I'd like to read the 24th verse,
the last verse of Proverbs 18. A man that hath
friends must show himself friendly. And there is a friend that sticketh
closer than a brother. Solomon, the writer of the Proverbs,
says that a man that hath friends, if he will have friends, he must
show himself friendly. Now I heard a story one time
about a man out west here who was being tried for stealing
a horse. And I'm sure all of you remember
that Stealing a horse out here was a very grave and serious
offense. A person could be hanged if found
guilty of such a deed, and many were. Sometimes without even
a trial they were hanged. And it so happened that the man
that was accused of stealing the horse from another man in
town No one liked this man. No one liked the man at all. Nobody cared for him. The man
whose horse had been stolen had always made it a point to get
the best of any person with whom he had any dealings in this life. He had never tried to do anything
good for any other person other than himself. Consequently, the
man whose horse had been stolen didn't have one single friend
in the entire town. And the case was tried and presented
to the jury, and the evidence against the accused man was pretty
strong. And after about 30 minutes of
deliberation, the jury returned to the courtroom. The judge asked
gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict? And the chairman
of the jury stood up and said, yes, we have your honor. What is your verdict, inquired
the judge. There were a few moments of silence,
and then the chairman spoke. He says, we find the defendant
not guilty if he will return the horse. After the judge had
silenced the laughter in the courtroom, He admonished the
jury, I cannot accept that verdict. You go back until you reach another
verdict, said the judge. So they went back to deliberate
another verdict. Now, no member of the jury had
any liking for the man whose horse had been stolen. At one
time or another, he'd done all of them dirty. So about an hour
passed before the jury could reach another verdict. They took
their place in the jury box, and the courtroom grew silent. Have you reached the verdict,
the judge asked. Yes, we have, your honor. What
is your verdict, asked the judge. The courtroom was totally silent. You could have heard a pin drop.
Everyone waited for the verdict. The chairman read the decision
reached by the 12 good men tried and true. We find the defendant
not guilty, and he can keep the horse. The courtroom burst into
laughter, and the moral of the story is that it pays to be interested
in someone other than yourself. You heard the old saying, no
deposit, no return. It pays to be interested in someone
else besides yourself. If you spend your life trying
to take advantage of other people, never caring about anyone other
than yourself, then you will end up a loser, like the man
who lost his horse. Now, if you desire a friend,
then you had better be a friend. If you desire for other people
to help you, then you'd better help other people. If you want
to be treated right, then you'd better treat other people right,
because what you sow is what you're going to reap. One writer
said, Friends are like priceless treasures. He who has none is
a social pauper. Bishop Riles said, A friend is
one of the greatest blessings on earth. He is poorest of the
poor who has no friends. We all need friends. This world, beloved, is a very
rough place in which to live. It is filled with disappointment.
It is filled with tears and sorrow, pain and bereavement, trials
and troubles, heartaches, physical pain, emotional pain, and we
all need a friend. One man said, oh, how good it
feels the hand of an old friend. I need a forgiving friend, myself. I need a loving friend, somebody
who will be a friend to this sinner. Praise God, I have found
such a friend who sticketh closer than a brother. In Matthew 11,
19, there is a short statement that is very precious To me,
Jesus is speaking and he quotes what the people have been saying
about John the Baptist and then about himself. And what they
said critically about the Lord Jesus Christ, what they said
with meanness in their hearts and what they said with hatred
in their hearts towards Christ, we rejoice in. We praise God. They say, Jesus says, I am a
friend of publicans. I'm a friend of tax collectors,
and I'm a friend of sinners. How wonderful it is to know that
there is one such as the Lord Jesus Christ, who is a friend
of sinners. Now, this to me is the best quote
I ever read in my life regarding a friend. Jesus said that people
said that he was a friend of publicans and sinners. Well,
how did they know that? By his example, by watching him
as he conducted himself in his ministry on earth, they learned
that he was a very close friend of publicans and sinners. He
was interested in their never-dying soul. He was concerned about
where they would spend eternity, and he took time to preach the
gospel unto the poor. Now this to me, as I said, is
one of the greatest quotes that I ever read in my life. You see,
