Wisdom and Friendship
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Those are the friends that you'll make for a lifetime, so I have my backpack on, ready to go, meet all my new friends.
You're going to be my best friend for life. You're going to be my best friend for life. Excited. And there's some truth to that, right? That there are some friends you make in college that you keep for the rest of life. Some, not so much.
There are even some people in college that you don't even like. And they don't even like you. And by God's twist of irony, later on in life, you end up becoming good friends. Like Chet, Matt, and I. I didn't like them, and they didn't like me in college. But God brought us together, and now we are close friends, and we pastor a church together.
But that happens. People change over time. Your friends change over time. You change over time. You learn about yourself. You learn more about your friends.
Friendship can be complicated. You go through seasons sometimes where either friendships are too much or they're not enough, where you're disappointed by friends or that you feel defeated because you can't be the friend that you want to be. And yet, in spite of all the complexities of friendship, we still long for it. We long for good friends. Friendship can be made in the image of a communal God. And we're designed for friendship.
That's why half of all the TV shows, they center around a group of friends. It's because friends are very important to us. We're designed in the image of a God who is communal. We long for friendships that give life, that make it joyful and fun and good. So, in order for us to understand friendship well and how God designed it, we need to go to the Bible. We need to look at what the Bible says about friendship.
And the Proverbs have various bits of wisdom about friendship. So, we're going to look at the Proverbs on this today. And we're going to move this through this in three different parts. We're going to look at first, wise friendship. Second, we're going to look at true friendship. And then lastly, we're going to look at friendship redeemed.
So, wise friendship, true friendship, friendship redeemed. Let me pray and then we'll jump in. Lord, we love you and we thank you. And we thank you that you give us your word and that your word shapes us and molds us. That it pierces us to the heart. God, I pray right now that you would go to work in our hearts.
So that we can see the wisdom of friendship and the friends that we are called to be. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, so first, we're going to look at wise friendship. Alright, we're going to look at wise friendship. There are a few different aspects of wise friendship that we're going to see.
And we're going to start out with one of the bigger passages in Proverbs on friendship. Starting in Proverbs 27, verses 9 through 10. Oil and perfume make the heart glad. And the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel. 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. So it starts off, how sweet it is to have a friend that gives you earnest, heartfelt counsel. Now, there's something important to know as we walk through the Proverbs. Friend, the word friend, and neighbor. However, those two words have the same range of meaning in the Proverbs. Alright, when we hear that in the English language, we go, Friend, somebody you're friends with, neighbor is somebody you live beside.
Alright? And Proverbs has the same range of meaning. So they kind of get used a little bit interchangeably. So you're going to see friend, neighbor. It's our concept of those whom you call friends. And it says, What we're going to see first is that the Bible upholds sincerity as a quality of friendship.
Wise friends are sincere. Life is better when your friends are sincere. When they are genuine. When they are real. When they give you earnest, heartfelt counsel. This is how it starts off.
Wise friends are sincere. Proverbs 28, 23. Gives another picture of sincerity. Whoever rebukes a man will afterward found more favor than he who flatters with his tongue. So it goes after sincerity.
And the opposite of that being flattery. When I was in the 8th grade, I loved the 8th grade so much that I said I wanted to do it again. So I had an encore experience where I did the 8th grade twice. And I transferred to a new school. And I showed up, you know, a little bit nervous. New school.
Same grade. And I got there. And I met two friends out the gate. Now one of them was just like me. Transferred in from Wagner. And, you know, we're both filling out the school together.
Nice guy. You know, not overly nice. But nice guy. And the other one was overly nice. Like aggressively nice. Invited me to his house very quickly.
And was very nice out the gate. And what I began to learn about these two friends is that one of them was genuine. One of them was real. The other one flattered. All right.
He said nice things to you. I always say nice things about you when you weren't there. One friend, I went to, we went through high school together. We were actually going to college together. We were roommates in college. We're still friends this day.
The other one later in high school cheated with my girlfriend. Just two different types of friends. But one was flattering. It took some time to actually realize that. Because flattery is the enemy of sincerity. Flattery is the enemy of sincerity.
