Is This Friendship?
One bright spring day the leader of the Republic strode confidently across the square. He was on his way to the Senate where he would give a speech prior to his departure, for he was leading the armies east to engage the enemies on the eastern front. He had already proven himself to be a brilliant military strategist by defeating a coalition of armies in the west and significantly expanding the western border. The square was full, many senators headed in the same direction. As he crossed the square, the throng of people seemed to crowd in, and an ominous feeling crept over him. The leader had many enemies – men who resented his achievements, men who disagreed with his political reforms, men who wanted his position – in sum, men who hated him. But he also had friends, a huge number of friends, and many people who were dependent upon him. It was impossible for anything truly dangerous to happen. Suddenly there was a signal. Knives were drawn. The crowd fell upon him, inflicting terrible wounds until it began to seem as though this were the end. The greatest wound was the blow struck by his best friend, and Julius Caesar breathed his last in words made famous by William Shakespeare, “And you, too, Brutus?”
What sort of a world is this when friends turn on you? The story of Caesar’s assassination captures our imagination because of Caesar’s enormous stature and its improbability, but above all for his betrayal by his friends. Especially Brutus. Caesar loved Brutus like a son, and had designated him his heir in his will. They served together in the great Gallic Wars Rome fought against the barbarian tribes in present-day France. What does friendship mean if such a friend kills you?
I hope you have never been killed by a friend, but even for us, friends aren’t always as reliable as we wish, are they? I am sure you have been let down by a friend at some point. Maybe you have even had the painful experience of having been betrayed by a friend. Then it is time to get another friend, right? But Proverbs 20:6 says, “Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?” Even good friends can be ornery and unreliable. Friendship can easily be derailed by the wickedness of others as Proverbs 16:28 says, “A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends.” Friendship is hard! Why is it hard to find and keep good friends? To understand this we need to go back to the beginning.
Eternal Friends
Last week Pastor Brian proclaimed the wisdom of God in creation. God made a wonderful universe, and it was all good. The capstone of creation, and the pinnacle of its glory, was man. Man is also a created being. Man is not God, and never will be. He shares with the other animals and everything in the world the fact that he is a creature. But man, and only man, was made in God’s image. And that sets him completely apart from everything else in the universe.
Much has been said about the image of God. This is a favorite topic for theologians (and doctoral candidates!). Essentially it means we are like God. When someone looks at creation, he sees the marks of the creator – the wisdom, beauty, and power of God. When someone looks at man, these marks are more vivid. One of the primary characteristics of God is friendship. There is one, and only one, true God; but in some way incomprehensible to us, God is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three persons always love and trust each other. They are the best of friends! When God made man in His image, man also loves and trusts other persons. This is one aspect of the image of God, and is true of all human beings. You might say that man was created with the capacity for friendship, and that is true. But friendship is not a latent capacity in man. Friendship is a present reality in all mankind. It would be more accurate to say man was created a friend. At his creation man was a friend of God and other men and women. Friendship is an aspect of the image of God, so all men and women are friends. The only question is whether they are good friends or bad friends, faithful or treacherous, loving or betraying. And sadly, we have experienced some of all these qualities in our friends.
Everything is rooted in God. God made this world, and it bears the marks of its creator. God is three friends: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These friends always love and trust each other. Man is made in God’s image. He was made a loving, trusting person. The first man loved and trusted God, and then he loved and trusted the woman God made for him. God and man talked with each other, as friends do. God showed Adam where to get good food, and showed him the tree which was off-limits. Adam trusted God. He ate the good food and avoided the dangerous tree. God brought the animals to Adam to name, and when it became obvious that Adam needed a mate, God put Adam to sleep. Adam trusted God as he underwent major surgery in the creation of woman, and Adam shouted with joy when he first saw the astonishing new creature God had made for him. There were five friends in the Garden of Eden: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Adam, and Eve. All five loved and trusted each other.
Betrayal!
