must have puzzled people way back when it was written. Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, starts out:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Hang on – let’s just stop; let’s just pare that back a little bit.

In the beginning God …

Before everything and everyone else, was and is God. Now most of the Old Testament is written in the Hebrew language – this verse certainly was – and the word that we translate as “God” is the strangest word. It’s the word “Elohim”, which literally, in the Hebrew language, is the word “gods” – plural. “In the beginning Gods”, is what it actually says and it’s what it said to them, thousands of years ago when it was written and what it still says to the Jewish Nation today.

In the beginning Gods …

And just a few verses down, when God tells us how He created us, this is what it says – Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our own image, in our own likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Did you pick it up? God said, “let US” make humankind in our image.” “US!” Now back in those days, just about every nation had its gods – they were polytheistic, which means they believed in many Gods, much as Hinduism does today. But Israel … Israel believed in one God; they were monotheistic and in that way they were really quite unique. Have a listen, Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

And so this One God, who declares Himself from the beginning, to be more than one, turns out as we later discovered, He is three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit – in one perfect relationship that we call “God”. Three persons in One God which is the mystery of what today we call the Holy Trinity. So from the very beginning, God is a God of community.

And we – you and I, and every other homosapian that has ever trodden this Earth – are made in the image of God. And how did God make us in His image? Well, male and female He created us. He made us to be companions; to have friends; to have close relationships for this reason, because this is one of the key aspects of being made in God’s image.

Now, as you and I look at ourselves in the mirror, we realise that we are made to have friends, notwithstanding the fact that we are really all quite different. I mean, my daughter Melissa and I couldn’t be more different. We both go exercising most mornings. I do it on a brisk ten kilometre walk all on my own. I have done exercise with other people when I was in the Army – I hated it. I love exercising just on my own. Melissa, on the other hand, she joins a group of twenty or so people under a trainer and they exercise together. For her, she simply wouldn’t get out there in the morning if it weren’t for the companionship of the other people.

See how different we are! And yet, even I at the end of the spectrum where I really enjoy my own company, at that extreme – if I can put it that way – I need close relationships; I need friends; my wonderful, long suffering wife and a few good friends. They say “no man is an island”. It’s true of women too. None of us is meant to travel through this life on our own. Yea, sure, there are times when people desert us. That even happened to Jesus, when He was arrested and tried and crucified – all His friends left Him. It happens, sadly, sometimes to each one of us. But that’s not the norm; that’s not how it’s meant to be for most of the time, because that, quite simply, is not the way we have been created – in God’s image, remember!

And so in kicking off our chats about friendship and relationships, I guess I am hoping that you and I will examine our own lives. Come on, honestly, who are our close friends? Do we really share our souls with them, or have we built up protective walls to hide behind. Walls that protect us from getting hurt; walls that shield us from accountability; walls that save us from the pain and the expense of feeling someone else’s pain and sacrificing for them? Or quite simply, walls that have grown up all by themselves because we are so … so busy racing around earning money, paying the mortgage on a house that is way too big and for possessions that are really way more than what we need?

Well, come on, let’s get real here! God made you and He made me in His image to be in this thing called “community” – to have friends and deep and meaningful and rich and rewarding and painful and sacrificial relationships. And one of the most profound turning points of my life – as someone who doesn’t need quite as many relationships in his life as perhaps others do – is that until we enter into such relationships; until we start serving our friends with the gifts and the abilities and the resources that we have and until we see the impact on their lives through our service, there can, quite simply, be no sense of satisfaction or fulfilment or contentment in our lives.

Why? Because it was for this purpose that God made us – to love Him and to love our neighbours as ourselves. That’s it. That’s what life is all about! And to the extent that we turn away from relationships of true friendship, it is to that same extent that we miss out on real life; rich life; a rich and abundant life; the sort of life that Jesus came to purchase for you and purchase for me on that cross.

 

It’s Not Good to be Alone

It strikes me that in one sense we are all incredibly different – different places, cultures, circumstances – and yet in another, though, we are all the same – we all need to feel God’s love around us. We all need to experience the warm touch of a friend; we all need to know that there is someone we can turn to and talk to; someone who cares and who understands. It doesn’t matter who we are or where we are, what we are going through, we all need at least one friend.

You know what they say, “A Friend in Need, is a Friend Indeed”. Now the foundation of that need for friendship is found in the one thing that sets you and me apart from every other creature in the animal kingdom, it’s the fact that we have been made in the image of God. And God is a God of love and of relationship and of friendship and of community – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – three persons, one God – the mystery of the Holy Trinity. A God who has always lived in love and relationship.

And so this one God; the three persons, creates thee and me in His image, so should it be any surprise then that we are just like Him in this? We are made to be in relationship with Him and with other people. And it’s for this purpose that we have been created, as we saw earlier: Genesis chapter 1, verse 26:

God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness … So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

This one God who talks about Himself as “us” and then in order to create humanity precisely in His image, He makes male and female to live in unity and relationship together. He didn’t just make one or the other – He made both. And in a different part of the creation account, God actually speaks about this very issue of being alone, verses having a close companion. Genesis chapter 2, verse 18:

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”

Now, let’s just stop and think about this for a minute: here are the words that come from God’s own mouth; from deep within His great and mighty heart – He tells you and He tells me that it is simply not good for someone to be alone. Now here He provides a wife for Adam but the principle spans across all human relationships and before I say it again, these powerful words from God, I just ask you to look at your life.

How close are you to other people or how distant are you? Do you have people to share your triumphs or your failures with? Or are your victories empty and your burdens great because you can’t share them with others? If your answer tends more towards the latter than the former, then listen again, deep in your heart to the Word of God: “It is not good for us to be alone.” It simply isn’t good because that’s not what we were made for.

As you may have heard me say before, I am the sort of person who doesn’t need a whole bunch of people to be close to me. Is that because I don’t like other people? No. Not at all. Is that because I am overly selfish or standoffish? Well, I hope not. The reason is that my motivational gifting – and you can read about those in Romans chapter 12 – is to be a leader and the key thing that we leaders bring to the table is our strength, rather than say, our natural compassion or our bubblyness or anything else.

Leaders are very much like eagles – when it comes to the important things they hunt in packs of one. They are naturally a solitary sort of person. And if we take that to the extreme, we leaders can become hermit like. I know I can. But … and there’s a big “BUT”, even someone with that sort of personality still needs friends.

I have a handful of very close and very trusted friends. I catch up with a lot of people. I love interacting with people but generally speaking, I rely on a small group of friends to help guide me and support me and when needs be – and we all have this need from time to time – to set me straight.

One of my favourite sayings is that ‘a friend is someone is who stabs you in the front’. It’s a great saying, isn’t it? And there are a handful of people like that in my life, without whom – quite bluntly – I’d be pretty much useless to you. But there was a time in my life when I allowed my natural tendency towards a solitary existence, combined with my tendency to overwork myself and make myself so busy that I simply didn’t have any friends. It was a time almost two decades ago when I found myself in an incredibly difficult place. I was very needy; at one point I didn’t even have anywhere to live.

And it was in the middle of that that I realised the compelling truth of what God said when He took a look at Adam – Genesis chapter 2, verse 18:

It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his companion.