What's worse is that it sets people up for failure. Proverbs 29.5 says, A man who flatters his neighbor, again, here, friend, a man who flatters his neighbor, spreads a net for his feet. You know the kind of parents that really build their children up with a false sense of self-worth and value? They like really say lots of really overly not true but kind things to them. And then they go into the real world not set up for success. My parents never did that.
They were very genuine. When I was in the fourth grade, I did chorus. And I loved chorus. I loved to sing. And I thought, Man, this is fun. I'm going to sing in front of people.
And at the end of fourth grade chorus, I talked about wanting to continue doing it. My parents said, Well... And they were just like, You know, you like other... You're good at baseball. Like you... You like other things.
You know, it's good to see. It's good to see. And they were very kindly trying to help me see, You like singing. It may not be a gifting of yours. And I'm thankful for that because I didn't end up on American Idol. Y'all remember those people?
They get in front of... They get in front of millions of people on camera thinking that they were great. And they'd sing their hearts out. And then they would get absolutely destroyed. And no one ever loved them enough to sit them down and tell them, No, you should not sing in front of people like this. One o'clock in the morning at karaoke, in the shower, fair game.
But not in a performance setting. It sets you up for failure. When you are insincere with flattery and you are not earnest, you set them up for a trap. It is easy to flatter somebody. It's easy to say nice words. It's easy to say, Hey, you got a nice shirt.
Huh, you know what? That was a really good sermon today. Hey, you drive a really cool Prius. Like, it's easy to say nice things even when they're not true. It's easy. Because we like that.
We like saying nice things to people. Right? We like how it makes us feel. But hear this. If it doesn't fit into the biblical category of encouragement, which is based in reality, which is true. Encouraging words are true.
If it's not based in that, then the nice words you have to say aren't about your friend. They are for you. They're so you can be liked. They're so you can get a smile. You're not actually loving your friend. You are loving yourself.
Wise friends have candor and honesty. They don't shout, You go, girl, while you blow up your life and try to spend your life savings on a squirrel sanctuary or whatever you would do. Like they, they, they're not going to let you do that. In fact, when the time comes, they're going to rebuke you. Proverbs 27, 6 says, Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
So plentiful are the kisses of an enemy. It takes a true friend, someone who loves you enough to risk your friendship, to risk awkwardness, to rebuke you. This is huge because this is the reality. Many of us will measure friendships by how often our friends kiss us as opposed to wounding us. It's metaphorically, Proverbs is speaking metaphorically, kiss being nice things said to you as opposed to the rebuking, the wounds that come with rebuking. I have a friend.
I won't mention his name, but he is Australian. And he's really good at wounding me. He's what the Proverbs calls a very faithful friend. If you don't know that joke, it's Raz Bradley, one of our pastors, who is Australian. Now, he's not always tactful. We'll get to that in a moment.
But he is faithful to wound. A few years ago, I handled something poorly. I handled something. I did not lead well in a specific area. And there are many people that could have looked at what I did and could have made tons of excuses. Right?
Could have made excuse after excuse for why I failed in this area. But he didn't. He looked at me and he pointed exactly how I failed, where I needed to grow in leadership. And it hurt. It hurt. But it didn't kill me.
It wounded me. It did not kill me. It did not destroy me. And I've used that experience as a filter for my leadership in many decisions since and going forward. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. When a friend shares hard truths, they wound you.
And it is painful. But that pain is ultimately for your good. They are willing to risk painting the ones they love. They're not going to cheer you on and say, You go, girl. Go for it, dude. And not say, Man, we've got to sit down.
They're going to sit you down. They're going to rebuke you because they care about you. You need friends like this. You need friends who will stand in the way of you in self-destruction. You need friends who will stand in the way of you blowing up your life because they risked awkwardness. They risked friction enough to be able to sit you down and tell you truth.
We need people that sharpen us like that. Proverbs 27, 17 says, Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. Good friends make each other better. As iron sharpens iron. Would you have ever seen iron sharpening iron? Have you ever seen someone sharpen a knife?
It's gritty. It's metal on metal. Sometimes sparks are flying. But it's ultimately friction for the betterment of the instrument. That's what it is. That's what the Proverbs is getting at.
It's friction for our good. That someone would sharpen you. We need this. Because the reality is that you are shaped by the community around you. Your parents raise you. They put as many morals and values into you as possible.
