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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 4:11
Well, this morning we continue on in Ecclesiastes chapter 4 as we've begun this sort of short little series, just trying to hold together several passages here at the end of chapter 4, titled Becoming Companions.
And within that, the idea is that we need to grow in our companionship as brothers and sisters in a church body, and what can best serve that need of growth is by becoming good friends, by understanding the place and significance of friendship in the Christian life.
We of course entered into this by looking at verses 7 through 8 and the condemnation of being all alone as a result of working but never sharing, toiling but never passing on. I returned, I saw vanity under the sun, one who was alone without companion.
It was interesting as I discovered this week in the screw tape letters, one of the things that the demon screw tape rejoices over is the fact that in modern Christian writings, he says, there's to be found few of the old warnings about worldly vanities, the choice of friends, and the value of time.
So the demon is rejoicing, nowadays they don't write Christian books that press warnings about worldly vanities, the choice of friends, or the value of time. And in my mind, what have we been looking at in Ecclesiastes but the emptiness of vanity, the choice of friends here in chapter 4 being so important, and the value of time.
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. We considered that last week, friends that save, that know how to rescue out of the pit, verse 11.
Again, if two lie down together they will keep warm, but how can one be warm alone? That'll be our focus this morning, friends that keep. And then verse 12, though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
As we said last week, all three of these images seem to be the experience of an ancient traveler. Life being viewed as a pilgrimage, and along that pilgrimage there is a need for rescue if one was to fall into a ditch or into a pit.
There's a need for warmth so that you don't freeze in the deep cold of the night, and there's a need for protection or defense along the way lest thieves or robbers come and overtake you. So there's a rescuer, a comforter, and a defender, and that's the idea of the friend, the faithful friend here in Ecclesiastes 4.
And as we said, this is another better than statement. Better than one being alone is two. Two are better than one because it is not good for man to be alone. Michael Haken, who's a historian of the church, he's written several little booklets and a somewhat larger book called Iron Sharpens Iron on biblical friendship, seeing throughout his studies of church history how important friendship has always been in Christian thought and in Christian experience.
And so he relates the friendship among some of the ancients like Basil of Caesarea or Augustine, or figures like Spurgeon or Owen or Edwards. He says, for the Christian, true friends are those with whom one can share the deepest things of one's life.
Someone that bears the burdens of our soul, of our hearts. In other words, someone who knows the nights that we face, the cold that we experience. They're people with whom one can be transparent and open.
And in the course of conversation about spiritual things, the believer will find strength and encouragement for the Christian life. Now when I think about the night and this idea of being warmed, I think about comfort and I think about encouragement, a refreshment.
And that's how I want to look at verse 11 together this morning. The first way we'll look at it is the need for the comfort of friendship, which is to say we experience the cold of life's night. The cold of life's night.
And generally speaking, the way we speak about an arc toward the end of our life is the sunset of life or the impending night of life. But we also can use the image of darkness or night as a time of trial or trouble.
There's a coldness that comes. It's the experience of trial. It's the discomfort of trial. So the coldness of the night brings about through friendship, comfort. When we have a faithful friend and we're experiencing the coldness of night, we receive comfort.
And the other way we'll look at coldness this morning is the coldness of the heart. So it's not the coldness without, the coldness of difficulty in life or circumstance or trial, but also the coldness within, the coldness of my heart, the dryness of my spiritual walk.
And that's when a faithful friend will bring refreshment, another form of comfort. And I hope you'll see how closely tied together comfort and refreshment are. If two lie down together, they will keep warm.
We need to be friends that know how to keep, friends that know how to keep. If two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one be warm alone? Well, to start with, the coldness of the night being trial, difficulty, circumstance, the coldness of that night is what makes the warmth so warm.
The colder the night, the warmer the warmth of a friend. The more cold you are at night, how much farther goes that little bit of warmth? If you've ever felt the icicle hands of someone with poor circulation, and it seems like as soon as you give them a handshake, they light up, and then they grab your hand, and you're like, God, let go of me.
Alicia has icicle ankles at night, and I'm usually kicking them away from me. She disrupts my comfort. Cold seeks after warmth. And it's the coldness of night that makes warmth so warm. So here's the first point I want to make.
A friend can't change the temperature of the night. A cold night is a cold night. I can't change that. I cannot take the trial away as a friend, though I might want to. I can't actually change your health or your difficulty.
I might try. There might be small things I can do to help you up and along the way. But the coldness of the night is something that I cannot change. However, I can change your experience of the coldness of the night.
So the cold night is going to be the cold night. But if I'm close to you, if I'm present with you as a friend, I can warm you. That will change your experience of the coldness of the night. In other words, the trial is going to be there.
But your experience of the trial will be different as a result of friendship. The presence of a faithful friend might be the difference for how you endure the night. The presence of a faithful friend might be the only reason you endure the night.