So today, let me challenge you, come on, let’s be honest with ourselves. How many of us are living our lives in emotional isolation? How many of us are relying on ourselves to claw our way through life? How many of us have simply forgotten what it means to have some friends around: people who help us with their unique gifts and abilities and resources and outlook; people who one day we can help with our gifts, our resources, our abilities, our outlook?

And as time goes by, sure, we are going to rub each other the wrong way from time to time, but as the days and weeks and months and years pass by, we, together with our friends and loved ones; the people whom we have invested in, the people who have invested in us, will have woven this rich tapestry that we call “community”.

It’s not good for us to be alone, we need helpers; we need to learn to become helpers because we can’t do it on our own. So if you are someone who has become just a bit isolated – perhaps it’s busyness, perhaps it’s selfishness, perhaps it’s a reaction to the hurts of the past, maybe it’s just circumstances … whatever it is, listen again to what God has to say to you today: it is not good for you or for me or for anyone else, that we should be alone, it just isn’t!

 

Friendship Makes Us Strong

One thing that I’m not in life is an engineer or a builder and so when I see some massive bridge that seems to effortlessly span a ravine or a harbour and carry trains and trucks and cars and buses 24/7, I think, “How would you ever build that?” I mean, where would you start? Where would you turn the first sod or sink the first pylon? It is totally, totally inconceivable to me how they do those things.

Pretty much everyone on the planet I guess, has seen a photo of the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge – the “Coat hanger” as some people affectionately call it. It was built back in the 1920s and 1930s before computers and a lot of the high-tech stuff we have nowadays. And here’s how they did it. They started at each end, on the northern shore, on the southern shore of the harbour and built their way into the centre – the thing met in the middle! I just can’t imagine how they did that, can you?

Now, I’ve seen photos of the bridge as it was being built and it looks quite uncanny because you sort of have like half a bridge reaching out from one shore and the other half reaching out from the other shore and the whole thing looks so lopsided you wonder how is it that the whole thing didn’t just fall over before it joined in the middle?

Well, here’s what the experts will tell you: the strength of the structure comes from all the cross braces that are built into it. They don’t look particularly pretty; they have no other purpose other than to work together with the rest of the structure to give it strength and stability. That’s how come you can have half of this massive bridge stretching out from each side of the harbour, without the thing toppling over. It’s the cross braces that did it.

Now I have been sharing this whole thing about the strength of this amazing bridge with you because one of the key things about friendship is that it makes each of us stronger than we can possibly be on our own. Don’t believe me? Have a listen to what God’s Word has to say on the subject – Ecclesiastes chapter 4, beginning at verse 7:

Again, I saw vanity under the sun: the case of solitary individuals, without sons or brothers; yet there is no end to all their toil and their eyes are never satisfied with riches. “For whom am I toiling,” they ask, “and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy business.

See, he starts off here by talking about the solitary individual. Sadly, there are a lot of those in the world – people who work hard, labour hard and … for what? What’s the point of having wealth and comfort and all that stuff if you don’t have anyone to share it with?

My wife Jacqui and I live in a comfortable apartment. It’s nothing super flash, not a great stunning harbour view or anything like that, just comfortable. And we have decorated it as tastefully as we can, within our means and I love living there with her. But I have often looked around the place – I sometimes work at home, writing and preparing stuff – I look around and you think, ‘You know, without her in this place with me, it just wouldn’t mean anything. The joy and the satisfaction I have in our apartment, is because it’s not just an apartment, it’s our home together. Not because it’s anything fantastic architecturally, it’s because it’s ours.

And that’s what God is saying here. Stuff isn’t where it is at. All that stuff is simply vanity if you are on your own. God’s solution? Let’s read on Ecclesiastes chapter 4, beginning at verse 9. He says, look:

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other, but woe to the one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A Threefold cord is not quickly broken.

You see, God’s solution is that two are much better than one. Why? Because firstly, they have a good reward for their toil. In other words, there’s great satisfaction in doing things together and achieving things together. But secondly, it’s because two are stronger than one – if one falls, the other lifts them up.

But woe to the one who is alone and falls and doesn’t have another to help.

And how often do we get it wrong or run out of steam or find ourselves bleeding on the ground, without even the strength to get up again? Right then we need a friend! A friend in need is a friend indeed! And again if we face adverse circumstances – the cold in this case – if you lie down alone, you’ll freeze. If you have the heat of another, you’ll probably both survive. If we are attacked, one may prevail against the other but two will definitely withstand the attack.

Very simple logic! But doesn’t it get you how in our busy-ness, with all the stuff we have going on in our lives or in our selfishness, we are not prepared to make the sacrifices that friendship demands and we become solitary individuals. And I love … I love how God finishes this teaching off. He says:

A threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Hang on! He was talking about one and then two – where did the third one come from? Here’s how I understand this: I think God is introducing Himself into this equation of friendship and relationship. Two is great, it’s much better than one. But three … two plus God binding them together is absolutely stunning. It’s the strongest of the three options.

I was preaching on this once in our church and demonstrated this truth by first having two people hold a single strand cord tight. Of course the moment I cut it, it fell apart. Then we platted two cords together and I was able to cut one cord here and another there and they still were held together. Although when you pulled them tight at the ends, they started coming apart. And then we platted three cords together and made six or seven cuts in the different cords over about two meters. You know something? They hung together in this incredibly strong formation because a threefold cord is not easily broken. That’s the simple truth.

When you are weak, I can be strong for you and vice versa. And when we are both a bit frayed at the edges, God can hold things together for us. Friends make us stronger, and when we introduce God into the friendship; when we forgive the way He wants us to; when we humble ourselves the way He wants us to, then that friendship cannot easily be broken. It’s like those cross braces on the Harbour Bridge, friends make each other strong and in Christ, the end result is so much greater than the sum of the parts.

That’s the whole point. What bit about this don’t we get??

Choosing our friends is something that mostly we don’t think too much about. But it’s something we ought to give quite some thought to. Because some people are going to be good friends … and others can tear us apart. So – how do you choose your friends?

 

Choosing a Friend

Hey, it’s great to be with you again this week on the programme as we are continuing our look at good and godly friendships in a series that I have called, “A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed”. And today we are going to take a look at the fact that, as things turn out, we actually do get to pick our friends. Now it’s always fascinated me how people choose a marriage partner. What is it that clicks there? What is it that kind of gets that chemistry going?

I was watching a TV special a few months back where a whole bunch of research has been done on exactly that. It was fascinating really, but despite all the research, they still didn’t quite nail it. There is something incredible and special about how two people kind of choose one another to become life-long soul mates. It’s one of God’s great mysteries, don’t you think? At the moment I locked my eyes onto the woman who is now my wife, Jacqui, there was no one else for me – not sure how it works but I’m really glad it does.

But have you ever thought about how people choose their friends? I remember doing a series on air a few years back about relatives. It was called, “You Can Pick Your Friends but You Can’t Pick Your Relatives”. Boy, did that one get a great response! So this idea of picking friends, how does it happen? Because my hunch is that there are some people who, frankly, we wouldn’t want as friends.

There are some people who I know – I can picture their faces right now – who I have to tell you, would make terrible friends and so they don’t become friends; I don’t let them into that circle, because if I did, that relationship would damage me. I’m sure you can think of a few people in your life who are just like that.

