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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 4:9-10
Well, this morning we continue on with Ecclesiastes chapter 4, and we began last week with a focus on verses 7 through 8 and the introduction of the man who works entirely for himself without ever pausing to ask not just what he's working for, but more importantly who he's working for.
This one who is alone has neither son nor brother, that is to say, no prospect of passing down an inheritance. No one to divide the fruit of his labor with and enjoy together with, and he never pauses to ask for whom do I toil and deprive myself of good, meaning that the good that he was depriving himself of was companionship.
And so we began part one of a sort of short series here in chapter 4 that I'm titling Becoming Companions, and the idea is that by the end of verse 12 we'll have our hands around what it really means to have a properly defined and ordered view of friendship, Christian friendship, biblical friendship.
And I would not say here that friendship is the same thing as companionship. I'm going to make a little distinction between becoming companions and the way that friendship relates to that. The goal is that we would have Christ-like, biblically defined friendships in this church body and that those friendships would feed into and create thicker companionship as a church.
The idea is that we want to grow in our companionship with one another, and part of growing in companionship with one another is actually as a body developing friendships within the body, and that's really the focus here, is understanding how friendship will relate to companionship, and I hope that'll become clear, especially over the next two weeks.
So, companions, according to verses 7 and 8, are better than selfish gain. There's a good that we deprive ourselves of when we work alone or work for ourselves. Companionship in this sense is something that requires effort, it requires intentionality, thoughtfulness.
Remember, it's the one who doesn't stop to think, why aren't I working with someone? Why aren't I sharing with someone? So, to have a companion, to labor toward friendship, you actually have to have an intention, a thoughtfulness, an awareness, a regard for others that God has crossed your path with.
And this, of course, can be those within the household, those surrounding the household, those in the workplace, in the body. Essentially, a neighbor can be a companion. And so, the thing that runs against that is busyness, maybe fear, maybe insecurity, maybe there's some personal reasons that we would choose to isolate ourselves from each other, to wall up the prospects of relationships.
And the task, then, is to learn that this is a good that comes from the hand of God, and we need to see relationships as gifts that come from God's hand. Especially friendships, one of the sweet, unique gifts that comes from God is friendship in life.
And we're going to be looking today with verses 9 and 10, again next week with verse 11, the following week with verse 12, and all that goes into that friendship. And then we'll also consider when friendships fail as we close out chapter 4.
So it's not all cotton candy as we move to the end of chapter 4. We're reminded just how honest, how brutally honest Ecclesiastes is with the reality of life. Well, let's look at verses 9 through 12, even though we'll only be looking at 9 and 10 this morning.
Here is a classic, definitive passage on friendship from the Word of God. Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion, but woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up.
Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. How can one be warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. So here in verse 9, we come to another better statement.
As we said, chapter 4 is full of these so-called tovspruk, better sayings. Two are better than one. This is a variation on the good. Why am I depriving myself of good? It's the same idea, the same language of what is good, what is better.
And this is good. Now when we're saying that two is more good than one, we're already drawn back to creation. Remember, Ecclesiastes is a running commentary on Genesis 1 through 3. And we're drawn all the way back to Genesis 2, verse 18.
It is not good for man to be alone. I hope you see this intertextuality. It is not good for man to be alone. No, indeed, two are better than one. It is not good for man to be alone, so it is good for man to not be alone.
It is good for there to be two rather than one. Following verse 9 and that nod to creation, we come to verse 10. In fact, if you look at verse 10, 11, and 12, you start to get this illustration perhaps of someone traveling, someone journeying.
The idea is that if you were traveling along some unbeaten path in the wilderness, you could fall into a ditch or a pit or maybe down some craggy ledge. Your footing gives way and you need someone there that's able to pull you up out of that ravine or out of that pitfall.
If you think of traveling and all of a sudden the sun begins to set and with it the warmth begins to recede and you're there shivering all alone, unless you have someone who's there to warm you and you can huddle together during the cold of the night.
And certainly, as you're traveling in the ancient world, thieves, robbers on the way are a perennial threat. And if you were traveling alone, it's easy for a thief or a robber to overtake you, but if you're traveling with a companion, you might be able to withstand.
All you have to do is outrun your companion, you can get away. No, don't do that. No, two can actually carry on. Two can help defend one another. So with that, you get this imagery of traveling, of journeying.
And I think Ecclesiastes is meant to help us understand the journey of life, the pilgrimage of life, and the place that God puts on friendship for that journey. So friendship is a form of rescue, as we'll see this morning, of saving.
Friendship, companionship is a form of comfort, of keeping warm. Friendship or companionship is also a form of help, of encouragement and defense in a time of need. Now let me just backtrack a little bit where we were last week.
We built the foundation last week by talking about the second table of the law, the second commandment, which is like the first, to love our neighbor in the same way that we would love ourselves. And we said that's the foundation for every human relationship, my relation to God and to fellow image bearers, and any fellow image bearer is my neighbor.