Because there was someone there to keep you warm. You were still shivering. Your lips were still blue. But you actually made it. And you made it in large part because the means of friendship was used by God for salvation.
Such warmth in the midst of a cold night is what I would call the friendliness of friendship. We think of friendliness as warmth, as something warm, a warm smile, a warm embrace, a warm regard. That's the friendliness of friendship.
G .K. Chesterton says, only friendliness produces friendship. And then we must look far deeper into the soul of man for what produces friendliness in the first place. Only friendliness brings about friendship.
You don't become friends with someone because they gave you an ice cold glare. You become friends with someone because they were warm to you. They seemed warm. I'm drawn to this person for some reason.
We seem to get along. Where did that warmth come from? Chesterton is rightly saying, we have to go really deep into the soul of man to understand the source of that warmth. And what is the source of that warmth?
Well, as Christians we know, anything that's good comes down from above. If there's warmth, if there's light, it's of God. You look at a figure like Abraham and he endured year after year of the cold night of waiting in desperation for a promise to come true.
And he was losing heart and stumbling in his way. And we can marvel at this father of our faith and say, how did he make it? How did he endure? How can I be faithful like that? And the answer is, it wasn't just Abraham's faith.
But more than that, it was Abraham's faithful friend because Abraham was a friend of God. And however cold and dark that night may have been, he had a support and a warmth and a lifeline that carried him through to the fullness.
That's the God of all comfort, the God of all hope. As when I was in Chicago a few weeks ago, and as only he could preach it, K. Edward Copeland, he said, it ain't who you are, it's who you with. In other words, it's not how you're going about your walk of faith, it's who's with you.
And you have God with you. What does Paul say in 2 Corinthians? He's the God of all comfort who comforts us in our tribulation. And one of the means that God uses to comfort us is the friends that he orchestrates in our lives.
We're going to explore this a little bit more in a couple of weeks, but let me just make the point here as as an introduction. We have to trust the providence of God to bring about friendships. This is going to be more at the end of chapter four when we talk about how friendships fail.
But the same providence of God that gave me my unique personality, as unique as my DNA or thumbprint, the same uniqueness of my gifting and my leaning and my interests and capacities, that same providence will also bring about unique relationships and friendships with others.
And I can trust God with that. I can trust God that he will supply around me relationships to invest in and to cultivate and to build. He has uniquely orchestrated people in my life that I will benefit from, that will be means of securing my walk with him in ever deepening ways.
Let me just illustrate this for you. All right, let's just gallop through 2 Corinthians in three passages just to prove. 2 Corinthians chapter one. You'll notice how thematic this idea of comfort is to the apostle Paul in this letter, which at least part of this letter, if it's not a separate letter, is the letter of tears.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort who comforts us in all our tribulation that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
So God is the source of all comfort. We are comforted by that comfort as it comes through others. And that comfort that comes through others helps us know how we can comfort others. And the comfort that we've received is the comfort we give.
And all of this comes from God. That's Paul's experience. That's Paul's understanding. Look how he spells it out. 2 Corinthians seven, beginning in verse five. When we had come to Macedonia, our bodies had no rest.
We were troubled on every side. He's just relaying this is how difficult it was. Our bodies were giving out. We looked like zombies as we came to Macedonia. We had no rest. We were pressed in on every side.
Outside was conflict. Inside was fear. In other words, the night was cold. Nevertheless, God, notice the source. God, who comforts the damn cast, comforted us by the coming of Titus. You see that? Where's the comfort coming from?
God. Who's the comfort coming through? A friend. God, who comforted us with the coming of Titus. Titus now became a source, an extension of God's comfort. And then Paul says, in fact, we were also not only comforted by his coming, but by the comfort with which he was comforted in you.
When he came to you, you comforted him. And that comforted us. And all of this is of God, you see? And then how does he end the letter? 2 Corinthians 13. He says, finally, brethren, farewell. Become mature or become complete.
Be of good comfort. Be of one mind. Live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. So he says to this church, it's a very difficult time in his ministry and a difficult relationship with this church.
And he's relaying to them the source of all comfort, the hope of all comfort, the way that God uses other people in our lives for comfort. And then he said to the church as a blanket exhortation, be of good comfort to each other.
Be of good comfort to each other. Now, what is good comfort? How can we think of good comfort through the lens of Ecclesiastes 4, the idea of a friend knowing how to keep us warm in the coldness of the night, in the difficulty of our life, in the difficulty of our trial?
How can we be of good comfort? Well, something that I've been thinking about this week is how we have a comforter that we use as a noun. And I'm not talking about the Holy Spirit. I'm talking about why you'd go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
You actually buy in some vinyl case a rolled up comforter, a comforter. Now, what is that but an experience of warmth and rest and safety? It's why we allow children sometimes to have security blankets or comfort blankets and they get to age 13 and it's down to a square inch and nobody knows about it but them and their parents.
