SPEAKER_00: Proverbs twenty-seven has a few verses that describe the power of friendship, beginning in verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Oil and perfume make the heart glad.
SPEAKER_00: And the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel.
SPEAKER_00: Do not forsake your friend and your father's friends.
SPEAKER_00: Don't go into your brother's house in the day of your calamity.
SPEAKER_00: Better is a neighbor who's near than a brother who's far away.
SPEAKER_00: And jump down to verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps the translation you memorized younger was so one man sharpens the countenance of his friends.
SPEAKER_00: Christians, of course, put energy into marriage.
SPEAKER_00: We go to marriage conferences and read books about marriage, but we put less energy into friends, which shows a contrast with our children.
SPEAKER_00: Our children, of course, who aren't married, put so much energy into friends, and it comes so naturally for them, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It was one of the uh a recurring theme with all of my kids when they were at a certain uh younger age.
SPEAKER_00: We'd pick them up from church on Sunday and ask them, How is church?
SPEAKER_00: And they would say, It was so fun.
SPEAKER_00: I made a new best friend, and we would say, Really?
SPEAKER_00: What's her name?
SPEAKER_00: And they would say, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: What a thriving friendship right there.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I think one of my kids carried on that friendship for several months before they learned her name.
SPEAKER_00: Uh she would describe her in the card on the way home.
SPEAKER_00: The one with the hair bow.
SPEAKER_00: We're like, okay, next time learn her name.
SPEAKER_00: Kids make friends so easily.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you're six, I'm six, let's be friends.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't work at our ages, you know?
SPEAKER_00: Uh you're 49, I'm 49.
SPEAKER_00: We can be friends.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't work that way.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, we understand the importance of friendship.
SPEAKER_00: In a church like Emmanuel, it's highly transitory.
SPEAKER_00: People come and people go.
SPEAKER_00: There's so many military people, the Pentagon, FBI, people that are here just for a couple years and then sent somewhere else.
SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to make friends that way.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people that stay at the church that aren't in that transitory feel some of our church leadership references this phenomenon as standing on the platform and the train goes by.
SPEAKER_00: And you can you can make friends with people as they're going by in the train, but how deep of a friendship can you have when they're only going by the platform for a moment?
SPEAKER_00: That's the nature of living in Northern Virginia.
SPEAKER_00: It can be difficult to make friends.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the scripture really commands us to make friends.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 18, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire.
SPEAKER_00: He breaks out against all sound judgment.
SPEAKER_00: The person who isolates himself cuts himself off.
SPEAKER_00: And notice this language here, he breaks out against sound judgment.
SPEAKER_00: There is helpfulness in friends.
SPEAKER_00: You can run ideas by your friends.
SPEAKER_00: You can tell your friends conflicts you're having in home, or you can tell your friends about a car you're thinking of buying, or a house you're thinking of buying, or a new job you're thinking of taking.
SPEAKER_00: And in the company of many counselors, there's wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: That's something that's true for a king.
SPEAKER_00: A king has his cabinet.
SPEAKER_00: A king is obviously responsible for making the decisions.
SPEAKER_00: The buck doesn't stop with the cabinet, it stops with the king.
SPEAKER_00: The same concept is true in friendship, but we don't have a cabinet.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have a group of people we can summon to help us think through the next decision in our life, but we do have friends.
SPEAKER_00: The person who cuts himself off from that breaks out against all sound judgment, Scripture says.
SPEAKER_00: Friendship in that sense is a critical part of the human life.
SPEAKER_00: It's God designed us for this kind of friendship.
SPEAKER_00: And friendship is different than any other relationship that we have.
SPEAKER_00: That's because friendship has no, in a sense, pretenses to it.
SPEAKER_00: Not with true friendship.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I guess there's some like middle school age where kids try to present one persona or one personality or one style in order to be friends with people who present that style or that personality or that persona or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: But you grow out of that somewhat fast.
SPEAKER_00: At least any kind of mature, wise person grows out of that.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis talks about this in his book, The Four Loves, about what makes friendship so special.
SPEAKER_00: And he hits on that point.
SPEAKER_00: The point is that in other relationships, every other human relationship, you stand as yourself plus some other title.
SPEAKER_00: You're friends with somebody at work, you're you plus your job title.
SPEAKER_00: In home at home, your your wife is your best friend, but you're always the friend and the husband.
SPEAKER_00: You have a friendly relationship with your kids, but you're friend and dad.
SPEAKER_00: In every relationship, there's that.
SPEAKER_00: There's you plus something else, with other obligations that you take on by that something else.
SPEAKER_00: The one exception to that, and the whole human experience, Lewis argues, is friendship.
SPEAKER_00: In friendship, you're not you plus something else.
SPEAKER_00: You're only you.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis refers to that as the kingliness of friendship, which is a cool phrase.
SPEAKER_00: Because the king doesn't need to present the king and the person, they conflate.
SPEAKER_00: It is their true identity.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the king plus the other person.
SPEAKER_00: No, that is who he is.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody else has their name plus something else, not the king and not the friends, Lewis says.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis describes it this way: two friends therefore meet like sovereign princes of independent states.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine two kings traveling abroad and they encounter each other.
