Cultivating Friendship With God
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Sermon Title: Cultivating Friendship With God
Scripture: Psalm 25:14
Occasion: The Lord’s Day
Date: January 7, 2023
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Scripture Transitions Sermon Title|Quotes |Emphasis
PRAY
Ephesians 1:2 “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
What is your goal this new year?
What goals have you set that you would like to accomplish this year?
Goal setting by definition is the process of taking active steps to achieve your desired outcome.
Do you have steps set out to achieve your Goal?
Someone once said, “A goal without a plan is only a dream.”
Beloved, there is no greater goal for Christ’s redeemed ones, than to cultivate friendship with God.
God has not left us in the dark as to how we can have a deep friendship with Him. As a matter of fact, He has given us His Word, for this very reason.
As I have had time to unplug over Christmas break, I have spent much time at the Lord’s feet hearing from His Word and responding to Him in prayer.
Through this close interaction with the Lord, the Holy Spirit has made it clear to me, that God’s greatest desire for His blood-bought children is that we would have a deep friendship with Him.
He desires to have deep intimacy with us.
As the C. Austin Miles’ Hymn , “In the Garden” goes,
He desires to:
Walk with us, and talk with us.
He desires to:
Tell us we are His own.
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
none other has ever known.
What our elders desire most for each of you, beloved, is that we would together, learn how to cultivate a friendship with God this 2024.
That’s the title of my sermon: “Cultivating Friendship with God”
Many of us have spent the last few years knowing who God is intellectually.
Many have spent the last few years learning how to serve God and carry out His mission.
But what I sense from our Church, is that what is lacking most is intimacy with God.
Friendship with Him.
An intimacy with the Lord that changes us.
An intimacy with God that enriches our marriages, our friendships with others, our witness, and how we operate in our day-to-day lives.
Psalm 25:14, which is our text this morning, teaches us how we can have a cultivate this kind of friendship with God in 2024.
The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant.
Context of Psalm 25:
King David, the author of this Psalm, seems to have written this in his old age.
We get that from verses like Psalm 25:7
Psalm 25:7 (ESV)
Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
This is most likely the period in David’s history where his son, Absalom, was heading the great rebellion against Him.
David is old, and alone, and all He has is God almighty with Him.
All that to say, David in his old age, looks back at life, and the song of His heart is likened to my favorite Hymn, “what a friend we have in Jesus.”
Can we find a friend so faithful
who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness;
take it to the Lord in prayer!
What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer!
Friendship is on David’s mind.
And not just friendship with His son Absalom, or friendship with Jonathan His closest confidant in life-but what’s overtaking him in His old age is friendship with God.
But the question arises this morning, which was the question of the great philosopher Aristotle, “Can humans really have a friendship with God?”
Aristotle believed that the answer to that question was “no’!
The reason he believed that humans could not have a friendship with God is because he believed that humans have nothing in common with God.
But contrary to Aristotle’s belief, the bible teaches us there is commonality between us and God, thus friendship is not only possible but it’s God’s intent for us.
POINT ONE: My first point this morning from our text is that God does show us that we CAN have a friendship with Him!
This is wonderful news for us this morning!
This word “friendship” here in verse 14 is defined as: Confidential discussion, circle of confidants, intimacy, or as translated in many of our bibles, “secret or secret counsel.”
The NKJV translates verse 14 this way,
“The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, And He will show them His covenant.”
David instructs us here that intimacy with God is possible, but the question, IS HOW?
Before we head towards the low hanging fruit, which is of course is what precedes “the friendship of the Lord” here.
I want to make a case for friendship with God from a Biblical Theology stand point.
Biblical theology, simply put, is the theology of the Bible.
That is, it is not our own theology but that of the biblical writers themselves.
It is their convictions about God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit and God’s work in human history as revealed in the writings of Scripture.
So what does the Bible teach us as whole about friendship as it relates to God.
Well we first have to begin with the doctrine of God here.
It’s been said that the Triune God of the Bible is a “friend who has friends.”
In other words, from all eternity and for all eternity, The Father, Son and Holy Spirit live in a perfect community of dignity, love, communication, friendship, and a deep knowing and selflessness.
This truth sets a new precedence for friendship.
The great Church father, Augustin, has been known to focus on the oneness of God.
Here is the thing as a side note, if we focus too much on the oneness of God or too much on the threeness of God, we will end up in error. So we have to be careful.
But Augustin once said,
“If God were unipersonal (A God who existed as a person and later created angels, etc.), His power would be primary, and love and friendship would be secondary to God’s being. But since He is Triunal, God is a friendship from all eternity, so that means that He is love, and friendship, so love and friendship is primary, and power is secondary.”