Then a sixth person appeared in the garden. This curious animal had an innocent-sounding question – “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” Eve politely answered the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” At this point the serpent introduced a new thought. “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Huh. Now what? The only way to discover the truth about the tree is to test it, right? That’s what all you modern men and women would do. That’s what all you scientists do. In the dark ages men believed that Aristotle knew about the world, and the path to knowledge was to study Aristotle’s writings. When men woke out of their ignorant slumber, they saw that it is necessary to test claims of truth. The scientific enterprise is propelled by empiricism – by testing all ideas to determine which are true – and even those of us who are not professional scientists want to think that we are wise enough not to fall for untested opinions. So the first scientist – the first modern woman – Eve, took fruit from the tree in question and tested it. And she discovered that the serpent was right! She didn’t die. And also the fruit was lovely and delicious.
You cannot do modern science without the scientific method, and the experimental approach to life has helped us to create the most wealthy and comfortable society ever. But you cannot treat friends like bacteria in a petri dish. Friendship consists of love and trust, and when there is no trust, friendship dissolves. You have experienced this. If you encounter someone who does not believe what you say, you do not count him as a friend. And are any of the people you call friends serial liars (or so you think)? There are degrees of trust in human relationships. You may have a friend who is completely trustworthy, but often gets directions wrong. You will maintain your friendship, but check his directions. My college professor was a great guy and we were good friends, but he could not tell his left from his right. Literally! If he had told me to go to the lab on the left side of the corridor, I would definitely have sought a second opinion. However, it is very hurtful when a friend does not trust you in a matter in which you are confident you are right. If you are an expert computer programmer and have been writing Java code for decades, and a friend doubts that you can write a simple program, it is quite hurtful. Your friend has called into question something that is clearly and obviously true and important about you. He has implied that you are incompetent, and furthermore a fraud! Your friendship is unlikely to survive repeated episodes like this.
But there are no degrees of trust with God. God is completely trustworthy all the time. And if you are an empiricist and are looking for evidence, the whole creation is evidence that God is wise, powerful, and good. Trustworthiness is integral to God’s nature. People are fallible, but God is not. A friend may give you wrong directions by mistake or in ignorance, but God knows all things and never makes mistakes. What else is left? If someone gives you wrong information, and it is not a mistake, what is it? It is malice. No one would solemnly assure you to turn right if he knows there is an ambush awaiting – unless he wants you to die. And when we re-examine the serpent’s reply to Eve, we see that malice is in fact what he ascribed to God. “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil,” he said. “Eve, honey, you have a world of possibilities ahead of you. But God is holding you back. Don’t let Him get away with it! Eat that fruit. Expose God’s lies. Achieve your full potential.” And when she ate the fruit, Eve showed that she agreed with the serpent.
Could your friendship survive if someone showed that he thought you were a despicable liar? Or that you intended to ruin his life? Friendship can survive misunderstandings, and mistakes, and ignorance – but how could you be friends with someone who is trying to hurt you? And so in a moment Eve ceased being God’s friend, and became His enemy.
We usually think of Eve’s eating the apple as an act of disobedience – and it was. The King of the universe gave a command, announced the punishment, and Eve broke the law. She was guilty, and deserved the punishment the law demanded. Today we are looking at this story from another angle – an angle neither more nor less true and important – the angle of personal relationship. The legal angle reveals Eve’s guilt and exposure to the death penalty. The relationship angle reveals Eve’s betrayal of God and the death of her friendship with Him. So what about the other friends?
Adam Joins the Betrayal
Eve’s treachery accomplished the immediate death of her friendship with three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – for God is all three. What about Adam? Speaking of Adam? Where was Adam all this time? Verse six tells us that Adam was with Eve. Adam watched the serpent approach Eve. He heard the discussion. Adam watched while Eve took the fruit. What was Adam doing?
What should Adam have been doing? God placed him in the garden to care for it. The text says, “to work it and keep it.” Adam’s first job was to cultivate the garden, planting, pruning, harvesting, and doing all the things necessary to keep the garden a lush, healthy place. His second job was to guard the garden – to protect it from damage and keep out enemies. When God gave Adam a helper, Adam was responsible to nurture and protect his wife as well. It was Adam’s job to tell Eve about the trees – which ones were good for food, and which one they must avoid.
