Friendship and Community

Text—these are the very words of God

Proverbs 17:17 ESV

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

Proverbs 27:17 ESV

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

Proverbs 13:20 ESV

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

Introduction

In the beginning, God placed a man named Adam in the Garden.

He made Adam in His image.

God gave Adam commands and mandates—stooping down to communicate with His creation

Clearly Adam was made to have relationship with God

But then God said this—

Genesis 2:18 ESV

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

Not good that man should be alone

A Helper fit for Him

God would form Eve—Adam’s wife—from his bone

Now it is clear that Adam was made to have relationship with another Image-Bearer

In other words—Humanity is made to have friendship with God and one another

The one another part can be hard and confusing

What is true friendship?

Who are my true friends?

How does one even find true friends?

And am I a true friend?

This is where God’s wisdom book steps in to rescue us once more

Context

We have been studying Proverbs 10-29 thematically, looking at nine major themes woven into those chapters

For the month of August we have been focused on what Proverbs has to say to us about relationships:

Marriage and Faithfulness

Parenting and Children

Friendship and Community

Anger and Conflict

Big Idea

True friendship reflects the love of Christ, remains faithful, and is intentionally used for God’s glory.

Outline

1. True friendship is defined by steadfast sacrificial love (Proverbs 17:17).

2. True friendship is forged and fixed in adversity (Proverbs 17:17).

3. True friendship is leveraged for the Gospel (Proverbs 27:17; Proverbs 13:20).

1. True friendship is defined by steadfast sacrificial love (Proverbs 17:17).

The first verse we will spend time with today is Proverbs 17:17

Proverbs 17:17 ESV

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

Let’s start with the first part of that Proverb.

A friend loves at all times

A friend loves steadfastly

A friend loves with constancy

Steadfast Love is Sacrificial Love

This is one of the marks of true friendship.

Love that does not shrink back

The love in true friendship is like note struck on a piano with the Sustain Pedal held down.

It rings and rings and rings.

It is a faithful love that does not ebb and flow with circumstances.

It does not show up on the mountaintop and disappear in the valley.

It remains. It abides.

We all want these sorts of friends and we want to be this sort of friend.

Many people claim to be this sort of friend.

But in reality, this kind of love can be hard to find:

Proverbs 20:6 ESV

Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?

Why is steadfastness and faithfulness so rare and hard to find?

Because it costs something.

True friendship comes with a price tag.

The price is putting the needs of another person before yourself...

...Which means that the love you find in true friendship is sacrificial love.

This is how Jesus defined sacrificial love.

John 15:13 ESV

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

Jesus also displayed this sort of sacrificial love in His life and death.

Christ is the Friend of Sinners, but He was not a sinner Himself.

He was holy and perfect.

But then—the holy and perfect Son of God, was taken to Calvary and there He laid down His life.

He was crushed in the place of the ungodly.

He received the wrath of God on His head so that it would not fall on yours—and on mine.

And He resurrected from the grave—securing victory over death and proving that His sacrifice was accepted by God.

And now He has opened the way for any sinner to FRIENDS with God.

Truly, greater love has no one than this.

There has never been and there never will be a greater act of sacrificial love.

And the Cross that our Lord died on sets the standard for the type of love we should aim to have for one another in true friendship.

It is a love bent outward.

A love that wants to take on the weight of burdens.

A love that is willing to be disadvantaged so that another may have an advantage.

A love that will itself down that another may have what they need

Friend/Companion

This constant, “at all times,” sacrificial love is what separates friend from companion.

Proverbs 18:24 ESV

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

There are two Hebrew words in play in this verse.

Companion: Hebrew word = Rea (reh-ah)

It is being used by Solomon to refer to someone who is an associate

Friend: Hebrew word = Aheb (ah-HEB)

It is being used by Solomon to refer to the closest sort of friend—closer than a brother

Someone who is beloved

The companion does not love at all times.

When things get hard, they don’t stick.

They leave.

This is why a man of many companions comes to ruin.

He thinks he has all these friends, but they won’t sacrifice for him.

When hard times come, they leave him to deal with it on his own.

But a true friend will stay even when brothers leave.

Their love is bent outward and they are willing to bear the burden.

They are willing to face the trial, just as Jesus has done with us.