Who is my neighbor is the great question of Jesus' challenge with the story of the Good Samaritan. And the answer to that is the neighbor is anyone. Anyone is your neighbor. Whoever you come across, for whatever reason or whatever circumstance it may be, anyone is your neighbor.
Now, of course, we tend to use that term neighbor to speak specifically about those who live near us, those that live in our neighborhood. The idea is a neighbor is a potential relationship, right? Anyone I could potentially come to know, potentially meet, potentially become acquainted with.
A companion is something different. Companion is someone you are with, someone who is with you. Now, that word companion I love because actually the etymology of the word companion breaks down to someone you eat bread with.
Come, right, with, pan is bread. A companion, someone that you partake of bread with, someone who eats your bread. And I would put it like this. A neighbor is someone you break bread near. A companion is someone you break bread with.
A neighbor is someone you break bread near. A companion is someone you break bread with. As a church body, we are companions because we break bread together. Within that level of relationship, within our companionship, we're drawn to certain relationships and these are friendships, all right?
Now, friendships feed companionship. Friendships flow out of companionship. We're all traveling together, journeying in this way, breaking bread along the pilgrim course and out of that journey, out of that pilgrimage, we're drawn to certain relationships in the body that could only be described as friendships.
That brings us to our focus this morning. Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor and if one falls, the other will lift his companion but woe to him who is alone. When he falls, he has no one to help him up.
Well, the first thing to notice about the two here are they are laboring together, journeying together. There's a reward for their labor. The idea there is there's something that's returning to them. There's fruit that they're enjoying together.
What happens when two are working at something rather than one? Well, the burden of that work is now divided between two. You split the burden in half because you're not the only one picking up sticks.
You're not the only one building the concrete wall. You're not the only one stacking or piling up, so you're dividing the work, dividing the burden but there's also something about the way that it is better to give than to receive that though the fruit of your labor is divided, somehow you double your enjoyment.
Isn't this good? Isn't this a reward? The fact that you had one to share in the labor with is actually what becomes its own form of enjoyment, its own reward. If you think of the logic of companionship, when Jesus orchestrates the mission of the 72, you think in Mark chapter 6 when he's sending out, as it were, the first missionary enterprise, he doesn't say, every man for himself, go.
No, what does he do? He sends them out two by two. Why? Because two are better than one. He divides the labor and what would the enjoyment of that labor be like? When they were actually seeing the word of God being made effective through their ministry, they would rejoice together.
They would pray and prepare, everything would be enhanced because they're laboring alongside one another and that's the idea of companionship as a church body. As the hymn puts it, the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.
This is a reflection of God's own enjoyment within himself as a triune God, the communion he has between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and our kindred relations, our kindred mindset is like to that which is above.
There's a unity, there's a purpose, there's an enjoyment. The enjoyment is right there in the passage we opened our service with, Psalm 133. Look at verse one. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is.
Just pause there. I heard us read that this morning. Let me tell you how it sounded. Behold, how good and pleasant it is. That's not how David's writing this. Behold! Isn't this amazing? Like when a kid finally gets the opportunity to have that birthday cake.
My kids yesterday had my sister's birthday cake, this big chocolate cake. Have you ever seen Roald Dahl's Matilda with Brucie and the chocolate cake? It was that. And we all looked like Brucie by the time we were done.
And their eyes widened. Behold, how good, how pleasant this is. This is great. This is what it's like to have unity. There's a spontaneous joy, a comfort. David is experiencing this as a blessing. We don't exactly know when he penned the words to Psalm 133.
John Calvin argues it was when Israel was unified, as it were. Now he was king over these tribes of Israel. They had been so blessed by God that they were expanding not only their borders, but their unity as a people under the kingship of David.
And he's saying, look at how good that is. But that's not David's only experience of the joys of unity. The enjoyment of companionship. In fact, David experienced personally what could be described as the best presentation of biblical friendship.
It was his friendship with Jonathan. If you could risk putting it this way, David loved Jonathan more than his own soul. Jonathan loved David more than the opportunity to become king in his father's wake.
More than the whispers and ravings of his father against David. They had a friendship that opposed every arrow, every slingshot, every threatening and rumbling. They were committed to each other. David had known that kind of friendship.
In fact, that friendship so cherished in his memory meant blessing for Mephibosheth. Just for the memory of Jonathan. I will bless those descended from you. I will do anything in my power to be a blessing to Jonathan or the line of Jonathan.
Such was Jonathan a friend to me. David and Jonathan had a friendship that the world truly can't fathom. It is a paradigm of Christian friendship, and it's something that cannot be mustered up in our flesh.
It's the highest reward of God to have a human relationship on these terms. David said the love of Jonathan was sweeter than that of women. As you can imagine in our godless postmodern era, all sorts of skeptics and biblical critics see that as some ancient version of homoeroticism, and there's nothing of the sort there.
If anything, we have completely collapsed the category of bosom friendship, of this kind of friendship in Western history. This is not foreign throughout previous centuries or millennia, but we've become very uncomfortable with the language, with the poetry, with the allure of friendship in this way, and yet it's prized, and it's treasured, and it's presented here in the Scriptures for us.
