Wise Friendship

During the outbreak of the first world war in 1914, the British army were struggling to enlist the numbers that they needed to fight effectively against the massive German army! They knew that unless they increased their ranks dramatically, they would simply be overwhelmed by the enemy! And one General at the time Sir Henry Rawlinson, came up with the strategy of tapping into the power of friendship.

He suggested that if people from all classes were able to sign up alongside their friends, and know that they would go and fight next to their friends, then there would be many more willing! And he was right! Thousands enlisted in what became known as ‘Pals Battalions’. Friends from the same neighborhoods, same professions, same sporting allegiances, went to war together. They stood side by side on the battle fields of the Somme, and many died side by side, friends till the very end!

Friendship is such a deep, significant, beautiful thing! We were all made for friendship, it is not good for man to be alone. We are relational beings, created by a relational God! Father, Son and Spirit, in perfect friendship, perfect relationship!

Friendship can be hugely influential in what path we walk down, and continue to walk down in this life! That’s why when parents send their kids out one of the main concerns they have is what friendship group will they get into!

Proverbs has much to say about wise friendship, God has much to say about wise friendship! So this morning we’re going to take a number of different Proverbs and try to simply answer...

What does True Friendship look like?

And then see...

How in Christ do we see this most beautifully Demonstrated?

Jesus, the Fulfillment of wise Friendship

What does True Friendship look like?

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

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

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy. ()

Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel. ()

Who do you have in your life right now that you would describe as a friend? And what is it that makes them a friend? What is the criteria in your mind that moves someone from an aquintence, someone that you know, maybe someone you sit beside in school or work with to a true friend!

Maybe it’s those people you actually see outside of school or work or a normal setting, people you socialise with. Maybe it’s someone you text or snap chat. Maybe it’s someone you share a common interest with, you both like shopping, or cars, or cycling or stamp collecting!

What is it that makes someone a friend? And how do we know if they’re a true friend?

In Proverbs there are some truths that really stand out that help us see through the confusion of what we understand as friendship today...

Just because someone’s with you, doesn’t mean they’re your friend...

Wealth brings many new friends, but a poor man is deserted by his friend’ ()

‘Many seek the favour of a generous man, and everyone is a friend to a man who gives gifts’ ()

Sometimes we can have people that want to be around us, people that show an interest in us, that spend time with us! But when we scratch the surface a little, it’s not really us they want! It’s what we can give them!! ‘…everyone is a friend to a man who gives gifts’. The gift might be money, wealth brings many new friends…. Rich people don’t usually have any trouble having people around them. Just look at the celebrities of today, the footballers, singers, actors etc. They’re popular, they have the most followers on Twitter, the most friends on Facebook, it seems everyone wants to be their friend! The gift might be gossip, maybe there’s a certain person who is always in the know, they’re the one with the inside information, and people want to be their friend, not for them but for what they can find out! Or maybe the gift is humour, craic! People like to spend time with a person when the craic is good, when they make you laugh, when they do funny things! They give the gift of laughter and that’s the appeal!

But when that gift is spent, when the person becomes poor in that sense then ‘friends’ often desert him! If the funny guy stops being good craic to be around, and in fact is quite down, then who wants to hang out?! If the rich person loses all their money and can no longer buy his friends stuff, then who wants to still spend time with them.

I remember in school there was a guy I was ‘friendly’ with on a Monday and Thursday afternoon. And it was purely because of the gift I could get! Monday and Thursday were french class!! He was generous to me in helping me, and I was selfish and didn’t really care about him, I just cared about what I could get from Him!!

Just because someone’s with you, doesn’t mean they’re your friend!

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2. Just because someone always agrees with you, doesn’t mean they’re your friend

Better is open rebuke than hidden love.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy. ()

It’s human nature to want to surround ourselves with people that agree with us, that will affirm us, that will go along with what we think! If we’re honest, we want people that will tell us we’re right, we want people who will always speak positively and never negatively! But we need to beware, profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Many are the compliments, the affirmations, the agreements of those people who really don’t give a rip about us, who don’t really care for us!

Have you ever been in a situation where someone has come to you maybe with something that has been said to them that’s hit a nerve. And they look to you to tell them it isn’t so, that the person has got it wrong. You know though deep down that there’s a lot of truth in what has been said, but yet you give them want they want. ‘Don’t listen to them, sure what would they know’. Sometimes kisses, compliments and pats on the back, are actually more a sign that we care more for ourselves than we do for someone else!

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If the people in your life that you call friends, only ever agree with you, tell you you’re right, affirm your position, and never challenge or disagree, then there’s a fair chance they’re not what the Bible would call a friend! They’re not the people that our loving Father wants us to have around us! Isn’t it so wonderful that He cares for us in such a practical way that he would deal with friendship!

So what does a true Friend look like?

Someone who loves us enough to be honest.

Better open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend...

We really need people in our lives that will faithfully wound us! Not wound us in the sense of sticking a knife in our back to damage us, but wound us in the sense of a surgeon using a knife to lovingly cut out a cancerous tumor! Both are wounds, both will hurt, but only one is done to save the person’s life!

Ray Ortlund says in his book on Proverbs, ‘Everyone of us needs a friend who will not flatter us but will refine us’! Flattering is easy, it’s safe, it’s comfortable! You’re not going to risk a response by flattering, you’re not going to have someone tell you to mind your own busy or keep your nose out, or stop judging me! You need no back bone to do it, no courage, no conviction, no real love! But Refining is different! For someone to be prepared to openly rebuke, say it as it is even when it’s not want we want to hear, and may cost them, to be prepared to wound us knowing that by wounding us they actually save our lives! That takes courage, that takes love, a dying to self, a preferring others interests more than our own!