Now, in my own personal devotion time over the past few weeks I have been spending some time in the Old Testament Book of First Samuel. And I have to tell you, it is one of my favourite Books because you discover so much about whom God is and how He operates and how He thinks and how He reacts to things. Part of the story is that Israel demands a king. Up to this point their system of government has been a theocracy, with God as the Head of State. But they weaken and demand a king, just like all the other Nations around them as though, somehow, coming down to their level would be a good thing.

So God gives them a king, King Saul, having warned the people that it wouldn’t work out brilliantly in the end, but they still demanded the king. So they got what they deserved and surprise, surprise, surprise, things don’t go well, to the point where ultimately, where God takes His hand and His anointing off Saul and He anoints this young shepherd, David, to be the next king, even while Saul is still on the throne.

The problem is, with God’s anointing on him, David becomes a strong and powerful and popular figure. And meanwhile, Saul is still the king and he becomes incredibly jealous of young David, so Saul, not once, but several times, sets out to kill David. Isn’t that how it often happens?

I have seen it several times in ministry – I have seen a man who has been anointed by God for a role but at some point it becomes obvious to everyone and sundry, that God has taken the anointing away. And at that point – I am thinking of one man in particular now – this man lashes out and tries to destroy the people around him that still have God’s anointing on their lives.

And so, David is in Saul’s sights and in those days the king had the power of life and death over people – plain and simple. If the king decided you were going to die then, guess what, you were going to die. Let’s have a listen. First Samuel, in the Old Testament, chapter 18, beginning at verse 10:

The next day an evil spirit from God rushed upon Saul, and he raved within his house, while David was still playing the lyre, as he did day by day. Saul had his spear in his hand; and Saul threw the spear, for he thought,”I will pin David to the wall.” But David eluded him twice.

Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him but had departed from Saul. So Saul removed him from his presence, and made him a commander of a thousand; and David marched out and came in, leading the army. David had success in all his undertakings; for the Lord was with him. When Saul saw that he had great success, he stood in awe of him. But all of Israel and Judah loved David; for it was he who marched out and came in leading them.

So, King Saul is still king in name only, but the anointing of God – God’s power, God’s favour to be king – has quite clearly passed from Saul to this young kid David. And Saul just wants to kill him. Well obviously, he doesn’t because David goes on to become perhaps, the greatest king that Israel ever had.

So who or what does God use to stop Saul from killing young David? Let’s look at First Samuel chapter 19, beginning at verse 1:

Saul spoke with his son Jonathan and with all his servants about killing David. But Saul’s son Jonathan took great delight in David. Jonathan told David, “My father Saul is trying to kill you; therefore be on your guard tomorrow morning; stay in a secret place and hide yourself. I will go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are, and I will speak to my father about you, if I learn anything I will tell you.

Jonathan spoke well of David to his father Saul, saying to him, “The king should not sin against his servant David, because he has not sinned against you, and because his deeds have been of good service to you; for he took his life into his hands when he attacked the Philistine, and the Lord brought about a great victory for all of Israel. You saw it and you rejoiced; why then will you sin against an innocent man by killing David without cause?”

Saul heeded the voice of his son Jonathan; Saul swore, “As the Lord lives, he shall not be put to death.” So Jonathan called David and related all these things to him. Jonathan then brought David before Saul and he was again in Saul’s presence as previously.”

See, it turns out that Saul’s son – the very man who, according to human logic, would be next in line for the throne – Saul’s son Jonathan, decides to save David’s life. The question you have to ask yourself is, ‘Why would he do that? Because as we read, “… Jonathan took great delight in David” in first Samuel chapter 9, verse 1.

Something inside Jonathan kind of clicked – he could see what everyone else could see – he could see that the mighty hand of God was on David; he could see the power of God on David; the favour of God on David; he could see the humility and power; the goodness of this man David, who had been anointed to become the next king and so he chose to become David’s friend. He stands up to his all-powerful father, King Saul and he defends David, as some risk to his own position, you would have to say; even to his own life. Remember Saul could have him struck down and killed – such was the power of the king.

It seems the way Jonathan chose David as his friend was to see the goodness of God in him. Now, not all the people who would be our friends are perfect, are they? But a fantastic first criterion for choosing a friend: Is this a good person? Is this a godly person? Is this the sort of person that God would choose? Well, as it turns out, David was exactly the sort of person that God would choose. He had already chosen him to be king. And not according to the world’s criteria of looks and outward success and presentation and physical strength and so on …

How did God choose David? Well, here is what God said to the Prophet Samuel when he was sent to choose a king from amongst Jesse’s sons who were David brothers. First Samuel chapter 16, verse 7:

The Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected this one; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

And can I suggest to you that when you and I are looking for good friends; friends who will stand up for us; friends who will be faithful; friends whom we can trust – we would do well to choose them as God does – to choose someone after our own heart; to look not on outward success; not on how good looking they are or how wealthy they are but on the character of the man or the woman who would be our friend.

Imagine the choices we would make then … I mean, just imagine!

 

Honouring a Friend

I always look forward you know, to the weekends. I guess it’s a time for a bit of a rest for most of us; time to catch up perhaps, with some friends. And as much as I love doing what I do during the week – I really enjoy working hard in all that I do – I also look forward to the weekends because it’s a time for catching up.

Saturday mornings often, my wife Jacqui and I will head down to our favourite little cafe and just spend some time together, catching up, talking, reading the newspaper and then perhaps over dinner or Sunday lunch we will catch up with some friends. Friends are special people and that is why we have been talking about friendship over these past few weeks.

Earlier we met young David before he became King of Israel, through God’s account of his life in the Old Testament Book of First Samuel. And we saw how it was that a young man by the name of Jonathan chose David to be his friend – now that’s okay, until you realise that Jonathan was King Saul’s son. David was likely to take the throne away from Saul, so Saul was trying to kill him. And if you do that then Jonathan would likely succeed his father on the throne of Israel.

Yet despite this, Jonathan befriends David; stands up for him and saves him, as we saw, from being killed by Saul. What we discovered was the reason Jonathan took this extraordinary step is that he was impacted by the godliness and the goodness of David. He saw into David’s heart and was impacted by that – he chose David as a friend, the same way that God chose David as a friend. Not by assessing the outward appearances but by looking on his character and his heart.

Now, as I have observed a few times during the course of this series, a friend in need is a friend indeed. In fact, that’s the title of this series of messages. And David was definitely in need because each time God through Jonathan, saved him from being killed by Saul, Saul would again be attacked by an evil spirit and would again come after David. Remember he planned to kill David, so if ever David needed a friend it was now.

And that friend was Jonathan, a man who, as we are about to see, was willing to put his very life on the line for David even though David was, effectively, his rival for the throne. Let’s have a listen to the powerful impact of Jonathan’s friendship for David. First Samuel chapter 20, beginning at verse 1:

David fled from Naioth in Ramah. He came before Jonathan and said, “What have I done? What is my guilt? And what is my sin against your father that he is trying to take my life? He said to him, “Far from it! You shall not die. My father does nothing great or small without disclosing it to me; and why should my father hide this from me? Never!”

But David also swore, “Your father knows well that you like me; and he thinks, ‘Do not let Jonathan know this, or he will be grieved.’ But truly, as the Lord lives and as you yourself live, there is but a step between me and death.” Then Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you say, I will do for you.”

Well, David said to Jonathan, “Tomorrow is the new moon, and I should not fail to sit with the king at the meal; but let me go, so that I may hide in the field until the third evening. If your father misses me at the dinner, then say, ‘David earnestly asked leave of me to run to Bethlehem his city; for there is a yearly sacrifice there for all the family.’ If he says, ‘Good!’ it will be well with your servant; but if he is angry, then know that evil has been determined by him.