Augustine wrote in his book on Christian doctrine, this is our highest reward, that we should fully enjoy God and that all who enjoy God would enjoy one another in Him. So again, just as we don't rest away the second table from the first, just as we see that loving God implies love of neighbor even as love of neighbor implies loving God, we recognize the highest reward is to enjoy God even as we enjoy the relationships God has given us with others.
We enjoy them in Him, because of Him, through Him. That is a thought. Our highest reward is enjoying each other in God. Highest reward. What does that say for a life under the sun, for a life of vanity, for the good gift of friendship?
Now, of course, this is distinct from fellowship, or as I'm saying, the kind of companionship that a church should have. The companionship a church should have is described in Acts chapter 2. We find at the beginning of that, the Spirit of God is poured out when the day of Pentecost had fully come, and by the end of the chapter, as a result of the outpoured Spirit of God.
What do we have? We have a church body, sequestered there in Jerusalem, continuing steadfastly in apostolic doctrine and in fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayer. What's the outflow of that continuing in doctrine, in fellowship, in breaking of bread, in prayer?
We read, all who believed were together. All who believed in this way, who had received the outpouring of the Spirit of God, held everything in common. They even sold possessions and goods, divided, so that anyone who had needs could be met.
And they continued daily with this singular accord, breaking bread from house to house and meeting in the temple. And we read, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God. Does that sound like Ecclesiastes to you?
Eating, drinking, enjoying the good, gladly, simplicity of heart, not clutching, not grasping. And notice what's tied to that. They break bread together. They're with each other. They're enjoying the relationships that God has blessed them with.
They see it as a gift from His hand. This is what the Spirit has brought about. Not a selfishness, not an isolation, not a strong arming, but actually an accord. This is the idea of companionship, but friendship is even higher than companionship.
That's what a church ought to strive for, but the church gets a long way there as a result of biblically ordered friendships. Let me put it to you in this way. The companionship of Jesus' disciples was thicker, not weaker, because of the friendship of Jesus to the beloved disciple.
Even Jesus had, within the band of twelve, one that He was particularly alike to, had an affinity with or a regard for. If we understand the way that love, like a David and Jonathan, love of a friendship can then cascade and supply companionship, we understand something of what's taking place in Acts chapter 2.
It's not that everyone is everyone's best friend. It's just that friendships enjoyed unto God's glory have a way of feeding and nourishing and thickening companionship. They were able to be of one accord, breaking bread together, because friendships had developed.
This is not some uniformity. We don't all drive beige sedans and wear khaki uniforms and eat oatmeal. Thank God for that. And for that reason, we're drawn to some more than we are to others. We should not pretend that we have the same level of relationship or intimacy with all alike.
That's simply not true. That wasn't true for the twelve. That wasn't true for David and Jonathan. Friendship is held out as a virtue. And that friendship, again, it fertilizes and nourishes other relationships in the human life, the human experience.
So you might have colleagues at work that you get along with fine. Isn't it funny how those friendships at work stay friendships at work? I remember working at the factory and I had certain people that I was drawn to until I went home.
It's like, you're my work friend. We don't really do anything outside of that necessarily. I get along with you when we're at work because we're working together. Sometimes church can be like that. And I'm saying, though we must be hospitable and we want to grow in a thicker companionship, we should just appreciate that we can enjoy a relationship when we come together.
Even if that relationship doesn't explode and become BFF forever outside of that contact or that opportunity. Because simply put, some relationships are more meaningful to us than others. But if we invest and cultivate those meaningful relationships, every other relationship gets sweetened.
It's made more fruitful. It's made easier to navigate. Why? Because we have someone we're traveling with. Someone who's keeping us and helping us. Someone who's praying for us. Someone that we find a certain level of rapport and comfort with.
And that only enhances our ability to travel well with others. We tend to use friend when we can't say brother. I don't know why we do that. You know, someone's a brother in Christ and then you meet someone who's not a Christian and you're like, hey friend, how you doing?
Even Jesus sometimes speak in that, friend, what have I to do with you? But I think we need to actually elevate the term friend because friend is something much more intimate than brother. Companionship is brother, sister.
Friend is something above that if we understand in biblically order the idea of friendship. If you're not convinced of that, I hope you'll be convinced just by the end of this morning, if not the next two weeks.
There's companionship and then there's friendship. There's brothers and sisters, as close as that is, and then there's a friend. Is there any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by the fire, said C .S. Lewis?
Any pleasure on earth as great as that? And the answer was, no, there's not. Lewis said elsewhere, friendship is the greatest worldly good. There's something unique as a gift about friendship that God has blessed us with.
He says this, certainly to me, friendship is the chief happiness of life. If I could give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I would say, sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.
If you're aware of C .S. Lewis, of course he had this literary circle in Oxford known as the Inklings, Owen Barfield and J .R. Tolkien, and there's been a lot of work that's come out of this fellowship and there's been a lot of work about this fellowship that these men experienced, and in some ways cultivated and sustained through decades of life.
