A Response to a Sermon on Friendship and Community

Hey everyone! So, it was mentioned to me that it would be good to expand on the friendship aspect of the sermon that I responded to in the previous blog as I had touched a bit on the differences in the definition of “loyalty” when it came to friends, but, since the sermon the following Sunday was about friendship in community, I thought I would respond to this sermon instead.

I think a lot of friendships in the local churches can be seen as deeper than friendships with our secular friends perhaps because there are a lot of Christian words that are thrown around, but, even in these settings it is important to have discernment when it comes to friend selection because you have to really get down to the real root of things, the real focus, the real heartbeat. Man or God. Because, ultimately, these will be people that you will take counsel from, discuss topics with, and so on. So being able to have a conversation about the subject of friendship, and what makes it a good and godly one, is a beneficial thing to have and I wanted to lay my thoughts out here.

To start, the sermon did an around the way intro, but ended up landing on two oft-quoted lines from the book of Proverbs: the ones about iron sharpening iron and how the wounds of a friend are better than kisses from a enemy. I’m going to talk about these further into this blog, but here I just wanted to point out that every time you talk from a book of the Old Testament, you have to have a few things at the forefront of your mind. Firstly, the people in the Old Testament did not have the Spirit living within them. We cannot use them as people that we should be like, as moralistic characters for us to emulate. Christ had not come yet, the people were still separated from God because of sin, and the Spirit was not indwelling them since God could not live in sinful man. Yes, the Spirit would fall for a period of time upon a member of the remnant to open their eyes to believe that a Messiah would come or to enable a prophet or leader to accomplish a work that He was doing, but the Spirit did not stay. So, when you read the Old Testament, you have to see that it points to three things: that a Saviour was coming (and who God was that was sending this Saviour), that people wanted sin (i.e. what not to do), and that people could not make themselves right on their own. Second thing is that we have a very different situation post-cross. We do have the Spirit living within us to guide us into all truth and give us new desires as a branch connected to the Vine. Jesus said that it was a good thing that He was leaving that we would receive the Spirit who would live within us now that we were no longer separated from God and, because of that, we are able to live according to His truth, desiring the joy that He desires for His people, and having the power to live in this way and be sanctified through the Spirit at work in us. Thirdly, just as I said before, the Old Testament painted so many amazing portraits for us of this Saviour and what He would come and do and one of those things you can see through the book of Proverbs is this: Solomon was a wise human king, but as Jesus says in Luke 11:31: The Queen of the South “came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.” Something greater than Solomon is here. We are found in Christ as His people, connected to Him like branches to the Vine and, thus, we must consider that for all Solomon’s human wisdom, how much more wise is the wisdom that we are able to know through the Spirit at work in us to guide us according to spiritual wisdom. The wisdom of God surpasses worldly wisdom.

Alright, so the three main points to look for in a friend in community were laid out loosely as follows: find friends that sharpen you, that wound you, and who encourage you. Ok, sure. This sounds good. But let’s dissect things a little bit. At the beginning of this sermon, it had been said that there were different ways to hear from God and that the most important one was through community. Through other people. In the sharpening section it was said that men sharpen men so you can only be sharpened in community, not by yourself or any other way. In the wounding section it was said that you have to find other people who will say things that you probably don’t want to hear. And then there was the point about friends encouraging you. So, I just want to break these four ideas down a little bit more.

Again the points sound good: sharpening, wounding, and encouraging. But let’s dig a little further and read between the lines and look at a couple red flags with this. And the first one begins with the idea that community is the main way that you hear from God. So, according to this sermon the main way is that humans are hearing from humans. In a Christian setting (and I will be speaking strictly regarding this mindset and not any other), that should raise a few questions for a believer. Where are your sharpening, wounding and encouraging words coming from? Man’s subjective truth? Do you see what I’m saying here? Godly Christian fellowship must be rooted in God’s objective truth. That is the only way that you know how to be a good friend. Both parties in the friendship must go to God’s word first and spend time in contemplating His truth before you come to the relationship. This is how you come into the friendship as worshippers. This is how you know to point each other into the joy that God desires for His people, how you say to one another “let’s walk together in what is right” which should not be burdensome for a Christian. God must come before that friendship. God must stand above the friendship and the friendship must be seen through Him. If you begin with community and don’t point people to their Bibles first, what encouragement and sharpening will you be giving? The advice will be rooted in human ideas. People could be giving you advice that is about worldly ways of doing business, or worldly ways of being in a marriage relationship, or worldly ways of thinking about the marriage relationship before your enter it. We only hear from God through His word. And what people say to you about God should come from them studying His word or dwelling on time spent considering His truth and, again, you will only be hearing God’s word in that way, too. How can you sharpen, wound and encourage, if the focus is on community that is at a higher level than looking to God’s word?