Then you're off into the world. And for the rest of your life, you are shaped by the people around you. And we need people in our lives that sharpen us. Otherwise, we become dull. There's a pastor, Ray Ortman in Tennessee. He says, By ourselves, we become dull and blunted and lose our edge.
We need friends who will do that. Who will absolutely show and display this type of sincerity. All right. So, that's a few different areas that we see where the Proverbs calls us to be sincere friends. The next aspect of friendship you see in the Proverbs of wise friendship is tactfulness. We need friends that are wise.
Wise friends that have tact. That are thoughtful. The Proverbs calls us to be tactful in friendship. Which requires knowing your friends. All right.
It requires understanding boundaries. It requires understanding how to interact with them. You need to know your friends and be tactful with them. We get a few different pictures of tactfulness in the Proverbs. Proverbs 25, 17 says, Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor's house, lest he have his fill of you and hate you. Boundaries matter.
Boundaries matter. When I was a kid, one of my best friends lived about a mile away. We ride bikes to each other's house all the time. In the summertime, we spent a lot of time together. And I remember this one time, he was over at my house for like three days in a row. And I didn't understand what was happening, but I was getting agitated and frustrated.
And he was getting agitated and frustrated. And finally my mom said, Look, he's got to go home. He's been here for three straight days. You're getting on each other's nerves. It's too much. He's got to go home.
That's displaying this wisdom. That's what Ben Franklin says when he says, guests like fish begin to smell after three days. It's this idea that it's too much. Now, this is very important to know if you are an extrovert. If you don't understand the difference between extroverts and introverts, let me quickly explain. Extroverts, like myself, are fueled by people.
I can go from conversation to conversation. I can hang out with people three days in a row, three nights in a row. I can have all kinds of people in my life and I'm fueled by them. That's why extroverts are fueled by people. Introverts, not so much. Alright?
They're not fueled by people. They need time alone. They need time by themselves. It's a little bit of a continuum. It's a little bit of a scale. But introverts aren't fueled by people.
It doesn't mean they're not good with people. It just means they're not fueled by people. So, for those of you that are extroverts, you need to understand that boundaries matter. The Proverbs describes suffocating someone with your friendship like eating too much of the same food. It's like going to the same restaurant five times in a week and then saying, you know what? I've had enough.
I'll be back in three months. It's too much. You will get your fill and you will dislike it. So, if you're an extrovert, you might think, I could hang out with this person every day and it would never get old. No. It will get old.
It will probably get old faster for the other person but it will get old. We need to understand this, that boundaries matter. So, as extroverts, we need to know this and if you are more introverted, you need to love your extroverted friends enough to let them know that you need some space, that you need some boundaries and let it not be weird and let it not be something that offends you or gets insulted. We need to be able to understand and know one another, have the tact to know one another, to be able to navigate those situations. Some of our friends, our closest friends are the Freemans. So, Matt plays, he's a pastor over worship.
He's the guy playing up here on the guitar. They come over sometimes and about two hours into the night when they come over, I will, it's almost like clockwork. Matt is eventually going to start drifting away. Alright? He's going, and we laughed one time he ended up in front of the TV watching Frozen and we couldn't find him and all of a sudden he's staring up at Elsa singing and we're like, what are you doing? He drifts.
And what I've learned over the years is that after a couple of hours he just needs like ten minutes to himself. Alright? Because he's introverted. You may not know that about him because he's very good with people but he's actually introverted. He's not fueled by people. So, when that time in the evening comes where he drifts away to get on his phone for a moment to just be away, I don't go over and say, hey buddy, what you doing?
Can I get you a drink? Is there anything I can help you with? Come on, what's he going to come back and talk to us? I give him his space and I don't take it personal because I know that he just needs ten minutes and he's going to rally and come back. Alright? It takes tact, you guys.
It takes understanding that friends need boundaries. It's another aspect of tact. Proverbs 25, 20 gives us a second picture. It gives us the tactfulness to know how to read the room. How to read the room. Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day and like vinegar on soda.
Wise friends know how to read the room. They know how to not sing songs to a heavy heart. And that is something that's increasingly difficult for our culture because our culture is very obsessed with self. And tactfulness is not being obsessed with self, it's understanding the people around you. So, when your roommate bursts through the door and starts just joyfully, maybe not singing, but just saying, I love my job. My job is so great while the other roommate is on the couch in tears because they've been passed up for yet another Job after another bad interview.
