What a Friend We Have in Jesus
Friends Day Sermon
Chuck Sligh
September 14, 2014
TEXT: John 15:15 – “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”
INTRODUCTION
To be and have true friends is one of the great, enriching blessings in life. To be without a true, loyal friend is one of the great tragedies in life.
Illus. – Charles Swindoll tells the following sad story about a friendless billionaire:
Howard Hughes was one of the richest men in the world, with the destinies of thousands of people—perhaps even of governments—at his disposal. Yet he lived a sunless, joyless, half-lunatic life. In his later years he fled from one resort hotel to another—Las Vegas, Nicaragua, Acapulco. His physical appearance became odder and odder. His straggly beard hung to his waist and his hair reached to the middle of his back. His fingernails were two inches long, and his toenails hadn’t been trimmed for so long they resembled corkscrews.
“As far as I know,” a Hughes confidant once said, “he’s never loved any woman. It’s sex, or a good secretary, or good box office—that’s all a woman means to him.” Hughes often said, “Every man has his price or a guy like me couldn’t exist.” Yet no amount of money bought the affection of his associates. Most of his employees who have broken the silence report their disgust for him.
Why was Hughes so isolated and so lonely? Why, with almost unlimited money, hundreds of aides, and countless beautiful women available to him, was he so unloved? Simply because he chose to be. It is an old truth that God gave us things to use and people to enjoy. Hughes never learned to enjoy people; he was too busy manipulating them.
When I read that, I thought, How tragic to go through one’s life and not have a friend in the world! Howard Hughes is an example of what a life of selfishness and greed reap. He never had a friend because he never WAS a friend. Proverbs 18:24 says, “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”
Contrast Howard Hughes with the one Person in history who above all others can be described as “a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” When I was growing up, we used to sing that precious hymn by Joseph Scriven, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, and it’s no wonder it was so popular. – I’ve had many friends in my life, but NO ONE compares to Jesus as a true friend.
Today is Friend Sunday at our church. Many of you are here today because a friend invited you and you didn’t want to disappoint your friend. He or she may be a CLOSE or a CASUAL friend; a GOOD friend or a POOR friend. But today I want us to look at the GREATEST friend you could have by first examining the qualities of a true friend, and then seeing how Jesus is that kind of friend to us.
I. FIRST, A GOOD FRIEND IS COMPLETELY HONEST WITH YOU.
Proverbs 27:6 says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.”
Illus. – I remember a good friend I had when I was an assistant pastor in Tennessee. He pulled me aside one day and said, “Chuck, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but can I be honest with you about something?”
Well—what do you say to a question like THAT? You know bad news is coming, but you also know that this person has only your best interests in mind.
He shared something about me that at first hurt my feelings. But really, what he told me was good for me, because it was THE TRUTH. He cared enough about me to be totally, brutally honest with me. His criticisms and advice were the “faithful wounds of a friend.”
You see, a true friend doesn’t just tell you what you want to hear. He cares enough about you to be completely honest with you.
Jesus was one who was always completely honest with those He dealt with. In this sense, He was a true friend in every sense of the word. He never pulled any punches with those He loved.
His treatment of Nicodemus in John 3:3-7 is just one example – Jesus said in verse 3, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” and in verses 6-7, Jesus told Nicodemas, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.”
Illus. – The great British preacher George Whitefield traversed the British Isles and the American colonies with one message he preached over and over wherever he went: “Ye must be born again! Ye must be born again!”
Someone asked him one time why he always preached the same message, “Ye must be born again” everywhere he went.
He responded, “Because my friend—You must be born again.”
And you know what?—I’m going to be a friend to you today and I’m going to tell you what you need to hear: To have your sins forgiven; to be right with God; to have the hope of heaven as your eternal destiny, you MUST be born again.
To be “born again” means to be born spiritually into God’s family by turning to Christ and trusting Him as your sin-bearer. The Gospel teaches us that we are separated from God by our sin and that the penalty for that sin is death and hell. However, Jesus died on the cross in your place and rose from the dead. If you’ll simply put your faith in Him as your Savior, the Bible assures you that you’ll be born into God’s family and have your sins forgiven.
If you’ve not been born into GOD’S family, then dear friend, let me urge you to come to the cross and trust in Christ’s finished work on Calvary for you.
Perhaps you’re here and you say, “Pastor Sligh, I know I’ve been born into God’s family.”…but you know in your heart of hearts that you’re not serving God. Or maybe there’s some sin holding you back in your Christian life. Or perhaps you’re backslidden and just grown cold to the things of God.
I’m going to be a friend to you now and tell you the unvarnished truth. Here’s what you need to do—
o You need to repent of your sin and turn back to Christ this morning!
o You need to stop justifying your sin and confess it and forsake it.
o You need to stop making excuses for putting other things before God!
o You need to wake up out of your backslidden condition and live for the Lord wholeheartedly and unreservedly.
o You need to get back to faithfulness to church and begin again to lead your family in the things of God.
Speaking to backslidden believers, Paul said in Ephesians 5:14-16 – “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. 15 See then that ye walk circumspectly (that means “carefully, diligently”), not as fools, but as wise, 16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
II. SECOND A GOOD FRIEND IS SELF-SACRIFICING.
Illus. – I remember when we moved from Wiesbaden to England in 1995 to pastor a church there. You military folks may not understand this, but every time we’ve moved, we’ve had to do it ALL—from start to finish—ourselves. When we moved from Germany we priced full-service moving companies and all of them were priced at over $10,000—and that was back in 1995. By packing everything ourselves, ordering our own container at our own expense and loading it ourselves, the cost was one-fifth that amount. So that’s what we’ve done every time we’ve moved for almost 30 years as missionaries.