Second point. The iron sharpening iron part. The sermon said that you can only be sharpened in community so if anyone says that you cannot be in community and be sharpened, that is someone being conceited. First off, I should mention that both of those verses in Proverbs are not connected to one another and they both do not say that they are about friendship in the local church community. I’m going to come back to the iron sharpening iron part, but what I want to focus on first is the comment that we cannot be sharpened outside of community. This, to me, highlights something that needs to be addressed and to answer it I would again say that we have to go back to the point that the Bible is the biggest sharpener of all. We have to read that word to even know how to sharpen each other. The Bible, and the Spirit, more importantly, who is guiding us into all truth and convicting us of wrongdoing and sanctifying us through the understanding of what it meant for Christ to come and what it means for Christians who are found in Him, this is the sharpener. Time spent with God, beholding God, gazing at the depths of wonder found in this considering of who He is and how big He is and how small we are, this enables you to understand what a delight it is that we can be all-of-life worshippers of Him, who have His grace and truth pour upon us through Christ, and causes our desires to change that we would want to live in the joyful worship of Him in our work and marriages and parenting relationships and friendships that will look very different than the world. This has to come first and this is how we are sharpened first and foremost. Not through people as the only and main way. Paul would never say to stay at a place that is spiritually unhealthy so that you are still attending a local church or so that you are in community, but he would also never say that your personal relationship with Christ is through other people. The Bible says that there are no more mediators between God and man anymore. Christ made a way for you to go directly to God and hear from Him through His word through the Spirit guiding you into its’ truth. I’m not opposed to the idea that friends will sharpen, or build up, friends - sure, when you talk to your friends, you should be pointing each other to Jesus and His word, you should be talking about Him and what He has said about Himself, you should hold fast to the joy and the hope that you have as Christian believers rooted in a mighty and sovereign God. When you meet. Not that’s the only way. It can’t be the only way or else what are you sharpening each other into? How are you sharpening each other? You cannot sharpen each other without first being sharpened by the word yourself, alone with God.

The next point is regarding the verse in Proverbs about the wounds of a friend being better than the kisses of an enemy. Firstly, this verse was used in conjunction with the iron sharpening iron verse throughout the sermon, so we have to kinda see how it was seen in a similar light. But I would like to say that this verse is not specifically talking about friendship in community. While yes, it is true that having a friend who points you to the joy that God desires for His people is important in a godly friendship, this passage could also be talking about how flattery is deceptive and that being wounded by a friend, or upset by a friend, is better than the deviousness of the unreal-ness of the other. If we set that verse aside momentarily, though, I wanted to talk about two things here. Firstly, what I would want to ask, similar to the sharpening section, is if the Bible is not viewed as the first, let alone the primary, way of hearing from God, and the community is seen as the only way of sharpening each other, then where is your “wounding” advice coming from? What does the definition of “wounding” even mean in this sermon? Is the advice coming to you even right advice in the first place? Is it based on looking to God instead of man and not wanting it to be about man’s glory instead of God’s? You have to be able to discern the root and the motivation of the advice that is being given to you if man is the primary source and the Bible is not pointed to as the main sharpener. Again if you go with the notion that the Proverbs verse is talking about community, it raises a few questions: why would a friend pointing you to the joy that God desires for you wound you if you are a believer? Wouldn’t you also be wanting to go after what the right way would be? Take other ways of looking at this: when God refines us or convicts us, does that hurt a Christian? He causes us to see something and, as Christians with new desires and a heart that wants to consider things in light of Him and the joy of relationship with Him, it should fill you with a “yeah...” and a “thank You” and a “wow, He took me out of that!” and a “woah, He showed me the sadness that is found in that other thing and the delight that is found over here.” It’s not an “uh, now I have to stop doing that?!” Do you see what I’m saying? From the context of this passage in Proverbs, it just doesn’t seem to fit with what the sermon was focusing on - community in a local church - because it leaves a whole bunch of questions unanswered in its usage.