So if God is friendship, of course He desires friendship with us for us.
So this leads to the Doctrine of creation.
Turn to Genesis 1:26
Genesis 1:26 (ESV)
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
If we have a triune God who is friendship, and God made us in His own image, then it is quite natural to conclude that God created us for friendship.
God created us as relational beings that long and desire friendship.
And not just with others, which is extremely important to how we were created, hence why God gives us the Church, but primarily, God created us in His image in order that we might have friendship with Him.
He created us beloved, for friendship with Him. This is true, because we are made in the image of the Trinity who is friendship.
The doctrine of God shows us that friendship with God is found in God, the doctrine of creation show us that friendship with God is what we were created for, and finally the doctrine of redemption shows us that God went to great lengths to ensure that friendship with God is not only possible but the very reason why Jesus came to earth.
John 1:14 (ESV)
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
Don’t miss this: Jesus, who is God, became like you and me?
WHY?
So that He can sympathize with us and Identify with us!
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
This proves Aristotle wrong, doesn't it?
Aristotle said that friendship is predicated on commonality. A Shared interest.
In Jesus’ incarnation we see the lengths that God is willing to go to for friendship: He leaves His throne, to take on flesh to share the commonality of our humanity.
Jesus’ humanity is the common bond that allows for friendship with God.
Tim Keller points out here that “Aros love is two people looking at each other. But Philia love is when two people are side by side looking at something else.”
Tim goes on to say that……
“Friendship starts when two people are looking at the same thing, and they have it in common, “you two.”!
That brings friendship and closeness, He says.”
Jesus came to earth to share the common bond of humanity.
Jesus knows what it’s like to be human.
Jesus becomes like us in our lostness, when He cry’s out on the cross,
Matthew 27:46 (ESV)
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
We can now look at God and say, “YOU TWO”!
Temptation in the wilderness, “YOU TWO”
Being falsely accused and unjustly treated, “YOU TWO”!
The betrayal of a close friend, “YOU TWO”!
Jesus’s incarnation provides for us that “you two’” which is absolutely necessary for a real friendship.
The story of Christ’s redemption does not end with the life lived for us but the life He gave up for us on the cross.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:15 (ESV)
No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
God has made known to us, by His grace, His secret counsel, His covenant, that shows us that the God-Man willing gave up His life in order to restore friendship with God!
Sin separates us from God. Thus causing us to be enemies and not friends.
So the Son of God, the mighty friend of sinners, steps into human history, and displays to the world the greatest act of friendship the world has ever seen and ever will see.
Jesus sacrifices His own life on our behalf.
The greatest act of friendship is to lay down ones life for His friends.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
No other religion can offer this. None.
You will perish in your attempt to find this kind of friendship outside of Christ.
A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Jesus is that friend, beloved.
He will never leave you or forsake you.
Do your friends despise, forsake you?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In his arms he'll take and shield you;
you will find a solace there.
His sacrifice on the Cross, secures for us a friendship that will never be broken or compromised.
There is no friendship like Jesus’ friendship.
Jesus not only knows the worst about you, but He went to the cross to take on the payment for your sin, in order that you would know the depths of His love and friendship.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
If you repent and trust in Him today, you can move from knowing to tasting the depths of Christs love and friendship.
So can we have a friendship with God?
Biblical theology gives us a resounding, “YES”!
But like any friendship, if we don’t cultivate our friendship with God, we will find ourselves distant from Him.
God will seem more like an acquaintance than a close friend.
And maybe that is where you find your self at the start of this year.
And maybe you are asking yourself, “how can I cultivate a close friendship with God this year?”
Point 2: Psalm 25:14 gives us four ways we can cultivate friendship with God.
Psalm 25:14 (ESV)
The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant.
What does it mean to fear God? Here is what the wisest man who ever lived, says about it…
Ecclesiastes 12:13 (ESV)
The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
Or as Jesus says in John 15:14
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
1. The first way we can cultivate a friendship with God this year is to OBEY HIM.
Didn't see that one coming, did you?
We talked about how God is like us. Thus, we can find friendship with God, but He is not just like us in that He is HOLY.
But here in our text, God helps us with this: The bible instructs us here that if we obey Him, a neat things happens: WE BECOME LIKE HIM!
That is why Peter writes in 1 Peter 1:15-16
but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct,
since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
There is no friendship with God without the pursuit of holiness.
Hebrews 12:14 (ESV)
Strive for… the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
Holiness comes through obedience, and through obedience we not only see Christ, but are conformed into His image.
Through obedience to Christ’s Word we grow in Christ-likeness.