In fact, in 1960, C .S. Lewis published a book about friendship, at least in part, called The Four Loves. And he distinguished within that the type of love that we could characterize as affection, the type of love we could characterize as friendship, the type of love that would be marital love or Aaronic love, and then the type of love we characterize as charity or agape.
And he, in speaking of friendship, defined friendship as a shared vision that brings forth companionship, a shared vision that creates a relationship. He very famously says, spouses face one another, whereas friends stand side by side as they have a shared vision out looking.
They're both pursuing something. They both have a similar idea and approach. He called it the what? You too? Moment of realization. You love this too? You're like this too? You get me and I get you? That's the beginning of friendship.
Of course, this understanding of friendship was not unique to Lewis. If anything, he gleaned it and picked it up as he worked through the canon of Western literature, and of course, Tolkien as well for his part.
Though he was much more of a family man, Lewis was a bachelor for a long period of his life, he learned to appreciate friendship largely because of what he had studied, also what he had experienced and the friends he had lost in the trenches of World War I.
If you understand anything about the storyline of The Lord of the Rings, you'll understand the central theme is friendship. And if anything, the hero, the Jonathan to the David of Frodo, is Samwise. The ideal climate for friendship, Lewis argued, is when people are absorbed in a common interest.
And then he had this fascinating insight. Such friendship, he said, will make good people better people. And such friendship will make bad people worse. That is profoundly true. Such friendship will make good people better people.
And such friendship, such absorption, will make bad people worse. A man, Proverbs 18, 1 begins, a man who isolates himself, seeks his own desire, and he rages against all sound judgment. So Proverbs 18, which is the chapter of human relationships, we're going to be looking at Proverbs 18 a lot in the next few weeks, especially on the fourth week.
Proverbs 18, 1 begins with the man who's alone, who has neither son nor brother, the one who never pauses to think for himself, for whom am I toiling, the one who isolates himself because he's seeking his own desire, and he's raging, he's resisting, he's rejecting all manner of sound judgment.
He doesn't hear the insights of the Proverbs. When Ecclesiastes says two are better than one, he goes, nah. He's for himself. His companions are expendable for that reason. And here's where we get to the proof of what I'm saying, that we all aim to be better brothers and sisters, we all aim for a thicker companionship, but chief above that is a friend.
The end of Proverbs 18 says, a man who has friends may come to ruin, but there's a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Do you see there how friend is elevated above even brother at the end of Proverbs 18?
Now Proverbs 17, verse 17 says, a friend loves at all times, but a brother is born for adversity. You don't go against la familia, but here Proverbs 18 says, no, actually the crowning human relationship is a friend.
A man who has many friends, even that man may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. There's a friend, a companion, that is a Jonathan to our David. And for this reason, as Proverbs says earlier, the righteous should choose his friends carefully.
The way of the wicked will lead them astray. This is how a good friend makes a good person a better person, and a bad friend makes a bad person a worse person. The righteous must choose their friends carefully.
As Paul says, good company, he actually says bad company corrupts good habits. And so the question is, if bad company, bad friends corrupt good habits, what does good company do? What do good friendships do?
What does a close companion, what does one closer than a brother bring about in the Christian life? If bad company corrupts me, what does good company do for my walk? And this is the idea of a friendship.
This means that when I'm choosing, I'm choosing someone that will truly come to know me, truly come to love me, in the way that perhaps the closest earthly picture we get is a spouse. Though for some of us, because of the lack of the Lord's presence in our marriage or in our marital bond, we actually find that our companionship, our bond, comes with someone entirely different who's that gift, who's that strength of support in our life.
We see it as a gift from His hand. It's not good for us to be alone. However, that aloneness may be answered in God's good providence. This means we have to choose very carefully. Listen to what Augustine says.
The reason that you have a friend or love a friend ought not to be so that he can do something for you. If that's why you love him, so that he can get you some money or some temporal advantage, you aren't really loving him but the thing that he gets for you.
A friend is one that is loved freely for his own sake and not for the sake of something else. I love this person because of what they can do for me. I love this person because of what I can do for them and how that makes me feel about myself.
Neither of these are biblical parameters for what we could rightly call friendship. Friendship is something spontaneous. I simply love them. I freely choose to love them, not because of what they can or can't do for me, not because of what gain or advantage would come my way by relating to them.
Though there'll be many advantages and rewards in the friendship, the friendship is such I love them simply because I love them. That's biblical friendship. I have a rapport, an affinity, a bond, a common interest.
Whatever hills and valleys may come, this is my friend. Now here's the problem. Friendship like this is at an all-time low. Again, Lewis, Tolkien, reading the works of Western literature understood this was a norm, if anything, an esteemed virtue for human relationships, and they were seeing even in the post-war modernity of Britain the collapse of the institution of friendship, the hollowing out because of the opportunity and the quest for gain and the fracturing of life.
They saw that friendship was falling by the wayside. If anything, their works, their poetry, and their own example as friends was meant to combat that in their time. Bradley Berzer, who teaches at Hillsdale, has an excellent book that's coming out on this very facet of friendship.