Love Bent Inward

But we have to be aware of the fact that Proverbs presents a number of threats to true friendship.

It warns us about these attitudes and actions that can destroy friendship.

The tongue can destroy friendship.

Proverbs 17:9 ESV

Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends.

Gossip and breaking trust will take friends and break them apart like a wrecking ball smashing through concrete.

Overstaying your welcome can destroy friendship.

Proverbs 25:17 ESV

Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor’s house, lest he have his fill of you and hate you.

If you are constantly taking from your neighbor, it will kill friendship.

Hospitality includes sharing your time and your goods with others.

Time and goods are finite things.

We only have but so much to give.

When you are always draining someone’s reserve and never giving back, that will strain the relationship and end any hopes of true friendship.

Unresolved conflict can destroy friendship.

Proverbs 18:19 ESV

A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle.

When you offend someone and you just leave it, you are killing that relationship.

Their offense will remain and it will be like the walls of a fortified city.

You won’t be able to get into their heart.

Wrong motives can destroy friendship.

Proverbs 19:4 ESV

Wealth brings many new friends, but a poor man is deserted by his friend.

If someone becomes your friend just because of what you can provide for them out of an abundance, they will be gone as soon as the abundance is gone.

A friendship with wrong motives has no foundation and it will not be steadfast.

The faulty love will fail.

Now here is what we need to recognize in each of these cases:

If steadfast, sacrificial Christlike love in our friendships is BENT OUTWARD...

Then these attitudes and actions that destroy friendship is love mutated and BENT INWARD!

Why would we gossip?

Because we love the sweet morsel of news coming off of our tongue and what WE get out of it MORE than we love our friend whose secret we are sharing.

Why would we overstay our welcome?

Because we love whatever WE are getting out of abusing someone’s hospitality MORE than loving that person who is being hospitable.

Why would we not resolve conflict?

Because we love the comfort WE maintain by avoiding hard conversations MORE than we love the people we have offended.

OR—maybe we love the idea of BEING RIGHT more than we love the idea of BEING A FRIEND.

Why would we engage in friendship with wrong motives?

Because WE are only concerned with what WE get and what will make US feel good.

And we view OTHERS as a means to our end.

We love them for what they can give us MORE than we love them for who they are.

Christians in Friendship

As Christians, this should never be the tone of our friendships.

When people think of the type of friends we are, they should think of the same words we use when talking about Christ and His Cross.

Sacrificial

Selfless

Servant

They should not think:

Self-obsessed

Self-exalting

Self-seeking

Self-focused friendship will never last through the fire of difficulty and trials.

This brings us to our 2nd point.

2. True friendship is forged and fixed in adversity (Proverbs 17:17).

This is where we deal with the second half of Proverbs 17:17

Proverbs 17:17 ESV

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

A brother, who is a blood relative, is born and raised up to be an added strength to the family in adversity.

The word adversity means a state of extreme misfortune.

While it doesn’t always happen, the expectation of Scripture is that a brother is going to be there for his siblings when hard times arrive.

But notice what Solomon has done with this Proverb.

He has taken the friend and set him up next to the brother.

He is showing how a true friend, who loves at all times, is there for the extreme misfortune just as much as a blood relative would

This demonstrates how deep friendship can run

Souls Knit Together

One of the greatest examples we have in the Bible of friendships born for adversity is that of David and Jonathan.

Right after David gets done explaining what happened with Goliath’s death, the Bible says this happened:

1 Samuel 18:1 ESV

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

The Scriptures say that Jonathan’s soul was knit to David’s but it doesn’t describe how it happened.

It is hard to attribute it to anything other than God’s divine grace.

It is as if God reached down from heaven and did the sewing himself.

When it says that Jonathan loved David as he loved his own soul, we are seeing that Jonathan is bound to David in committed love.

He demonstrates this by giving David his royal robe and his armor.

This all gives us an idea of the sort of deep bond that we have with those who are friends that stick closer than a brother.

God will knit our souls to another and bind us to them in love

We know God does this with husbands and wives.

But he also binds men to men in friendship and women to women in friendship

And once that happens, there is a divine command on our life to not abandon those friends.

The Command

Proverbs 27:10 ESV

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

This is not a suggestion.

This is not simply guidance.