I don't have one of those, by the way, if you're wondering. A blanket that we call a comforter. That's an experience of warmth in the coldness of night. You bundle up in this thick blanket that sort of smothers over you and it keeps you very warm.
That is a good source of comfort in a cold night. How can we be a comforter in that sense for a friend that's going through a cold night? Well, let's consider how we can be of good comfort by looking at what is lousy comfort.
Paul's like, don't be lousy comforters. Be good comforters. Well, what would be a lousy comforter? Well, the first, I'm going to give you four, four lousy comforters so that by contrast we'll know how we can actually keep each other warm as friends in the coldness of night.
The first lousy comforter is this, a wet blanket, a wet blanket. Is there anything more infuriating than entering into the very place you expect to have comfort and warmth and finally let your body release into the bliss of sleep only to find that someone knocked over the Kool-Aid jug?
And now the very source of comfort becomes the source of discomfort. The very thing that was meant to be pleasant is now unpleasant. That's a wet blanket. Maybe the classic example of a wet blanket would be the friends of Job.
As we read in Job 16 after he's heard all of these torrents that are coming from his friends and they're barking up the tree. Here's what it is, Job. You just stop denying reality. Here's what it is. And none of it actually sticks to where Job's at in the moment.
But his friends don't know that. And so finally when Job responds after bearing under that assault of encouragement and exhortation, Job says this beginning in chapter 16. Job answered and said, I have heard many such thing.
Miserable comforters are you all. You guys are such lousy comforters. You guys are horrible friends. This is all you've been saying and you're barking up the wrong tree. He says, shall words of wind ever have an end?
In Job 21 verse 34 he says, how could you ever comfort me with empty words? Since falsehood remains in your answers. You think you know what's going on but you have no idea. So all your advice and perspective is empty.
And that's miserable comfort. That's a wet blanket. You speak of that which you do not know, that you do not understand. So that means that a faithful friend needs to understand the coldness of the night for what it is.
You cannot bring the right warmth if you don't know what the night is. Job's friends were barking up the wrong tree. That's why Job couldn't receive it. He couldn't be comforted by it. It was a wet blanket.
Let me twist that a little bit and say, for us who are less righteous than Job, it tends to be that we find words to be empty and we reject as miserable comfort the well-meaning advice of our friends because they're usually barking up the right tree.
They're going up the right tree. We're going, miserable comforters of you all. You've got it all wrong. And the friend's like, no, I don't. I know you. I know your night. I see the pit. I know where you're at.
And we dispel them and treat their words as empty because they're barking up the right tree, not the wrong tree. This is always touching on the faithful wounds of a friend. That sometimes we kick against the warmth.
Like that hotel blanket, they have the U .S. Marine Corps put the ends on. And you put your feet in there and it's like going into a stockade. I can't sleep like that. I have to kick it out and get the blankets loose.
It's a miserable comfort. But it's intended for my warmth. It's intended to be a form of help. It's a faithful wound of a friend that may be uncomfortable at first, but it is faithful and it is right.
And therefore, I should receive it. They know the night I'm in. They know the warmth I need, even if I reject it. When I am a king, enthroned on my own pride, in my arrogance, every contrary prophet seems like a troubler of Israel.
Have you come again, you troubler of Israel? I'm just here to tell you the truth. When I'm enthroned in arrogance, I will look down on right, sound, biblical advice as something that's against me rather than for me.
So not everything that we in our night feel to be a wet blanket is actually a wet blanket. It might be the best warmth we could ever find if we have eyes to see it. But of course, at the same time, that means that we have to be present enough to know the night that others are in.
I remember I had a very, very close friend when I was working at the Christian bookstore, when the Lord started really doing powerful things in my young life. And we spent an inordinate amount of time together.
We would hop in the canoe on Hickory Hills Lake in Lunenburg. His parents had a home there. We would be out on that canoe from morning till evening. This guy was built like a lumberjack. I remember going to the driving range with him, and he'd be knocking golf balls like 400 yards.
It was insane. Because he grew up canoeing. So he had this like Ajax strength. And I'm there like holding the paddle, and he's motorboating along. And we would spend all that time catching fish, sharing devotions, praying, talking about life.
We had this relationship that was thicker than blood. And I remember the opportunity came when his brother invited him to live with him in Maryland. And I knew it wasn't going to be good because his brother wasn't really walking with the Lord.
And there were some signs of weakness in my friend. And so I was exhorting him, and I was begging him, please don't go. Listen, you've got a good thing going here. But he decided, no, I'm going. And so I wrote out a card for him as he left, and I was looking for a passage to put in the card.
And I came across Proverbs 27, verse 10, which says, do not forsake your own friend, nor go to your brother's house in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor nearby than a brother far away. What I was trying to get, and I was like, wow, thank you, Lord.
That was pretty much on the nose. Don't forsake your friend and go to your brother's house. That's kind of like the perfect verse. But he'd already made up his mind, and he was bent to go. And what I was trying to get across to him was, your brother doesn't know you like I know you.