They were self-consciously understanding the significance of friendship in post-war England. They saw, if anything, the outflow of World War I as the collapse of this institution. So they recognized how pivotal it was for a society to aim for and esteem friendships.
They saw it fracturing. They saw it receding. Matthew Bingham, who wrote this excellent book, Heart of Flame, and you'll be hearing quotes from that in the next few weeks, he says,. There are good reasons to suspect that modern life militates against the natural cultivation of relationships that have been previously enjoyed.
In other words, people don't have friends like they used to. Maybe some of you remember your grandparents and bosom friends that your grandparents had to the very end. And though you remember that, you don't have anyone that you could make a parallel with.
Where are my bosom friends? These were their friends of 70 years. Where are my bosom friends? Daniel Cox, who's a social scientist, writes,. We're in the midst of a major friendship recession. We don't have a place for it.
No wonder we're working harder than ever, never pausing to ask who's it all for, never knowing how to enjoy the good of labor and the fruit of labor. Friendships are vanishing. The idea, the institution of friendship is vanishing.
There was a survey done by the Center on American Life. Daniel Cox writes,. The results are jaw-dropping. There's a massive number of adults that report the number of close friends and the steepest decline is among men.
And Bingham notes,. Perhaps the major contributing factor for this is our addiction to social media, the illusion of friendship. What are you talking about? Friends? I'm from the MySpace days. I've got hundreds of friends.
Tom is the first of my friends. Tom is everybody's friend. Tom is the most friended man in the world. If friend no longer means friend, it's the illusion of friendship. And so as one sociologist argues, such technology leaves us in a strange state of being alone together.
That's where we are as a society. Alone together. That's not companionship. Being in a church body as companions is not being alone together. And certainly the idea of a friend is not being alone together.
How are you going to keep warm? How are you getting out of that pit when you fall? Who's going to defend you in a time of need? We expect more from technology devoted to friendship than from friends or friendship itself.
We expect more from technology and less from each other. And the sociologist concludes, because we are drawn to connections that are low risk and always available. I don't have to risk time. I don't have to risk all that goes into building and maintaining a relationship.
I don't have to risk offense. I don't have to risk the highs and the lows. If you know the affinity Lewis and Tolkien had, you'd also know that across 40 years of friendship, they had fallings out. This is what it means to have a friendship.
There's risk involved. There's intention. There's purpose. That doesn't dissolve the friendship. It enhances it. It makes the bond that much tighter. If you're married, you know exactly what we're talking about.
And so I want to give three points of application, and we're just beginning this journey in the weeks to come, but three points of application, and here's the call. The call is we ought to seek and become friends that save.
That's the first little nugget of friendship here in verse 10, is helping someone out of a pit. In other words, saving them. If they don't get out of the pit, what's going to happen to them? If they're all alone in the pit, what's going to happen?
Archeologists are going to find a skeleton in 1 ,500 years. That's what happens. So the idea is we're going to save. And by the way, I think we need to allow for this language of salvation, though it may not be capital S salvation, it's nonetheless purposed and brought about by Christ for his people.
Think of Paul telling Timothy, in such a way you will save both yourself and your hearers as you take heed to your life and your doctrine. He uses this language. You'll be able to save yourself and your hearers?
Paul, what are you talking about? Are you now rejecting the gospel of Christ as our sole mediator and the means by which we are saved? No, no, no. But he's using this language of rescue, of salvation in a lowercase s sense.
We'll see it in a moment from Jude, verse 23, this idea of we're actually able in our relationships to save, to pull someone out of the pit. So we ought to seek and become friends that save. Not every relationship in this church will be like that, but we ought to seek a relationship or relationships like that, and we ought to become friends like that.
Again, we won't be able to do it for everyone. You have a watered-down view of friendship. If you think you can have biblically defined friendship with everyone that you see in the body, it's just not possible.
Either you won't be a friend to them in that biblical sense, or you'll be a friend to everyone in a totally weak and hollow sense. So I'm asking for us to seek and become friends that save, as we'll see next week, that keep, as we'll seek in the following week, that help.
And as we do that in certain relationships in this body, the outflow of that will be companionship, companionship. If they fall, one will lift up his companion, but woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him.
So a friend that saves first, a friend that saves knows the need. A friend that saves knows the need. Help! Where's that voice coming from? Well, I'm just going to keep going. A friend that saves knows the need.
Where's that cry for it's coming from the pit? Oh, there's a pit there. Oh, that person needs help out of that pit. That's a friend that saves. They know the need. You see the pit for what it is, whatever that pit may be.
And that pit takes many forms in our lives. The pit that causes sorrow, the pit that causes us to shrivel up into a ball of curled despair, the pit that makes us run through the motions and no one would know it but our bosom friend, our close companion.
No one else sees the pit for what it is. A friend that saves knows the need. In some cases, a friend that saves knows the need better than the one who has the need. You're in a pit. No, I'm not. Yes, you are.
No, I'm just climbing. No, that's a pit. No, no. Just a flesh wound, as Monty would say. You see the pit for what it is. That's a friend that saves. That means you also have to know the friend. This is why, again, friendship is so defined.