SPEAKER_00: They speak to each other on neutral ground, freed from all their contexts.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis goes on to say in the Four Loves that those two kings that are conversing in some neutral land, they can have a friendship with each other unlike anything else, because there in that neutral land alone can they be them true selves with somebody else who is like them.
SPEAKER_00: They can't be that in their own nation, they can't be that in their own family, but they can be that with their friends.
SPEAKER_00: He goes on to say, we don't have these pretenses among friends.
SPEAKER_00: Friendship, he says, is an affair of the disentangled and stripped minds.
SPEAKER_00: I had to read that sentence a few times.
SPEAKER_00: It's an affair of the disentangled and stripped minds.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, who you are, disentangled of all those other relationships.
SPEAKER_00: That's who you are towards your friends.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, this is the classic C.
SPEAKER_00: S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis line Eros or erotic love will have naked bodies.
SPEAKER_00: Friendship has naked personalities.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why he says in friendship, there's a certain arbitrariness to it.
SPEAKER_00: And what he means by that is that you kind of can choose your own friends, you kind of can't choose your own friends.
SPEAKER_00: It's providential.
SPEAKER_00: And you try to reverse engineer it.
SPEAKER_00: You look back at the people you're closest friends with throughout your life, and you don't really know how you became friends.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there was common interests or whatnot.
SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, it is just providential.
SPEAKER_00: And Lewis describes it as arbitrary.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I have no duty to be anyone's friend, and no man in the world has a duty to be mine.
SPEAKER_00: No claims, no shadow of necessity, and this is essential for true friendship.
SPEAKER_00: That's so counterintuitive today.
SPEAKER_00: Friendship, and this is the famous quote.
SPEAKER_00: I gave you the lead into it, but this is Lewis's probably his most famous quote on friendship.
SPEAKER_00: But when you just take the quote by itself and you lose the lead in you, you don't really understand what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: He then says this, which is what you see on, you know, friendship posters and stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Friendship like philosophy and like art is unnecessary.
SPEAKER_00: Like the universe itself, it has no survival value.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, it is one of those things which gives value to survival.
SPEAKER_00: Friendship gives meaning and joy to life.
SPEAKER_00: You're not required to be a friend any more than the universe is required to exist.
SPEAKER_00: A person who rejects that thinking, rejects the nature of friendship, finds himself isolated.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Jesus, of course, speaks of friendship in our scripture passage we read earlier today, John 15.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus links his sacrificial love to us with his friendship.
SPEAKER_00: He says he's going to lay down his life for us.
SPEAKER_00: Greater love has no one than this, he says, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus begins his instruction on friendship by reminding his disciples that he is the greatest friend there is, as evidenced by the fact that he will sacrifice his self for them.
SPEAKER_00: Now notice this combines in my mind with Lewis's thinking.
SPEAKER_00: There's no obligation upon Jesus to do this, it's out of friendship.
SPEAKER_00: The Father has sent him to be the sacrifice, and he could do that in obedience to the Father without taking on the mantle of friendship.
SPEAKER_00: But he takes on the mantle of friendship, being his true self with his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: So that when he does lay his life down, he's not doing it as a slave.
SPEAKER_00: He's not doing it as the one under submission to the Father or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00: He's doing it as the one who is the friend of the people for whom he will die.
SPEAKER_00: And that friendship is reciprocated.
SPEAKER_00: You are my friends, he says, if you do what I command.
SPEAKER_00: That's our part of this friendship.
SPEAKER_00: When you understand the richness of John 15 and really John 16 and 17 as well, but specifically John 15, you understand that richness, you understand you're not under an obligation to obey Christ any more than the leaf of a tree is under an obligation to be green.
SPEAKER_00: It just naturally happens that way as it is fed.
SPEAKER_00: Your friendship with the Lord binds you to obedience, not out of some kind of obligation, but out of almost the ontological reality of friendship.
SPEAKER_00: You're a friend to the Lord, you obey.
SPEAKER_00: And pastors like to preach passages.
SPEAKER_00: There's lots of passages on marriage, and so they're easy to preach and write books on.
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 27 is one of those places that does talk about friendship so and drives us to it tonight.
SPEAKER_00: But to be clear at the beginning, the Bible doesn't have a clear definition of friendship.
SPEAKER_00: There is a clear definition of marriage, but there's not a clear definition of friendship.
SPEAKER_00: There's not like the high school equivalent of the DTR that defined the relationship talk for friends.
SPEAKER_00: So, hey, we've we've done a lot.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about sports scores and we've gone and got coffee together and hung out.
SPEAKER_00: Can we be friends now?
SPEAKER_00: Are we officially friends?
SPEAKER_00: Can I introduce you as my friends?
SPEAKER_00: You don't have that kind of conversation.
SPEAKER_00: There's no official definition of friendship.
SPEAKER_00: But it's just the state of having companions that you live life with.
SPEAKER_00: That's why there's not a prescriptive list of things to do to be a good friend.
SPEAKER_00: There's not six things to do to cultivate a friendship.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible doesn't give you that.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, the scripture describes friendship more about who you're supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of person you are is probably going to dictate what kind of friends you attract.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why getting friendship right is not about a few do's and don'ts.
SPEAKER_00: It's far deeper than your actions.