He doesn't know your walks like I know your walk. He doesn't know your night like I know your night. Don't go there. He'll be of no help to you. And then you'll be of no help to me, because you know my walk and my night, too.
We spend a lot of time getting there. That's the idea of a friend. As it were to be like the Lord's taikiki. It was taikikis that Paul speaks of in Ephesians and Colossians. And he says, a beloved brother, a fellow servant in the Lord, he will tell you all the news about me.
I'm sending him to you for this very purpose, so that he would know your circumstances and comfort your hearts. That's a friend. He's going to learn about the night that you're in, and he's going to bring warmth to you.
That's a friend. That's a friend. A wet blanket may have the desire to bless, but the act of blessing becomes the curse. That's a wet blanket. Proverbs puts it this way, 27 14, he who blesses his friend with a loud voice rising early in the morning, it will be counted a curse to him.
When you just get your eyes closed and your friend comes right up to your ear and says, God bless you. That's not a blessing. That's a curse. The idea is what's meant to be an encouragement or a comfort becomes a burden and a difficulty.
So that's the first form of lousy comfort, the wet blanket. The second form of lousy comfort is a short blanket. If you're blessed with height, as some of us, sometimes you have, we tend to run out of all the good blankets in our home.
They're always in the wash. And so I'm reduced to using one of my kid's blankets. And it's only four and a half feet long. And I'm six feet tall, which means all night long, I have to either choose covering my shoulders or my toes.
And it's the battle of the night to try to cover as much as I can. And that's the idea of a short blanket. It's not very comforting when part of you is unmet or undoubted with. And that would be comfort where there's not enough time or too few words.
That's the fly-by comfort. Oh, so sorry, bless your heart. And then you're on. My toes are open. That has been of little comfort to me. Paul in Acts, when he's going through the churches of Macedonia in Acts 16, it says, and with many words, he comforted them.
It was not a fly-by comfort. With many words, he spent time comforting them. That's the idea. James 2 says, if a brother or sister is without food or without clothes, and one of you says to them, depart in peace, be warm, be filled.
But you don't give them the things that are needed for the body. What does it profit? That's a friend that is a short blanket. I'm sorry you're cold, be warm. I'm sorry you're hungry, be filled. But they never actually spend the time or give the care or share the words.
That would be warmth. That would be comfort. The image I have of this in my mind, I don't know if this will be helpful or harmful, but the film Titanic. Men and women experience the ending of that film very differently.
Because the women are melting and going, oh, isn't that beautiful? As they're watching the final moments of Rose clinging to the door in the frigid North Atlantic, and Jack with frost on his eyebrows in the water clinging to the side.
The women go, oh, it's so romantic. The guys are going, there's enough room on the door for him too. They do the overhead shot and you're like, what, why is she hocking the door? Like, you could live and get on the door too.
That's a short blanket. That's like, yeah, I'm close, but you're gonna freeze to death. I've got the life jacket and the trench coat and I'm on the floating timber, but I'm just close enough to watch you freeze to death.
That's a short blanket. Not enough time, not enough words, not enough presence, not a faithful friend. And this is why faithful friends are few and far between because not everyone can be a friend like this to everyone.
Different sociologists talk about different levels of relationship and you have something like a stranger to acquaintance to companion to friend, and I would say companion could be the circle of the church, but within that is a very small circle of friends, confidants, someone that knows the nights, the burdens of my soul, someone that won't let me freeze, someone that won't be a short blanket to me.
I expect short blankets from companions. They don't have time for much more than that. They don't know me well enough to be more than that, but a friend knows me well enough to be a blanket that can cover me and keep me warm.
The third lousy form of comfort is a weighted blanket. I don't know where these came from, but it's like lead lined and somehow you're pressed to the bed frame and hopefully you don't have some medical emergency because you won't be able to reach for a phone or anything.
You'll just be trapped under that. And I think the idea there is the opposite of the short blanket. A weighted blanket is way too much. It's an overkill of words. It's so much presence that someone suffocates in the midst of it.
I'm gonna be a faithful friend to you. I'm gonna eat, sleep, and blink right next to you. You'll never be alone with your own thoughts because I'm gonna be a faithful friend to you. That's a weighted blanket.
It's a wise friend that knows when you need to be there and when it's okay not to be. Job says in Job 16 that his friends are weighted blankets to him. He says, beginning in verse four, you know, I could speak like you do.
If your soul were in my soul's place, I would heap up words against you and shake my head at you. You see what he's saying? All you're doing is putting all this weight of your words on me, and it's like this weight that's not comforting.
You think the more you say, the more help that you're giving me, but you're only making it worse for me. This blanket is suffocating me. In Pilgrim's Progress, it's interesting that evangelists seem to know when he's needed and when it's okay to go.