It couldn't be with everyone. I hope everyone doesn't know me as I could be known. I'm thankful the people that know me most are the people I trust most. They've proven themselves trustworthy. You ought to feel like that too.
The person that has the most power to wound you is the person who knows you the most. This is why a Proverbs 31 woman, it says, the husband's heart safely trusts in her. She could ruin my world, but I have a confidence because of her love.
She's proven herself trustworthy. So you come to know the friend. You know the companion. You know the pit. Each one of us faces situations in life that are unique. And for that reason, we're often looking for help when we're in that pit.
We're often all of a sudden willing to follow the advice of Proverbs 11. We're looking for an abundance of counselors. We want to find safety. How can I get out? But here's that companion who sees the pit for what it really is.
Sadly, what happens in the Christian life is the multitude of counselors have the same weight as the bosom friend. Because I don't want to own the pit that I'm in. I don't want to see it for what it is.
I'll believe anything else. So I listen to a lot of false friends. I listen to a lot of Job's friends. I do anything to assuage where I'm at. And the friend that actually knows me and knows my pit the most is the friend that's putting the knife in my side.
It's a friend that faithfully wounds. So we look for an abundance of counselors. We look for friends that can help us. But a lot of friends don't know us or the pit we're in. And so while we all want to think, well, when I'm in a pit, I'm just waiting for anyone to come and lower a ladder.
I will gladly jump on. No, we're more like a rabid pit bull that's snarling and barking and biting the very means that are meant to help us. How do you build the kind of friendship that faithfully wounds so that we can actually make it out of the pit?
Well, part of the problem is that what we all do in human relationships is something that I'll call now the portrait exchange. The portrait exchange. I was in Chicago last week and went to the famous Art Institute of Chicago, which was just a glory.
I wish I had three days just to walk through the galleries. And they have not just paintings by certain painters, not just masterpieces that are world-renowned, but they have whole galleries dedicated to masters.
And I was in the Van Gogh room, and I saw the self-portrait, and I remembered, oh, I have a book about Van Gogh. Maybe I'll do some reading on that. This wonderful book by a man named Russ Ramsey called Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart.
He's a Christian writer, and he's using some of the story and some of the images as a way of getting across some points. And he explains that for a time, Van Gogh was a very troubled man. A lot of speculation as to why that might be, but he was very, very unstable, and yet he had this dream of creating a house called the Yellow House that would become a commune for artists.
And an artist who seemed to be rather interested in this proposal was Paul Gauguin, who was a French painter. They had met each other through Van Gogh's brother, Theo, and the occasion was made. They were going to live together and spur each other to paint until this could somehow carry momentum.
But the man that was picking up Gauguin from the train station didn't know him, so they agreed, let's paint portraits of each other, and that way we'll have a little item and we'll be able to recognize each other when the time comes.
And so Van Gogh painted a self-portrait and sent it to Paul Gauguin, and Gauguin painted a self-portrait and sent it to Van Gogh. When you paint a self-portrait, how do you paint it? Do you paint it like Cromwell, warts and all?
Do you have some idealized, romanticized version of yourself? Van Gogh sort of put himself in this wise sort of pose, this knowing master, someone that Gauguin could look up to. Gauguin sort of styled himself after Jean Valjean, and I'm a very meek guy, my lot is with the humble, and they're each creating a portrait.
Here's how you'll know me. They lived together for all of 63 days. It ended in bloodshed and part of a missing ear. Those portraits had no resemblance to the reality of who they were. When we meet people, when we desire relationships, we start with a portrait exchange.
This is who I am. This is what I'm like. Here's how you can understand me. This is why all marital counseling says you're hiding, you have your best leg forward and you're hiding another leg, all the way up to the wedding day.
And on the wedding day, the other leg comes out, because now you're living together. The portrait exchange is over. Now you're meeting the person that you're living with. That's the idea. But here's the kind of genius of friendship.
A friend that saves knows the reality behind the portrait. Maybe not at first, but they come to know it soon enough. That might be enough to scare some people out of friendship, out of relationship, out of companionship.
But the friend that sticks closer than a brother, the friend that sees you not for the portrait you pretend to be, but the person you really are, that friendship is going to be built in all of the right ways for all the right reasons.
I love you and I know your need. A friend that saves knows the need. Russ Ramsey writes it in this way. If the Lord, in his kindness, gives us the blessing of friendship, he is most certainly calling us to the holy work of burden bearing.
I'm committed to you. You are my friend. And that means I'm going to bear some of the burden with you. This is why two are better than one. I see the pit. I see what you're in. Ramsey writes, stick around long enough in any relationship and you'll come to see more than the initial portraits offered.
Neither portrait was accurate. But are the portraits we're inclined to lead with ever true? Something I actually like about when the camera systems came along in the 19th century. I don't know why this social convention changed, but if you ever go to the Carlson Antique Emporium and look at old tintype photographs, there's one thing you'll notice that's a complete difference to how we take photographs today.