Therefore deal kindly with your servant, for you have brought your servant into a sacred covenant with you. But if there is guilt in me, kill me yourself; why should you bring me to your father?” Jonathan said, “Far be it from you! If I knew that it was decided by my father that evil should come upon you, would I not tell you?”

Then David said to Jonathan, “Who will tell me if your father answers you harshly?” Jonathan replied to David, “Come, let us go out into the field.” So they both went out into the field. Jonathan said to David, “By the Lord, the God of Israel! When I have sounded out my father, about this time tomorrow, or on the third day, if he is well disposed toward David, shall I not then send and disclose it to you? But if my father intends to do your harm, the Lord do so to Jonathan, and more also, if I do not disclose this to you, and send you away, so that you may be in safety. May the Lord be with you, as he has been with my father.”

If I am still alive, show me the faithful love of the Lord; but if I die, never cut off your faithful love from my house, even if the Lord were to cut off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth.” Thus Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the Lord seek out the enemies of David,” Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him; for he loved him as he loved his own life.

Jonathan said to David, “Tomorrow is the new moon; you will be missed, because your place will be empty. On the day after tomorrow, you shall go a long way down; go to the place where you hid yourself earlier, and remain beside the stone there. I will shoot three arrows to the side of it, as though I shot at a mark. Then I will send the boy, saying, ‘Go and find the arrows.’ If I say to the boy, ‘Look, the arrows are on this side of you, collect them,’ then you are to come, for, as the Lord lives, it is safe for you and there is no danger. But if I say to the young man, ‘Look, the arrows are beyond you,’ then go; for the Lord has sent you away. As for the matter about which you and I have spoken, the Lord is witness between you and me forever.”

And without going on to read the rest of the story, that’s preciously what happened. Now the reason I share this with you is, earlier we saw how Jonathan spoke up for David and therefore, saved his life. But here … here Jonathan is taking a huge next step – he is actually prepared to work covertly against his father to save David’s life and he gives himself only a fifty/fifty chance of making it through alive. Look again at verses 14 and 15:

If I am still alive, show me the faithful love of the Lord but if I die, never cut off your faithful love from my house, even if the Lord were to cut off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth.

Jonathan has seen the goodness of David’s heart – he can tell that God has anointed David to be king – you just can, when the hand of God is on someone’s life, can’t you? So instead of fighting God the way his father, Saul, was fighting God by trying to kill David; instead of trying to hang onto the throne for himself, Jonathan lays down his needs and his wants and his priorities and his rights and puts his life on the line for David.

Now, unless he had done that, David would never have become king. Had Jonathan not done what Jonathan did, the whole history of Israel would have changed. Jonathan is a friend; a true friend; a friend indeed, because not only does he speak well of David to his father – let’s face it, talk is cheap – he is prepared to put his life on the line for his friend; he is prepared to sacrifice in order to honour his friend. And that … that right there is a true friend – someone who not only speaks well of you but who honours you through sacrificing for you.

Over a thousand years later, the Apostle Paul put it this way. Philippians chapter 2, verse 3:

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility, regard others better than yourselves, that each of you look not to your own interests but the interests of others.

If you and I are looking for a friend, this is the sort of person we are looking for. And if you and I are looking to be a friend, this is the sort of person we are looking to be. The story of Jonathan’s friendship for David is something of a “back story” if you like, to the main plot of what’s going on here. In a sense, it’s not the main thing; the main thing is that God has anointed David to be king and eventually, he becomes king. But God uses Jonathon’s friendship; true friendship to make it happen.

God has plans for thee and me as well. And don’t be surprised if more often than not, He will bring a good friend alongside through whom He will make it happen.

 

What Am I Up For?

 I guess I have thought a lot about this story of Jonathan’s friendship for David. Right there at the outset something touched Jonathan deeply about this young David, who would be king. In fact, as many would go on to argue in hindsight, possibly the greatest king that Israel ever had, other than the King of the Jews, who found Himself nailed to a cross.

Yes, something just kind of clicked inside Jonathan when it came to David. First Samuel chapter 18, verse 1:

When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as he loved his own soul.

And so out of his heart decision to be David’s friend, Jonathan went on, time and time again, to save David’s life at great risk to himself. And as we will see over the next few weeks, that is ultimately something that cost him his life.

And this whole idea of loving your friends to death, literally, is a “Jesus” thing. Have a listen to what the Apostle John wrote some decades on, after Jesus had died and rose again and ascended into heaven. First John chapter 3, verse 16. John writes:

We know love by this: that Jesus laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

And so the thing I really think about and contemplate in my heart before the Lord is this: Berni, are you prepared to do that for your friends? Are you prepared to put yourself out? Are you prepared to put it all on the line for them? Interesting in this day and age we are often even too busy to do the basics for our friends, let alone to put our lives on the line! Have you noticed that?

So and so at the church is sick, really should cook a meal and take it over there – but it doesn’t happen because, “Well, I’m busy and I’m tired and stuff is happening …” You know how it is – it’s often how it goes. We just couldn’t be bothered. That’s how much we trivialise our friendships. That’s how self-absorbed and self-centred we have become, because that’s the culture we are living in. I kind of never quite expected this, but as I have been spending time in God’s Word just learning and re-learning what He has to say about friendships, can I tell you, it’s been a serious wake-up call for me. God is giving me a good shake and saying, “Bernie, do you get it? Do you see what I’m on about here when it comes to friendship?”

How about you? Is He giving you a good shake too? I hope so, because sometimes you and I need to be shaken out of our complacency. Sometimes the world squeezes us into its mould and tells us that that’s just the way things are. It’s the way things have to be – got a mortgage, got to earn money, got to do this, got to do that, this that and the other and all those things rob us of good and godly friendships.

And our enemy the devil, is sitting there rubbing his hands because he knows if he can isolate us then we will be weak and vulnerable – we will be in a place where he can readily attack us. But God … God doesn’t want us to be squeezed into the world’s mould; He wants us to feast on the bread of life; to drink the living water of His Spirit of wisdom and truth that are His Word and be forever changed. Romans chapter 12, beginning at verse 2:

Do not be conformed to this world, (do not let the world squeeze you into its mould) but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may be able to discern what is the will of God – what is the good and perfect and acceptable will of God.

And so my encouragement to you today is to be rocked to the core by the story of Jonathan’s friendship to David; be rocked to the core about the truth of choosing good friends; be rocked to the core as God challenges you as He does me, through His mighty and powerful call to be a “Jesus” kind of friend.

We know love by this; that Jesus laid his life down for us, and so we ought to lay our lives down for one another.

Be rocked to the core. Can I encourage you? Grab the Bible, read this story of Jonathan for yourself. It is in First Samuel – it is an awesome story. It goes on for a few chapters, it doesn’t take very long at all to read. The story of Jonathan has really impacted me, not to say, I need to be like Jonathan, but to challenge me about what sort of friendships I am prepared to have. To challenge me about how much I am prepared to sacrifice in order to be a friend and to challenge me about the sort of friends that I choose.

God has anointed some people in your life to be your friends, as He has done with me and there are some people who come as wolves in sheep’s clothing who appear to be good friends but are just going to tear us apart. Let me encourage you to take friendship seriously because none of us was made to operate as a stand-alone unit. None of us was made to be alone. God made us to live in godly relationships with the other people that He set around us.