we're imperfect friends ourselves. We want to be friends with those
around us. I want you, my friend, to be
my friend indeed. I want you to support me. I want
you to stand behind me. I want your love in the gospel. And I want to be able to stand
behind you. And I want to be able to support
you and to be able to comfort you and to establish you in the
ways of God and truth. But when all is said and done,
the only friend desperately needed by each and every one of us is
that friend of sinners, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now to live in
this world, I'm telling you as I mentioned earlier, that this
is a difficult place to live in. We know that there's the
whirlwind of trouble, and our brother mentioned it as he prayed
this morning. In this world, trouble is brewing. Judgment is coming. The hand
of God most surely will come upon this world in judgment. It is ripening for judgment every
day. And each one of us need a friend. We need that friend, the Lord
Jesus Christ, this friend that will stick closer than a brother. And if I've made friends with
everybody else in the whole world, but He is not my friend, then
I'm in trouble. I am in trouble, in deep trouble,
if I know not the Lord Jesus Christ. But if all others speak
ill of me, and nobody else likes me, and everybody else turns
against me in this world, but he who is my everlasting friend
is for me, it's all right. It's all right if he is my friend. It's all right. It'll be all
right if I have this friend of sinners, this friend of publicans
and sinners. How do we know that Jesus Christ
is the friend of sinners. Well, because he has proven his
friendship. He has proven his friendship.
He's not loved in word only, but he's loved in deed and in
truth. There are evidences of his friendship. Let me give you some of them
this morning. Those of you that love the gospel of the free grace
of God, you listen very carefully. Those of you that would know
the gospel and have it revealed to your heart by the divine spirit,
listen carefully to what the word of God teaches. Number one,
he was the friend of sinners before there was such a thing
as a sinner. We know the Lord Jesus Christ
was foreordained before the foundation of the world to be the Lamb that
would be slain in the mind of God for sinners. And in the covenant
of grace, God chose a people more numerous than the sand of
the seashore. All were sinners at that time,
only in the mind and in the foreknowledge of God himself. Man did not exist
when the Lord Jesus Christ entered into covenant with the Father
and the Holy Spirit in order to redeem a people. And Jesus
Christ in the covenant of grace was the agent who represented
those people who were at that time only, they were sinners
in the mind of God only at that time. Now we know, and to explain
a little bit what we mean by this, we know that sports figures,
they have agents that represent them to the management and works
out their contract and gets them the big salaries that they get. Well, I'm here to say that sinners
had an agent in the covenant of grace when that legal binding
agreement between the Father, Son, and the Spirit was drawn
up in eternity past, we had a surety, we had a friend in that covenant
who stood up on our behalf, who volunteered to represent us because
he loved us. The Lord Jesus Christ stood up
for us Before we had an existence, before we were ever born and
came into this world, the Lord Jesus Christ stood up for us. Now to illustrate this a little
better, I want to turn to Exodus chapter 2, and I find in Moses
here a type of the Lord Jesus Christ being a friend of sinners
and standing up for us in the covenant of grace. representing
us. Now we know the word of God prophesies
that the Lord would raise up one like unto Moses who would
be a prophet unto the people and we were warned to hear him. Now that prophet was the Lord
Jesus Christ and so Moses then is a type of Christ and so we
see in Exodus chapter 2 in verse 16 it says, Now the priest of
Midian had seven daughters, and they came and drew water, and
filled the troughs to water their father's flock. And the shepherds
came and drove them away. Now this event took place after
Moses had grown to adulthood And he had felt that his people,
the children of Israel, that he should participate in their
deliverance. And so he had killed one of the
Egyptians, you remember. And then he had to flee from
Pharaoh, because Pharaoh heard about it, and set out to slay
Moses. And so he went on to the back
side of the desert, and here he sat down by this well, and
when these daughters of the priest of Midian, these seven daughters
came and drew water and filled the trough, well then the shepherds
around would come and drive them away and let their flocks drink
of the water that the girls had pumped up for their flock. But Moses, it says in verse 17,
and the shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up. Moses stood up. and help them
and water their flock. In other words, they needed someone
