A Friend of God

Well, happy Sabbath, brethren. Sabbath. It is uh so wonderful to be able to be here uh with all of you today uh not only to uh keep this Sabbath day as God set it aside and made it holy and and so we're gathered today today for that. But also, as was mentioned, um, for my family and I, the reason we're here in Tacoma, Washington is because of my brother in Christ, Michael Shide.

Also because of my sister in Christ, Debbie. It's that relationship that truly made us want to travel here to remember that, to honor it. But all of us are gathered together on this day because of the relationship that God wants to have with each and every one of us. The relationship that I spoke of that I have with Michael and Debbie is because of that relationship which we shared in God.

It is a relationship which is about family which is what God has always desired since the beginning of creation. Since he began to first plan for creation to have sons and daughters who would join his family and live in his kingdom. That truly is why all of us are here today. It's relationships. When we think about some of the titles which God has, they're all about relationship.

He is our father. Christ is our brother. God is our creator, sustainer. Christ is our lord, our king, our redeemer, and future husband. David called the Lord his strong ally. If we think about it in this world that we live in which God gave to us, every relationship which we have leads us back to God. Our friendships, our marriages, our sons, our daughters, our all of our relationships lead us back to our heavenly father.

I'll see if I can get my notes to work for me. Let's see. Ah, there we go. When in doubt, press escape. Wouldn't that be nice if we could do that in every instance in our life? Things aren't going the way we want. Oh, escape. We'll just get out of this situation. So, we know, brethren, that God desires family. He wants us to have godly offspring. And that truly is why we are here. When we look around, what we see is relationships. Most often, whether we're leading songs or whether we're uh speaking from this pulpit, we start off by calling each other brethren. That word actually means of the womb. That's what makes us family.

That we are created as this family. But God wants that relationship to be developed, for it to grow. What about friend? Michael was my friend. But more important than our relationship with each other is that first relationship with God. Are we able to say that I am a friend of God? That is the title to my message today.

a friend of God. We know that Abraham was a friend of God. In Isaiah 4 and I believe it was verse 8, God says this, "But you, Israel, are my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the descendants of Abraham, my friend." That is the spiritual family that each and every one of us who have believed in God, who have repented and been baptized and had hands laid upon us so that we we might receive God's Holy Spirit.

We are spiritual descendants of Abraham and he set that example of being a friend of God. And he says, "You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth and called from its farthest regions and said to you, you are my servant. I have chosen you and have not not cast you away." Fear not, for I am with you.

Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Can we individually imagine that the creator of the universe would look in your heart, in your mind and say, "You, you are my friend." And do we understand what that means? We know that Moses spoke with God as to a friend.

Exodus 33 and verse 10, he says, "And all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the tabernacle door." So it was it was a witness to everyone. And all the people rose and worshiped, each man in his tent door. And so the Lord spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. I believe that in our own walk, our disciplehip, our becoming that servant of God, each of us are wondering if God's speaking to us.

We want to have that relationship. We seek it. We desire it. That relationship, brethren, is a choice. Is a choice that we make to be committed to, to pursue. Uh some of us grow up around people and well, we've just known them my whole life. They've always kind of been there and we're friends. But how many of us have looked at someone and said, "I think I choose you.

" Uh several years ago at the feast, we were introduced to a new family and uh or new to us and uh we have our little boy and they had a little boy who was about the same age. Uh this is a few years ago and we kind of walked in the door and all the kids came rushing up and you know I'm greeting people and mixing and mingling as we do and I hear this little voice behind me and they're talking, hey, what do you like to do? What do you like to do? And I hear this little voice say, you know, I'm JD.

You're going to be my friend. And he took him by the hand and led my son upstairs. He's like, let's play cuz you like stuff and I like stuff. And and they chose this friendship. They're still friends. That friendship is still growing. I think as we get older, we kind of forget that that we get to choose that relationship.

And as we just read, God chose you. He's chosen us to become friends. This is the path that we will walk hopefully all the days of our lives. And we know that we've been given examples of those who've walked that path of friendship with God. Enoch walked with God. Noah walked with God. All the others who are given to us in this book have walked with God because they chose to.