Adam knew about the animals. God showed the animals to Adam and he named them. Adam knew serpents do not talk. When a talking serpent showed up in the garden, Adam should have known that he didn’t belong there. When the serpent began to seduce his wife, Adam had to destroy the serpent. Eve’s reply to the serpent reveals that Adam had done a poor job of instructing his wife in the words of God – for the answer she gave the serpent was inaccurate. Eve reported that God had forbidden touching the tree, but God had done no such thing. Then when the seduction was complete, Adam should have ripped the covers off the faithless couple and torn the fruit from Eve’s hand. Instead of fulfilling his duty as guardian of the garden and protector of his people, Adam stood by and watched as Satan led Eve into catastrophe.
Paul tells us in 1 Timothy that Eve was deceived. She was new, and Adam had failed to pass on God’s word to her accurately. She had not seen all the animals and did not know that serpents could not talk. The text tells us that “the serpent was more crafty then any other beast.” Satan twisted God’s word and Eve was confused. She broke God’s law and sinned, but it was a sin of confusion. Adam, however, was not confused. He knew exactly what was happening. Adam knew that an enemy had invaded the garden, twisted God’s word, seduced his wife, and led her into a deadly sin. Why? This is not the time to ponder what might have led Adam to this horrible behavior. It is enough to see that Adam horribly betrayed his wife. Adam knew what to do, but instead he chose to allow Satan to lead his wife to death. It was not instantly apparent, but that was the moment Adam’s loving friendship with Eve was dashed. Even worse, if anything could be worse, was Adam’s betrayal of God. By his failure to guard the garden, Adam turned the world over to Satan. Becoming friends with Satan meant he was now an enemy of God.
The Consequences of Betrayal
What do you do when a friend maliciously betrays you? If he is more powerful than you, you will hide. If you are more powerful than he, you will eliminate the threat. Adam and Eve assumed that God would be out to get them now, so they ran to hide when God arrived. The text says, “they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden. The Hebrew word translated “sound” can mean anything from voice to a roar. I was not there, so I do not know exactly how God sounded, but Adam and Eve experienced God’s arrival as the roar of Godzilla. After all, they had betrayed someone much more powerful than they, and God had warned them that the penalty for eating the fruit was death. Friendship with God was utterly demolished – replaced by fear and vengeance. So we have this pathetic, embarrassingly pathetic scene of Adam and Eve hiding from God among the tress. It reminds you of the toddler who plays hide-and-seek by putting his head under a pillow – as if as long as he cannot see you, neither can you see him.
But when God showed up, He did not execute Adam and Eve. Like a good father, God asked them to explain themselves. And then everything came apart. Adam performed the impressive verbal feat of blaming in one sentence both God and Eve for his failure. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree…” No taking responsibility for his failure, Adam blamed God and his wife for the disaster. When God turned to Eve, she blamed the serpent. Friendship with God is in tatters, friendship in marriage is gone, and friendship with the creation is destroyed. God holds the universe together, and when man became separated from God, there was no harmony anywhere.
God explained the consequences of sin. The serpent had his own culpability, and God sentenced him to a life of groveling in the dirt. Whenever you see a snake slithering across the ground, God wants you to remember that sin entered the world through the lies of Satan. God put the fear of snakes into our hearts, especially women, so we hunt and destroy them. Whenever you kill a snake, God wants you to remember that Satan, in the guise of a snake, is the bringer of death. For the woman, her most delightful and important act, childbearing, would forever be marred by pain. Whenever you women are laboring in childbirth, God wants you to remember your role in bringing sin into the world. With friendship with God severed, women will be unable to have a stress-free marriage. Surely arguments in marriage are one of the worst consequences of sin. God explained to Adam that his sin had brought curse upon the ground. Adam was still responsible for cultivating and guarding the earth, but now the earth would put up a fight. Men, whenever you are miserable in your job, God wants you to remember that this is the fruit of sin. Snakes in the grass, labor in childbirth, fighting at home, sweat at work – these are the enduring signs that friendship with God has been destroyed – and with it all hope of true friendship anywhere else.