They didn't smile back then. Every portrait looks like they're suffering indigestion. They're just kind of there with a grunt face. When did we decide to start smiling? Someone was just like, why are all the pictures so grim?
We need to start smiling. But now, every picture you see on your Instagramable life are these artificial smiles. It's a presentation you could never sustain. I shudder to think of social media influencers who get caught in the Walmart aisles and have to crack out the smile and act like everything's great.
You're never allowed to hang the head low. Are the portraits we exchange ever true? Listen to this. To truly love someone is to move beyond first impression into the heart. It's to take on the work of stewarding someone else's joys and sorrows.
It's to show up for their celebrations and invite them into yours. It's to sit with them when they're sick and nurse them until they're better. It's to lean on them when you're the one who's hurting. Is there a more sacred calling in life than this?
To really know a person is to know them by their sorrow. Not by their smile. Not by their self-portrait. That's companions to a degree, but it's not a friend. Ramsey's right. To really know a person is to know them by their sorrows.
Consider the ministry of Jesus and the people we meet along the way. If you spend any time in Scripture at all, when I mention their names, you'll know who I'm talking about. They're all people known, at least in part, by their pain.
Matthew the tax collector. Simon the leper. Blind Bartimaeus. Doubting Thomas. Judas the betrayer. The man with the withered hand. The woman caught in adultery. The boy with the unclean spirit. The girl who had been only asleep.
The widow from Nain. The rich young ruler. The woman with the issue of blood. The paralytic from Capernaum. The demoniac who lived among the tombs. The thief on the cross. We know these people by their sorrow.
And so what does it mean that Jesus encounters them as a friend? He looks past a self-portrait. He looks past a smile. He sees the need for what it is. He sees the need for what it is. Who can find a more faithful friend than this?
This is a paradigm for friendship. Do you see what I'm saying is, Jesus is a model for us of what friendship ought to be. A friend that saves knows the need. Second point. A friend that saves endures that need.
A friend that saves doesn't just know the need. They endure that need. They're not just here for a moment. They don't parachute the quick observation. Hey, that's your pit. Hope it works out. See you late.
They endure that need. I'm not going anywhere. We've got to figure out a way to get you out of this pit. That might be a day or a year. But I'm not going anywhere. I'm your friend. A friend that saves endures the need.
Spurgeon quoting one Lord Bacon says, a friend is another self. I love you like I love me. You're another self of me. I want to help you as I would want to help myself. And he goes on to say, nothing opens the heart like a true friend to whom you impart grief, joy, fear, hope, suspicion, counsel, whatever so lays upon the heart that would oppress it.
Here's where I'm really at. Here's where I'm really struggling. Here's where I'm really suffering. Here's my brightest embarrassing hopes. Here's my worst nightmares. There's a weird thing in friendship that the friendship doesn't take on a melancholic note as a result of that.
Because part of that friendship is also the enjoyment, the bubbling reciprocity of humor, especially among men. There's a sort of banter and a rib poking that becomes the form of friendship glue. There was a famous meme some years ago, and I'm not using him as a paradigm for friendship, but Vladimir Putin standing in a monsoon of rain to honor a fallen soldier's wreath.
And the caption under it said, that friend who always roasts you and torments you. He was the one that loved you the most. It's where that rib poking came from. And there's a difference, so it's not that the friend only ever knows the grief and bears the burdens, but you don't have a friendship where that is missing.
Friendship is more than burden sharing and griefs and woe, but it's certainly not less than that. And however congenial you feel toward another, if you're withholding your sorrows and your despair, you are not walking in friendship.
You have not found a friend indeed. Thomas Brooks, the Puritan, would describe such as summer friends. They're here because the weather's nice. Summer friends. When you start descending into that pit, those summer friends are hard to find.
So he says, what we need is a winter friend. All seasons friends. When the going gets tough. When you go buy tires here in New England, you need all season tires if you want to get somewhere. You need an all season friend.
You need a friend when things turn cold. This is where a faithful friend, an active friend, a praying friend, a bosom friend will be proven. Not all friendships will be maintained in this way. This is how you'll know.
Whatever other friends you had, here's your Jonathan. A friend who's always loyal. A friend who not only knows the pit, but they endure it. They endure it with you. You sob on their shoulder. You give them the perfect advice because you see the pit for what it is, and it keeps looping out of the ear, but you don't lose heart because you're a friend.
Christ is such a friend to us. How many times, o 'er and o 'er, has he spoken that piercing word that we just won't take down into our heart because we're in the middle of our tantrum and our self despair, and yet, does he depart?
Does he forsake? Does he abandon? No, never. Spurgeon puts it this way. Has Jesus not been with you in the house of mourning? You found your best friend where men find pearls in caverns deep where darkness dwells.
You found Jesus in the hour of your trouble. Isn't that when you first met him? Many of us. It's in that hour of crisis, that hour of grief. It was in the bed of sickness that you first learned the value of his name.
It was in the hour of mental anguish that you laid hold the hem of his garment, and since then, your nearest and sweetest intercourse has been held with him in darkness. He endures it all. A friend indeed.
