Sermon 1

Intro

One of the most critical components to figure out in any and every season of our life is: who are our friends.

Throughout our life it’s our friendships that play a formative role in our development.

This is true in childhood, middle school, HS, college, adulthood and even in aging.

So much of our joy in life is contingent on our relationships.

So much of our stress and anxiety is contingent on our relationships.

Our ability to endue hardship is often contingent on our relationships.

This is why FRIENDSHIP is critical.

Who is you’re closest friend?

John 15:9–17 NIV

9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

Jesus calls us His Friend.

Why don’t we think of Him as our Friend?

Want to keep him esteemed with honor

“No man with a trace of humility would first think that he is a friend of God; but the idea did not originate with men. Abraham would never have said, “I am God’s friend,” but God Himself said that Abraham was His friend. The disciples might well have hesitated to claim friendship with Christ, but Christ said to them, “Ye [a]re my friends.” Modesty may demur at so rash a thought, but audacious faith dares to believe the Word and claim friendship with God.

“demur” raise doubts or objections or show reluctance.

Today, I want to help us have an audacious faith that is able to boldly claim friendship with God.

This is leads to the second reason why we struggle to view God as our friend. We don’t really understand friendship. We experience lots of relationships. Marriages, family, coworkers, neighbors, classmates, fellow volunteers, or people in our Bible study. But, I’m not sure we have understood God’s vision for friendship. So we don’t understand the significance of what Jesus says when He says, “You are my friends…”

2. we don’t understand what friendship actually is.

Aristotle:

· Friends of utility. These relationships are based on mutual support or help. Friends at our jobs or other parents who help coach kid’s sport teams or carpool to activities are these type of friends. Once the situation changes and there isn’t a need for mutual benefit, the friendship goes away.

· Friends of pleasure. These are people we enjoy spending time with based on a shared passion, hobby, or enjoyable activity. These are the folks you watch the game with, hunt with, or exercise with, but once that shared activity is gone, so is the relationship.

· Friends of virtue. These are deep friendships that go beyond circumstances and they are rare. In fact, much of longing many philosophers from Aristotle’s day to our day today long for this type of friendship. We long for it because it is so rare and we have so few examples.

Jesus was a friend of Virtue

Jesus Sacrificed for us

John 15:13 (NIV)

13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Example: Give example of Jaden sacrificing for his friend this last weekend.

Example: could be Sam from LOTR

Are you the type of friend that is willing to sacrifice?

2. Jesus Shares openly with us

John 15:15 (NIV)

15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

In Scripture, we have an example of this. There is a powerful scene in Genesis 18, when God said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Gen. 18:17) and, as a friend, God shared with Abraham His plans.

Gen 18 - God shares his plan with Abram

3. Jesus Selected us

John 15:16 (NIV)

16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.

Action, as friends, we obey

John 15:14 (NIV)

14 You are my friends if you do what I command.

Friendship leads to allegiance

because theres’ sharing, sacrifice, and selection involved.

Example:

Friends of Jesus obey Him.

What does obedience have to do with friendship?

Right here, our old sense of religion can kick in and we think, “Okay, to be Jesus’ friend that means I need to obey Him and that means not sinning.”

Avoiding sin is a good thing. Sin harms us, it harms others, and it harms our relationship with God, so we should take sin seriously and we should avoid it. But obedience isn’t just avoiding sin. How many other friendships in our lives do we define by not breaking the Ten Commandments? If you say to someone, “We’re friends because I haven’t lied to you, cheated you, or killed you,” that is a fairly low standard of friendship.

So what is Jesus talking about when He says, “You are my friends if you do what I command”?

Scripture gives to us the answer through a story. Abraham, as mentioned before, was called throughout Scripture, God’s friend. Jesus’ half-brother James writes this about Abraham:

James 2:22–23 (NIV)

22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend.

“Abraham believed God”

context comes from Genesis 15:1–6 “1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

Example: Matt Roussin invited me to Zion

God has some amazing things He wants us to experience if we would only TRUST and OBEY Him.