Now it takes a lot of work to do all that, and especially to load a container because you’re only given two hours to load a 20 foot or 40 foot container before exorbitant fees are added on.
When we loaded the container to leave Germany, we found out what a blessing real friends are. Several of our friends from church came and helped us load the container. They showed up early on a Saturday morning to move everything outside to where the container was going to be; and then when the container got there, they loaded it; and then stayed around to help us with the clean up.
I thought, What a blessing to have friends who would give up their Saturday to help us out. They didn’t have to do that. But that’s the way friends are—they sacrifice for their friends.
But nothing compares to the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the greatest friend of all.
John 15:13 says, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” What a friend Jesus was to go to the cross and die for us. He laid down His life for us in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice: to die in our place. As the songwriter said, “What a friend we have in Jesus!” No wonder the people in the Gospels called him “the friend of sinners.”
III. THIRDLY, A GOOD FRIEND IS NOT A “FAIR-WEATHER FRIEND.”
Proverbs 17:17 says, “A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”
Sometimes so-called friendships are dependent upon what the other person gets in return. When for some reason you cannot provide that any more, the friendship crumbles.
I’m so glad God’s not like that! God is not a fair-weather friend: He loves you no matter what. No matter what you may have done, He still extends His welcoming hand and says, “It’s not too late yet. Come to me. I’ll save you. I’ll clean you up. I’ll forgive you and give you a life with purpose and fulfillment.”
Yes, His justice demands the penalty for sin—death and hell—if you refuse His love and friendship. But I will tell you this: If you miss heaven, it’ll be because you spurned a loving Savior, as well as the love of true friends who tried to point you to Jesus.
Oh friend, come to Jesus, the friend of sinners. At the cross where He died for you’ll find mercy and grace and love and peace with God and forgiveness. At the cross, sin and shame are powerless.
But you can’t come to God with the dirty rags of your good works and religious deeds. You must come to Christ JUST AS YOU ARE—with all your sin and shame before God and you must trust HIM to cleanse you and change you. Romans 5:8 says, “But God [showed or demonstrated] his love toward us, in that, WHILE WE WERE YET SINNERS, Christ died for us.”
Believer, have you wandered from the path of faithfulness and turned aside to a sin or the attractions of the vain things of this world? Jesus is not a fair-weather friend. He never stopped loving you; He never gave up on you. He’s waiting patiently for you to come back to Him in repentance.
CONCLUSION
Illus. – This week we were reminded again of the awful events 9/11. There were many stories of heroism that may never be told about that dreadful day because neither the heroes nor their witnesses survived to relate their heroic acts.
But one WAS told in a gripping documentary I saw about two Frenchmen who were shooting a documentary about how a rookie New York firefighter at Engine 7, Ladder 1 became an experienced fireman over the course of nine months. Ladder 1 was the fire station closest to the World Trade Center when the first plane hit, and they were the first into the building to begin rescue operations. Abruptly the Frenchmen’s story changed from that of a rookie fireman to the valiant struggle of these firemen who braved their lives to save as many people as they could.
Inexplicably, not one firefighter from Ladder 1 was killed or seriously wounded when either building collapsed, nor were either Frenchman killed. However, the chief of Ladder 1 was a man named Dennis Pfeiffer who had a brother named Kevin who was the chief of another fire station that also rushed to the scene. When Kevin arrived at the World Trade Center, for a brief moment their eyes locked in on each other and they nodded to one another. But there was no time for pleasantries and they both went back to work directing their firefighters.
Dennis was in the first building when it collapsed and somehow escaped—all of which was dramatically caught on videotape, but Kevin never made it out. Here’s why: When the order came to evacuate building 2, Kevin directed his friends in the fire department to the exits in the midst of the chaos and blinding debris and falling dust, not willing to leave the building until the last firefighter was out.
Totally unfamiliar with the building, many of them testified that they would never have made it had it not been for the sacrifice of Chief Kevin Pfeiffer.
Friends, we are all in danger of our immortal souls without God’s amazing grace. The Bible says that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a).
In Revelation 20 we read theses sobering words, “And I saw a great white throne, and him [i.e., God] that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. 12 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books….14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. 15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” (Revelation 20:11-12, 14-15)
If you have not experienced God’s forgiveness through Jesus, someday the building of life will collapse and it will be everlastingly too late—and then you’ll face God at the judgment. But wait!— Through the rubble of this life, there’s Someone pointing the way. His name is Jesus Christ.
He says, “Come to me. I’m the way to LIFE. I’m the way to PEACE. I’m the way to SIGNIFICANCE. I’m the way to CLEANSING. I am the way to GOD.”
If you’re already one of God’s kids, then let me encourage you to examine your life thoroughly. Are you fully committed to the Lord—your dearest Friend? Is there something you need to confess and forsake? Have you obeyed the Lord? Do you need to return to the path of following Him?
My prayer for each of you today is that you will commit yourself to become a friend of the “friend of sinners”—and live faithfully for that precious Friend for the rest of your days.