That's the equivalent of taking a coat off of somebody on a cold winter day. It says, it's like vinegar on soda which in the Hebrew is a complicated saying but it essentially means pouring vinegar in the wound or as we use, probably the best paraphrase of this is salt in the wound. It's not loving. We have to understand and grow in Romans 12, 15, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. And that takes understanding your friends and knowing how to read the room and see when they're sad and what to say and what not to say. Demetri Martin, a comedian, he has a joke.
He says, I'm sorry is the same thing as saying I apologize except at a funeral. There you go. It'll sink in later. But context matters. Knowing what to say matters and how to say things matters. It takes being tactful enough to know when to say the right things.
Know how to read the room. Proverbs 26, 18-19 gives us a different aspect of tactfulness. Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, I am only joking. It's like a madman is the one who fires away jokes like this and says, I'm only joking. Let me talk to let me talk to my fellow sarcastic sarcastic brothers and sisters. Those who appreciate the art of sarcasm and joking.
I love sarcasm. I do. And the Bible sometimes reads sarcastically and ironically in certain places. So I think that God appreciates sarcasm. At least on some level. However, you need to receive this proverb for the friend who is always joking in a way that makes you question reality.
I don't know if he's kidding. For the friend who passive-aggressively hides what they want to say in sarcastic digs. Alright? For the friend who qualifies their barbs, qualifies their digs, and says, just kidding, this is a joke, when their eyes are saying, but seriously, for the friend who doesn't know how to shift into serious mode when the time calls forth. It says, you are like a madman who gleefully launches flaming arrows into the hearts of your friends. It's like, ha ha!
I'll just point out your insecurity in front of everybody. It's hilarious. I'm just kidding. It's just a joke. That's what it's getting at. Here's the deal.
If everyone around you can't take a joke, it's very possible you don't know how to deliver one. And you need to receive this proverb. You've got to learn when it's appropriate to joke and when not to joke. And you need to know your friends well enough to know what type of jokes they receive. Chet Phillips and I are brutal towards one another. More brutal than I am with anybody else than he is with anybody else.
We are brutal towards one another. We feed off it and we love it. It's just our personalities is how we mix. That's our brand of humor. We're very brutal towards one another. It would be unloving to apply that type of humor to other people.
There are times where we're in the office and Ben Johnson who leads a community group in our church he also works for 1040 Hope they have space in our office. Every now and then Chet and I are going back and forth and Ben gets caught in the crossfire. And it's just so unkind because Ben doesn't understand sarcasm very well. Part of how he's raised is part of how he spent 10 years in the Middle East. He just doesn't understand it very well. And it's just mean.
It's just like no. You've got to learn to downshift. You've got to learn to know which friends to press in with a joke and pull out of a joke. It takes tactfulness to know our friends and to know what they receive well. I've got you one more proverb on the subject matter of tactfulness. I won't spend a lot of time on this.
Whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice rising early in the morning will be counted as cursing. Which is pretty self-explanatory. Don't yell joyfully at your neighbor in the morning and be counted as cursing. The only thing I have to say on that is that my wife is not a morning person. And sometimes when she comes in here after she's, you know, Sunday morning she's brought all three kids by herself and she's not a morning person. I'm thankful that we have so many people who greet and greet well.
Continue to do it. Just don't take it personal when she has a blank stare in her face because she has no poker face and she just came in with three children and mornings are difficult for her. Alright, that proverb is self-explanatory. I'm going to move on from that. Wise friends have tact. And also, lastly, wise friends are reliable.
Wise friends are reliable. Proverbs 17, 7 says, A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity. You've heard said that you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family. And that kind of rolls a little bit into some of these Proverbs. The idea is that brothers, family, they're born for adversity. Meaning, they're going to be there.
There's a familial obligation that they have to be with you when times get difficult. But your friends don't have to be. They don't have to be there. But good friends choose to be there. Good friends choose to love you at all times. Even in the midst of adversity, they are reliable.
Are you the kind of friend who will sacrifice your schedule for another when they're in trouble? Are you the kind of friend who will stay long into the night if that's what it takes? It's getting at reliability here. Loving at all times. I like to think of myself as a good friend. And then on this subject matter right here, I feel my selfishness in this.