He's not there to prevent Christian from going into the slow of despond. He's not even there in the middle of the slow of despond, but he's there in that last little bit of strength when he's needed most.
That's a faithful friend. Knows when he's needed, knows the night, knows what he's needed for, knows how to be of comfort. It was Tolkien, J .R. Tolkien, reflecting on C .S. Lewis's life and friendship, and he said, I suppose the greatest influence that Lewis had on my life through our friendship was sheer encouragement.
I thought, what a beautiful eulogy for a friend. What your friendship meant to me most through all these years was simply this. You encouraged me. When it was hard to move forward, when things were tangled in our relationship, you just encouraged me.
I don't know that a faithful friend could ever be more than that, an encourager, a comforter. Isn't that what the Holy Spirit is to the people of God? The comforter, the encourager, keep going. I know it's hard, I know you're weak, I know you're tired, but keep going.
That's a faithful friend. So we want, not these lousy comforters, what do we want? We want the snuggie. We want maximum comfort. We want a friend that covers us in micro-fleece and we have room to wiggle our fingers, room enough to fit a whole family under there.
That's snuggie comfort, that's faithful friendship. It's the warmth of embrace. It's a difference between people that we may be in the same room with, but they could never warm us like the warmth of a friend.
And the friend doesn't have to do much, they don't have to know much, sometimes they just have to be near, that's enough. I remember seeing this video in a holding cell and it was this wife and she had just learned some devastating news about her marriage and her family and her husband was clearly a man she did not know and did not understand, turned out to be a monster.
And this is all hitting her and totally destroying her. Destroying her life and she's just weeping and crying and there's two officers in that room and they're just there waiting for her as she's weeping to be able to answer the next question.
They've got their boards, they can't do much more than that, but just get the information so the investigation can continue. And then her father comes into that room. He has no idea why he's been called, but he just knows it's bad.
So he just walks in very tenderly, there's this old elderly man and he sits down in the chair and he goes kind of cautiously, is this a daddy daughter date? You know, like how bad is this? And she finally just bursts out in tears and he says, okay.
And he scoots his chair over to her and they just hold each other and she cries into him. Same room, same room, but only one could bring warmth in that kind of night. Only one could be of comfort in that kind of despair.
Everyone else can stand around and know the issues and see the pain, but they don't know how to warm. Their shoulder won't mean as much. That the kind of comfort that a friend can bring, the kind of means of grace that God gives through friendship is the embrace that says it will be okay because I'm here.
And I'm praying for you. When we're suffering the nights of life, sometimes the opinions of others fall like stones from a slingshot on us. But of course, it's the need to have this appreciation for the people that God has put in our path that even if they don't fully know or can't fully meet where we're at, to appreciate their presence in the way that God will use it.
If I'm rigid, I won't be able to appreciate my friends for what they are, for how God would seek to use them, for the comfort they're trying to be, even if that comfort is of little use to me in the peril of the night.
And I think that was something the Lord wanted Job to see. You know, you're miserable comforters. Yeah, but Job, they came, they came. They came and they mourned with you and they stayed with you and they sat with you and they're praying for you and they're trying to speak into your life.
It might feel like slingstones, it might fall on deaf ears. You might want to rebuke them and be rid of them, but those are faithful friends, even if they're barking up the wrong tree. And why do I think the Lord wanted Job to see that?
It's this fascinating causal construction in the Hebrew in Job 42, about how Job is restored. And his friends are there. They console him and comfort him and it's how it was always meant to be, but something had to change in Job's heart.
We read, and the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends. Isn't that fascinating? You would think it just says, and the Lord restored Job's losses. And the Lord gave him twice as much as he had before and all his brothers and sisters and acquaintances.
It doesn't say that. It says the Lord restored Job's loss when he prayed for his friends, when he started to see his friends in a different light. Wow, even when it didn't seem warm to me, they were there for my warmth.
Even when it didn't seem to be helpful to me, they were there to help me. And when I prayed for them, when I thanked God for them, then he restored me. And what they had been there for is what continues.
They came to him, they ate with him, they consoled him and they comforted him. That hadn't changed. Job changed. And if we're reading between the lines, it was the presence of the people that surrounded Job that brought Job to the Lord so the Lord could deal with Job.
And then it changed the way that Job related to them after the fact. Well, how can we be friends like this? We asked the question, where does comfort come from? And I just give two important sources, I believe, though there's certainly more, but I believe a faithful friendship like this, warmth in a cold night like this, comes from one of two things.
And the first thing is trust, trust. One source of comfort in a friendship is trust. We talked about this last week in terms of a marriage. The husband's heart safely trusts in his wife. I can risk my difficulty, my burden, my troubles, my failures, because my heart safely trusts in you.
You're not against me, you're for me. You're not gonna go broadcast it for my peril. You're going to, in wisdom, learn how to cover it and encourage me and even exhort me. So one source of the comfort of the friend is trust.