here, an authority figure who could discourage these shepherds
and one who would stand up in their defense, take their part,
and would allow them to go ahead and water their flock. So consequently,
they were able to get back home real soon that day. And so their
father noticed that and asked them about it. How are you come
so soon today? And they said, and an Egyptian
delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and also drew
water enough for us and watered the flock. Well, as the story
goes on, they sent out and got Moses and brought him back to
the house. And he was given one of the daughters
of the priest to marriage. But the point of it all is that
Moses stood up to represent those girls and to defend them. And the Lord Jesus Christ, the
true prophet of God, the prophet who fulfilled the prophecy about
Moses, he stood up for us in the covenant of grace. He represented
us. And isn't it wonderful to know,
if you've experienced the salvation of the Lord, if you know what
it means to be saved, isn't it a wonderful thing to know that
back yonder, before we existed, there was somebody that stood
up. Stood up for sinners, stood up
for people who would voluntarily transgress the laws of God and
become rebels against God in time, that he would step up and
answered to God for us. We were loved eternally by God. We were loved first. We did not
love Him first. He loved us first. He loved us
eternally. And He's been our friend from
the very, very beginning. And so He stood up and answered
to God for us. That is, if we believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, if we're trusting Him, if we've been redeemed,
If we've experienced the true grace of God in our soul, then
we know that he has proven his friendship to us in that he stood
up in the council halls of eternity. Well, when he saw we would become
unrighteous, he stepped in to become the Lord, our righteousness. When he saw we would become bankrupt,
he stepped in to pay our debt. When He saw we would become ugly
through iniquity, He stepped in to make us beautiful through
His comeliness. And might I say, if you would
think with me a moment, that He made us so beautiful through
His comeliness that now not even God the Father Himself looking
upon us and His Son can see any difference between the two. That's
how beautiful The Lord Jesus Christ has made his people all
beloved with his holy garment on. We're as holy as the Holy
One. We're blameless before him in
love and we've been fixed up by God the Father through the
Lord Jesus Christ and through the comeliness and righteousness
of Christ being put to our account that the Father as he looks upon
his Son and looks upon us, he cannot tell the difference between
the two. Now is that alright? Is that
alright? That's how much of a friend this
Lord Jesus Christ is, that he would provide everything for
us in order that we might be accepted in the beloved one. I remember reading a story one
time, this will kind of help illustrate this a little bit.
There was an old mother sheep that lost her little lamb, And
they tried to put a bum lamb with her and she would not accept
that bum lamb. She would not accept him at all.
And so they took and skinned her lamb and took the hide and
the fur, the wool, I'm sorry, off of the little lamb and put
it upon the back of this bum lamb. And so the mother, smelling
her lamb, she took right to the bum land. And this is just an
illustration of how the Lord Jesus Christ, that with his garment
of holiness and righteousness on, as all believing sinners
have his garment upon them, then the Father accepts them because
they are clothed with the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now
then, you talk about a friend. He is that friend that has stepped
in for us and stood for us, representing us, providing righteousness for
us. And when he saw that we would
violate God's holy law, he stepped in to honor that law for us. And that is the friend that Solomon
spoke of when he said, This is the friend that sticketh closer
than a brother. And then second, he was the friend
of sinners when he came into this world 2,000 years ago to
die on the cross. In John chapter 15, if you would
turn there in your Bibles, I'd like to read here a few verses
to you, John chapter 15. And I want to begin here with
verse 13, where the scripture says, The Lord Jesus, making
these statements, greater love hath no man than this, that a
man lay down his life for his friends. In verse 14 he said,
Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call
you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth.
But I have called you friends for all things that I have heard
of my Father I have made known unto you, I have called you friends."
Now, the Lord Jesus Christ knows what it is to be a friend, therefore
he says that no man hath a greater friend than this, no greater
love hath any man than that he lay down his life for his friends.
And you are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you.
