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WEEKLY
Volume 1 Number 8
23 July 2006
Ye Are My Friends
(Message delivered by Pr Hien
Nguyen at the Sunday Worship Service, 2 pm, July 16, 06)
Text:
John 15:13-15
In our lives, we might have
experienced certain kinds of friends. Some were very good and honest
whom we still want to keep in touch with, and some were dishonest or
unfaithful who made us sad and disappointed. Sometimes we even received
evils from the friends we had helped a lot, and we felt deceived or
betrayed, and this might make us more cautious in making friends with
others.
People in
the world are proud of their “big” or “famous” friends. They may like to
show their photos taken with a president, or a king, or a queen, or a
movie star or a sports star, or a celebrity. How about you and me? If
you are asked to tell about your best friend, what would you say?
Perhaps you will tell about your close friends from your childhood, from
schools, from work, or your life-partner,
or
boyfriend, girlfriend, and so
forth. As devoted Christians, many of us will tell about our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ, our best Friend, and then what does it mean to be
Jesus’ friends.
Jesus Christ, our Divine
Friend
Our Lord Jesus says,
“Greater love hath no
man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”
(John 15:13). And our Lord
Jesus Christ, our God, did lay down His life for His friends,
all mankind, all of us,
miserable and hopeless
sinners!
Our
Loving Friend:
The Bible says that it is rare to see someone willing to die for a just
or good man (Rom 5:7), and it must be very rare to see a just or good
man to die for a sinner!
My dear friends, our Lord
Jesus is our God, our Creator, our Maker and our King, but only because
of love, He humbled Himself and came into this world to die for sinners,
rebellious human beings whom He had created, even to die for you and me!
A holy God died for His sinful creatures, the godly for the ungodly, the
just for the unjust! (John 3:16; Rom 5:6; 1 Tim 3:16; 1 Peter 3:18) That
is God’s love for you and me: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in
that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5: 8). My dear
friends, God did love you and me so much that He gave His only begotten
Son, who also did love you and me so much that He died for each of us!
Sometimes we take God’s love for granted and forget that we deserve
eternal condemnation in hell without God’s love, grace and mercy! My
dear friends, we cannot find such a loving Friend in this world. Our
earthly friends may fail us but our Divine Friend will never. May God
help us to know more about His love, which passes our knowledge, so that
we may be rooted and grounded in His love (Eph 3:17-19) and be
constrained by His love to live and die for Him (2 Cor 5:14-15). As we
have received the Lord as our Lord, Saviour and Friend, no one and
nothing can separate us from His love (Rom 8:35-39), but His perfect
love will cast out all fear (1 John 4:18). Truly, the Lord Jesus is our
Divine Friend, our best Friend, our loving Friend, and He never fails us
even though our friends and loved ones may disappoint us and fail us.
Our
Faithful and Caring Friend:
When Job was in great troubles, losing his wealth, children, and health,
he was despised and forsaken by his loved ones, his servants and his
maids, and even his friends misjudged him and spoke against him (Job
19). My dear friends, even when we have nothing, and no one understands
nor cares for us, and we may feel lonely or friendless, our Lord Jesus,
our faithful Friend, is still with us and will never forsake us (Heb
13:5). The apostle Paul’s experience is so encouraging, “… no man stood
with me, but all men forsook me… Notwithstanding the Lord stood
with me and strengthened me …” (2 Tim 4:16-17), and Peter’s
exhortation is very true, “Casting all your care upon him, for he
careth for you” (1 Peter 5:7).
When
sharing our personal problems, burdens, feelings or desires with our
close friends as our confidants, sometimes we are disappointed as they
reveal our secrets to others (Ps 11:13). However, my dear friends, we
can pour out our soul to the Lord, our faithful and caring Friend, who
does know us well, understand us, and sympathise with us and our
circumstances, and we surely find the comfort and strength from Him and
His Word.
Our
Wise and Mighty Friend:
When we are in great troubles or difficulties and we do need some
guidance, help, or deliverance while our earthly friends may not be
around or available or able to help us, who will you and I turn to, my
dear friends? Thanks be to God for our Divine Friend, who is able to
help us with His wisdom and power, making all things work together for
our good according to His sovereignty and timing (Rom 8:28). Shall we
not love and trust in such a Friend who never fails nor disappoints us?
How to Be Jesus’ Friends
It is a great privilege to be
a friend of a king, a president, a prime minister or a famous and mighty
person. Do you and I appreciate the friendship with our Lord Jesus
Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords? How to be His friends?