In fact, Augustine said, there's no greater comfort than unfeigned loyalty and affection between true friends. So he's saying it's the loyalty, it's the bond, it's the trust between friends that becomes the greatest source of comfort.
That I trust you, comforts me. Michael Hagen in his little book, Cultivating Biblical Friendship, he gives some pointed advice toward this end. He says, one of the ways we cultivate biblical friendship is we build trust.
You don't start out with trust, you build it. You build it with a friend. This kind of trust in a friendship is distinct from charity that we show toward all. You can show charity without building trust sort of friendship.
This is something slightly different. Certainly, trust involves charity, and in some ways, trust begins with charity and is maintained by charity, but the trust that you're building on is a foundation for friendship.
This means that you build trust by proving yourself to be faithful over time, giving opportunities to your friend to do the same. Not creating hoops for them to jump through or tests that they have to pass, but just living enough life in proximity that they've proven themselves trustworthy.
That's the idea. That means that they're gonna have to be vulnerable to you, and you're gonna have to be vulnerable to them. In time, if you're close enough with them, then they'll see your weaknesses and your needs and your flaws.
How they respond, how they react to those things will show you their level of trustworthiness. So what you don't do is say, I really like them. I think they'd be a good friend. I'm gonna go dump everything about my life on them.
That's unwise. Don't do that. This is something you sow, you water, you build gradually. You take small steps over time that you didn't even know you were taking until you look back and say, hey, we're really close, and we've been through a lot together.
Other people have come and gone, but wow, we have a pretty strong foundation in this relationship. What is that but a foundation of trust? And when you have that foundation, as Haken wisely says, don't be quick to throw that out the window when there's something that causes it to stumble along the way.
You didn't share your French fries with me at the pub yesterday. You're dead to me. No, you take the licks and the shots, and sometimes you still have memories of a disappointment or a failure, and it kind of sours as you think of that friend, and you just sort of dispel that and say, yeah, but what's that against all this?
That's a foundation of trust, and you'll never have the warmth in a cold night without that kind of trust. You won't allow anyone to be that source of comfort to you. It doesn't mean, of course, that you can afford to be naive because people can be deceitful, and we all have agendas and motivations that can cause others to be useful for us, but they're not useful to us for a time.
That's why, as we said last week from the Puritans, they talked about winter friends versus summer friends, fair weather friends, friends that are here because things are good and it's gain to them, but they're not around when things get hard.
Also, bad company corrupts good behavior, and so just because you get along doesn't mean you should go along. You have to be thoughtful. You have to be wise about the friends that'll be very, very close.
To choose a friend is a hard thing. Moms, dads, to help your children navigate choosing and maintaining friends is a very hard thing. Sometimes the moms and the dads sit back and they feel like they're waiting for a slow car accident to finally hit.
I don't think this relationship is good. This friendship has been nothing but trouble, and I don't really know what to do about it, and so you have to start at a young age helping your children to navigate wise friendships, friendships built on trust, friendships that are proven, friendships that have a godly end, and of course, you learn to distinguish things that will separate those kinds of friendships.
Proverbs is very clear. Whispering separate friends, right? A gossiping tongue will destroy a relationship. Why? Because trust is eroded. The foundation is dissolved. You can't have a friendship any longer.
It's the small cells of whisperings and slanders that become a cancer to the best relationships, but within that, where whisperings are even conformed, you learn to distinguish between betrayal and disappointment.
Friends will always disappoint. That doesn't mean they've betrayed. We will always let each other down, but that doesn't mean there was some malicious intent or motive in that. It just means we're sinners, and we sin against each other, and we fail each other.
Jesus restored Peter after a betrayal and made him into a friend that he wasn't. That's what the love of Jesus did to Peter's life. Peter, if you love me, feed my sheep. Don't be overconfident in yourself like you were the night the rooster crowed, but rather, put your confidence in me and depend on me and feed them and love them as I'm loving you.
He restored that friend. He distinguished between the disappointment of Peter's rejection and failure, but he knew where Peter's heart really was. Peter didn't know where his own heart was, but the Lord did.
Peter, I know how weak you are. You don't realize how weak you are. You're in the moment. You're full of zeal, but when you're all alone, when the night is cold and there's just a little fire, even a slave girl will be able to get you to betray me.
So as Hagen says, if a friend disappoints us, it hurts, but it doesn't display necessarily a character flaw or a break in the foundation. We stumble, and in those experiences, we learn how to rely on God more.
We understand more about the perfect friendship of Christ who never fails us, never leads us astray. Let me say one more thing along these lines. You cannot allow the fear of that failure, the fear of potential loss or betrayal, the fear of a foundation being broken up from ever causing you to trust others again.
That's just not walking by faith. That's ignoring the importance that the scriptures place on friendship in the Christian life. That's essentially saying, I'd rather freeze to death than trust someone to warn me.
And let me just say, if that's your attitude, you will freeze to death. You will apostatize. God has given you a means of grace in faithful friendships. So you have to see that and pursue that. You have to build a foundation of trust.