Kyle’s Version

[Be]Friended John 15:9-17

Today we are kicking off a new series about a surprising and important concept in Scripture that is often overlooked. Friendship. But, before we dive into this series there is something I want to celebrate with you today. At Wooddale one of our values is to be “Kingdom Building”--that means we are for helping to build God’s Kingdom and not our own. We want Wooddale to be known for what we give away to bless others. Through some personal connections with our staff, but ultimately though the hand of God, we heard about Bethany Reformed Church in Clara City, MN who is joining us for this new series. Bethany is searching for a new Senior Pastor and that can be a difficult time for a church. When we heard they were in this season we reached out and asked, “Can we do anything to help?” and the leaders at Bethany said, preaching help during this time of searching. Since we already have our messages set-up to be sent to those of you online and to our Edina Campus, we offered to set them up to receive our messages as well. So for this series on Friendship we hope to be good friends to our brothers and sisters in Clara City. Wooddale, would you please give a warm welcome to Bethany Reformed Church?

Bethany is planning to join us just for these few weeks and to all of you at Bethany, welcome.

I want you to think for a moment specifically about your closest friends. Who are your one or two best friends? Do you have them in mind, either their faces or names?

Is one of them Jesus?

If not, why not? Did you know Jesus considers you one of his friends? Let me show you.

Please open your Bible to the Gospel of John, chapter 15, starting in verse 9. This can be found on page 1643 of the blue Bibles in the pew back here at Eden Prairie and Edina and at Bethany in Clara City, this will be on page XXXX of your Bibles.

As we are turning there, let me set the scene. Jesus and His disciples had just finished what would become known as the Last Supper and He is explaining to them what is going to happen and giving them a passionate message about His relationship with His followers. We pick it up in the middle of this extended message.

John 15:9-17 (NIV)

9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

Jesus calls us His friend. What does that mean?

As someone who studies Scripture for my job, I spend a fair amount of time in biblical commentaries and reading over scholarly articles on passages of Scripture before preaching messages. I have noted a seeming lack of attention given to the concept of friendship with Jesus. There are volumes about the nature and character of God, His sovereignty, His love, His Mercy, Grace, Kindness, Sacrifice, Redemption and Justice. I am grateful for all of those insights. But how often have we focused on fact that Jesus calls us His friend? It isn’t just Jesus who tells us He is our friend. Years before, in the opening sections of Scripture, God called a man named Abraham to follow Him. Abraham did and multiple times throughout Scripture, both in the Old and New Testament, Abraham is called a “friend of God.”

But this concept doesn’t come up often, and when we think about our own friends, often Jesus doesn’t make the list? That’s true for me and we can explain that away by thinking, “Yeah, well, I wasn’t thinking about JESUS but, you know, actual friends…” But, should Jesus be the first name we consider as our best friend? Why our hesitancy to see Jesus as our friend?

As I have been reflecting on this, I believe there are two reasons for the hesitation to focus on this idea of our friendship with God.

The first is a noble reason. I think it makes us uncomfortable and we worry we will dishonor God by thinking too casually about Him. There is some valid concern for this reason. One of the ways to find ourselves outside of the truths of God’s teaching is to make the mistake that God is like us. When we assume God thinks or acts like us, it always leads to thinking too little of God and thinking wrongly about God. When this happens we don’t take sin as seriously as we should. We then think about sin in a relative way. There are certain sins we rightly acknowledge are wrong, harmful and evil. But then there are others that we know aren’t right…but… come, on, they aren’t really THAT bad. If we assume God is like us, then we assume God also gives us a little wink about certain areas. That is wrong. God never winks at sin, big or small (as if there is a small sin). God loves us. He created us and He wants us to experience a thriving, full, and flourishing life. Sin always steals, limits, hurts, robs, and destroys the good things God intends for our lives. God never is okay with that, He always wants us to live by His Spirit, not by our own efforts or desires, because He wants what is best for us.

So, it is good to not assume that God is like us. He is not like us, His ways are higher than our ways. This is why I say the caution to consider God is our friend is a noble caution because it doesn’t want us to make too little of God. The problem, however, with this caution is it is unbiblical. God does call us His friend. That doesn’t mean He is “one of the guys” but it also means to reject the term of “Friend” when it comes to think about God is to miss something important in our relationship with Him. I fear many of us might be missing something important.

Author and Pastor from the mid-twentieth century, A.W. Tozer once said this:

“No man with a trace of humility would first think that he is a friend of God; but the idea did not originate with men. Abraham would never have said, “I am God’s friend,” but God Himself said that Abraham was His friend. The disciples might well have hesitated to claim friendship with Christ, but Christ said to them, “Ye [a]re my friends.” Modesty may demur at so rash a thought, but audacious faith dares to believe the Word and claim friendship with God.

Today, I want to help us have an audacious faith that is able to boldly claim friendship with God.