SPEAKER_00: It has to reach all the way to the motivations of your heart.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a friendly person, you will draw friends and have friends.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a godly person, you will draw and have godly friends.
SPEAKER_00: If you are an isolated person, you're going to have a hard time having friends.
SPEAKER_00: And the point of this verse is that you do that at your own harm.
SPEAKER_00: You think I'm just not a friendly person.
SPEAKER_00: Dad, that hurts you.
SPEAKER_00: I just shoot myself in the foot all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Biblical friendship is obviously different than worldly friendship.
SPEAKER_00: Worldly friendship is self-centered, self-focused on your, you know, your own hobbies and whatnot, your sense of belonging, your finding a purpose in your relationship.
SPEAKER_00: That's a worldly model of friendship.
SPEAKER_00: What if the greatest commands the Bible gave us were to make sure no one hurts you, make sure no one looks down on you, make sure that you take care of yourself, make sure you're never dependent on anyone, make sure that you are your own person.
SPEAKER_00: What if that's what the Bible commanded you to be?
SPEAKER_00: You would infer that you're created to live for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible turns all that on your head.
SPEAKER_00: You're called to be vulnerable and sacrificial.
SPEAKER_00: You're called to be humble, allowing others to look down on you.
SPEAKER_00: You're not called to take care of yourself, but to take care of others.
SPEAKER_00: You're not called to be your own person, but to die to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And the person who does that is going to draw friends with like-minded missions in life.
SPEAKER_00: We're friends with God as we love Him with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we're friends with others as we love them as ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: That being said, God providentially creates relationships where friends come into our life and strengthen our life.
SPEAKER_00: To have a friend, you have to be a friend.
SPEAKER_00: And to be a friend, you have to engage with people, encourage people, pray for people, remember them, interact with them.
SPEAKER_00: There's a certain amount of providential mystery, like I said, that goes into that, a certain amount of personal chemistry that goes into that.
SPEAKER_00: That you can't reverse engineer.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, even if you go on in the Four Loves, talks about how the beginning of friendships, nobody's talking about the other person.
SPEAKER_00: And I read that, and it's just so against the Christian way we normally talk about friendships today.
SPEAKER_00: But Lewis says when he looks at the best friendships in his life, it didn't start by him trying to get to know the other person.
SPEAKER_00: It honestly, Lewis says in his own confession, started about him talking about himself.
SPEAKER_00: And the other person talking about himself.
SPEAKER_00: And you realize, oh, we have certain things in common, and talking about yourself and himself becomes pegs that you can start to bounce off of, and you realize how much your life is engaged.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not recommending talking about yourself more.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need that kind of help.
SPEAKER_00: But it is interesting when Lewis is writing a book on friendship and looks back over his lives of friendships, he says, you know, most of them started with me being self-focused.
SPEAKER_00: There's a certain amount of providential mystery that we go about living our lives, and people who have an overlapping life with us end up gravitating towards each other.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read one more Lewis quote, and then I'll be done.
SPEAKER_00: Except for one more later on.
SPEAKER_00: In friendship, Lewis says, we've chosen our peers.
SPEAKER_00: But in reality, this is what he means by a providential twist, in reality, a few years' difference in the dates of our births, or a few more miles between certain houses growing up, the choice of one university over another, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised in the hallway.
SPEAKER_00: Any of these chances would have kept us apart.
SPEAKER_00: You understand what he's saying by that?
SPEAKER_00: I look at some of my closest friends and how many providential encounters there were that brought me to those places.
SPEAKER_00: You know, a teammate in soccer that we just got, we got paired off together to be gym partners for the season.
SPEAKER_00: Had he been one more person over, we wouldn't be friends.
SPEAKER_00: Sitting next to somebody at seminary or a new student lunch at seminary, and I sit at this table with this person who becomes a friend.
SPEAKER_00: Had I sat at a different table, I wouldn't have that friend.
SPEAKER_00: There's so many of those providential twists, Lewis says.
SPEAKER_00: And we think we've chosen our friends, but you know, if you went to a different school, you'd have different friends.
SPEAKER_00: As for a Christian, he says there are no chances.
SPEAKER_00: A secret master of all ceremony has been at work.
SPEAKER_00: Christ, who said to the disciples, You haven't chosen me, but I have chosen you, can surely say that to every one of your friendships.
SPEAKER_00: They're chosen by the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: When you understand that, Lewis writes, your friendship is not a reward for your discriminating in good taste.
SPEAKER_00: It rather is the instrument by which God reveals your beauties to others.
SPEAKER_00: You can be socially aware, of course.
SPEAKER_00: You know, with little kids, your parents can say, I forbid you to be friends with that person, you need to be friends with that person.
SPEAKER_00: And you think, how can you make me be friends with them?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I can arrange your schedule for the next six years of your life so you're friends with them.
SPEAKER_00: There.
SPEAKER_00: Hard to do that in middle school, hard to do that in high school.
SPEAKER_00: So easy with the four-year-olds.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there are different kinds of friendships.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, scripture warns you about three kinds of friendships that will be disappointing, and then we'll get to the good one.
SPEAKER_00: The first kind of friendship is a friendship with a fool.