They've agreed to it. And we know that two cannot walk together unless they are agreed. In friendship, we tend to agree to uh keep certain rules of friendship. Uh probably unspoken rules. And those rules are about how we're going to treat each other. And usually when we're young, I remember my mother telling me I was upset about something and she said, "Well, do you think that that's the way a true friend would have treated you?" I go, "Oh, oh, I I now get why mom told me not to hang out with him.

" You know, that wasn't a good friendship. So, there are rules, standards that we seek to live up to in that friendship. And it's no less than our friendship with God. We know a friend of God, one who loves him will live up to his standards. 1 John 5 and verse three tells us, "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.

God's laws, which are one of the reasons why we are all here today, are not done away with, but rather they give us a blueprint to his nature, to his heart, so that we can walk with him, and so that our hearts can be reformed and made into his image to be like him. We're having our minds remade to be like the mind of Christ.

In Proverbs, we're told that there's a man or excuse me, a a man who has friends must himself be friendly, be open to that. But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. You know, there's a distinction between having a buddy and a true friend. How many of you had buddies in school? Yeah. Yeah, we all did.

There was somebody that we were like, "Hey, you're just like me. We've got the same sense of humor. We get along. You know, I like baseball. You like baseball." You know, whatever it is. And some of our buddies we really loved hanging out with and getting in trouble with. Right. We had those friends that are like, "You want to do this?" "Yeah, I do." "Well, I want to do that.

We're probably going to get in trouble." and we go, "Okay, it's got to be fun." And sometimes that's where those friendships start. But a true friendship elevates us. It improves us. We want to be like God. In order to do that, to be friends with God, we can't stay the same. We have to be changed. To have a true friend is to have a friend who helps us become a better person.

God is not our buddy. We rever him. Maybe we had a relationship in our life, someone who was older than us who it seemed like they were walking a better path. And in order to be their friend, we knew we had to step up our game to do better, to do more, to be on that level to where they would want to be friends with us.

That is our friendship with God. That I I know that God has chosen me. I know that he has selected me. But he wants to lift me up to be on his level. And that means I have to change. Our physical friends are the physical friends that help us to do the same thing, which we're really not going to find out in the world.

But we will find it in those who are seeking the same relationship to be brethren, one with each other and to be a friend of God. A true friend is a faithful friend, a loyal friend. Book of James 4 tells us this. Verse four, and I'm sorry, I'm I'm I'm speaking quickly for the sake of time. James writes, "Adulterers and adulteresses.

" He's not just picking out individual sins, but rather an adulterer and an adulteress an adulteress are unfaithful by definition. Unfaithful. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the scripture says in vain, the spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously? There's a there's a possession there where God says, "No, you're mine.

I don't want you to follow those other ways of the world to have the corruption that could get on you that could damage you. You are precious to me. How many of you ever remember being jealous of your best friend? Think back to high school, junior high, junior high, especially grade school. There was somebody that was your special friend.

What? What do you mean you're friends with Susie? No, you're my friend, not Sus's friend. That's a That's a very youthful idea. And yet it holds true. God says, "You are mine. I have chosen you specially. I don't want you chasing after other gods or doing other things that will harm you. Be faithful in your friendship to me.

Don't let these other things come in the way. Hold fast. That's who we want to be as friends of God. It is a special relationship. It is deep. It is meaningful and it is intimate because God's not looking for acquaintances. I dare say that all of us in our life in our spiritual walk with God have maybe felt like we were less of an intimate friend, a child of God, and maybe we're getting more into that acquaintance level.

Well, the truth is is that not that's not God's fault. That's mine. That's ours. Because we are not seeking him as we should. We are not chasing after him zealously. He wants a friend who's striving to be like him, who would change his own life, lay that old life down, and give up that life just as he did for us.

He wants to know us. A true friend is the one that we spend the most time with, that we choose, that we seek, that is special, and that we devote ourselves to. In my life, my best friend is my wife. I love her. I think she's really cute. And the reality is is there's no one else that I would rather spend time with than her.