That’s His plan!!

Friendships are things we don’t often think too much about. We just have friends and we enjoy they’re company and that’s it. But there is such incredible power in a God–ordained friendship. And God … God means for us to lay a hold of that power.

 

Laying Down Your Life

Today we’re continuing on in a series of messages that I’ve called, “A Friend In Need Is A Friend Indeed” and I really want to take a look at the heart of friendship, what friendship is all about because I wonder whether in this disposable world in which we live whether we’re only too prepared to trash friends who don’t suit us. People who don’t always tell us what we want to hear, people who don’t pander to our whims.

Now don’t get me wrong I believe there are some people that we all know that we shouldn’t have as close friends because they’ll do us more harm than good. We talked about that last week on the program. But we live in increasingly in a world where there are so many other distractions, well if our friends are a bit too difficult to get on with we just ditch them and we immerse ourselves in a rapidly growing range of entertainment options.

And that is, in fact, what a lot of people are doing. They’re kind of cocooning themselves in things that please them and in so doing withdrawing step by step from meaningful friendships.

It kind of works for a while but my what a lonely place that ends up being. I wonder where you are right now in your life when it comes to the friendship stakes? When some young lawyer – schooled in the Old Testament Law of Moses, which is what lawyers in the 1st Century of Israel relied on – when this lawyer asks Jesus in effect, “Out of all the commandments in the law (and there are, the scholars tell me, around six hundred and thirteen commandments) which ones were the most important.” Jesus was very quick to answer. Mark chapter 12, verse 29-34:

The first is, ‘Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’. The second is ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’. There is no other commandment greater than these. Then the Scribe said to him, ‘you’re right teacher, you have truly said that he is one and besides him there is no other and to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength and to love one’s neighbour as one self. This is much more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices’. When Jesus saw that he’d answered wisely he said to him, ‘you are not far from the kingdom of God’. After that no one dared to ask him any more questions.

And the thing that really leaps out for me in this is not so much the bit about loving God, I mean as absolutely vital as that is, you kind of expect the Son of God to say that. The bit that kind of leaps out for me is that we should love our neighbours as ourselves and the Scribe, the lawyer replies, “You’re right, Rabboni!” In fact loving God and loving others, well those things are so much more important than any religious ritual we’d care to name.

Loving our neighbours, making friends, serving them with all that we are is more important than sitting in a Church and singing songs or listening to a sermon, as important as all those things of course are. The word here for love is “Agape” which means unconditional love, sacrificial love and the word used for neighbour is “Friend”. You shall love your friends with all that you are unconditionally, without reservation and sacrificially.

This is precisely what Jesus is saying here and it follows right on from loving God with all that we are. In fact it’s the flip side of that coin if you will. Now if we should love our friends as we love ourselves then let’s stop and think for a minute, how is it that we love ourselves? Do we care for ourselves, provide for ourselves, protect ourselves, nurture ourselves? Yeah, by and large we do.

And if we didn’t have a roof over our heads we’d do everything we could to get one. If we didn’t have food to eat we’d do everything we could to get food. If we were drowning we’d do everything we possibly could to get air and survive. It turns out that not only do we have a strong survival instinct, we have rather a strong provision instinct. We want to survive and thrive and we do what we need to do to make those things happen.

So right here Jesus is actually saying, that’s how you love you now love your friends in exactly the same way. Do you see the power of what He’s saying here? Take this survive and thrive love that we have for ourselves and in exactly the same way that you apply it to yourself, Jesus is saying to you and to me, apply it to your friends, to your neighbours.

Now when it comes to doing the whole “survive and thrive” love for ourselves, by and large, it’s pretty much not a sacrifice. We look after ourselves, we look after our family, we provide for them, we’re kind of hard wired to do that. Making sure that I’m safe and I’m fed and I’m well provided for.

Okay I have to get up each morning and I have to go to work to earn a crust to make that happen. I just can’t lounge around in front of the television all day. But that’s not a sacrifice, it’s just what I do for me and for my family and yet when we take the love we have for ourselves and we start doing with it what Jesus is saying here, loving our friends the way we love ourselves all of sudden it can seem like a huge sacrifice.

Can I tell you something? Love is always a sacrifice and this unconditional love that Jesus is calling each one of us to have for our friends can be a huge sacrifice. Unconditional love, agape love comes at a price because it’s unconditional and Jesus is calling us to fire Him into loving our friends with that sort of love and as He does that He makes it abundantly clear that it’s going to cost us something. Matthew chapter 16, verse 24:

Jesus told his disciples, ‘if any one wants to become one of my followers let them deny themselves and to take up their cross and follow me.’

Loving friends – loving them the way God means for us to love them, loving them in the way that is so much more important than any religious ritual under the sun – is about laying down our lives for them. It’s about putting their needs before our needs. It’s about sacrificing what we want for them. Do you see how radically different Gods take on friendship is from the worlds approach?

Many people have friends because of what they can get out of the friend. Companionship, maybe money or a business deal or a good time and when they’re no longer of any use we just kind of toss them on the scrap heap. Done with them, no good to me anymore, move on.

And yet the people whom we choose as friends we’re meant to love with all the drive that we have to love ourselves to survive and to thrive, with all the instinct we have to provide for ourselves we’re meant to take that drive and that instinct and love our friends with that. Unconditionally in the same way that we love ourselves, dying to self, sacrificing for our friends and in Gods scheme of things this comes second to only loving God Himself with all that we are.

Being a friend means laying down our lives, being a friend means being there for someone no matter how badly they maybe acting up right now. It’s about denying ourselves, taking up that grizzly brutal cross of sacrifice and following Jesus.

 

The Jonathan Story

When we talk about friendship there’s one young man, Jonathan, whose story in the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel, I simply can’t go past. I want to unpack that story a bit more with you today because it’s like a powerful case study of what we’ve just been talking about. Now we met Jonathan, King Saul’s son, last week on the program.

Saul had been appointed king against God’s will and counsel, mind you, and after some initial successes he turned out to be something of a disaster and so God had the Prophet Samuel anoint a new king in young David but as Gods favour and the people’s support and all the success shifted away from Saul onto David as his anointed successor King Saul became incredibly jealous and bitter and twisted and several times he tries to have David killed.

So young David spends several years on the run from Saul during which time Saul tries to kill him, as I said, a number of times. Yet time and time again God saves him through a friend Jonathan, Saul’s son. Let’s have a read, 1 Samuel chapter 19 beginning at verse 1:

Saul spoke with his son Jonathan and with all his servants about killing David. Saul’s son Jonathan took great delight in David. Jonathan told David, ‘my father Saul is trying to kill you therefore be on guard tomorrow morning, stay in a secret place and hide yourself.

It turns out that Saul’s son, the very man who according to human logic should be next in line for the throne, decides to save David his life. You have to ask yourself why? Because Jonathan took great delight in David, that’s what it says, 1 Samuel chapter 19, verse 1. Something somehow inside Jonathan clicked, he could see what everyone else could see, he could see the almighty hand of God on David’s life, he could see the power of God on David, the favour of God on David. He could see the humility and power, the goodness of this man David who had been anointed as the next king.