SPEAKER_00: Don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be a friend with the fool.
SPEAKER_00: In Proverbs, it should come as no surprise.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be friends with the fool.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 14, 7 says it this way: leave the presence of a fool.
SPEAKER_00: For there you don't meet words of knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: Fools won't enrich your life.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where friendship is supposed to be a little self-serving, Solomon's saying.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that person is a fool, and it's it would be so easy for you to say, yeah, but I'm mature and they're a fool.
SPEAKER_00: I should be friends with them so that I help them.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Leave their presence.
SPEAKER_00: Their words, their life won't enrich your life.
SPEAKER_00: Friendship can be self-serving in that sense.
SPEAKER_00: In this sense, so much of Christian teaching on friendship goes against the way you would think the Christian ethic would be.
SPEAKER_00: You think I should be friends with the immature person because I want to help them.
SPEAKER_00: You hear people say that when they justify dating somebody who's ungodly.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, maybe they're not a Christian, but if we date and get married, they'll totally get saved.
SPEAKER_00: Look, it's evangelist.
SPEAKER_00: You told me you wanted me me to be an evangelist, Dad.
SPEAKER_00: Of course I can marry the non-Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Such foolishness.
SPEAKER_00: And the same principle is true with the friendships.
SPEAKER_00: Leave the presence of a fool, because you will not meet words of knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be friends with someone who will make you dumber.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 14, verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Fools mock at the guilt offering, but the upright enjoys acceptance.
SPEAKER_00: I love how Solomon chooses the guilt offering as a window into friendship.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the larger category, the larger context in Proverbs 14, I'm just giving a verse at a time, but that whole section of Proverbs 14 is on friendship.
SPEAKER_00: And there Solomon takes the guilt offering as a litness test with friendship.
SPEAKER_00: The guilt offering is a pretty interesting insight into friendship because the guilt offering is not something you're required to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's an optional offering.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the free will offering.
SPEAKER_00: It's an optional offering.
SPEAKER_00: It's not one of the scheduled feasts or the scheduled sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: It's described in Leviticus chapter 5 and the first part of chapter 6, as well as Numbers chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: And the whole idea is that if you have an unintentional sin, in fact, in Leviticus, it says if you sinned and you didn't realize it at the time.
SPEAKER_00: So it's only in retrospect.
SPEAKER_00: You look back and you think, oh, yesterday when I did this, that was sinful.
SPEAKER_00: You can then go and bring a sacrifice for that sin offering.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, there's different categories of sacrifices depending on the category of sin.
SPEAKER_00: But the point is, you don't have to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody would know about it.
SPEAKER_00: And so your conscience is convicted, and you say you want to offer a sacrifice for your sin.
SPEAKER_00: The fool mocks that and says, why would you give up your why would you give up the animal?
SPEAKER_00: Why would you give up your money?
SPEAKER_00: Why would you give up whatever your sacrifice is?
SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that?
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to do that.
SPEAKER_00: That's the fool.
SPEAKER_00: The fool mocks it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a principle that extrapolates out to our current life today.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have the guilt offering, of course, but you can apply that same kind of concept to your spiritual life today.
SPEAKER_00: The fool mocks the person reading his Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The fool mocks your prayer time.
SPEAKER_00: The fool mocks giving money to the church.
SPEAKER_00: The fool mocks all those free will things you can do.
SPEAKER_00: The fool mocks them.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that?
SPEAKER_00: But the upright enjoy acceptance.
SPEAKER_00: And this is about friendship in that section of Proverbs 14.
SPEAKER_00: But even if you look at the verse, notice how it's a parallelism.
SPEAKER_00: The fools, they're mocking.
SPEAKER_00: The upright, they're accepting.
SPEAKER_00: The fools are mocking the guilt offering.
SPEAKER_00: The upright, they gain acceptance.
SPEAKER_00: The fools will get isolation.
SPEAKER_00: The upright will gain or enjoy acceptance.
SPEAKER_00: They will experience friendship.
SPEAKER_00: And this friendship makes life greater.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 14, 13.
SPEAKER_00: Even in laughter, the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief.
SPEAKER_00: The bigger context here is you know, if you go through a good time without a friend, it can be sad.
SPEAKER_00: If you go through a sad time with a friend, it can be good.
SPEAKER_00: That's Proverbs 14 13.
SPEAKER_00: And the fool doesn't experience that.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first kind of friendship is that with a fool.
SPEAKER_00: Second kind of friendship is that with a fraud.
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, these first ones are bad.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be friends with a fraud.
SPEAKER_00: The fool is not the only kind of person to avoid.
SPEAKER_00: The hardest person to be friends with.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis says this too.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't count as a quote, just an observation.
SPEAKER_00: The hardest person to be a friend with is a person who is needy for a friend.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps you've experienced that.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody who just wants to be a friend so bad and they latch on to you.
SPEAKER_00: That makes for a very difficult friendship because they are being a friend in that relationship for what they get out of it, which ends up diluting friendship.
SPEAKER_00: A friendship leech.
SPEAKER_00: They latch on and they suck your energy.
SPEAKER_00: They want something from the friendship.
SPEAKER_00: And they're not afraid to take it.
SPEAKER_00: They want your time, they want your affection, they want your money, they want your attention.