She knows me all of my strengths and all of my weaknesses better than anyone else. And she still chooses me every day. That is a small image of the relationship that God wants to have with us. That we choose him every day. That he chooses us every day. And he knows us. Not just because he can look down at us and know every thought that crosses our mind, but that we choose to share it with him.

that we choose to seek him to to tell him our thoughts, our heart, our mind. There's a reason that we are told to diligently seek him out while he may be found. Why we are to walk with him daily? Because we want him to know us. He already does. It's It's not like anything's hidden from him. But he wants us to come to him willingly.

I think of relationship again as a as a father. My kids sometimes, you know, you can come home and you can see something and you're pretty sure you know what happened and who did it. Now, you can decide to call them all down and be like, "All right, we're going to get to the bottom of this." But isn't it better when you walk in the door and the kids see you and they come to you like, "Mom, dad, I did this.

" Well, why don't you tell me about that? Why don't we talk about it? There's one way of doing it where we're, you know, more the investigator, the disciplinarian. All right, we're going to get to the bottom of this and you're going to tell me. What we want is them to come to us and share. That's when we realize that that relationship is growing.

It's progressing. It's deepening. We need to be seeking that type of relationship every day. And not just in a superficial area or superficial way. Matthew 7 and verse 21, Christ says this, "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven." See, I can say, you know, well, of course I know who God is.

You know, I I go to church. I keep the Sabbath day. But not everyone who says, "Lord, Lord," shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and even done wonders in your name? You know, I'm I'm here. I'm working.

I'm I'm doing stuff. And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. It's more than just keeping the Sabbath. It's more than just keeping the holy days. What are the two great commandments upon which all other commandments hang? That I will love God with my everything, heart, soul, mind, everything.

And the second is like it. That I will love each other. That I will love my brethren, the family of God. I think that's for me the legacy that Michael left that we would talk about regularly. It is the relationship that each of us has with our heavenly father and our lord Jesus Christ and how it is mirrored in our relationship with each other.

If we don't have those two great loves, it doesn't matter all the technicalities of things that we think we've done. Love covers a multitude of sins and it begins with our love of God. And if we have that, then it spreads with our love for one another. rather that relationship again requires that we choose it because again the world is out there it's easier to be like well today I want to choose the other way or if we've got a conflict with someone well not today we're not I'm going to choose to not love you today

because today it's hard today you're really annoying But that's not an option. A true friend is not hit or miss. A true friend is always because they have chosen to be a true friend each and every day. Not fair weather, but every day. That is who we choose to be with God and who we choose to be with each other.

We uphold that friendship. We seek to walk with God and with each other every day. We choose to be faithful to it. And we have to work at it. Some friendships are are just easy easy to be around. And I think God gives us those because sometimes we need those. There's somebody that's like, "Ah, I I just completely relax with you.

" I think there's more honor in holding those friendships that aren't as easy that we have to work at to see what we have in common. Maybe to see beyond the differences which especially in this world everyone tends to focus on. Well, we agree on 90% but oh that 10%. And so we'll focus on that instead of everything that God has given to us that is truth that we have in common that is good that makes us family.

We have to work at it brethren. You know we don't get to choose who else God has chosen. We'd like to, right? You know, somebody comes into church and we're like, "What? You?" I don't think that's going to happen in God's kingdom because God chooses and we choose him and we choose each other. And it does take time and energy coming to truly know God having a deep and intimate relationship with him and all of our other relationships which point back to him.

It's what he has wanted since the beginning, since creation. And that's the calling we've been given today. Christ as he was spending his last hours with his disciples spoke of this John 15 verse 11 he's speaking again very intimately privately with his disciples John 15 and verse 11 these things I have spoken to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full.

This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this than to lay down one's life for his friends. He's letting them know what's going to happen and also that this will be their example. You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants.

For a servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends. For all things that I have heard from my father, I have made known to you. You didn't choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit. He's saying, continue to do what I have done with you.

Continue to grow this relationship, this family. You are to bear that fruit and that your fruit should remain that whatever you ask the father in my name he may give you. These things I command you that you love one another. Brethren, family, we're all here for the same reason today. We're here first because it is a day which our heavenly father selected and chose and set aside and made holy so that we would follow it.

so that we would have it to reconnect with him, to be restored by his spirit and by his word and by his truth and by fellowship, with one another with all those others who were seeking to know him, to hold fast to him, become a child of God. We're also here because of one who set that example. Thank you, brethren.