And so he chose to become David’s friend. He stands up to his all powerful father, King Saul, and he defends David at some risk you’d have to say to his own position … even to his own life. Remember Saul was the king, Saul could have him struck down and killed, such was the power of the king. And this wasn’t the only time that Jonathan stepped in to save David, he did it several times as David emerged as Saul’s rival for the throne.

David was travelling through the country with hundreds of fighting men and blind Freddy could see he was going to be king sometime soon. I mean blind Freddy could see that Saul was on his way out and it’s in this context that the thing that really intrigues me is that instead of crossing over into David’s camp, instead of deserting his despotic father Jonathan stays with the king as it turns out to the bitter end. Why? Why would Jonathan have done that?

I remember a great scene in my favourite British comedy Yes Prime Minister when the Prime Minister asks his personal private assistant Bernard Wooley, he said, “Bernard whose side is the civil service on?” And Bernard with a smirk answers, “oh Prime Minister, the winning side”. It’s funny but it cuts so close to the bone because when there’s rivalry what we naturally want to do is to position ourselves on the winning side so that we can have an ongoing role in the victory and what happens thereafter.

But instead Jonathan positions himself deliberately on the losing side. Why? Well it turns out that he does it for his friend David because that wasn’t the only time when Jonathans position as his father King Saul’s son was able to be used to save David’s life. He did it several times and in the end, because Saul has so badly turned against God, because of his despotic sinful behaviour to cling to power, because Saul consults a medium, God allows Saul and his sons to be killed in battle. Let’s have a read, 1 Samuel chapter 31 beginning at verse 1:

Now the Philistines fought hard against Israel and the men of Israel fled before the Philistines and many fell on Mount Gilboa. The Philistines overtook Saul and his sons and the Philistines killed Jonathan and Abinadab and Malki-Shua the sons of Saul. The battle pressed hard upon Saul, the archers found him and he was badly wounded.

Then Saul said to his armour bearer, ‘draw your sword and thrust me through with it so that these uncircumcised may not come and thrust me through and make sport of me.’ But his armour bearer was unwilling for he was terrified so Saul took his own sword and fell upon it. When his armour bearer saw that Saul was dead he also fell on his sword and died with him.

So Saul and his three sons and his armour bearer and all his men died together on that same day. When the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley and those beyond the Jordan saw that the men of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead they forsook their towns and fled too and the Philistines came and occupied them.

It turns out that Jonathan perished with Saul because he hung onto the losing camp in order to protect his friend David who went on to become king. He laid down his life for David and that, that’s what according to God a friend is. Someone who’ll lay down their life for us. It’s precisely the sort of friend you and I are looking for and can I tell you it’s precisely the sort of friend that God is calling you and me to be?

Is it hard sometimes, when everything and everyone is screaming at us to save their own skins and ditch our friends when push comes to shove? Does it hurt sometimes to sacrifice for our friends? You bet you it does! I mean you bet you but without that sort of commitment what does friendship really stand for? Is it just two people using one another or is there a soul connection? Is it an expression of unconditional love of God that He showed to you and me when He sent His Son Jesus to die for us on that cross?

I’m a preacher and from time to time I guess I’ve been known to preach up a storm but the greatest sermon I will ever, ever preach is the way I live my life, the sort of friend that I am, what I’m prepared to sacrifice. The degree to which I’m prepared to take up that grizzly cross and follow Jesus out into the lives of those who need to know Him. That’s the greatest sermon you and I will ever preach.

 

The Jesus Story

And we’re going to do that by looking at Jesus, I mean what better way to do that. Jesus is born as a baby in Bethlehem, He grows up in Nazareth, I mean it’s humble surroundings as a carpenters son. Did He have friends as a lad? Well that’s not something we really see but we have to imagine that He did and then one day it’s time to step out from His role as a carpenters son and some time in His early thirties, He begins His public ministry with His baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist.

And not long after that He starts to call some disciples to His side. Now He had lots of disciples, a disciple was someone who followed a Rabbi and Jesus the Rabbi had lots of them. He was doing amazing miracles; He was speaking in ways people just didn’t expect. Have a listen, if you’ve got a Bible grab it, we’re looking at Matthew chapter 4 beginning at verse 23:

Jesus went through Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread through all Syria and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains and demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics and he cured them all and great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and from beyond the Jordan.

But out of those great crowds he chose twelve … just twelve disciples, Matthew chapter 10 beginning at verse 2:

These are the names of the twelve apostles. First Simon also known as Peter and his brother Andrew, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector, James son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus, Simon the Canaanite and Judas Iscariot the one who betrayed him.

He did that because He knew that if His ministry was going to live on beyond His time here on earth, if the coming of the Son of God was going to have an impact a hundred years on, a thousand years on, two thousand years on and more He was going to have to pass on His passion and His teaching to a handful of others who would pass it on to more and more across the world and down through the ages.

And when you stop and think about it what He knew was ultimately that it was friendship that was going to change the world. Doesn’t that blow you away? Without those friends, without those apostles you and I wouldn’t be sitting here believing in Jesus today. The Church exists today, Gods Word is being preached today, lives are being transformed today, people are meeting Jesus today because friendship was and remains the corner stone of Gods plan to reconcile people back to Him. Just let that sink in for a minute.

Do you see? Friendship isn’t some side story, it’s the main story and these disciples lived with Jesus, travelled with Jesus, were admonished by Jesus, watched how the Son of God handled Himself, saw His miracles. All this happened because He chose them and He drew them close and He called them friends. He was their Rabbi, they were His learners which is what the word “disciple” really means, to be a learner and they lived with Him on the road for the best part, I guess, of three and a half years.

This Rabbi/disciple relationship was very much a hierarchical relationship according to the tradition of Jews, the Rabbi up there, pupil down here and the pupils in many respects were indentured to the Rabbi but after all they went through together, toward the end when He was about to be crucified, just stop and have a listen to what Jesus says to His disciples about friendship. John chapter 15 beginning at verse 12:

This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this than to lay down ones life for ones friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you to do. I don’t call you servants any longer because the servant does not know what the master is doing but I’ve called you friends because I’ve made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You didn’t choose me, I chose you and I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.

Wow! No longer were they just students, no longer were they like indentured servants or slaves but in love they’d become Jesus friends and because they were His friends He was going to show them the greatest act of friendship by literally laying down His life for them. He was opening up His relationship with His Father to them by telling them, revealing to them what God was all about in sending Jesus to live and to walk and to speak and to heal and to suffer and to die and to rise again here on this earth.

It was in what the Holy Spirit revealed to them about the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ that Gods family, the Church, was born here on this earth and now lives on through the lives of billions of people every day. And by making them His friends, by making us Jesus friends … you and me, through this amazing sacrifice of His, He’s now calling us as a direct result and consequence of His friendship to go out and to bear fruit, to go out and to change the world, to go out and to be Jesus to a lost and hurting world in desperate need of knowing about and experiencing the amazing love and friendship of God through Jesus Christ. Do you get it?

That’s why this is the flip side of loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. The second thing is just like the first; love your neighbour as yourself. Have you put your trust in Jesus? If the answer’s yes then you are His friend, no longer an enemy of God, not only His servant but His friend, blessed by the greatest act of friendship in all of history. The death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son of God for you. Set free, forgiven by the price He paid for you on that Cross.

Set free to live a new life through His victory over death. With a door to the eternal love and friendship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit flung wide open, the welcome mat put out, the table set so that forever you can fellowship with your God.