SPEAKER_00: They're sucking it from you.
SPEAKER_00: They view friendship as something to get.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 14.20 gives one example of this.
SPEAKER_00: The poor is disliked even by his neighbor, but the rich has many friends.
SPEAKER_00: Now Solomon focuses here on one aspect of that kind of fraudulent friendship: money.
SPEAKER_00: But you can extrapolate this beyond money to all sorts of things.
SPEAKER_00: The point here is that if you are seen as somebody who can give, there's going to be no shortage of people who can take.
SPEAKER_00: It's a proverb, so it's not exhaustive, but it hits on an exhaustive point.
SPEAKER_00: That it is hard to be friends with needy people who are only trying to get something from you.
SPEAKER_00: And Solomon compares that to the person who's pretending to be your friend for your money.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean you can't be friends with a rich person.
SPEAKER_00: It means probably if you're friends with somebody who has more money than you, that's probably something you will have to talk about in your friendship and work through it, like who's paying for what and when, because you don't want to, as a needier person, you don't want to give the impression you're leaching.
SPEAKER_00: And as a wealthy person, you don't want to give the impression you're buying friends.
SPEAKER_00: So it is somewhat complicated.
SPEAKER_00: But there's the reality that the wealthy person is not going to have a shortage of people who want to be their friend.
SPEAKER_00: That's not true friendship.
SPEAKER_00: It's fraudulent friendship.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 20, verse 6 describes it this way: Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find.
SPEAKER_00: There's no shortage of people that will tell you what a good friend they are.
SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
SPEAKER_00: If you'll just listen, they will tell you.
SPEAKER_00: They are so faithful.
SPEAKER_00: You would totally want to be their friends.
SPEAKER_00: And even this language, they're proclaiming their own steadfast love.
SPEAKER_00: Who walks around proclaiming their own steadfast love?
SPEAKER_00: Hey, nice to meet you.
SPEAKER_00: I just want you to know I'm a super faithful guy.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's somebody who's angling to be a friend.
SPEAKER_00: And it is transparent.
SPEAKER_00: There's no shortage of those people.
SPEAKER_00: Especially if you have money, power, or influence.
SPEAKER_00: No shortage of those people.
SPEAKER_00: But a faithful friend, they are so hard to find, so hard to find.
SPEAKER_00: Some people proclaim their own virtues.
SPEAKER_00: They talk about how faithful they are.
SPEAKER_00: That's very different than a true friend that is hard to find.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the fraud, the fake friend.
SPEAKER_00: Third category is the foul friend.
SPEAKER_00: The foul friend.
SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty sure that's the right spelling, a foul.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: It's the right spelling.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of those weird English words right there.
SPEAKER_00: A foul friend.
SPEAKER_00: The needy person is hard to be friends with, but he's not the only kind of difficult friend.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 17, verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends.
SPEAKER_00: The overly critical person divides friendships.
SPEAKER_00: You can't be friends with somebody who's always criticizing you.
SPEAKER_00: And they do that under the cover of the I just, I'm trying to help you out, brother.
SPEAKER_00: As a friend, I'm exposing what's wrong in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Friends live with each other in toleration.
SPEAKER_00: And I gave this example a couple weeks ago talking about marriage.
SPEAKER_00: That's so important inside of a family.
SPEAKER_00: A family that is constantly exposing each other's weaknesses and shortcomings will be a very difficult family to live in.
SPEAKER_00: A family that covers for each other will be a family of love and joy.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever covers an offense, especially between close friends, seeks love.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you talk to your friends more than you talk to other people, which gives you more obligation to say dumb things or to say hurtful things.
SPEAKER_00: If you're offended by the things your friends say, it's best to just cover them up and move on.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're repeatedly offended, then maybe you look for a pattern, maybe you need to say something to your friends, but maybe it's you that's being easily offended.
SPEAKER_00: You want a strong friendship with each other?
SPEAKER_00: Cover each other's petty offenses.
SPEAKER_00: But the one who repeats a matter separates close friends.
SPEAKER_00: And commentators are divided on who the repeating is too.
SPEAKER_00: Is it in the friendship or is it external to the friendship?
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, both are true.
SPEAKER_00: The person who's critical of his friend all the time to his face is going to end up separating close friends.
SPEAKER_00: There's also just the reality that you gossip around your friends about other people.
SPEAKER_00: How soon until your friends deduce, man, I don't know if I can trust this guy.
SPEAKER_00: He's always talking to me about things other people told him.
SPEAKER_00: It's not too long before I deduce that the things I'm telling him, he's going to tell other people.
SPEAKER_00: Your close friend becomes a gossip, it starts to erode the friendship.
SPEAKER_00: They share something that shouldn't be shared, that shears away friendships.
SPEAKER_00: And now this also happens if you're gossiping to other people about a close friend.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you tell me something that one of my friends did to offend you, that's going to either poison me to you or poison me to him.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Solom means here.
SPEAKER_00: You repeating a matter that one of my friends did to you is only going to serve to, again, either hurt our relationship or hurt my relationship with my friend.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of thing that's not easily remedied.
SPEAKER_00: I read this year a book called The Bully Pulpit, a biography of Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.