Faithful Obedience and Submission:
Our Lord Jesus says, Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I
command you (John 15:14). The verb “do” here, present active
subjunctive, denotes a continuous action, so it means “if ye keep on
doing,” not just spasmodic obedience (Robertson, Word Pictures in the
New Testament). “Whatsoever” and “command” are the same terms Jesus
used in Matt 28:20, “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I
have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of
the world. Amen.” Then, my dear friends, if you and I want to be Jesus’
friends, we are to keep on doing whatsoever He commands us to do in the
Holy Bible, all the counsel of God (Acts 20:27), nothing more, nothing
less. He has the full right and authority to command or order us to obey
Him as He is not like our ordinary earthly friends, but our Divine
Friend, our God and our King. Even though we are called His friends
(John 15:14-15), we are to be His disciples (v 8) and His servants
first. “Henceforth I call you not servants/bond slaves… Remember the
word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord …”
(vv 15, 20). When we are fully submissive to our Lord as a bond-slave,
then He will lift us up and call us His friends. Last week we learnt how
to be Jesus’ disciples by following Him with all our love, commitment,
faithfulness, obedience, submission and loyalty. We are to follow the
example of our Divine Friend, the Son of God – “he humbled himself, and
became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil 2:8). We
see that Abraham, who was called the Friend of God (James 2:23), and God
said “Abraham my friend” (Isa 41:8) as he believed in God, feared God
and obeyed God, not sparing even his only begotten son Isaac (Gen 22).
There is no other way. Our Lord says that he who loves Him keeps His
commandments and keeps His words (John 14:21, 23). My dear friends,
shall we not keep on obeying our loving, faithful, caring, wise, and
mighty God-Friend so that we may enjoy a blessed friendship with Him for
ever?
Separated from Sins and
the World
The Bible
says, “ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship
of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a
friend of the world is the enemy of God (James 4:4). A friend of
the world means to love the world, be conformed to the world, accepting
and following worldly values, mindset, pride of life, lusts and
pleasures (Rom 12:2; Col 2:8, 20; Tit 2:12; 1 John 2:15-16). Our Divine
Friend is not of the world, and neither are we, His friends. The Bible
confirms, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3). My
dear friends, if we want to maintain our friendship with our holy Divine
Friend, we are to separate ourselves from sin and the world and walk in
the light as He is in the light (1 John 1:7). Although our Divine Friend
loved sinners and died for sinners like us and was not ashamed to be
called “a friend of publicans/tax collectors and sinners” (Matt 11:19),
but He does not lower His holy standards. He only calls us His friends
when we repent and separate ourselves from sins and worldliness and keep
on obeying Him and His Word. My friends, shall we not be submissive to
the Lord for a blessed friendship with Him?
Blessings of the Friendship
with Christ
It is a great privilege and
honour to be called a friend of God, a friend of the King of kings and
the Lord of lords. The closer we walk with Him and keep our friendship
with Him, the more we are transformed to be like Him. “Iron sharpeneth
iron; so a man sharpenth the countenance of his friend” (Prov 27:17),
and “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a
companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Prov 13:20). Surely, walking
with our Divine Friend, we will be wiser and holier and will be like Him
when He comes back again (1 John 3:2).
Moreover,
the closer our friendship with our Divine Friend is through our
continued obedience, the more we know Him and His Truth and His Word,
and then we are fully satisfied and would rather have our Lord and His
Word than anything else in this world. The Bible says, “The secret of
the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his
covenant” (Ps 25:14). Our Lord Jesus says, “He that hath my
commandments, and keepeth them, … I will love him and will
manifest myself to him” (John 14:21), and “…but I have called
you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have
made known unto you” (John 15:15). As Abraham was the friend of
God, God said, “Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do;” (Gen
18:17). My dear friends, perhaps, you wonder why you do not have a heart
knowledge of God nor see the wondrous things out of His Word. Then, let
us do like Paul, love the Lord and “count all things but loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus … that I may win Christ and
be found in him” (Phil 3:8-9).
Conclusion
Whether we believe or not, our
friends do have some influence on the way we think, believe, speak,
behave, or dress. The Bible says,
“Be
not deceived: evil communications/companionships corrupt good manners”
(1Cor 15:33). Then it is a great blessing to make friends with godly
Christians who truly believe in the Lord and His Perfect Word, and most
of all, to be Jesus’ friends until we see Him face to face. May God
help us keep on obeying Him and His Word for a blessed friendship with
our Divine Friend, who is faithful, caring, wise, and mighty, and will
never fail us nor disappoint us. “A friend loveth at all times” (Prov
17:17). Amen.
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