We get this concept.
Friends rub off on each other.
That can either be good or bad.
(Example of me and Jeremy and how now I’m wearing crocs like Him.)
Only through obedience to God’s Word due we become like Jesus.
Friends, the reality is this:
Jesus has done enough in His incarnation and atonement to be like us. So, If we want to cultivate friendship with God, we must grow in obedience.
Before you write this point off, and say, obedience has nothing to do with friendship, think about friendship for a moment.
What is friendship?
Friendship is allowing someone to be themselves.
If a someone cannot be him or herself around you, you will soon enough find yourself without any close friends.
Maybe today, as you look back at 2023 or over your life, you find yourself without any friends who deeply know you and that you deeply know: friend; let me suggest to you that the reason for this might be because you have not allowed people to be themselves around you.
I'm not talking about accepting sin or anything like that.
I'm talking about allowing people to be themselves without being scrutinized, questioned, or investigated simply for being themselves around you.
As it relates to God, the only way to allow God to be God in our lives is by obeying Him.
And maybe this is why you do not have close intimacy with God and others.
You are living in disobedience.
You are not allowing God to be God; thus, you are not allowing us others to be themselves, and you are not being yourself around others.
You say, "I obey God," but you continue disobeying.
(Example of Elizabeth Elliot)
I’m not naive to the fact this morning that there are people who are spiritual this morning but not religious.
Here is what I mean: There are people among us that want connection with God and experience the fullness of His goodness and presence, but they don’t want to get their life in line under God’s Word.
Hear me: If you want friendship with God this year, you must quite doing things your own way.
You must quite trying to have a friendship with God on your terms rather than on God’s terms.
We must learn to pray as Jesus prayed
Luke 22:42 (ESV)
“… not my will, but yours, be done.”
This boils down to one christian virtue, humility.
If you want a close friendship with God today and with others, you MUST humble yourself.
Here is God’s wisdom on this:
Philippians 2:1–5 (ESV)
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy,
complete my joy by being 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 count others more significant than yourselves.
Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
This must be the virtue that marks our life and friendships-HUMILITY!
Nothing reflects christ more than humility.
Then counting others more significant than ourselves.
Then humbling ourselves before God in obedience to His Word.
Psalm 25:9
He leads the humble in what is right,
and teaches the humble his way.
2. So the first way to cultivate friendship with God is through obedience, the second way is to believe in the covenant that he has made known to us in the gospel.
The gospel of justification has marked our study in the book of Romans.
Here is how Paul says it in Romans 5:1-2
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Understanding the gospel of justification is absolutely essential to cultivating friendship with God.
Why do I say that?
Because if you think you have to earn God’s favor and approval by doing good things you will ultimately find yourself expecting God to bless you because of what you have done for Him.
That is not friendship.
Maybe that is where you find yourself today.
You just see God as your boss.
You expect him to give you your wages for what you do for Him.
You even demand that He gives you what you think you earned.
Maybe just maybe that is why you find yourself being friendly with God today and don’t have an actual friendship with God today.
If we are going to cultivate a friendship with God, we must understand that God first loved us.
That we are undeserving of God’s love in Christ.
Romans 5:6 (ESV)
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly (US).
Romans 5:7–8 (ESV)
For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
1 John 4:10 (ESV)
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
It is by grace that Jesus stepped in our place on the cross and took on the wrath of God for us.
Our relationship is rooted in knowing, experiencing, and growing in God’s love and grace.
And once we get saved by grace, it’s not a one and one thing that we don’t need to keep learning about and growing in, no, no, no!
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
3. So if we are going to cultivate friendship with God in 2024 we must humble ourselves in obedience to Him, we must believe and grow in our understanding of the gospel of grace, and we also must learn to have a two-way communication with God in prayer.
We understand that there is no real communication with anyone, including God, if communication is only one way.
The Psalms are saturated with people talking with God.
Praising Him. Crying out to Him. Making requests to Him. Etc.
But make no mistake, that talking to God in prayer is only 50% of communication.
The other 50% is listening to God.
We all need to do a better job listening.
My wife and kids often tell me that I need help listening.
I’m always trying to get a word in. And too frequently I do this with God.
Friendship requires that we listen.
If there is no listening there is no friendship.
Listening shows we care more about the interests of others than we do our own.
Friends, we must be quick to listen and slow to speak in prayer… James 1:19
Or in the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 5:1
Ecclesiastes 5:1 (ESV)
Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil.
The question that we must draw from this is this: What are we listening to?
We must not listen to our hearts, (they are deceitful), we must not listen to our dreams……they can and will let you down. (dream that told George Whitfield that His son was going to be a preacher, His son died at a young age).