You can't afford to jettison it and think you'll come out on the other side, okay. So don't let fear or cynicism keep you from building that kind of trust toward that kind of friendship. This is how Hagen puts it.
The walls you build to shut others out will not protect you, they will imprison you. Isn't that what Ecclesiastes 4 is saying? Woe to you when you fall into a pit and there's no one to help you. He doesn't say, woe to the people that won't help you.
When you fall into a pit, they were so cruel to you. Lousy friends, you just have to pull yourself up by your own, he doesn't say that. He says, listen, if you've so pushed others away, woe to you that you have no one to help you.
You weren't willing to walk by faith and build a foundation of trust. Woe to you when you perish or freeze. Because you never took the risk to find a friend. When God surrounded you with opportunities and potential, just for that means of grace, woe to you.
This is what we said last week. People turn to social media because the mirage of relationships on social media is low risk. What does that tell you? But that building a friendship is high risk. Ooh, I could get hurt, I could get crushed.
The very thing that might be warmth to me could also throw me into the ice chamber. Every relationship is risk. As Hugh Black says, it's a risk we must take. Because although nearly every sorrow in our earthly life involves others, nearly all of our joys in earthly life involve others as well.
No risk, no warmth. So that's what I would say about the coldness of the night, meaning the trials and difficulties of life around us. Let me be brief about the coldness within. Not the coldness without, but the coldness within.
Coldness of the heart. This is really tied to refreshment. John Owen says, we are but dust, and God in his providence makes general allowances which are fitted for our refreshment and relief as we pilgrimage.
Which include tangible provisions, good gifts, good means, as well as intangible blessings like friendship. And he says we greatly stand in need of these things. We cannot be faithful pilgrims without them.
So I want you to see that this kind of comfort, this kind of warmth is actually intertwined with refreshment. This is when our heart is cold. This is when my walk is dry. That's when a faithful friend will be a source of refreshment and comfort to me.
Philemon 7, we have great joy and comfort in your love because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed by you, brother. Do you see how refreshment and comfort are tied there? We've been comforted because you have refreshed us.
When we were weary, when we found it difficult, you restored our strength. You refreshed me. That's the idea. The first thing I'd say about refreshment is it's something that should happen often between friends.
Paul says the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus for he often refreshed me. He was that guy. He refreshed me. And some of us have those people in our lives. Frankly, God gives Onesiphori to the church.
Refreshers in the church. They're just go-getters. They're back-slappers. They're come on, let's go. They're encouragers. They're sons of Barnabas. And praise God for that. But never take that for granted because who's gonna refresh the refresher?
Who's gonna comfort the comforter? Who's gonna heal the physician? We need to learn how to be of encouragement to those who encourage us, how to refresh those who refresh us because no one can do it consistently forever.
So I'm only ever using a friend because they're helpful to me when I'm weak or weary and I'm never seeking to return the favor. And I am being a poor friend. In fact, I'm being no friend at all. Refreshment should be happening often between friends.
How can I pray for you? How can I encourage you? How can I help you? I've noticed this lately. I thought of you and I got this for you. It should happen often. Think of this idea of refreshment. It shouldn't be something sparse.
It should be something generous. When you go to a conference or a wedding or something and they say we have right now refreshments in the back corner and everyone sort of gets up and waddles over to the refreshment area, what do you expect to find?
Platters, plural, refreshments. You don't find thimbles of punch and one little platter of Cheez-Its and everyone's breaking them into microns to share with each other. That's not refreshment. Refreshment is something lavish.
Here's the spread. I want to encourage you. You're in a dry time. I'll be your well. And what does that imply? But secondly, refreshment is something that requires work. It means I actually have to cultivate means of grace in my life so that I can be a source of refreshment.
So that I can pray because I've cultivated prayer in my life. So that I can share a word in season or even out of season. Why? Because I've devoted my mind to God's word and I've hidden it in my heart.
That's the idea. I'll know how to be a faithful friend if I'm putting the work into friendship. Being, availing myself with the means of grace so that I can dispense those means of grace to others. A body that does this is a body that is mature.
It's a body that's melodious, harmonious. Times of refreshing have come. And it comes through the spirit of God. The spirit of God comes and he grants repentance so that times of refreshing can come. That's what Peter says in Acts chapter three and he's bringing Joel chapter two into that.
He says, repent therefore and be converted so that your sins may be blotted out so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. This is what the spirit's going to do. What does the spirit do in David?
Remember when David becomes Saul's armor bearer? And whenever Saul was troubled, in fact would fly into fits of rage. We read that David would take up the harp and play it and Saul would become refreshed, soothed, and well in his own right mind.
The troubling spirit would depart from him. That's a faithful friend. Saul wasn't a very faithful friend to David, hurling spears at him. But David was a faithful friend to Saul. Though it's hard to be in your presence when you're like this, I'm gonna pull out my harp.