Now if that ain’t a model of friendship for you and me to live out here on this earth then I just simply don’t know what is. It all started when God called you and God called me to be His friend. It all started because first He loved us, that’s what friendship is. Friendship takes the first step, friendship just doesn’t sit there and say, “you know that guy over there is a pain in the neck, there is no way I’m going to serve him.”

You know what God does? God sometimes points us to that pain in the neck over there and says, “Go and love that person, go and serve that person, go and be Jesus to that person just in the same way as this Jesus came to this earth to die for you, to suffer for you so that you may be my friend.” This is what God is calling us to, not just to worship Him with words but to worship Him with our lives by being someone else’s friend.

Friendships are fantastic aren’t they? But how often do we come at this whole friendship thing with a rank consumer mindset – asking what’s in it for me? May be the question we need to be asking is … what sort of a friend am I?

 

The Friend Who Failed

We have been chatting these last few weeks about the whole subject of friendship. It isn’t something we talk about that often; it’s something we kind of … I don’t know, take for granted. And yet friendship, relationship, love, sacrifice are at the very centre of God’s plan for this world.

As we have seen over these last few weeks, God looked at Adam when He created him and He said, “Hey, it’s not good that this man should be alone. I’ll make him a helper as his partner.” Why? Because you and I are made in the image of God – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit – three persons in one God; a God of relationship and community and of love for all eternity.

I have heard some people postulate that the reason God created us – you and me – was that He got lonely. God was never lonely because God is three persons in one and that’s a mystery that I think we will spend the rest of eternity wrapping our minds around. No, God created us so that He could show us His great love; so that we could behold His glory. That’s why God created us. And He created us in His image. Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27:

God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” So God created man in his image; in the image of God he created us, male and female he created us.

See, we have been created in the image of a relational God, “… male and female he created us.” But although we are created in His image, there is one big difference between us and God … one difference that God allowed to happen in order that we should have a free will – either to love Him or not to love Him – for without freewill, love can’t be love. As A.W. Tozer writes in his book, “The Pursuit of God”:

You and I are in little (our sins excepted) what God is in large. Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In our sins we simply lack the power.

You see, our sin is what sets us apart from God, in more ways than one. And our sin means that our capacity for love and friendship and relationship is marred; twisted and often perverted. That’s why people have arguments and disagreements. That’s why marriages fall apart. That’s why beatings happen. That’s why exploitation happens. That’s why wars happen.

Because through our rebellion against God – and that’s precisely what sin is – we lose the ability to live together, to work together, to honour one another in perfect love and perfect relationships, as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit honour and love one another in the perfect relationship that we call “God”. You see this time and time again throughout the Bible.

Over the past few weeks we have talked a lot about the friendship between Jonathan – King Saul’s son – and the heir to the throne of Israel, David. Now Jonathan eventually gave his life in order to be David’s friend but only because Saul’s sense of friendship and loyalty became so twisted and so perverted and so jealous that he set his heart on killing David, whom God Himself had chosen to be the next king after Saul. Why? Because Saul was jealous of David’s success and popularity. Have a listen to this – First Samuel chapter 18, beginning at verse 5:

David went out and was successful wherever Saul sent him; as a result, Saul set him over the army. And all the people, even the servants of Saul, approved. As they were coming home, when David returned from killing the Philistine, the women came out of all the towns of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments. And the women sang to one another as they made merry, “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” Saul was very angry, for this saying displeased him. He said, “They have ascribed to David tens of thousands, and to me they have ascribed thousands; what more can he have but the kingdom?” So Saul eyed David from that day on.

The next day an evil spirit from God rushed upon Saul, and he raved within his house, while David was playing the lyre, as he did day by day. Saul had his spear in his hand; and Saul threw the spear, for he thought, “I will pin David to the wall.” But David eluded him twice.

Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him but had departed from Saul. So Saul removed him from his presence, and made him a commander of a thousand; and David marched out and came in, leading the army. David had success in all his undertakings; for the Lord was with him.”

Do you see how our own selfishness and pride and anger, births something in our hearts that unlocks a powerful evil in the spiritual dimension? Do you see how our sinful nature and our thoughts can lead to a breakdown in God’s perfect plan for perfect love and unity and friendship? See, this is why friends fail; this is why sometimes people turn against us – because their sinful thoughts and desires have unlocked a spirit of evil that grips them and leads them to sinful acts.

And whilst we might say, “Well, yea, right, this is a bit extreme here. I have never tried to kill anyone with my spear before today,” have a listen to another example – a much more recent one. One that happened about a thousand years later after this Saul/David incident, in the first century AD; one that a few of us may well relate to just a bit more closely. It comes from the Book of Acts chapter 15, beginning at verse 32:

Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the believers. After they had been there for some time, they were sent off in peace by the believers to those who had sent them. But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, and there, with many others, they taught and proclaimed the word of the Lord.

After some days, Paul said to Barnabas, “Come, let us return and visit the believers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” Barnabas wanted to take with them John also called Mark. But Paul decided not to take with them one who had deserted them in Pamphylia and who had not accompanied them in the work. This disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and set out, the believers commending him to the grace of the Lord. He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.”

You know what we have just witnessed there? The very first church split. Paul and Barnabas had this big argument and they went their separate ways. Let me ask you – can you imagine God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit doing that? Nooooo! But Paul and Barnabas did – even though they had been through a huge amount together in ministry already, in the name of the Lord. Why? Why didn’t they go to God and ask God to reveal what they should do and which way they should go and whom they should take? Perhaps God wanted them to go their separate ways. So why didn’t they figure that out and do that in love? Why did they have to have an argument? Why did they have to have a fight?

Because we as friends, sometimes get on our high horses and we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. See, friends are supposed to make us stronger. Friends encourage us; friends help us … friends help us see when we are operating in pride rather than for God’s glory. Friends are invaluable. But if Satan … if he can get in there and create merry hell, literally, by pulling us apart, you see, he wins a small victory along the way.

That’s why the stuff we have been talking about these last few weeks is so important. That’s why learning godly friendship; learning to take up our cross and follow Jesus into godly relationships is so powerfully important. Friends are going to fail us sometimes but that failure is not something that we should allow to tear us apart, because if we do, the enemy wins.

And so later we are going to allow God’s Word to become … well, something of a mirror to our faces, as we ask ourselves, “What sort of a friend am I?” Because I think what happens is that all too often, we look at this whole friendship thing through a consumer mindset. We look at people, friends, potential friends and what we are really thinking is, “If I have this person as a friend, hey, what’s in it for me?” And yet, I’m not sure that is quite the question Jesus had in mind. What sort of a friend am I? What sort of a friend are you?

 

What Sort of Friend Am I?

As our time over these past few weeks, talking about friendship, draws to a bit of a close, my hunch is that one question we need to be asking ourselves is, “What sort of a friend am I?” Am I the sort of friend that Jonathan was? We have chatted about him a few times these past weeks. He was King Saul’s son and even though he may have been next in line for the throne, he protected God’s anointed successor, David, from his murderous father and in the end that cost him his life. Or am I more like Saul, Jonathan’s father – prone to jealousy and anger and outrage and revenge, against the very people who have saved my skin in the past? Or am I somewhere in between those two?