The simple answer is: We must listen to God’s Word!
God speaks directly to us!
God has given us 66 books filled with His Words to us and for us!
Deuteronomy 6:4–6 (ESV)
“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 might.
And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
Truly listening to God’s word leads to delighting in God’s Word, and delighting in Gods Word leads to mediating on God’s Word.
And once you delight and mediate on God’s word, you will soon find that scripture becomes your language of prayer.
The neat thing about this is, that when you make it a regular practice of listen to God’s Word, you find yourself in prayer speaking back to God with His Word.
When we inhale God’s Word, we will always exhale God’s Word.
Friendship with God starts with listening to Him and then responding to Him with the language of scripture.
Through delighting, and mediating, and praying God’s Word you will find yourself cherishing the Words of God like the Psalmists.
How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
Tim Keller says about this:
“Our prayer life (our friendship with God must be galvanized (cultivated) by the Word.”
Your prayer life will go something like this.. “I hearing you saying, God.”
Eugene Peterson has a quote that is a bit long, but it’s so good that I can’t help but read it:
“In a world of prayers that indulge the religious ego and cultivate passionate longings, the Psalms stand out with a kind of angular austerity. . . .
Left to ourselves, we will pray to some god who speaks what we like hearing, or to the part of God that we manage to understand. But what is critical is that we speak to the God who speaks to us, and to everything that he speaks to us . . .
The Psalms. . . train us in that conversation. [We are] wrestled into obedience, subjected to the strenuous realities of living by faith in the God who reveals himself to us . . .
There is a difference between praying to an unknown God whom we hope to discover in our praying, and praying to a known God, revealed through Israel and Jesus Christ, who speaks our language.
In the first, we indulge our appetite for religious fulfillment; in the second we practice obedient faith. The first is a lot more fun, the second is a lot more important. What is essential in prayer is not that we learn to express ourselves, but that we learn to answer God.”
The Psalms were not prayed by people trying to understand themselves. They are not the record of people searching for the meaning of life. They were prayed by people who understood that God had everything to do with them.
God, not their feelings, was the center. God, not their souls, was the issue. God, not the meaning of life, was critical.
Feelings, souls, and meanings were not excluded — they are very much in evidence — but they are not the reason for the prayers. Human experiences might provoke the prayers, but they do not condition them . . .
It is not simply a belief in [God] that conditions these prayers . . . but a doctrine of God. . . . We would rather pray by exploring our own deep spiritual capacities, with God as background music . . .
without bothering with the tedium and complexity of the Scriptures . . . [But] if we elect the Psalms to train us in prayer, these are the conditions in which we will be working.”
The 4th and final way that we cultivate friendship with God is through seeking Good’s face in prayer.
If we are going to have a deep friendship with God we must desire with all that is within us to seek His Face, to seek His presence.
Psalm 34:8 (ESV)
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Psalm 27:7–8 (ESV)
You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.”
Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!
Friends, we can know God in the mind but not in the heart.
There are many among us that know all the right things about God in our minds, but we are not experiencing the fullness of God and His goodness that comes from entering His presence daily in prayer?
When is the last time you have been overwhelmed with God’s presence in prayer?
Where He has emotionally gripped your heart, your affections, leading you to tears of joy and gladness.
This was the Apostles meaning in Ephesians 3:19, when He says, Ephesians 3:19
Ephesians 3:19 (ESV)
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
God’s presence changes us.
It changes our disposition.
To be filled with the fullness of God is to be conscious of and yielded to God’s presence.
God desires us to be filled with his fullness both individually and collectively.
God wants to indwell our little Church to such an extent that everyone knows that he resides here.
Our countenance will tell the story off our friendship with God.
Some of us are empty of His presence, and today we need to ask the Lord to fill us with the fullness of God.
That we would know the depth, and width, and the breadth, and height of His love that surpasses knowledge.
We need to seek His presence and plead that He would take hold of our lives in such a way this year, that our lives would clearly display His presence with us.
David says……
Psalm 16:11 (ESV)
in [God’s] presence there is fullness of joy;
Jesus says in John 15:11
These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
God’s presence, His friendship, dear loved ones, brings fullness of joy in our lives.
Conclusion:
Do you have friendship with God today?
Maybe this is why there is no joy. (Mention Kristin)
Find joy today in our closest friend, the might friend of sinners, Jesus Christ.
In His presence there is fullness of joy!
Christians, let us make it our aim this year to cultivate a deep friendship with God through Jesus Christ.
Let us make it our aim to have a deep friendship with the Lord in 2024 and invite others into this joyous friendship.
PRAY