Here’s a light example, have you ever been out somewhere with a friend, and when you nip into the toilet you look in the mirror and realise that you’ve what looks like a full piece of sweetcorn that’s replaced one of your tooth! I mean, it would be impossible to not see what’s stuck in between your teeth! And yet, your friend has been too embarrassed to say! Really what’s happened there is they’ve cared more about their own embarrassment than their friends!

Now when it’s food stuck between our teeth it’s relatively unimportant, it’s funny! But when it’s a sin issue, it’s deadly!! If someone fails to help us see the issue, even though it’s obvious, then they fail to love us as a friend! Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel. (). If you want to know what true friendship is like, look for the people who will speak the truth to you even when it’s hard, look to the people who are earnest to give you counsel and it proves to be sweet, even though it may sting initially! We don’t need yes men in our lives, we need people who love us enough to be honest!

Someone who loves us enough to stick around

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

It’s one thing to have people in your life who will speak honestly to you, but we need more than that! Remember this isn’t about looking for faults in others, nit picking, pointing out every little issue! This is caring for someone so much that when you see something that will harm them, you faithfully help them see it, even if that means you get hurt in the process! But a friend doesn’t just stop there, a friend sticks around! A friend is in it for the long haul, they’re committed, invested, given to this friendship! ‘A true friend knows who you really are and does not walk away’.

‘A true friend knows who you really are and does not walk away’.

The closer people get to us, the more they will see our faults, our failings, those areas of our lives that we really don’t want anyone to see!! We would prefer to keep people at arms length so they don’t have to faithfully wound us! But a true friend sees it all, and loves at all times!

They see our selfishness, our pride, our arrogance, our fears, our lusts, our inconsistencies…often in fact they can be directly hurt by them! But they don’t abandon us, they don’t erect a barrier and keep a distance! They love at all times! Now that’s not to say they ignore these things, not at all! They’re faithful to help us see them, but they also are faithful to stick around and help us walk through them!!

…a brother is born for adversity… When it comes to our family members in one sense, they have to stick around, they have to put up with us! I know no matter what I’m struggling with I can always go to Ryan. I remember even in my early teens doing a lot of very foolish things (things that Mum and Dad probably never knew about), but Ryan would be there, in all my adversity, in all my trouble!! In a sense, that’s what brothers do!

But a friend has no family tie that binds them, no family obligation that sways them. They choose to love you, to stick with you, to be there for you, through the good and bad times! A friend loves at all times.

Let me ask you this morning, do you have friends like that in your life? In your school, in your social lives, do you have friends that will be honest with you, and be there for you, even when you’re not so nice, even when you’ve made mistakes, even when you’re having a bad day! That’s what a true friend is!

And are you a friend like that to others? Do you be honest and love people in the truth, do you stick with people even when you see the ugliness of their sin? I’m am so encouraged to see so many good friendship in this church, people who truly are there for one another, who aren’t afraid to be honest with one another! Praise God for that!!

But let’s seek more, because if their kind of relationship are to be found anywhere, surely it should be the Church! Because in the church we see the One who proves to be the wisest of friends, We receive the friendship that enables us to be friends to others!

Jesus, the Fulfillment of Wise Friendship

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

‘Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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. 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.’ ()

I want to finish this morning by calling all of us to embrace the truest, most beautiful, expression of this friendship. Maybe for some this morning that will be for the first time. For others, it’ll be as a call from a long lost friend, one we’ve maybe lost contact with. And for others it’ll simply be that friend we know and speak with regularly, but delight to enjoy!

Jesus Christ calls us into the very friendship of God! Now not in some irreverent Jesus is my ‘home-boy’ sense! But rather He calls us into the fullest expression of this wise friendship! O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”() We are called into this fellowship and friendship of God!

He is a friend who loves us without payment! We have no gift to offer Him, we are poor and needy! If fact not only do we have nothing to offer Him, but we’ve actually sinned against Him, we’re in great debt to Him! We’ve resisted Him, betrayed Him, ignored Him, mistrusted Him!! And yet, He calls us this morning to this friendship! It is by grace you have been saved...

He is a friend who will stick around! The closer we come to Him, the more we see our faults and failings, and yet, He loves at all times! ‘He sees the depth of our hearts, and he loves us the same’!! He is in it for the long haul, He’s committed, invested! Even when we forget Him, even when we dishonor Him, even when we try to hide from Him! He will love us, He is a friend who sticks closer than a brother!

He is a friend who will always be faithful to us! He will always tell it as it is! He’ll speak the truth, He’ll help us see our faults, as we look at ourselves in the mirror of His Word. He’ll faithfully wound us when He needs to! But never to damage us, never to condemn us, always to save us, to do us good, to change us to be like Him!

He is a friend who will stick around! The closer we come to Him, the more we see our faults and failings, and yet, He loves at all times! ‘He sees the depth of our hearts, and he loves us the same’!! He is in it for the long haul, He’s committed, invested! He’s promised to never leave us or forsake us, to complete the work He’s started! The things in our hearts that can be so ugly and dark, He sees, He knows, and He does not abandon us, but rather works with us in His power to change us! He is a friend who sticks closer than a brother!

How do we know this? Because He has laid down His life for us! At the cross Jesus demonstrated in the most beautiful, dramatic, wonderful way, that He calls us to this friendship! Because at the cross He deals with the very issue that makes friendship with God impossible, sin!

This is the friendship we have all been made for, this is the friendship that we cannot live without! This is the friendship that satisfies! If you don’t know Him yet this morning as your friend, this morning you can! Turn to him in faith, trust in Him as the friend of sinners, the one who laid down His life to deal with our greatest issue, our sin!

And for all here already believers, enjoy His friendship! Delight in His love, treasure His faithful, rest in His care, He is a friend like no other!!