When I see something and want to help somebody, I'll network a need. I'm fairly good at that. I say, hey, yeah, let me see if I can help. And sometimes it's good. Yesterday, I was supposed to help with something and I'm behind on work right now, so I came to the building and I worked in the morning and the afternoon to get some stuff done. And I networked a need and be able to get something done.
But there are times where I feel my own selfishness. I want to guard my time and guard my schedule and not love at all times. I want to be the reliable friend of the Proverbs, the Bible calls me to be. We need to be reliable friends. And we need reliable friends. Proverbs 18.24 says, a man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Now the Hebrew word for friend here is a little bit different. It's a little bit stronger of a word. This word is the word ocheb and it is the idea of deep love for one. It's a deep pure affection for someone. It's the kind of sacrificial love that we see in 1 Samuel between Jonathan and David. I don't have time to get in that story today, but I would encourage you to go read 1 Samuel.
Go to 1 Samuel 18 and read about one of the most powerful friendships in the Bible. That Jonathan had this ocheb type of love for David. And it was at his own cost. Because Jonathan was the son of the king. He was the son of King Saul. And David was the next anointed king.
And he loved David at his own cost because loving and helping and serving David meant he was not going to be king. That's the type of sacrificial loving ocheb type of friendship that it's talking about here. The friend who sticks closer than a brother. It means that the bond is powerful. It's more powerful even than family. Because you are choosing to be there.
You are choosing to be a friend. It's deep. There's depth in this type of friendship. And that's pitted against having lots of companions. If you have lots of companions, if you have lots of people that you call friends, but you don't let them into your life, they don't know your junk, they don't, they're not, they're, you keep yourself private and fenced off. You don't have friends.
You get a lot of companions. And when it all hits the fan, when life gets difficult, you need friends. You don't need companions because they won't stick around. You need friends. Go back to the Proverbs 27 that we stated at the beginning. Verse 9, Oil and perfume make the heart glad and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel.
That's getting at the sincerity piece. That you would give sincere, earnest, heartfelt counsel. But verse 10, it says, 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. And the point that it's getting at is that you don't go to family who may not be in it with you, who may be distant in the day of calamity. You need friends in the day of trouble.
You need people that know you, that love you, that are reliable when the day of trouble comes near. So, wise friends are sincere, wise friends are tactful, and wise friends are reliable. These are the types of friends, of wise friends that you need. Now, I don't know if you see what I did there, but I did the most Baptist thing I think I've ever done outside of baptizing believers. I gave you an acronym. Be a star friend.
There we go. Sincere, tactful, and reliable. Nailed it. There's a professor in Louisville, one of my Baptist professors, who's shedding a tear right now, because I finally did an acronym after 12 plus years of being a Baptist. Be a star friend. Sincere, tactful, and reliable.
You are not going to forget that soon. Alright, that is wise friendship. Let's talk about true friendship. friendship. Anyone feel like they're missing those type of friends? Star friends, sincere, tactful, reliable? Anyone feel, if they're honest, like they're not really crushing being a star friend themselves?
You're not being as sincere as you need to be, as tactful as you need to be, as reliable as you need to be? when you read the Proverbs and what it has to say about friendship, you either leave a little bit disappointed or if you're convicted, like you should be, a little bit defeated. Defeated because you realize how selfish we are, how self-centered we are, that we've got, you know, schedules and lives and busyness and all kinds of things that pile up or if you really start to be honest with yourself, sometimes realize that so many of our friendships are just based in utility, they're based in, it's just for your use and your gain and not for the benefit of someone else. You realize how selfish you are, and some of you are introverted like, I ain't never going to be a star friend, this is very hard, or you feel a little bit disappointed because you're left longing, because you realize your current friends, while good, they don't satisfy, and life is consistently shifting, and the good friends that you make, they move away, or you move away, I mean, even TV shows like Friends and How I Met Your Mother Get This, they end with the friend groups are changing because life moves on, I mean, life can be an endless string of disappointments when it comes to friendships, and many of us are left longing for friendships in this world, for comfort that comes from them, if you feel defeated, if you feel disappointed, I have good news for you, there are no perfect friendships in this world, it is a pipe dream to think that any friend in this world could ever satisfy your soul, and that is because true friendship is found in Christ, true friendship is found in Christ, Christ the friend of sinners and tax collectors, the true friendship is found in and flows from Christ, John 15, 13, we read this earlier, greater love has no one than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends, and who was it that laid down his life for his friends? Christ ultimately fulfills that, he is the only one that personifies perfectly this type of love, this type of friendship, he is the only one that is perfectly sincere, perfectly tactful, perfectly reliable, he is the only friend who does not abandon us, who never lets us down, that type of friendship is found in Christ, John Newton wrote a hymn, the hymn is called A Friend That Sticketh Closer Than a Brother, it is based on Proverbs 18, 24, in the hymn he says this and reflected upon friendship and how Christ fulfills it, he says, could we bear from one another and what he daily bears from us, yet this glorious friend and brother loves us, though we treat him thus, though for good we render ill, he accounts us brethren still, how good is that?