Treacherous Humanity
Into this scene of utter disaster God injected a note of hope. In speaking to the serpent, God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Eve would have a child! And the child would do what Adam had failed to do. Her child would cut off the head of the serpent who had caused this awful mess. Eve would live long enough to bear a savior. So imagine Eve’s thrill when she had a baby. God’s promise had come true! There was hope for deliverance from the misery their sin had brought into the world. Adam and Eve were doubly delighted when they had a second child, and more followed. Then disaster struck again. The friendship between those two boys steadily deteriorated, until one day Cain’s anger boiled over and he killed Abel. The child whom God had promised to save mankind turned into a child of Satan. Like his father, Cain was a murderer and had to flee. Imagine the anguish of Adam and Eve. One son was dead, and one was gone forever. Was this the end? Was death all that man could look forward to, or could they trust God to send another child to save them?
Cain’s descendants were evil, bloodthirsty men who celebrated violence and rejoiced in death. Eventually the whole world was full of violence. Murder, rape, and destruction were daily occurrences. As the world grew uglier, a few clung to the old hope. They trusted God to send a child to save them. A few men and women were friends of God. Finally the world was so consumed by evil, God washed it clean and started over with Noah and his family, and put in place human government to control the spread of sin. But scripture continued to be full of failed friendships. Jacob deceived his brother and Esau vowed to kill him. Joseph’s brothers hated him and sold him into slavery. King David’s son Absalom led a revolt and almost tore the kingdom from his father. Once again the world grew blacker and uglier.
In his letter to the Romans the apostle Paul described the course of mankind apart from God. The conclusion of chapter one shows the climax of sin’s progress through mankind.
Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (Romans 1:28 31)
Thousands of years passed. Most men and women lived lives of violence and betrayal, like their father Satan, but always a few clung to the old hope that God would send a child to save the human race. Finally the time was ready. A peasant girl in an obscure village in an occupied nation had a boy. She knew this was the one, because an angel told her, but no one else knew – until Jesus began to preach and heal. Next week we will see how Jesus saved us and made good friendships possible, but today we see that even Jesus was betrayed by a friend. For Judas was not an intruder. Judas was Jesus’ friend. Jesus speaks to us in Psalm 55:
For it is not an enemy who taunts me –
then I could bear it;
it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me
then I could hide from him.
But it is you, a man, my equal,
my companion, my familiar friend.
We used to take sweet counsel together;
within God’s house we walked in the throng.
Psalm 55:12-14
So we see in the betrayal of Jesus the full fruit of sin as it came to maturity in mankind. If even Jesus was betrayed by his friend, is it any wonder that we have trouble finding trustworthy friends? If the best men and women in history failed to be reliable friends, is it surprising that we also struggle to be faithful to our friends?
Friendship Restored
Satan succeeded in damaging our friendship with God and each other, but he failed to destroy it completely. Adam failed. Eve failed. If it were up to any of us, we would fail to love and trust God. No one would be friends with God, and no one would be faithful to each other. But God, who is friends with Himself in all eternity, is a faithful friend with man. Through all the awful sin and miserable failures of Adam and Jacob and David and all the patriarchs and prophets, God was always faithful. God is an unfailing friend. And when the time was ready, God came as a man to restore our friendship with Him and with each other. On the night of His betrayal, Jesus said, “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.” (John 15:14-15)
On this Lord’s Day Jesus calls us into heaven because He loves to be with His friends. Jesus talks to us in His word, hears our needs and worries as we pray, and feeds us in the Lord’s Supper. Jesus is our perfect friend, and so we have hope that we may be friends with each other.