If any man is a Christian, if anyone is a Christian, Then they
will, of course, follow the commands of our Lord Jesus Christ. We're
the sheep of his pasture, we've been called, and we will hear
his voice, and we will follow him, we will obey him. He was
our friend when we were in reality his enemies. Romans 5, 8 says,
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus, he came and bled and died
under the wrath of God in our place while we were sinners.
He died for my sins in order that I would not die in my sins. And for this, we give glory and
praise to him. I asked the Lord, what should
I come and tell you this morning? And he said, come and tell them
that I am the friend of publicans and sinners. I'm the friend of
not the righteous, not the good, but I'm the friend of sinners. And so He came to die for my
sins that I might not die in my sins. And Jesus said that
if you believe not that I am He, you will die in your sins. If you don't believe that I am
He, the Son of God, Then you will die on your sins. Do you
know my friend? Have you met my friend? Have you met him? Do you know
him? If you ever meet my friend, the friend of sinners, you will
never get over it. You will never get over it when
you come to understand how great a friend this one is. I have
a brother right now that is very near death. He's a younger brother,
just three years younger than I am. And we were very close
years ago. And I know what it is to have
a brother that is a true friend. I know what it is. But to have
one that sticketh closer than a brother, thanks be unto God,
I know something about that too. Do you? Do you know my friend? Do you know him? The Lord Jesus
Christ. He becomes sweeter and more precious
as time goes on. And when you hear his gospel
preached, you rejoice in his person and in his blood, this
one who laid down his life in order to save us. He said, I
call you my friends. I call you my friends. Now the Bible says that Abraham
was the friend of God. And the Bible also teaches that
he, Abraham, was the father of the faithful. Galatians 3 verse
6 and 7 says, Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted
to him for righteousness, know ye therefore that they which
are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And what
that means is that all of you that believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and have experienced regeneration, the Spirit of God
dwells in your heart, that every one of you are the children of
Abraham. You are a true Israelite. You are a member of the spiritual
Israel of the Bible, the Israel of God. And so, my understanding
is, and all of God's Abrahams are God's friends. If Abraham
was God's friend, then all children of faith are the friends of God. Do you feel yourself to be God's
friend? I hope you are. We are God's
friends. We were enemies, but now by God's
grace, I am on God's side. Are you on God's side? Whatever
he wants to do, by God's grace, it's all right with me. Is that
all right with you, whatever God wants to do? Whatever he
would be willing to do? Whatever he would be pleased
to do? Would that be all right with you? All right, he died
for my sin, he had no sin, and Peter said, who did no sin, neither
was any guile found in his mouth, yet he took my sin. Yet he took
all of my wicked, horrible guilt, my thoughts, my works, my deeds,
my nature, my words, he took upon himself and bore my sin
to Calvary and put them away. And he put them so far away,
even the omniscient eye of God cannot find them anymore, cannot
see them anymore. If they are sought for, they
will not be found. They are gone as far as the east
is from the west. Never to be remembered against
us anymore. Now, beloved, that is a friend
indeed. He's not the friend of good people,
I want to stress that. You say, well, it looks to me
like he'd just be the friend of good people. No. He said,
it is said that I'm a friend of publicans. You know what they
were, tax collectors and those who got gains unjustly. And whenever
God saved one of them, they had restitution to make and they
felt obligated to make restitution. They were sinners and then sinners,
the scum of the earth, if you please, not the good, the kind,
the moral, the upright, the loving people, not the up and outers,
but the down and outers. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
friend of sinners. Now, when He arose from the dead,
when He ascended on high, because the Bible says that He is Jesus
the forerunner, and He has entered heaven to lay hold, to lay claim
of the inheritance for us, and when He went there to lay hold
of that inheritance, we went in with Him. We went in with
Him. He took us in with Him. And the
Bible says that we're seated there where Jesus is at the right
hand of eternal majesty, that we're there with Him. We went
in. He's the forerunner, and we went
in with Him. Now, it's wonderful to have a
friend that can get you into high places. Well, bless the
Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ will take all those who believe on
Him into the highest, the very highest place that exists, and
that is right to the very throne of God, right into the very presence
of God. Now in heaven, He is still our
friend, because He appears there in the presence of God for us,
the book of Hebrews says, making intercession for us. Intercession. Oh yes, my friend, we have this
friend there now still praying for us. Praying for us. He takes our case, lays it out. As a faithful advocate, Jesus
Christ the righteous, our friend, he is praying for us every day. Now, you know, sometimes you
are talking maybe to a stranger who claims to be a Christian,
and maybe you will tell them about some prayer requests that
you have, and they say, well, I'll pray for you. Well, that's
meaningful, it really is, but then maybe you will meet with
an old friend, somebody who you trust, and somebody who is a
good a prayer warrior, somebody that is faithful to cry to God
to pray and you believe that they are and that the Lord will
hear them. Isn't it more comforting to put
your situation and your request into the hands of a true friend,
a true tried friend? Isn't it better to do that? Doesn't it feel more like that
you will get some response and that the Lord will most surely
hear the prayer and undertake for you, well this is the way
I feel about the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I love you all and I believe
that you're praying people. But I'm telling you, I'm grateful
that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father praying for me.