This is leads to the second reason why we struggle to view God as our friend. We don’t really understand friendship. We experience lots of relationships. Marriages, family, coworkers, neighbors, classmates, fellow volunteers, or people in our Bible study. But, I’m not sure we have understood God’s vision for friendship. So we don’t understand the significance of what Jesus says when He says, “You are my friends…”

Since we struggle to understand true friendship, I want to point out three ways in which Jesus displays true friendship to us in the passage in John. These are three ways for us to understand more deeply what friendship means and these are three ways we can be confident Jesus is our friend and the one way for us to respond to this friendship. How do we know Jesus is our friend?

First, Jesus sacrificed for us.

Writing about 300 years before Jesus, the ancient philosopher Aristotle observed something about friendship that we still experience to this day. Aristotle said there were three different types of friends.

· Friends of utility. These relationships are based on mutual support or help. Friends at our jobs or other parents who help coach kid’s sport teams or carpool to activities are these type of friends. Once the situation changes and there isn’t a need for mutual benefit, the friendship goes away.

· Friends of pleasure. These are people we enjoy spending time with based on a shared passion, hobby, or enjoyable activity. These are the folks you watch the game with, hunt with, or exercise with, but once that shared activity is gone, so is the relationship.

· Friends of virtue. These are deep friendships that go beyond circumstances and they are rare. In fact, much of longing many philosophers from Aristotle’s day to our day today long for this type of friendship. We long for it because it is so rare and we have so few examples.

300 years after Aristotle writes about this longing, Jesus displays the truest form of love and friendship. Jesus says this in John 15:13: Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

The cross was an act of great friendship. We don’t think of it this way, but it is. Jesus is human, but He is also God. Which means Jesus never needed to die a human death. He could have lived forever, without death because He had no sin in Him at all. The rest of us, we all die, it is part of the consequence of the fall and part of what sin has done to us. Yet, Jesus chose to die. He chose to die for us. When He died on the cross He was willingly making a sacrifice to atone for our sin.

It was the single greatest act of selflessness the world has ever or will ever know. Jesus chose to sacrifice for our good. That is the highest form and act of friendship. The world can now finally know what a virtuous friend looks like: Jesus!

Second, Jesus shares openly with us.

John 15:15: I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

In Scripture, we have an example of this. There is a powerful scene in Genesis 18, when God said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Gen. 18:17) and, as a friend, God shared with Abraham His plans.

In a divine act of friendship, God has shared openly with us about His plans, His ways, and given us all we need to truly follow Him. He has done this because He wants us to be part of His plans.

This is remaking my prayer life. In God’s Word, His plans are given to us. It is all here. When we read God’s Word we are reading God’s heart and God’s plan, and we are part of it because He has given His Word to us. So God’s Word informs how we pray, but also, the truth that Jesus wants to share with us. Based on this realization, when I’m facing a situation or meeting or challenge, I am specifically praying, “God, what do You want me to know about this situation?”

If Jesus is our friend, then He will share with us what He wants us to know. I’m approaching Him as a friend and asking my friend, “What do You want me to know?” Then confirming what I think I may have heard against God’s unchanging Word.

Third, Jesus selected us.

John 15:16: You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.

This is perhaps one of the greatest learnings about friendship I am having these days. I have falsely assumed that friendship just happens. I figured that either by proximity or happenstance, or God arranging it that friends just sort of happen. But, I am realizing, friendship is a choice. We choose to invest in a friendship, and Jesus chose us.

He didn’t choose us like picking teams in recess. I have not always been what you call “coordinated” and in elementary school we played pick-up football during recess. Often, I was last picked. Not like the last picked, but it is down to two and the other guy is picked so, by default, I’m with that team…which means I wasn’t really picked, I was an obligation.

At times, we can feel that way about Jesus. We can feel He was obligated to save us. That’s not what He says. He says He chose us.

Jesus loves you, but Jesus also likes you. Even if you don’t like you, He still likes you. He made you and He calls you by name. He selected you, on purpose and for our purpose.

He chose us to be His friend. Not because of what we did, not because of how good we were or because of our potential. He chose us because that is who He is, He is our friend. Even when no one else wants to be our friend, Jesus still chooses us.

But, then Jesus says one thing about being His friend that confuses us.

John 15:14: You are my friends if you do what I command.

Friends of Jesus obey Him.

What does obedience have to do with friendship?

Right here, our old sense of religion can kick in and we think, “Okay, to be Jesus’ friend that means I need to obey Him and that means not sinning.”