This is a command from the Lord regarding friendship

Once we are bound to another through the bond of friendship, we ought not abandon that person

Once we are committed to one another is a deep “brother-to-brother” and “sister-to-sister” love, we should stick with them.

We should be brothers and sisters born for adversity.

Shoulder to Shoulder

In fact, adversity is often the thing that God uses to deepen the bonds of friendship.

It is one thing to connect over shared interests and affinities:

Movies

Sports

Politics

Cars

Crafts

We certainly connect over these things.

In fact, CS Lewis said that most friendships start this way:

The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one!

CS Lewis

But however a friendship may begin, nothing increases the bond of friendship like standing shoulder-to shoulder through the fire.

Shared hardship has this way of welding us together in the heat of the crucible.

Let me explain why it is this way:

When things are going well, your friendships are often filled with more light conversation.

Common interests

Current events

The weather

Upcoming Plans

But when the real friction comes and the heat of suffering bears down on us, those things often get stripped away.

It is just YOU, YOUR FRIEND and YOUR PROBLEM.

It isn’t about movies.

It isn’t about hobbies.

It isn’t about cars and crafts.

For a season, all of that is stripped away as two friends stand together in the furnace.

Some people run when the common interests and the current events are stripped away and things get serious.

But there are others who do not run.

And when people stay and love us all the way through trial...

...That is when we start to figure out who the true friends are.

And when those true friendships endure a season of suffering and they are able to return to the lighter things—the love and affection we have for another runs even deeper.

The bond has strengthened.

Adversity is More Bearable When Faced With Another

But that isn’t all we should say about Adversity and Friendship.

Not only does suffering cause the bond of friendship to run deeper, but the bond of friendship makes suffering more bearable.

Listen to the Preacher’s wisdom in Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes 4:9–12 ESV

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

These verses come right after the author of Ecclesiastes has said that a man who works all alone will find his work meaningless because there is no one to share it with.

On the other hand, the man who is not alone has someone to share the reward for their labor with.

Moreover, if he falls, another is there to pick him up.

If he sleeps and he is freezing, there is another there to help keep him warm.

If there is some sort of attack, two will withstand it—three will not be easily broken.

The point of Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 is that there is strength in having friends that does not exist when we are all alone.

And you and I need that strength.

It is not good that man should be alone.

Burdens in this life can be unbearably heavy.

We are better off when the load is spread across a number of shoulders—not just sitting squarely on our own.

Paul’s Example

The Apostle Paul understood this well.

Paul went through a lot in his ministry.

In 2 Corinthians 11:24-28 he lists it all out.

He talks about multiple beatings, shipwrecks, imprisonments, dangers...

But Paul did not go through these things alone.

He was connected to friends and surrounded by friends for most of his ministry.

He had his closest friends in ministry:

Timothy, his true son in the faith

Luke, his traveling companion and record-keeper

Barnabas, his traveling missionary partner for years

Silas, the one who took Barnabas’ place

Titus, another true child in the faith

But he also had all of these other people he mentions who helped him or risked their lives for him.

All in all, between Acts and Paul’s letters, we can identify around 45 people who stood with Paul in adversity and Paul called them his friend

What a great man God made Paul to be

But even this great Apostle, theologian, missionary and pastor had to have friends to run his race and finish task the Lord Jesus gave him

We are not different

We need the help of friends to live life for Christ

Christ as the Ultimate Brother for Adversity Who Gives Brothers for Adversity

Maybe you have been trying to live life on your own.

You don’t want help from anyone

Well I want to challenge you that a heart closed off to friendship is a heart set up for brutality

At some point, the hammer drops and you are going to bleed.

Our health fails

Our job becomes problematic

Our parents get sick and we have to care for them

Our marriages hit rough spots

Our kids are breaking our hearts

These are the sort of things that I have seen bring people to their knees as a pastor

You will need someone when the moment comes.

First of all, you need Christ.

Christ is the ultimate Brother born for adversity.

God brought Him forth as His only begotten Son.

He is not just a Brother to help us through our greatest threats.

He is a Brother who has conquered our greatest threats.

He has dealt with our sin, our death and the wrath of Hell that we deserve, by laying His life down for us.

And Christ who died resurrected.

And Christ who resurrected ascended to Heaven.

And from that exalted position, He carries on His great work by being our High Priest who is able to sympathize with our weakness.