I'm grateful He's making intercession for me. I don't think for one
minute that I would have ever made it to this point in my life
as a believer in this waste-housing wilderness apart from Jesus,
my trusted friend, praying for me in heaven. He's making intercession
for his people in heaven. And that ought to warm your heart
this morning. He is a friend that knows you. He is a friend
that sticketh closer than a brother. And he is our friend who providentially
controls all events of life, all things. Working all things
together, the Bible says, for our good and for his glory. And my friend, this morning as
we talk to you about such one as Jesus Christ, sticking closer
than a brother, being a true friend, are you going through
a fiery trial at this time? Or do you, are you carrying a
heavy, heavy burden at this time? Well, your friend, the Lord Jesus
Christ knows what it is. And he knows exactly what's going
on in your life. He knows the ups and downs and
the struggles. He knows the whirlwind of problems
that comes into the lives of his people, the onslaughts of
tests and difficulty. He knows all about them. And
he not only knows about them, but he also knows about how long
they'll last, and when they'll be over. And the poet said, all
shall come to pass, last and end, as shall please our heavenly
friend. Now, isn't that a comfort to
know? You say, well, I sure would like
to get out of the problems I'm in. I'd like to get this heavy
burden off my back. I'd like to be able to get away
from these fiery trials. Well, my friend, just remember
that all shall come to pass, last and end, as shall please
our heavenly friend. And that is a great comfort to
my soul. My troubles and trials are coming
to an end. They will come to an end. They
will be over. There will be a day when the
Lord will deliver me and deliver me out of the great burdens and
the fiery trials that we experience from day to day. He watches. He is the divine refiner. He
will not let the fire get too hot. He won't let it get too
hot. You sometimes think that it may,
but it will not get too hot. He will over and over teach us
the vanity of this world and bring us back to our need of
Him. Nothing My friend, without him,
we need this friend that sticketh closer than a brother. When we
have him, we have all. When we have Christ, we have
all God has for sinners. We have this friend. Now, next
is he shares secrets and mysteries with his friends. In John 15
and 15, I read it a few moments ago, I would refer you to it
again. Henceforth I call you not servants,
for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth." The Lord Jesus
speaking to the disciples here says, I'm not going to call you
servants, slaves, my slaves, my servants, because a servant
never knew what his master was doing. He was just told, you
do this, you do that, you do something else. They never knew
what the master plan was because it was never revealed to him.
You fellows and some of you ladies have worked out in public and
you know that a lot of times you were assigned a job and you
never really knew. They didn't bring the blueprints
and give it to you. They just said, you do this,
you do that, you do something else. But the Master said, but
I have called you friends. And the reason is for all things
that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you."
In other words, what the Father told me when I was with the Father
before the world was, I told you. I let you in on it. I told you these secrets. Now, this is very important for
us to see, the mysteries of the gospel, because you know men
for the life of them cannot understand the gospel. left to themselves. They cannot understand the gospel.