SPEAKER_00: Two presidents back to back.
SPEAKER_00: They were best friends in life.
SPEAKER_00: After college, they became best friends, really lifelong friends.
SPEAKER_00: The book was called The Bully Pulpit, I bought it thinking it was a book on preaching.
SPEAKER_00: There's like an 80-page book by Thomas Rayner, who used to be the head of Lifeway called The Bully Pulpit, and I heard people recommend it, and I bought that, and what came was an 800-page biography of Roosevelt and Taft.
SPEAKER_00: And I just, I just I took that as a providential twist in life.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to lean into it.
SPEAKER_00: Those guys were such good friends with each other until Edith Roosevelt, Teddy's wife, heard something that Taft had supposedly said about Teddy.
SPEAKER_00: Historians are confused about whether or not it actually even happened.
SPEAKER_00: But some people ran to Edith and told her what Taft had said about her husband.
SPEAKER_00: And that wrecked their friendship because Edith wouldn't let Teddy be friends with Taft anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And so much of American history turned on that.
SPEAKER_00: Taft became a one-term president because Roosevelt ran against him again.
SPEAKER_00: So much happened because of that.
SPEAKER_00: That's how Wilson became president.
SPEAKER_00: Had people not gossiped to Edith, we would not have Woodrow Wilson as a president.
SPEAKER_00: But gossiping sheared their relationship.
SPEAKER_00: They made up many years later.
SPEAKER_00: They met each other in a Taft and Roosevelt met each other in a restaurant serendipitously at a Chicago train station.
SPEAKER_00: And talked and asked each other for forgiveness and made up.
SPEAKER_00: Later, Roosevelt said this about it.
SPEAKER_00: He said, quote, two old friends can always overlook offenses unless their wives get involved.
SPEAKER_00: And then it is impossible to untangle.
SPEAKER_00: And we laugh, but I want you to think about it for a second.
SPEAKER_00: How true is that?
SPEAKER_00: And it's not true in a bad way.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think Roosevelt even meant that, like his wife was in the wrong or anything.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00: You can be such good friends with somebody and overlook all kinds of offenses.
SPEAKER_00: But when you start repeating those offenses to other people, it makes it into a tangled mess of life.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 23, verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: Hear, my son, and be wise.
SPEAKER_00: Direct your heart in the way.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty and the s and slumber will clothe them with rags.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be friends with the person who's a drunkard.
SPEAKER_00: Because then you'll become a drunkard.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be friends with the glutton, because then you'll lose self-control.
SPEAKER_00: And the end of this is poverty.
SPEAKER_00: The end of this is wearing rags because you befriended the wrong people.
SPEAKER_00: Poverty will bring you down too.
SPEAKER_00: You want friends that provoke you to godliness and prod you forward, not friends who stifle you and dilute you.
SPEAKER_00: Those are foul friends.
SPEAKER_00: Fourth category of friends, faithful friends.
SPEAKER_00: Woohoo! Faithful friends.
SPEAKER_00: Friends that actually provoke you to godliness.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 17, 17.
SPEAKER_00: A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
SPEAKER_00: Good friends are faithful, and I'm using the word faithful, because notice that language, they love at all times.
SPEAKER_00: They are faithful.
SPEAKER_00: They love you when you're in the right, they love you when you're in the wrong.
SPEAKER_00: They love you when you're going through good times, they love you when you're going through bad times.
SPEAKER_00: They are stable in all situations.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the best proverb on that is Proverbs 18.24, very well known.
SPEAKER_00: A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
SPEAKER_00: You have all kinds of companions around you, all kinds of people who know you and would say that they're your friends.
SPEAKER_00: But that's so easy for that guy to come to ruin.
SPEAKER_00: You know, he has a thousand contacts in his cell phone.
SPEAKER_00: He needs to borrow a pickup truck and nobody answers the phone.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a category of friend who sticks closer than a brother.
SPEAKER_00: Friendship is not exclusive, but it is small enough circles to overlap in life.
SPEAKER_00: You have lots of companions, it doesn't mean you have lots of friends.
SPEAKER_00: You can have lots of companions and a smaller group of friends, and then even a smaller group still.
SPEAKER_00: This is a pattern of Jesus' life.
SPEAKER_00: He had his 70, he had his 12, he had his three, and he had his one.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a pretty good model for life.
SPEAKER_00: You can't spread yourself out infinitely.
SPEAKER_00: It's fine to have many companions, that's fine.
SPEAKER_00: You can have 70 people that you're companions with, but you can't have 70 people that you're close friends with.
SPEAKER_00: You can have 12 people that you're friends with, but not even Jesus had 12 people that he was, you know, in his inner circle.
SPEAKER_00: He had 12 and then three.
SPEAKER_00: You have many companions, you will come to ruin.
SPEAKER_00: But God providentially works in our life to give us some friends that stick closer than a brother.
SPEAKER_00: You know, because your brothers, I know my brother lives, my brothers live far away.
SPEAKER_00: Hard to call them when I'm in trouble, they live in other states.
SPEAKER_00: And Solomon makes that point as well.
SPEAKER_00: We'll look at that verse in a second.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 19, 22, though, first, what is desired in man is steadfast love.