Hebrews 4:14–16 ESV

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 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. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Christ is not just our Brother who brought us to God through an act of love 2,000 years ago.

Jesus continues to be our Brother for adversity.

Everyday He continues to pour out His marvelous love from God’s right hand as He sits over us—the Great High Priest who brings us to God.

But secondly, we need the people of Christ.

See—here is the thing about Jesus:

He is a Brother born for Adversity who brings us other brothers born for adversity!

John 15:16 ESV

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

The disciples did not choose Jesus.

Jesus chose them.

And His choice doesn’t just include bringing them to God, but bringing them to each other.

In other words, whenever Christ calls a disciple our of the world and into the Church, He is not just bringing them to Himself...

...He is also bringing them into the Church where there are Brothers and Sisters born for adversity.

You need the Church.

You need the people of the Church.

You need shoulders to your right and left that can help you bear the burdens of hard times.

Don’t try to live life on your own.

Come humbly to Christ, knowing He has loved you to the point of death on a Cross.

Come happily into the community of His people, who are called to love one another as Christ has loved us at Calvary.

3. True friendship is leveraged for the Gospel (Proverbs 27:17; Proverbs 13:20).

Understanding our need for friendship, we also must understand our aim and our purpose in friendship.

It is not simply to have a good time.

It is not simply to have a brother or sister to be there for you.

Like everything else in the Christian life, our friendships must be aimed at advancing the Gospel of Christ and glorifying God.

We will look to two verses to help us understand this in our final point today.

Friendship as Discipleship (Proverbs 27:17)

Proverbs 27:17 ESV

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

Iron sharpening iron refers to the work a smith would do

Iron is an unrelentingly hard metal

To sharpen iron, you need more iron—nothing else will get the job done

Therefore, the smith would take an iron hammer to the iron to form it into a sharp tool or a weapon

This is a picture of how spiritual growth takes place through the bond of friendship.

When you take one man and put him with another, the life of each man sharpens the life of the other

This sort of iron-sharpening takes place in a relationship where:

The truth is told

The truth is cherished

The truth confronts

The truth encourages

The truth corrects

The truth comforts

Sometimes this is painful.

Bruce Waltke points out that if IRON could FEEL like a sentient being, the process of being sharpened would be unpleasant

And yet the end result is beneficial—the iron is now effective to do a job

It is no different in our friendships with each other.

It can be painful to receive wounds from a friend as they tell you the truth—but Proverbs says that is better than the lying, flattering kiss of an enemy

It can be painful to tell a friend a hard truth—but Proverbs reminds us that this is what sincere friends do.

Proverbs 27:6 (NLT)

New Living Translation Chapter 27

Wounds from a sincere friend

are better than many kisses from an enemy.

As believers, we should want all of our friendships marked by this sort of faithful sincerity

Lots of people have relationships based on common interests, but it ends there.

For example, imagine a couple of guys who work together and they talk sports all day—maybe a little politics here and there

But they don’t go past that. They never talk about wives and children and God.

It’s all just surface level commonalities.

This is not the sort of friendship in view in Proverbs 27:17.

This is more of a well-acquainted companionship.

In true, biblical friendship, the hammer meets the iron.

The conversation dives down below the NBA, NASCAR and the NRA.

It submerges into the depths of the soul.

And there, Christian hearts are sharpened in Christian friendship.

Leveraging for Discipleship

Understanding these things, we must leverage our Christian bonds of friendship for discipleship, by seeking to build friendships that go past the surface and get into the depths.

These sort of Christian friendships contain two roles for the people in them.

On one hand, God uses you to be the hammer sometimes.

You are the Truth-Teller as you:

Give advice

Challenge someone about their sin

At other times, we are the iron receiving the hammer.

We are listening as our friends:

Counsel us

Confront us about patterns of sin

You could spend time with a friend for one afternoon and trade roles back and forth as both of you are edified and sharpened.

Understanding this, Christians should use all of their friendships to advance the love of Christ in their own hearts and in the hearts of others

And Christians should use their friendships to advance the Kingdom.

Friendship as Evangelism (Proverbs 13:20)

On the other hand, most of us will not only have friends inside of the church, but outside of the church.

Even your pastor has non-Christian friends!