They cannot understand the mysteries that's connected with the incarnation
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Him coming down from heaven,
being given a body in the womb of the Virgin Mary, being born
into this world, being suckled by his mother, living out his
days in this world, and then dying on a cross. buried, being
raised from the dead, the mysteries of the gospel. My friend, it's
wonderful when the Lord takes us and by revelation teaches
us the mysteries of this gospel of His. And we do not understand
that gospel until He reveals it unto our hearts. You say,
well, don't you think I have an education? Yes. I do believe
you have an education. You say, well, don't you think
I'm able to understand books and writings and so on? Well,
yes, I think you can mentally understand them with your mind,
but to understand it in your heart and soul savingly, no,
I do not think you can understand it until the Lord reveals it
to your heart. Salvation is by revelation. That's one of the offenses of
the cross. You only understand the gospel
as it's revealed to your heart. So then the Lord Jesus Christ
shares mysteries and secrets with his people. So he tells
them in verse 16, You have not chosen me. And this is a real
mystery. ye have not chosen me. Well,
then how did I become your disciple if you didn't choose me? Or if
I didn't choose you, how was it that I got in on this thing? He says, but I have chosen you
and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit and
that your fruit should remain that whatsoever ye shall ask
of the Father in my name, he may give it to you. The great
doctrine of election is one of those mysteries which the Lord
lets his people in on. And I praise God for this doctrine
of God having chosen me. I really believe that salvation
is by God's choice. It's by God's choice. Somebody
said, well, didn't we have a choice? We did. And we made that choice
in Adam, in the Garden of Eden. We chose to die rather than live. And if we ever live spiritually,
we live by the Father's choice of us. We live by the fact that
He chose us and gave us to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so these
great mysteries, these secrets, The Lord lets His people in on
them. He says, I let you in on them
like a friend talking to friends, because I am your friend. And then He is a friend that
we can talk to any time. Any time. Oh, any time. You know, even those who are
our friends here on earth, they would get irritated if we called
on them at 2 o'clock in the morning, wouldn't they? Get a little upset
with us. If their phone was to ring and
we used to wake them out of a deep sleep, oh, they'd get quite perturbed
with us, saying, couldn't you wait? Couldn't you just wait
till in the morning? Wait till some more convenient
time? But the Lord Jesus Christ, He
is a friend who we can visit with at any time. Whenever you
feel your need to talk with Him, call on Him. Call on him anytime. Call on the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. And he's our
friend who visits with us. Not only do we come to him, he
comes to us. And he visits with us. What is
man? The Bible says that thou art
mindful of him, or the Son of Man, that thou visitest him. The Lord does visit us. And He
condescends to do it, that He comes to us to visit with us. Oh yes, He condescends to do
that. He visited over 2,000 years ago. He visited us in the day of salvation. He came to us. Nobody gets saved
without Christ being there. Christ must come and visit your
soul when you're saved. And so He visited you when He
saved you. He is, I trust, visiting here
this morning. The Bible talks about Him being
where two or three are gathered together in His midst. He says,
there am I. I'm right there in the midst
of them, visiting. I'm there visiting when my people
meet together, when they come together. And I like His company,
don't you? I really do. I like His company.
Oh, my friend, a service without Him? Without him, we're wasting
our time. Unless he's here, unless he shows
up, then we're wasting our time. But if he shows up, it doesn't
make any difference, does it, about how wise the preacher is, or
how forceful he is. It doesn't make any difference
if Christ is in the meeting, if he's there. If our friend
shows up, then what a meeting we will have. We have a blessed
meeting because he's there. I like his company. And he's
been visiting with friends here this morning. Amen? I hope you're
his friend. I hope you are. I hope you are. I hope you're in agreement. He
calls on me to believe and then he gives me faith. Would you
consider him to be a friend if he did that? If he commanded
you to believe, and you'd go to hell if he didn't, and then
he'd give you faith, I'd say that's evidence that he's our
friend. He calls on me to persevere,
and then he keeps me by his grace. That's an evidence of friendship. He calls on me to bear a trial,
and then he gives me grace to endure it. Endure it, he said,
to the end, my grace, is sufficient for thee. He calls on me, takes
me by His hand, and He leads me in the way. What a friend! What a friend! He picks me up
when I fall, and I do fall. The Bible talks about the righteous
falling seven times, and the Lord lifting them up. So we do
fall, do we not? Every one of us have fallen.