Prayer
O God, we come to You this morning bearing the scars of failed friendships of the past, and the sorrows of wounded friendships in the present. Jesus, we are exhausted by our efforts to cultivate and maintain friendships, and we fear that true, deep friendship in this world may be impossible. Loving Father, we are horrified at the heartless way Adam and Eve rejected You, but we must admit that we are just like them – for we are their children. Almighty God, You are our only hope in this world. Our only comfort this morning is that at the moment of betrayal You promised a Savior – and in the fulness of time You came in person to save us from destruction. Help us always to live in the wonder and joy of this hope. We ask in the name of Your dear Son, Our only true Friend, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Ascription
Now to Him who loved us when we were His enemies,
to Him who is called Faithful and True,
to the only wise and eternal God,
be all majesty, power, dominion, and worship,
Now and forever, into all eternity. Amen.
-
The Story of Friendship: Redemption (Proverbs 17:9, 18:24)
The Problem of Friendship
Have you been disappointed by your friends? Do you disappoint your friends sometimes? Everyone wants friends. Companies try to sell you soda or beer or toothpaste with happy images of cheerful friends having a good time together. And have you ever seen an advertisement for a resort which did not show friends having the best time of their lives? I hope you have had a great times with friends, but sometimes our friends disappoint us. And last week we saw occasions where friends turned on each other. Brutus will forever be remembered as the friend who murdered Julius Caesar, and Judas is the symbol of betrayal for delivering his friend Jesus to be crucified. Human beings can be cruel! The apostle Paul opened his letter to the church at Rome by showing how deep society can sink into wickedness:
Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (Romans 1:2831)
As sin worked its way through mankind, friendship became more difficult and rare. Left to ourselves, we would have become as violent as the earth before the flood, when God destroyed everyone except Noah and his family. Praise God, God did not leave us to ourselves. God intervened and made deep, loving friendships possible among men and women. Paul tells us in this letter to the church in Ephesus how God redeemed friendship
Hostile Nature
Chapter two opens with a reminder of mans condition before Christ came to save us. We once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:3) Adam and Eve wanted to do what they wanted to do, and they violated Gods command because they wanted to eat the forbidden fruit. Ever since, man has lived in the passions of his flesh, which led to increasing debauchery and violence. We had become enemies of God, and therefore were subject to His anger. Now you may say, Wait a minute! Not everyone is so bad. I know some people who are pretty good. Sure. Not everyone is as bad as they could be, and we each sin in our own ways. But even in the best of us there is a deep tendency toward sin, and that is because we are rotten within. Paul says we were dead in our sins. Now of course our bodies were still up and moving around. So here Paul is not talking about the death of our bodies. He is talking about our spirits. God said to Adam regarding the forbidden tree, in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:17) Adams body did not die that day, but his spirit did. This is another way of saying that Adams friendship with God ceased. God is a living Spirit, and He created man with a living spirit. When Adam fell, his spirit died. That meant the end of his friendship with God. It also meant that Adam was dying from the inside out, and Adam had no ability or desire to become reunited with God.
I know what you are thinking. Many people are seeking for God. Even those in other religions are seeking God, though the quest is fruitless. No. People say they are seeking God. They may even think they are seeking God. But everyone descended from Adam is spiritually dead and cannot find God. They do not even want to find Him. So am I saying that people who claim to be seeking God are liars? No, I do not know the hearts and minds of other people, and many people are sincerely trying to do the right thing as they see it. But here is the point dead people cannot resurrect themselves. Adams rebellion changed mankind from spiritual life in friendship with God to spiritual death hostile to God. Men and women commit acts of sin for the same reason that cats purr and monkeys climb trees. It is our nature. Man has free will to do whatever he chooses. But Adams rebellion changed human nature so that mankind is spiritually dead and by nature only chooses sinful behaviors. That is why mankind pursues the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. All people are by nature children of wrath. This is what all people are like.
This is why religions and laws and education fail to make men good. These are superficial corrections, and they help temporarily to alleviate the worst of sins. But such measures are like taking a strong painkiller when you have cancer. It may indeed solve the pain problem temporarily, but a painkiller will not cure the cancer. Eventually you will die, and the outcome of trying to solve human problems by religions, or laws, or education eventually is death of the society and everyone in it. The only cure for death is life. The heart of this paragraph is verse five where Paul reminds us that God made us alive.