Maybe my next thought will help us out here. In the sermon, the three points were laid out and something of the sort was said like “what of the three is most appealing to you and what is most difficult?” And I mean, how it was worded and explained, yeah, the wounding one wouldn’t be the most appealing option. But here’s the deal. I talked about this in the previous blog post. It’s a subtle focus shift but it’s good to discern. I spoke about how, depending on where you’re rooted, small groups/accountability groups can often be a place to bemoan the difficulty of not doing what people actually want to do. “Oh it’s so hard to want to keep my eyes exclusively on my spouse” or “It’s so hard to communicate with my wife/husband.” It’s a subtle shift but it’s an important one to detect because instead of seeing the joy that God desires for His people as delight, the focus here sees this as a burden and those who say it as “upsetting you.” Besides the fact that the Bible tells us to be discerning, to judge those whom you may take counsel from according to fruit, to not give your pearls to the pigs, it also says that friends will encourage each other by together beholding the words of God and who He is and what He had done and they will point each other to walk in the joy that God desires for His people. When believers point each other to what is good to do (according to God’s, and not man’s, wisdom), to the joy that God desires for them, this isn’t considered burdensome by them, like others may think it is. Let me paint a quick picture. If you are speaking to someone who professes to be a Christian and that person says “Look at the drugs, it’s hard not to take the drugs, isn’t it? Let’s take drugs” you would be like, “No thanks” and you wouldn’t take offence to that. You wouldn’t even bemoan the fact that you aren’t joining in with them. With the new desires of your heart and being rooted in the Vine, you would be like “yeah, I’m not interested in that.” Now if there was another friend who came up to you who professes to be a Christian and that person said, “I want to worship God. We’ve seen this and that about Him. Let’s help each other look to Him. We aren’t interested in taking the drugs, we’re not even looking at them. Let’s look to Him and the joy that He wants for us.” Wouldn’t that be a delight and not a burden? How is that “hurting” me? Do you see that different focus of not even looking at the drugs? In both of these scenarios the believer wouldn’t take offence. It’s not like in the second option the believer would be like “Ok, but, argh, I just want to do the drugs and you’re telling me something I don’t want to hear!” Do you see the difference? Obviously the drugs example is an extreme one and probably in all cases people wouldn’t be like yeah that’s a good thing to do, but the point that I wanted to show was the focus. That’s why I’m saying the usage of this verse from Proverbs for this particular sermon about friendship in community raised more questions than it gave answers to because, if the person saying “let’s walk in the joy that God desires for His people” in the above example is “wounding” in the sense of “upsetting” their friend in a negative way, that would be a little eye opening. Because a believer who sees the joy that is found bound in relationship with God and in all that He desires for His people to know in the worship of Him, they won’t find it a begrudging task to worship Him in response to knowing Him - they will already be wanting to do this in their own lives anyway. Having seen God in His word, they will want to live in light of their new headship, not delighting in sin and the glory of man, but delighting in Him and the different way of looking at life through the joy that He desires for them as those saved by His saving work. And the friendships will be about walking together in this joy that is found in their “new desire” lives, beholding Him, coming at the conversations, not with the wisdom of man in view that looks exactly like the rest of the world, but with branch-like lenses attuned to the Vine.

I’m not going to touch as much on the encouragement part because the basis remains the same: giving encouragement based on what? Giving encouragement rooted in what motivation? Man’s pursuits? If you don’t start with the Bible and beholding God, what encouragement will you be giving your friend? Because encouragement, true encouragement, must rest in and be rooted in the steadfast truth that says that God is sovereign, His plan of salvation is steadfast, His promises are certain because we know who He is, His work is completed. This must come from spending time contemplating these truths, both individuals looking to Him first. See how this must be your foundation? If not, it is rootless or cliched commentary about nothingness.

Ok, so as was mentioned before, it was suggested that I maybe should expand on the loyalty aspect of the previous sermon and all I want to say about that is: there is a difference between loyalty that is contingent on man - the loyalty is directed toward the people, it rests in the men - instead of the loyalty being directed towards God and the friendship falls under that. In light of that, here’s my attempt, as asked, to write about what Christian fellowship is and is not:

Christian fellowship - good, godly Christian fellowship - is so different.

It’s not just community for the sake of community.

It’s not a popularity group, focused on the fun and games over the content.

It’s not a competitive friendship where both parties are trying to complete their spiritual checklist in competition with each other, but yet needing each other to be able to complete the checklist because the community is part of the checklist.