SPEAKER_00: And a poor man is better than a liar.
SPEAKER_00: Better to be friends with a poor guy than somebody who's not going to tell you the truth.
SPEAKER_00: What you need is somebody who is faithful in their love.
SPEAKER_00: That kind of love for each other transcends circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: This is what David and Jonathan have.
SPEAKER_00: When you think of friendships in the Bible, you run into David and Jonathan with this.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jonathan was friends with David at his own harm.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you understand that.
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan was lined up to be king.
SPEAKER_00: David comes along.
SPEAKER_00: If David's king, Jonathan loses the throne.
SPEAKER_00: And so David and Jonathan's friendship is a very potentially awkward friendship.
SPEAKER_00: As David grows greater, Jonathan loses.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why Saul was so antagonistic to David, one of the many reasons.
SPEAKER_00: But this is why he couldn't believe that Jonathan was friends with David.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the whole spear-throwing thing?
SPEAKER_00: And you get in Saul's mind this idea like, I'm trying to make you king.
SPEAKER_00: And you're throwing it away for the shepherd guy.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Saul was out of his mind with anger because he couldn't believe all the sacrifices he had made to make Jonathan king.
SPEAKER_00: Saul was Israel's first king.
SPEAKER_00: And he's trying to hand it off to his son, and instead his son is running around with his rival to the throne.
SPEAKER_00: It's like Saul is telling Jonathan, if you're friends with David, you're going to be poor.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to be out of power.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, if David becomes king, he's likely going to kill all of Saul's family.
SPEAKER_00: At least that would be the protocol.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you be friends with David, Jonathan?
SPEAKER_00: It's at your own harm.
SPEAKER_00: And when you think about that friendship, they hugged each other, they wept, they prayed together, they were so committed.
SPEAKER_00: Why were they such good friends?
SPEAKER_00: There's enough in 1 Samuel to let you know the answer to that question.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what made your first introduction to Jonathan?
SPEAKER_00: Is that he was going to fight for Yahweh, no matter if he would fight a whole army, just him and his little armor bearer against an entire army if he thought Yahweh was on his side.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he like throws the rock and is like, if they call me over, I'm going to kill them all.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: He is willing to fight an impossible battle if he views the Lord as on his side.
SPEAKER_00: How dare you blaspheme God's covenant name?
SPEAKER_00: I will take you on, Jonathan says.
SPEAKER_00: There's nobody else in Israel like that until he meets David.
SPEAKER_00: And they notice they become friends right after the battle against Goliath.
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan looks at David and is like, whoa, here's a guy I can be friends with.
SPEAKER_00: Same attitude.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody in the whole world will fight Goliath.
SPEAKER_00: And David says, listen, if God's on my side, I don't even need your armor, Saul.
SPEAKER_00: In the very next chapter, they became close friends.
SPEAKER_00: Do some math on that.
SPEAKER_00: There's probably a 25 or 30 year age difference between the two.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've thought about that before, but David was probably 16 or so when he defeated Goliath.
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan was already a seasoned warrior.
SPEAKER_00: Saul reigned for 40 years.
SPEAKER_00: So you do the mat you know the math there.
SPEAKER_00: They're probably 30 years old.
SPEAKER_00: They're 30 years apart from each other.
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan was probably, I don't know, 45 when he met David.
SPEAKER_00: And they became such good friends.
SPEAKER_00: Better to be friends in poverty than to be friends with someone who doesn't trust the Lord, who is a liar.
SPEAKER_00: Those who cannot conceive my last Lewis quote, those who cannot conceive friendship as a substance of love, but only as a disguise or elaboration of erotic love, betray the fact they have never had a friend.
SPEAKER_00: I mention that now because so many commentators go off about David and Jonathan and the appropriateness of their friendship and Lewis' responses.
SPEAKER_00: If you look at their friendship and see something inappropriate, you betray, you don't really understand what a friend is.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 27, verse 5, your Bible might be open to it.
SPEAKER_00: Better is open rebuke than hidden love.
SPEAKER_00: Faithful are the wounds of a friend, and profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
SPEAKER_00: Now earlier I said that friendship covers over each other's sins.
SPEAKER_00: You don't expose each other's sins, and that's true.
SPEAKER_00: But there are times in life where you do need rebuke.
SPEAKER_00: Not every conversation, not every passing in the hallway, not every time you talk to your friend again.
SPEAKER_00: That will poison a friendship so fast.
SPEAKER_00: But there are the rare times in life where you're going off course and you need your friend to help you out.
SPEAKER_00: The friends are like a guardrill in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You need a friend who will get in your grill and say, you're being dumb right now.
SPEAKER_00: Stop it.
SPEAKER_00: Better to be punched by a friend, Solomon says, than to be flattered by an enemy.
SPEAKER_00: Better to have a friend who loves you enough to punch you when you're in the wrong, than to have enemies that are always just prodding you on and encouraging you.
SPEAKER_00: That might be a male-only version of that proverb.
SPEAKER_00: There's loyalty, and with loyalty comes correction.
SPEAKER_00: Loyalty is a virtue.
SPEAKER_00: It is good to be loyal to your friends.
SPEAKER_00: And part of loyalty over the long term is loving somebody enough to tell them when they're in the wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Enemies won't do that.