A friend in a house of sorrow. A friend who gave his heart's blood for you. A friend who let his soul run out in one great river of gore. Such a friend would never forsake you. Hasn't he proven that? A friend that loves not in words, which is easy, but indeed.
That's hard. As Spurgeon says, he doesn't come to us and say, dearly beloved. He hangs upon a cross, and there we read, dearly beloved, in red letters of his own blood. He doesn't come with mere kisses of his lips first.
He gives us blessings with both of his hands, which were stretched out to be crucified. That's a friend who endures our need. And then third and last, a friend that saves answers the need. A friend that saves answers the need.
When in Pilgrim's Progress, Zac Eswain points this out in his book, Recovering Eden, and it's such a beautiful moment because another great treatment of companionship is the book Pilgrim's Progress. For all that is solitary about Christian's journey to the celestial city, you'll note how vital companionship and friendship was along the way.
And when Christian fell beneath the waves of despair, Bunyan tells us, when he was nearly swallowed up and lost altogether, he says, were it not for the grace of his companion, hopeful. In other words, a friend who saw the pit, knew what it was, loved his friend, was going to endure that alongside of him.
And when Christian began to sink, he began to cry out for his friend. He said, I sink in deep waters, the billows go over my head, all the waves go over me. And you know what hopeful said? Selah, be of good cheer, my brother.
I've felt the bottom and it is good. That's such a beautiful insight from Bunyan because he's saying, the friend has been in that same pit too and he's felt the bottom of it and he knows God is faithful.
That's the best kind of encourager you could ever have as a friend. Not someone who's never fallen into a pit and they're trying to help you, but someone who's been in a pit many times in their life who wants to encourage you and help you.
That's a friend who really knows how to answer your need. I've been there. I've proved the Lord. I've seen what He's done. Don't lose heart now. We're able to save our friends in that way. It's because of what God has done in and through us.
In this way, we make a distinction and some we save by pulling them out of the fire. It's an act of love. Again, a friend that knows the need, endures the need, and answers the need, this is a friend that's closer than a brother.
This is a friend that faithfully wounds even the snarling pit bull. And if you want to be a friend that saves, you probably won't be viewed as a friend that saves. That's the most heartbreaking thing of it all.
At least for a time, in the midst of the storm, in the rage of the torrent, you'll be viewed more as an enemy than a friend. Sometimes to rescue, to save someone, actually injures them, it hurts them.
I remember this video of a helicopter rescue in Arizona. Some 74-year-old woman was in peril and she was too weak to hike back and so the rescue operation was to send a helicopter and they lowered this bed and the paramedic, he basically tied her into this bed, but something went wrong with the joint swivel and so as the helicopter lifted up, she started rotating like a tilt-a-whirl out of hell.
You can watch the video of it. And she's a 74-year-old woman that's being rescued and being harmed at the same time. She's like, oh, thank the Lord! And she's spinning all the way to the Arizona Medical Center with a very hefty lawsuit in hand, I'm sure.
But I think that's all Christian rescue. You injure the people you're pulling out of the pit. That's what a faithful friend does. It's part of the sacrifice. Love has no greater than this. To lay down your life for your friends even when they're not viewing you as a friend.
Love has no greater than that. Do you understand Jesus laid down His life for us when we counted Him our enemy? While we were still sinners, He gave His life for us. Love has no greater than that. So Jesus is a paradigm for what it means to be a friend.
Do you have a friendship with Christ? Then seek and become a friend that saves. Who are you drawn to? Who are you close to? What would that kind of friendship look like in your walk? And what will that friendship produce in this body?
If it's a good friendship like this, you'll be made all the better for it. Frankly, the body will be made better for it. If it's not a good friendship, good habits will get corrupted and we'll be all the weaker as a result.
Jesus is the example. Jesus is the paradigm. We can say as we'll explore each week, hallelujah, what a Savior, hallelujah, what a friend! What a friend! Saving. Helping. Keeping. Loving. He is with me to the end.
He knows my need. He endures with me with long-suffering, never-failing patience every day of my life. He endures the pits that I am in even as He answers my greatest need by shedding His own blood on the cross and procuring for me a life that I am being saved for.
That is a friend that saves because He's answered my need. So, brothers and sisters, we ought to become friends that save. Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor. And if one falls, the other will lift his companion up.
But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has no one to help him up. Amen? Let's pray. Father, thank You for Your Word. Lord, bless it to us. Help us to become biblical friends in this body, Lord.
With those, for whatever mysterious providential reasons we have a rapport with, a draw toward, Lord. May we actually devote ourselves to that. Make the friendship what it could be and allow out of it to flow all good fruit in becoming companions together as a church body.
May beloved disciples bless the other disciples. May Jonathans so bless the train of others in the wake. Father, we would become true companions that don't just gather alone together to break bread, but actually break bread with one another, enjoying the good gift of friendship for all that You do with and through it.
Thank You for sending Your Son to be our true friend even when we were yet an enemy. Thank You for the love that conquers with irresistible grace even our rebellious souls and procures for us joy everlasting.
Help us to model His friendship toward others, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.