It’s not a strings attached, “I have to get something back from the friendship” relationship.

It’s not a Facebook-like friendship where it’s image management or an “I’m talking about the checklist points that I’ve done” type of relationship, but then nobody actually listens to each other and truly knows each other because it’s not about actually hearing.

It’s not doing your community things because you’ve been told to do something as a takeaway in the sermon.

It’s not ritualistic, task-focused relationship.

It’s not community where prayer is a sermon takeaway to do with people, or treating Him like a genie, or about people having to pray things for Him to do things because otherwise His hands are tied by bigger humans.

And it’s definitely not unthinking, content-less loyalty to man.

But Christian fellowship is different.

Christian fellowship puts God first, above the friendship, in order to truly know how to be a friend rightly.

It is about beholding Him together, looking to Him, worshipping Him. Coming together as worshippers first to walk beside each other as we worship Him in our individual lives.

It is about reflecting on His objective truth and desiring, as friends, to look to that together to know the great joy that He desires for His people.

It is not about spending time saying “oh, it’s so hard not to do the worldly things I actually want to do” but it’s a switch, a turning, like I said above, to say “I’m not even looking at that stuff. Let’s help each other run after this amazing joy found in what He wants for us.”

It’s caring about the internals.

It’s being real, no masks, and saying that, yeah, things might be hard or there might be a difficult stretch of time that someone is experiencing, but you are looking to God and encouraging one another in the remembrance of who He is - in truth. The internal, the content, the theology is important in the friendship. It’s what the friends cling to, remind each other of, and, because of this looking to His word, they see themselves as very small and delight in His bigness, knowing that He and not man deserves all glory.

It’s prayer that is looking for His will to be done and going to speak with Him in the understanding that He is so much greater. It’s not about man being bigger than Him. It’s about the wondrous fact that we can even go and speak with Him - that He did all that was necessary for us to be able to come to Him in prayer - because He knows it’s for our greatest joy and greatest good.

It’s meaningful and intentional because it is focused on conversation about Him that is focused on Him and not us. It starts out deep.

Real friendship is so much deeper than the loyalty that’s being described, because that loyalty is rooted in man. It’s rooted in the idea that, regardless of the situation, you will just continue on with that person - thick or thin, right or wrong. No thanks. If someone wants this, if someone holds this up as their friendship standard or spouse standard, do you get that they are wanting this kind of friendship? That you’re just going to go along with them with whatever and you just have to be ok with it and, in most cases, join in with it instead of wanting to grow and pursue joy and put God above man? Remember, grace is that God saved us that we might be sanctified. He doesn’t love us as we are, He saved us and made us new and changed us and is changing us to be conformed to the image of his Son in whom we are hid. Having grace doesn’t mean that we don’t care about sin. Grace is at the root of the incredible promise that we are transformed and we will not, as believers, be ok with sin - it will bother us - and, instead, we would want to pursue the better thing: God and the joy in Him. I would want someone who isn’t thinking about loyalty in a content-less way. I would want someone who is not coming at the relationship from this “loyalty in man” vantage point, with this backdoor mentality, but, instead, are thinking of the friendship through God. Do you see what I mean? A real godly friend will look to God how to be a good friend, put Him above you, pursue Him with you, look to Him first, and, thus, the both of you will see His glory and will hear His word in your conversations, will know the joy and hope found in Him in remembering all that He has done, and will delight in walking in the joy that He desires within the bounds of relationship with Him. Do you see the difference?

Ultimately I write this blog post thinking of my kids because my prayer for them is that, as they grow to adulthood, they would see that real godly friendship isn’t about being the same age as another believer. It’s not about being in the same life stage. It’s about being worshippers together. I pray that they would wait, and not settle, until good, godly friendships come into their lives. Even if that means that they are alone for a period of time. That it would be about the quality of the friendships instead of the quantity of the people. That it would be about finding their identity and acceptance in God so that they can look for friendships rooted in Him instead of the emptiness of friendships seeking the attention of man. That they would value the deep, meaningful friendships that behold God together and point each other to the delight that is found in Christ, where the conversations are filled with His truth and the life of His presence is known. That they would look for friendships where both parties need God more than they need the friendship and that they would take the time to distinguish between this and what is not a friend - even if it means being “disloyal” according to the current definition of the word so that they can find the great joy found in friendship that is loyal to God.