I think these are really important questions because they go to our character; they go to who we are; they go to whether other people can trust us as their friends or whether they have to watch their backs when we are around. If someone took a poll of the people you are close to – at work, at church, at home, amongst your social group – if someone were to ask all those people what sort of a friend are you, what would they say? Trustworthy or not; there when they needed you, or not; encouraging or not; honouring or not?

Right now we are going to kind of hold a mirror up to our faces, you and I and ask ourselves, “What sort of a friend am I?” See, some people deceive us. What they purport to be on the outside is not what they are on the inside. What they say to your face is not what they say behind your back. That wonderful line from the British comedy series “Yes, Prime Minister”, when the wise, old civil servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby, says to his young protégé, Bernard Woolly:

Remember Bernard, you have to get behind someone before you can stab them in the back.

That sums up those sorts of people and I’ve gotta tell you, there are plenty of them walking around planet earth right now. They are the kind of ‘Judas’ friend. Luke chapter 22, beginning at verse 1:

Now the festival of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was near. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to put Jesus to death, for they were afraid of the people. Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve; he went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might betray Jesus to them. They were greatly pleased and agreed to give him money. So he consented and began to look for an opportunity to betray Jesus to them when no crowd was present.

May I ask you quietly but directly: Are you a Judas kind of friend? Because if we are, then our relationships are going to be few and far between. People won’t trust us enough to allow us to be their friends. We need to be trustworthy in order to have influence in peoples lives. And they need to know that we are going to be acting in their best interests and by and large, friendship … friendship is about influence.

One of the rudest shocks I have ever experienced in my life is the transition from life in the military back into “civvy street”. See, things were pretty simple in the Army: everybody had a rank, you exactly where you stood and that was it. By and large, the system worked pretty well, although, it was a culture we kind of took for granted.

Then when I left the military I became a consultant – working in organisations where, not only did these “civvies” just did not “get it” but as an advisor, I had no executive authority. I couldn’t decide to do something and then just tell people to do that thing. I could only advise and cajole and guide … it was like herding cats. It was in that place that the difference between influence and control hit me in the face like a wet fish.

At first, I hated it but it wasn’t long and I began to realise that, right from the beginning, even in the wonderful structured and organised world of the military, leadership had always been much more about influence than control. That’s where my mentor of twenty years, Graham Pratt, the Managing Director of our consulting firm, taught me the single most important lesson about influence. It’s a lesson I still get to apply every day of my life, decades on. Here it is:

When people are able to trust us because we genuinely put their interests first, it is just amazing how influential we become.

And influence is the currency of friendship. See, Graham, in our company, established a culture that demanded that we always – irrespective of the circumstances – acted, first and foremost, in the interest of our clients.

Now, that was a pretty gutsy move, as I look back on it. I can remember on more than one occasion, that principle costing us tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in ongoing work. Ouch! We would often sit around the meeting table in the office, chatting about giving the client some piece of difficult advice and time and time again, as we debate the relative merits of good advice to the client verses the potential negative impact on our own organisation’s revenues and how we might mitigate that, Graham would bring us back to that principle that drove all that we did – the client comes first, second and third and everything else comes last.

As time went by, our consulting firm developed and grew because we had an enviable reputation for always providing the hard advice to the client in the best interest of the client. The end result of that was that our firm grew from a small back-room outfit to a substantial practice that worked internationally for some of the largest companies on the planet.

What was going on here? Well, I’ll tell you what was going on: we developed a great influence with our clients because they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they could trust us to act in their best interests, no matter what. Well, did we always get it right? No, of course we didn’t but we always gave advice without fear or favour that was in the best interest of the client.

See, Graham is now long retired, but this piece of wisdom of his is a gem that has blessed me over and over and over again. It was the key, if you will, that opened my understanding of what influence is all about. Of course, there is nothing new in any of this. It just took me a while to figure it out.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility regard others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something he should exploit, but instead he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness; being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:3-8)

See, that’s God’s wisdom – putting other people first is God’s wisdom. Serving them with all that we are is God’s wisdom. Sacrificing for our friends is God’s wisdom. A friend in need is a friend indeed. And the sort of friend that people are looking for in this world isn’t a “Judas” kind of friend; it’s the “Jesus” kind of friend. It’s the kind of friend that would humble themselves, even to the point of death, on a cross; someone whose life declares the powerful truth of the love of Jesus Christ; someone who will put their interests before their own interests; someone who will lay down their life for a friend.

Because let me tell you: there is no greater love than this, than to lay down your life for a friend – that’s the Jesus paradigm of friendship; that’s the Jesus paradigm of sacrificing and suffering so that we can discover rich friendship. And it’s when we learn to forgive a friend freely that we build close relationships. It’s this sort of friend that your friends are crying out for; it’s this sort of friend that they had never thought they can find.

Let me ask you a question – are you such a friend? Will they find the “Jesus” friendship in you? Well?

 

The Friendship Surprise

I don’t know about you but I pretty much like getting my own way – it’s our natural, human response to things, isn’t it? We interact with other people and they come at things from a different angle, with different perspectives and so we disagree with them. And that’s how disagreements start – that’s how friendships fall apart; that’s even how wars start. And it’s this lack of an ability to give up our own way for the sake of a relationship that the devil likes to exploit. We have our agenda and so we set about making it happen, despite what it might cost those around us – despite the relationships it might destroy.

Learning not to get my own way all the time, has been a process; a journey. And it continues to be a work in progress for God in my heart to teach me to come second. And here’s the weird thing – the really bizarre thing for someone like me – there is such an amazing – what would you call it – sense of satisfaction, in coming second; in laying down our own petty agendas for God’s glory.

I’m not saying that to make out like I’m some great guy. I am not! The point I guess I am trying to make is that, friendship God’s way is such an amazing surprise package. It is so rich to be able to forgive someone and lay down our own lives. It is something I simply would never in a million years, have expected – it’s like a treasure trove. And when we open it up it’s full of surprises and all the time, there it was in God’s Word.

We saw earlier when we talked about the fact that Jesus lay down His life for us. Philippians 2:1:

If there is any encouragement in Christ; any consolation from love; any sharing of the spirit; any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourself. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

Do you see the foundations that God is laying for friendship? It’s a foundation of coming second in order to win. And now He explains what it’s all about. Remember we read about Jesus having laid down His life – He didn’t want to cling on to being God; He was! Instead, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death; even death on a cross:

And therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father.

Do you see how God’s idea of losing in order to win is the basis of true friendship? Jesus humbled Himself and suffered and died so that you and I could be God’s friends; His children. And because He didn’t insist on His own entitlement and His status as the Son of God; because He laid down His life for His friends – you and me – what?

Therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every other name.

Friend, this is the secret of true friendship, godly friendship. The sort of friendship that is rich and lasting and pure and rewarding; the sort of friendship that you and I were made to live out, laying down our lives as Jesus laid down His life in order that we can put the interests of others first.

And truly, the greatest people in my life are the ones who have done just that. As I picture their faces – these people who loved me, when what I really deserved was rejection, in my heart their greatness lives on. They are the greatest people in my life because they were my friends in the dark times, because instead of rejecting me, they counselled me, they helped me and they loved me, because they were Jesus to me.

No greater love has anyone than to lay down their life for a friend. What sort of a friend are you? What sort of love do you share with the people around you? What sort of a witness is your life, and mine, of the love of Christ, in the lives of the people we live with? What sort of a friend are we?