That Christ, our perfect friend, loves us in spite of how bad we are towards him, in spite of how of a bad friend we are towards Christ, that he loves us and counts us as friends, counts us as family, how good it is that we have a perfect true form of friendship that's found in Christ. That type of friendship only comes from the acceptance and forgiveness that is not of this world. That no matter what, Jesus doesn't walk away from those whom he counts as friends. And we need to believe that. We need to absorb that. Because friends will fail us.
They're sinful. They will. Friends will absolutely let us down. They will abandon us. They will forsake us. They will forget us.
They will move on. Paul felt this. Paul, at the end of his life, when he's writing 2 Timothy, just before he was going to be executed, he wrote in chapter 4, he described how he was abandoned by one man who fell in love with the world. He had other friends who left and went to help with other churches. And he was basically left alone with the exception of Luke who was nearby. And in the midst of all of this, in verse 16, he says, at first my defense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me.
May it not be charged against them. Anybody feel that? You've been deserted? You've been hurt by friends? You've been stabbed in the back? And he goes on to say, verse 17, the Lord stood by me and strengthened me.
He gets it. That friends, they're going to fail you. But we have a true friend in Christ that does not fail. That he was strengthened by Christ. Remember Proverbs 18, 24, the one who sticks closer than a brother, that Oheb type of love that we're longing for, that we desire, that friendship is ultimately found and offered in Christ. Jesus, deeply, and hear this, deeply loves you.
Y'all, he's a friend that doesn't grow tired of hearing about your problems. You've been in a situation where you're talking to a friend, you're telling him about your issues, and you've got a lot going on after like 15, 20, 30, I don't know how long it takes, but you just look at their eyes and they're just a little bit tired, and they're kind of done. You've shared a lot. Jesus never grows tired of hearing your problems. Never. You can go to him at any point.
He's inexhaustible, guys. You can go to him over and over. He actually will take it. He wants it. He desires to hear from us. How good is that?
You ever feel like you're a burden to any of your friends? Jesus, you are not a burden to him. You can never be a burden to Christ. In fact, he wants your burdens. He wants you to bring them to him. He wants to hear from you.
You know how you long for a friend that understands you, that gets you? You know, frustrating that is, that you feel like people don't understand you? Jesus understands you and gets you better than anyone else, including yourself. That is the friend we have in Christ, the friend who never abandons us. There is no friend in this world that matches that of Christ. And yet, we're a bad friend back to Jesus, that we treat him illfully, as John Newton wrote.
That we aren't good friends back to him, and yet, he's there. And Paul got this. That's why he was strengthened by Christ in the lowest moments of his life. He found his strength and the friend that we have in Jesus. Will you do the same? Will you see the friend that we have in Christ?
Will you see the true friend that we have in Christ? Because true friendship comes from him, and ultimately, true friendship flows from him. And that is how friendship is redeemed. That's the last aspect I want us to see, that friendship can be redeemed. None of us can be the friend that Jesus calls us to be, but ultimately, that friendship, that true friendship that Jesus provides, it flows from him, and ultimately flows through us. 1 John 4.19 says, We love because he first loved us, meaning the ability to love others with an internal type of love, that comes from Christ.
It comes from Christ, because he first loved us. The ability to be the true and wise friend that we are called to be, it comes from Christ. It's ultimately encountering him as our one true, perfect friend, so that we can befriend others in the way that God calls us to. So, I have some questions for us to think through. And we're not going to resolve these right now, but I want you to receive these, and these are actually going to be in your group content this week for community groups. You'll be able to walk through these questions again.