Friend Nature
When we think of what Christ did for us, our focus tends to be on His death as a substitute for our sins and rightly so, because someone had to die to pay the penalty for our sins. But we tend not to think so much as to what comes next. There can be a tendency to think of salvation as Christs death for our sins and then going to heaven. But that leaves out the rest of life, and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. The most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, promises eternal life to those who believe in Jesus. But eternal life is not something we get when our bodies perish and we go to heaven. Eternal life is what we get now when we believe in Jesus, as Paul says in verse five of todays epistle reading. Our old, dead spirits that were hostile toward God have been replaced by new, living spirits who love God. Our new spirits love and trust God. We are alive! Spiritually as well as physically! We are friends with God again!
Furthermore, Paul says we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. To modern ears this sounds confusing or even nonsensical. How can we be seated with Christ when it is evident that we are seated right here on earth? Remember, Paul is speaking about matters of the spirit. When we were spiritually dead, we either denied the spiritual dimension of reality, or we encountered other dead spirits such as demons. When God makes you spiritually alive, you enter the dimension of His Spirit, the Holy Spirit. True enough, your body is here on earth, but your spirit is rubbing shoulders (so to speak) with Jesus and the angels. This can be hard to recognize when we are immersed in a society which cannot enter the dimension of the Spirit, and so denies its existence. All day, every day, you are told that this world is all there is. Only fools and foolish dreamers believe in myths about another world. But would you ask a dead person for directions to Ipoh, or how to make nasi lemak? Would you expect a corpse to tell you the truth about the world? Of course not! Of course dead spirits can tell us a lot of useful information about this material world which they inhabit, and we are grateful for scientists and engineers who discover technology which makes life easier. But unless they are spiritually alive, people have no contact with the dimension of Gods Spirit, and can tell us nothing reliable about it.
For us who have been made alive with Christ, we have new, living spirits and live now in the dimension of Gods Spirit. That means that we have living contact with God, and that means that we have a whole lot of new friends! It means also that our lives have new significance. Spiritually dead people pursue spiritually dead interests, the passions of our flesh…the desires of the body and the mind. When God resurrects people by giving them a living spirit, He introduces them to the life He prepared for them. Verse 10 says, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Paul opened his letter by telling the Ephesians that God chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world. Before God created the universe, before God created Adam and Eve, God planned to create each of us, to die for us, and to give us new life. That new life will endure forever when this world passes away, but for now, God has prepared things for us to do in this world. The rest of this letter consists of Pauls explanation of what those things are what God has planned for us to do.
Impossible Friendships
The next paragraph might seem like Paul is changing the subject, but no, Paul addresses the elephant in the room the insurmountable problem of Jews and Gentiles. When Paul said that God chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, the Jews would have nodded in agreement. God had chosen them. God called Abraham from a city steeped in idolatry and promised to make a great nation from his descendants. And it happened! Solomon built a magnificent temple where God was worshiped, and made Israel the dominant kingdom on the eastern Mediterranean coast. Israel betrayed God, and the prophets warned of severe consequences. Those same prophets also promised a glorious restoration. So Jewish followers of Jesus would have understood their salvation to be the fulfillment of those prophecies. But God had not chosen the Gentiles and Paul agreed. He says in verse twelve that the Gentiles were separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. A very politically incorrect comment. You folks who feel like second class citizens, your feelings are working just fine. You are second class citizens. We Jews are the chosen people, and you are not. Wow. Depend on Paul to make the point pointedly.
But the Jews those people chosen by God consistently failed to emulate the God they worshiped. True, the Gentiles were not Gods chosen people, but God loved the Gentiles. He always had. In fact, Gods purpose from the beginning was to use the Jews to bless the Gentiles. God told Abraham, in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. But instead of loving the Gentiles as God did and blessing the Gentiles as God expected the Jews hated the Gentiles. Since they had lost their kingdom, the Jews had been in the humiliating position of having to submit to Gentile rulers and live among Gentiles, but they hated it. The Jews betrayed Jesus when it became clear that He was not going to destroy their Gentile rulers. It is true that the Gentiles were not part of Gods people, but the Jews made it worse by their hatred.