SPEAKER_00: Enemies are always in it for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Enemies value short-term game.
SPEAKER_00: They're not in it for your long-term advantage.
SPEAKER_00: There's two oxymorons in this little couplet of verses here.
SPEAKER_00: Friendly wounds and wounding kisses.
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrew, it's very evident they're played off against each other.
SPEAKER_00: Friendly wounds and wounding kisses, those shouldn't go together.
SPEAKER_00: Better is a friend that will tell you the truth than enemies that will lie and flatter to you.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 27, verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Oil and perfume make the heart glad.
SPEAKER_00: The sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel.
SPEAKER_00: Oil and perfume are two very valuable things.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Solomon uses to compare to friendship.
SPEAKER_00: Oil and perfume that make your heart glad.
SPEAKER_00: But the sweetness of a friend is better than that.
SPEAKER_00: And the sweetness comes from his earnest counsel.
SPEAKER_00: Your friend is eager to help you.
SPEAKER_00: This is not talking correction here.
SPEAKER_00: This is a friend who's saying, hey, let me prod you on, let me encourage you, let me give you good advice.
SPEAKER_00: In light of that, Solom says, don't forsake your friend or your father's friend.
SPEAKER_00: There's a generational element of this.
SPEAKER_00: Don't go to your brother's house in the day of your calamity.
SPEAKER_00: Why not?
SPEAKER_00: You think something's important in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't you go to your family before your friends?
SPEAKER_00: Solomon's saying, no.
SPEAKER_00: Go to your friends first.
SPEAKER_00: Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away.
SPEAKER_00: Don't forsake your friendship.
SPEAKER_00: Don't forsake your father's friend, even.
SPEAKER_00: Make this kind of legacy of friendship generational.
SPEAKER_00: Let your kids know your friends.
SPEAKER_00: And don't forsake your parents' friends.
SPEAKER_00: You know, kids look at their parents' friends and they can roll their eyes or whatever, but because they don't understand how much work it is to have a lifelong friend.
SPEAKER_00: You know how long it takes you to build a lifelong friendship?
SPEAKER_00: All life.
SPEAKER_00: And your kids don't understand that.
SPEAKER_00: And so Solomon tells you, part of wisdom, don't forsake your parents' friends.
SPEAKER_00: Encourage your parents' friends even.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they'll be your friend.
SPEAKER_00: And look at your friends' kids as your own friends in that sense to encourage them and give them the blessing of generational friendship.
SPEAKER_00: Your brothers, they could live anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: But your friend is at hand.
SPEAKER_00: Better is a neighbor near than a brother far away.
SPEAKER_00: You have trials, you're strengthened in them by your friends.
SPEAKER_00: You have friends, they're your friends.
SPEAKER_00: So strengthen those connections.
SPEAKER_00: Which leads you to probably the most well-known verse in Proverbs in this.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 27, 17.
SPEAKER_00: Iron sharpens iron, one man sharpens another.
SPEAKER_00: One man sharpens the countenance of his friends.
SPEAKER_00: This is the communion of the saints is in the Apostles' Creed.
SPEAKER_00: This is not tangential to our faith.
SPEAKER_00: The communion of the saints is the sharpening of one another.
SPEAKER_00: Being the sharpening is two swords hitting each other.
SPEAKER_00: Friendship can be like that because sparks can fly, but having that kind of friendship helps keep you from doing dumb things.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible doesn't call us to a perfect friendship standard, but the Bible does affirm the beauty and the value of friendship.
SPEAKER_00: Best friends are not the ultimate goal in life.
SPEAKER_00: Casual friendships are not starter friendships.
SPEAKER_00: Like hey, I've hung out with this guy a few times.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it might blossom into a real friendship.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible doesn't call you to even pursue those kinds of friendships.
SPEAKER_00: You pursue wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: You pursue being an encouragement to others, you pursue being salt and light, and that will result in the mutual sharpening of one another, which will result in God's providential twists and turns bringing friends into your life.
SPEAKER_00: Christian friends enriching one another's lives at whatever depth of relationship you're at is the mark of healthy Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Christ's friendship with us, which is vertical, becomes the pattern for our friendship with others, which is horizontal, and leads to richness in human life.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I could tell, hey, do these four things and you'll make good friends because I know it is hard to have friends in our area.
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, it's so transitory.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't have four steps for you to do to be a good friend.
SPEAKER_00: But I do have the encouragement to you to be faithful and to pursue friendship by your faithfulness and see how the Lord blesses you.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're thankful that you have drawn us to yourself, to the death and resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He is indeed our greatest friend, because he laid down his life for us.
SPEAKER_00: No greater love has no match, no one, no man beyond this.
SPEAKER_00: That he would lay down his life for his friends.
SPEAKER_00: You indeed are our friends.
SPEAKER_00: Because of the love that you've shown us in Christ, we do what you command.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that our church should be marked by rich relationships of encouragement and mutual edification.
SPEAKER_00: Give us wisdom on when to confront and when to cover.
SPEAKER_00: Give us wisdom and how to engage with one another.
SPEAKER_00: Give us wisdom about how our life should be led in a way that strengthens the body through friendship.
SPEAKER_00: We give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.