Avoiding sin is a good thing. Sin harms us, it harms others, and it harms our relationship with God, so we should take sin seriously and we should avoid it. But obedience isn’t just avoiding sin. How many other friendships in our lives do we define by not breaking the Ten Commandments? If you say to someone, “We’re friends because I haven’t lied to you, cheated you, or killed you,” that is a fairly low standard of friendship.

So what is Jesus talking about when He says, “You are my friends if you do what I command”?

Scripture gives to us the answer through a story. Abraham, as mentioned before, was called throughout Scripture, God’s friend. Jesus’ half-brother James writes this about Abraham:

You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. James 2:22-23 (NIV)

What did Abraham believe? Abraham was a man living in a pagan land and there God chose him and called him. He called him to leave his home, leave his land, and follow God into a new land. And Abraham went. Then God told Abraham, “I will make you a great Nation and your descendants will be more numerous than the stars in the sky, and the entire world will be blessed because of your offspring.” Which is an incredible promise. The challenge was Abraham and his wife had no children and he was 75 years old.

But despite all of those barriers, Abraham believed God and did what He called him to do. The author of Hebrews says it this way:

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. Hebrews 11:8 (NIV)

I love that, he was willing to go, even though he did not know where he was going. Abraham went because he trusted God as his friend.

He didn’t ask God for all the details, or ask God to prove that He was able to bring forward all that He had promised. Abraham just knew God and so he knew he could trust Him. That’s what we do with our friends.

A few months ago I had the privilege of hiking some mountains in Colorado with a friend of mine. It actually started a few years ago when he told me he wanted to hike a few 14’ers with me. That just means hiking to the summit of mountains that are 14,000 feet or more in elevation. We finally got a date on the calendar and set-up the trip. Now, one thing about me is I can be a little “type-A.” I love a good plan and that is especially true if I’m traveling. I have a few trips for work coming up in the next year and for many of those trips, I already have my tickets, my seats, the route of how I’m getting from the airport to where I’m staying, and all of the details about where we are going, when and where we are eating, and what we need to accomplish. But for this trip, my friend says, just get to Denver, I’ll pick you up and take care of everything else. And I said, “Sounds good.” Because, I trust my friend. If I would have said, “Now, hold on. If I am going to be hiking up mountains in the wilderness I need to have more details. What mountain, where are we staying, how are we getting there, when and where will we eat, how do I know this is safe, how do I know this will be a good experience, give me the details or I’m not going!” Then my friend probably would have said, “Okay, we won’t go…” But I didn’t even think that because I know my friend and I trust him. In fact, Stephanie asked me a few details and I told her I really wasn’t sure, which was the first time I realized I was really trusting my friend. See, I know my friend, we wouldn’t do anything unsafe, he would want to stay in a good location, he is structured with his schedule, and he knows how to have an adventure. Because I just obeyed my friend, we got to climb three mountains and experienced this [show photo].

Can I suggest to you that our friend Jesus has some incredible things He wants us to experience in this life? He is our friend and He wants us to know Him, know His Father, and know the joy of trusting Him. Far too many of us are missing out on the life God has for us because we aren’t sure yet if we can trust Him.

This is why I so deeply want us to know Jesus, so we know we can trust Him with our lives.

How do we apply this message? Next week we will get into how we can obey Jesus’ commands in our relationships with others, but for this week, I want us to think about our relationship with Jesus. Do you consider Jesus to be your friend? Do you know Him as your friend?

If not, I want to encourage you this week to take a walk, a ride, or have a meeting with Jesus. For some of you, honestly, schedule it. Put an hour on your schedule and go for a walk, sit with a cup of coffee, or go for a drive and talk to Jesus like you would a friend. Tell Him what is on your mind. Share with Him what you are worried about and what you are thinking about. Talk with Him about work, your family, your hopes, your dreams, your fears. Ask Him, “What do You want me to know about You?” Then, listen and read His Word. If you aren’t sure what to read, read a psalm or read John chapter 15, what we are reading today.

This is what prayer and Scripture reading are about, getting to know Jesus. When we know Him, we trust Him and we will do what He says.

Take a moment to bow your heads with me. Where is one area in your life, right now, where you aren’t sure if you can truly trust Jesus?

How you know you can trust Jesus to be your friend is you can know and be reminded that He died for you. That is what we remember in communion, how Jesus proved His friendship to us.

Transition to communion.