Jesus entered this hostility between Jews and Gentiles and ended it. First, Jesus abolished the law of commandments. The Old Testament law provided the bass for the separation of Jews and Gentiles. Paul explains in his letter to the church in Galatia that the law was never intended to be permanent. There he calls the law a tutor, whose job is to prepare the student for maturity. When the student masters his subject, the tutor is dismissed. Now that Jesus has come, the law finished its work and has been dismissed. So the rituals and habits that separated the Jews and Gentiles are irrelevant. Second, Jesus preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. It was shocking to the Jews, but the same salvation Jesus offered to them He also offered to the Gentiles. The Gentiles did not have to do anything special to be saved. Johns gospel records Jesus saying to the Jews, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. (John 6:29) And to the Gentiles Jesus said, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. (Acts 16:31) This was deeply disturbing to the Jews, and for this reason some Jews tried to force Gentile believers to become Jews. But Paul and all the apostles were firm and united in teaching that Jesus welcomes Gentiles who believe.
The result of abolishing the law and preaching peace to Jew and Gentile alike was that Jesus had made one new man in place of the two, so making peace. This new race, this new spiritual mankind, would include Jews and Gentiles equally. In this new race, there is no Jew or Gentile. Those words no longer have any meaning, for now everyone who was chosen by God is a Christian. All people chosen by God [have] access in one Spirit to the Father…[are] fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone…[are] a holy temple in the Lord…a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. In Christ Jews and Gentiles are friends!
Power for Friendship
If Jews and Gentiles can be friends, all people can be friends. The Jews and Gentiles were separated by religion and culture, and the hostility ran deep. On their own, Jews and Gentiles were incapable of being friends. But in Christ, and only in Christ, Jews and Gentiles can be friends. There is no parallel in this world, for there is no other people who were chosen by God, as the Jews were. But Jesus work in dissolving the hostility is an example and a pattern and a hope that all lesser divisions can be overcome. This means that Anglos and Mexicans, whites and blacks, Chinese and Malays, Muslims and Christians can be friends in Christ. But only in Christ. Spiritually dead people have no desire to be friends with strange, difficult, and potentially dangerous people. Consequently spiritually dead people will never make friends of other races or religions or even the neighbors down the street. Sometimes conditions become so uncomfortable or desperate that it becomes necessary for peace and even for survival to act friendly toward others. But such gestures are superficial expedients and not real friendship. Remember what Paul said natural man is spiritually dead, and dead people cannot make friends.
What is more important to us is that Jesus makes us capable of being real friends with God and each other. The quality of your friendship with each other is only as strong as your friendship with God. Eternal life is not like gold bars under your bed. It is more like a trust fund. Perhaps you have an income that permits you to take lavish vacations, eat at expensive restaurants, and buy designer clothes. Some people are like this. They live all their lives in luxury. But they are not fetching a gold bar from under the bed each month to pay for such extravagances. They are living off the proceeds of a trust fund. Each month they collect a sum from the trust to cover their expenses, and if they spend it all, they can ask for more. Life is good. Life is wonderful, until the trust fund dries up. A stock market crash or offense to the owner of the fund can cause the rich life to disappear instantly. Life is a property of God. Only God has life. The rest of us live because each day, each moment, we draw from the trust fund of life in God. This is true for all people and the universe in its entirety, but it is also true of eternal life. Now, unlike a stock trust, we have no fear that a spiritual market will crash, and we have no fear that God will reject us. God will keep the eternal life flowing to his children forever. That is what makes it eternal! But just as a trust beneficiary could request an increase in disbursements, so we can request an increase in spiritual blessings from God.
You know that old nature we talked about, the rebellious nature inherited from Adam. That is still with us. I do not think I would have done salvation this way if I were God, but God has left us with two natures in competition with each other. In his letter to the Galatians Paul said, For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. (Galatians 5:17) I am sure you have experienced this . You see that you can help your neighbor, but you want to go swimming. You want to contribute to the fund for Ian and Dar, but you also want a new car. All your life, every day of your life, God is pointing you toward friendship with your neighbors, but your flesh craves personal pleasures. We could explore this at length in another sermon, but the point is that Gods desires gain the upper hand as we spend time with Him. Being with God This is what I meant by saying that the quality of your friendship with each other is only as strong as your friendship with God. Simply being with God draws from the trust fund of eternal life. When you are with God, you become spiritually stronger and stronger. You gain more and more strength to fulfill Gods prompting. The more you are with God, the less urgent will be the sinful desires of your flesh.