As believers, we really don’t view those relationships as iron-sharpening relationships because both people are not coming into the friendship with a commitment to the truth of God.

In relationships with unbelievers, we are bringing iron to stone.

Ezekiel 36 describes the heart that is far from God as being like a rock.

We want to bring the Sword of Truth—the living and active Word of God—against that rock.

We want to see that rock shatter and crumble and be replaced with a heart that is born again.

Proverbs 13:20 ESV

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

Whoever walks wise becomes wise...

It is abundantly clear from the plan reading of this verse that WHO YOU WALK WITH SHAPES YOUR LIFE.

This is both good and bad.

If we are Thermostats in our relationships with unbelievers, it is good.

We are controlling the temperature of the relationship.

The truth of Christ is influencing our unbelieving friend—as opposed to their worldliness influencing us.

If we are Thermometers in our relationships with unbelievers, it is not good.

Just as the thermometer changes with the temperature, we will change according to the temperature of our friend.

The coldness of their sinful counsel and example begins to creep in and grip us.

Before long, their influence has left us cold—frozen in our spiritual growth.

This is a question for each of us to ask:

If I have unbelieving friends—am I leveraging that friendship for the Kingdom?

Am I influencing my friend for Christ?

Or are they influencing me for the world?

Understanding the Limitations of Time and Space

Knowing that God wants to leverage our friendships to sharpen the lives of other believers and to shape the lives of unbelievers, we do need to understand our limitations.

We need to understand that we are all limited by time and space.

I am sure that most of us want to leverage all of our relationships for the Gospel’s sake and for the glory of God.

But the reality is that you only have so much time and you cannot be everywhere at once.

Some of you need to hear me say this one thing:

You cannot be everybody’s friend.

There is not enough time to do that much leveraging.

Others of you need to hear me say this other thing:

Not everybody can be your friend.

We might want everyone to be our friend, but that is not realistic.

If everyone was everyone’s friend, in truth nobody would ever really be anyone’s friend.

You cannot be everyone's friend — there isn't enough time or capacity for that.

And that's not a failure.

In fact, it's how Jesus lived.

He had twelve close friends

Three even closer than that

Wider Circle beyond them

If the Son of God had limits on His friendships, so do you.

Stop feeling guilty about that, and just be faithful with the friendships God's actually given you.

And certainly don’t be angry with others who are also limited in time and space, and doing their best to be faithful everyone in their lives.

Conclusion

Now—as we close— there is a good chance that in a room of this size, there are a few of you, who struggle to hear any of this today.

You understand all of this in theory:

True friendship loves sacrificially.

True friendship loves constantly.

True friendship loves for the Gospel’s sake.

But right now, you feel pretty alone.

You don’t really have the friend who will be a hammer to your iron.

You don’t have a friend who will bring the light to your darkness.

You don’t have a friend to love through sacrifice and servanthood.

Let me encourage you with two final thoughts.

A Day is Coming Where Friendship Will Abound Without Interruption

The new heaven and the new earth are not far away.

We live in the last days—waiting on Christ’s return.

The pain of friendship lost and friendship longed for will not exist in that place.

Revelation 21:4 ESV

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Part of the former things that pass away is the heartbreak that can come with friendship.

Be encouraged that the World of Friendship is on its way.

First and foremost, we will have God as our friend.

We will be His people and He will be our God.

We will see His face and worship Him together.

Secondly, we will have one another.

The whole Church will have the whole Church in friendship.

And we will have all of eternity to enjoy the sweetness of that.

The Day Is Here to Rely on God’s Church

But as we wait on that day, the Day of the Church is here.

We have one another in the body of Christ as we live as exiles and sojourners in this world.

Embrace this reality.

If you have struggled to gain friendship in the church, the best way to pursue it is to Commit to the Regular Rhythms of the Church.

Sunday School: 9am

Sunday Worship: 10am

Wednesday: 5:30pm

The best way to get to know people and make friends at SBC is to knit the schedule of your life to the schedule of the church, the best you can

In doing that, you will find that you are gathering with the same brothers and sisters week in and week out.

Stay patient—it won’t be long until you are KNOWN and you KNOW others.

And that is how friendship begins.

Christ’s return is coming, but Christ’s body is here.

May it be a harvest field of friendship for us all.