I'm gonna come near, I'm gonna sing a song to you. I'm gonna pray for you, I'm gonna have a word for you. You're in my thoughts, I care for you, you're in my mind. That's someone who's filled with the spirit.
In a church that's filled with the spirit in that way, what does that look like? Ephesians five, speaking to one another in Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, making melody in our hearts to the Lord. That's companionship made malonious by friendships being faithful.
That's the idea. Well, as we come to the end here, as we think about companionship, we're reminded, of course, that the source of comfort, as we saw in 2 Corinthians one, is God himself. God comforts us.
In all of our tribulation, and he uses the coming of Titus, the coming of people in this body to be a source of that comfort. This is how God will comfort us in our weary pilgrim ways. And you think about this paradigm we've been looking at from the hymn, that Jesus is the paradigm of a true friend, of a faithful friend.
Who has found a friend like him? Has there ever been a friend so faithful, so true? And we look at the servant songs running through Isaiah, beginning with the announcement of the gospel in chapter 40.
Comfort, yes, comfort my people, says the Lord. Speak comfort to our waste places, says the Lord. And what does that comfort ultimately come from? Where is it flowing toward? It's flowing toward the servant who's gonna bring about this comfort.
And this servant is the suffering servant. This is how the comfort will come about. We read in chapter 50, the Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned. This is a messianic prophecy fulfilled by Jesus Christ.
The Lord has given me the tongue of the learned that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary. Isn't that amazing? There's a messianic prophecy about Jesus being a good friend. Isn't that amazing to you?
God has given me the tongue of the wise so that I will know how to speak a word in season to the one that's weary. Messianic prophecy. He awakens me. Morning by morning, he awakens my ear to hear like the wise.
I speak like the wise because every morning, he opens my ears to his word so I can not just hear his word, but hear the things that my friends and those that are weary are saying or struggling with, hear things that they can't even utter and know how to respond.
Verse five, the Lord God has opened my ear. I wasn't rebellious. I did not turn away. Again, how we pack this all together, he's formed the body for me. This is certainly speaking of the whole point of the incarnation.
And what's the result of that? This body that was formed, this ear that was opened, this task and calling that he did not turn his back to. He says, I gave my back to those who struck me. I didn't turn my back on God's calling.
I gave my back to those who whipped it into pieces. I gave my face so they could pull the beard out from it. I did not hide my face from shame, from spitting. Do you see what he's saying? My ear has been opened.
I have come into this world so that I know how to comfort my friends. And when they're going through the night of life, whether within or without, I will know that word in season that will pierce them down to the very division of their soul.
And how do I know how to do that? Because I gave my back to be torn open. I gave my hands to be crucified. I allowed people to scoff and spit on me. And when I was going through that darkness of night, I faced a pitch black terror.
I faced a coldness that could not be uttered by human minds. And I gave myself to it so that from the very depth of that night, I would know how to comfort any lesser night among my friends. This is not cheap comfort.
This is not threadbare comfort. Why is he a faithful friend? He endured a night we could not imagine, a darkness we could not ponder, so that he could comfort us. And in his state of exaltation, send a comforter to indwell us.
Is that not a faithful friend? No wonder the messianic proclamation begins with, the spirit of the Lord God is upon me. The Lord has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to liberate those in captivity, to open the bars for those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord, to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for...
Do you don't think he'll do that to you, Christian? He's the paradigm for our friendship. If we have found him to be a faithful friend in this way, what does that mean for our friendship to others? He is the example, he is the power, he is the source of such faithful friendships in our lives.
What a savior, what a friend, saving, helping, keeping. We ought to seek and become friends that know how to keep. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm, but how can one be warm alone? God not appoint us to wrath, brethren, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us.
And whether we wake or sleep, we will live together with him. Therefore, comfort each other and edify each other, just as you also are doing. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the son whom you sent to be our faithful friend, to speak to our souls in a time of need, to restore us after stumbling and failing, to warm us in the coldness of our hearts, of our betrayals, of our fickleness and selfishness, to warm us in the difficulties of life and the troubles of the world and the assaults of the flesh and the evil one.
Forgive us, Lord, for failing him so easily and so often, for not being a true and loyal friend to him. And forgive us, Lord, for not being true and faithful friends to those you've put in our lives as friends.
And help us to be those friends. As Christ is to us, so may we be to them. Lord, do this work. It's of your spirit. Give us the words with which we can comfort. Give us the hope. Give us the joy. Give us the grace and mercy that we need to not only walk with you, but to walk next to each other and help each other along these pilgrim paths to glory.
Thank you for the friends you have given us. Help us to pray for them and find our own walks restored as Job. Help us, Lord, to bless and love friends all the more when they're barking up the right tree and we reject their words.
Lord, give us eyes to see our true friends. And thank you for the truest friend of all. It's in his name that we pray, amen.