But I want you to, maybe if you want to jot these down, if you want to take a picture of any of this, again, it will show up later this week. But I want you to work through some of these questions, because we need friendship to be redeemed. First question, are you willing to give earnest counsel, earnest, heartfelt, heartfelt counsel, as it's described in Proverbs 27, 9? Are we willing to do that? Which, by the way, takes a lot of work, you guys. When Jesus tells us to give counsel, it's the first thing he tells us to do.
Check the log in your eye, make sure that's out, take that out, look at the speck in your brothers, then you've got to use some tactfulness and realize that maybe you don't need to give counsel that's all at once, maybe you need to spread that out over multiple conversations because it might be too much to receive. It takes a lot of work to give earnest, heartfelt counsel. Are you doing this? Are you giving earnest counsel to those who need it, to those whom you call friends? Second, are you willing to risk your friendship enough to wound them even if it does not go well? Even if it doesn't go well?
Are you willing to take that type of risk? or are you holding back on a difficult conversation because it is going to be very uncomfortable for you because it is going to be very difficult for you because if you're doing that, you're doing it for your benefit and not for theirs. You're thinking of yourself and you're not thinking of your friend. Are you willing to risk your friendship enough to wound them even if it might not go well? Are you sincere enough to talk to your friends and not about them? Are you sincere enough to talk to them and not about them with others? To love them enough to go and talk to them?
We say that all the time in our church family. We say have you talked to them first and not about them? Are you sincere? Do you flatter instead of encourage? Do you flatter instead of encourage? Are the kind words that you have to say to somebody about you so that you can feel good?
Is it just flattery? Or does it fit in the biblical category of encouragement? Do you sharpen those around you or do you complain only about not being sharpened yourself? Are you seeking to sharpen those around you or is your consistent complaint well I'm not being sharpened enough, I'm not being loved enough, I'm not being poured into enough? Do you overwhelm, actually let's skip one, are you so blunt that you lacked tact? Are you so blunt that you lacked tact?
That maybe you even just excuse your bluntness as oh I'm just being real, I'm just being honest, if they can't handle that, no, are you striving to be tactful or are you too blunt for your friends to receive what you have to say? do you overwhelm your friends because you are looking for fulfillment from them and not Christ? Are you running to friends thinking that they're the one that's going to bring you fulfillment, they're the ones that are going to bring you comfort, they're the ones that are going to bring you joy? That applies also to your spouse. Are you looking to others for fulfillment instead of finding your comfort in Christ?
Is your joking or sarcasm hurtful? or joy filled? Is your joking, is your sarcasm, is it painful to others? Have you even considered that? That maybe the ways in which you joke actually cause pain? Are you a friend who loves at all times or is friendship about your good? Meaning are friendships just utility and for your benefit?
Let me have one qualification to this. For those of you that are out of sight and out of mind? Right? The kind of person that if someone in your life isn't directly in your line of sight, if they're not in your life immediately, then they're completely out of your mind. I want you to wrestle with that question about loving at all times. I'm not arguing, listen, I'm not arguing that you have to have endless capacity for friendships and that all the friendships you have that you maintain over life, I'm not saying that.
But you need to ask yourself the really tough question, are friendships about my enjoyment, about my good and my benefit, and when they're not in my community group anymore, I forget them. When they're not in my immediate life anymore, I forget them, I'm not reliable, I won't be there for them. That's a question you need to wrestle with. Do you love at all times, or is your friendship ultimately for your utility, your benefit, your use, and your good? Those are just a few questions that I want you to consider. And we'll have some time to talk through them in group this week.
You may need to have some conversations today, or later this week, as you absorb some of these. And here's the deal. You may hear all of this, you may feel a little bit defeated, you may feel a little bit longing. I want you to know and believe this, that Christ ultimately comforts us as the one true friend. He comforts us in our failures to be the friends that we need to be. and that he goes to work on our hearts, softens them, so that we might display the kind of love that is needed for friendship in order to be redeemed as the friends that we need to be. Christ, our true friend, can redeem our friendships for his glory and for our good.
Matt's going to come up, and I want us to take some time and maybe just reflect on any of these questions that stuck out to you.