Friendship in Action
The first application of todays scripture is to strengthen your friendship with God. You are already a friend of God, if you believe in Jesus. Jesus replaced your old spirit, hostile to God, with a new spirit friends with God. What does it mean practically to be friends with God? It is the same as being friends with anyone. Friends talk. Some friends talk a lot, others not so much, but all friends talk. So talk with God. What shall you say? Well, what do you say to your other friends? If you talk about the days activities, talk to God about the days activities. If you ask your friends for advice, ask God for advice. If you complain to your friends, complain to God. If you chat with your friends about Taylor Swift or the latest video game, chat with God about these things. God is a real person. He is not physically present right now, but He is a person just like all the other persons you know. Do not treat God as a mummy or a machine. Talk to Him!
Do you do things with your friends? Of course. It would not be much of a friendship if you did not do things together. So do things with God. This means that you have to know what God is doing, but there is a whole Bible full of examples of the sort of things God is doing every day. The first thing you see in the Bible is that God is working in the world. So go to work with God. I hope everyone here is engaged in productive work, so what does it mean to work with God? It means to work as though your Friend is there with you which He is. Conduct yourself in a godly manner, and expect God to see that the work goes well even when you have doubts. You eat and play with your friends, so include God in the fun of ordinary daily activities. God also does unexpected things, like talking to a sinful woman, or playing with children, or moving to a foreign country. Sometimes doing things with God will pull you out of your dreary life into unexpected new adventures.
Our second application is to strengthen your friendships with other people. We live in a big city and are surrounded daily with hundreds or thousands of people. But it is possible to go through a day without ever engaging someone as a friend. Even here at church, it is possible to come, sing and pray and listen, and then leave without a significant interaction with someone else. Most of us act friendly politely, in other words toward others, but strong friendship is more than politeness. Most of chapters four through six in this letter provide insight on how to act as a friend toward others, and the book of Proverbs is full of guidance. Proverbs 17:9 teaches us to be careful what we say about each other. Loving each other means that we bury offenses against us, rather than complaining to others about how we have been treated. Proverbs 18:24 distinguishes between a companion and a friend. A friend sticks with you, even when you are an idiot. You need such friends. Your boss may have to dismiss you, your nextdoorneighbor may report you to the police if you park incorrectly, your grocer may sell you bad produce but a friend will encourage and comfort you in all circumstances. Others need you to be such a friend to them. Next week we will look more closely at what friendship with each other consists of.
Invitation to Friendship
If you are here today, but do not believe in Jesus welcome! We are glad that you joined us, and you are always welcome in our church. However the richness of friendship with God and others that we have been proclaiming is not available to you. If you do not believe in Jesus and have not been baptized, you are still spiritually dead dead in trespasses and sins, following the course of this world, following the dark prince of this spiritually dead world. You are a child of Gods wrath, not because you are so bad or have done anything obviously wicked. You are trapped in the rebellious nature Adam handed down to all of us. In addition to those sins which you can admit to, your whole nature is in rebellion against God. You will never be Gods friend, and will perish in eternity. The good news is that you can escape! The gospel is the good news that Jesus came to rescue you from the prison of your old nature, and to give you new spiritual, eternal life. Our psalm today concluded, The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. The gospel is the call to take refuge in God. It is good news that you may escape condemnation and become a friend of God.
The question to you is, do you understand what we are saying? Do you agree that you cannot be a true friend in your own power? Do you wish for the blessings of escape from death, friendship with God, and true friendship with others? Then I repeat what Paul said to his jailer in Philippi, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. Trust Jesus. Trust His words to be true. Trust Him to save you. Be baptized into fellowship with Jesus and the church.