We have fallen. We need to be picked up. And
the Lord Jesus will do that. When I get too high-minded in love, He brings me down. He
does. Somebody said a true friend is
somebody who attacks you from the front. Well, that's a good statement,
I think. Somebody else said a true friend is somebody who goes around
behind your back saying good things about you. You understand
that maybe a little bit better. But a true friend is somebody
that will come straight up to you and talk to you to your face
and won't go behind your back talking about you in a derogatory
way. And the Lord Jesus Christ, when
you get too high and mighty and you get lifted up and you're
haughty and proud, He will come directly to you and He'll take
you down in love until you can submit yourself to Him and until
you can once more look to Him without pride of face and without
pride of grace. Well, that is a friend. When
I cry, He bottles up my tears. The Lord knows even the tears
that we weep. And somebody said this business
of friendship It doubles joys and it halves griefs. It cuts griefs in half. It doubles
our joys and halves our griefs. So when I cry, He bottles up
my tears. Do you know He knows about your
tears? He knows about them. When I'm
depressed, He cheers my soul. He cheers my soul. He lifts me
up. And when I'm alone, He reminds me that I am not alone. He reminds me of that. You know,
somebody said that the best definition they ever had of a friend is that He comes in when everybody
else goes out. When everybody in the world goes
out, He comes in. And many, many times the Lord
allows us to get to the place where we feel that we're alone
just to remind us that we're not alone, that He is with us,
and He brings us to that place where everybody goes out and
he comes in. That's a true friend. Joseph
Scurvin left Ireland and went to Canada and the young lady
that he was to marry would follow sometime later on a ship. Well when she came over on her
journey the ship sunk in the North Atlantic and Joseph Scurvin
was crushed and shortly thereafter he took sick was bed fast for
a while and the ladies in the village there in Canada they
brought him food and one day a lady brought him some soup
and she gave him the soup and noticed an envelope on the stand
beside the bed and she said what is this and he said you can look
at it if you want to And inside was a note to his mother and
a poem. And the poem said, What a friend
we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. He wrote
that psalm, What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and
griefs to bear. And when he died sometime later,
they inscribed the title of that poem on his tombstone in Port
Hokie, Canada. What a friend. we have in Jesus. Well, you might be wondering,
you reckon that this friend of sinners would be a friend to
me? Well, he's my friend and he's
the friend of others here, and so if he's my friend, if he's
friend of others here, and he said I'm the friend of sinners,
then I believe he'd become your friend. And once he has become
your friend, I believe that you'll find out that he's been your
friend from eternity, and that he stood up for you long ago,
and that he's still standing up for you today. The friend
that sticketh closer than a brother. May the Lord own this message.
Hadn't been the easiest sermon I ever preached by any stretch
of the imagination, but it certainly is a true message. And I hope
that the Lord will use it and own it in your hearts and those
of you that are God's children, that you will take comfort from
this and rejoice in this friend. And remember that if you would
have friends, you must show yourself friendly. If you go out to acquire
friends, don't try to interest them in you. You be interested
in them. and they'll become interested
in you. People like people that like
people. Now you think on that a little
bit. Remember, no deposit, no return. When I was a boy, we
used to walk a couple miles to a store, an old country store,
and they sold pop in glass bottles. They didn't have any plastic
bottles. And so, if you bought a pop and
you was going to take it with you, you had to pay a deposit
on the bottle. And then when you brought the
bottle back, they'd give you back the deposit. So that's what
we're saying. No deposit, no return. Now in this business of friendship,
you must show yourself friendly if you're going to have a friend.
I appreciate each one of you. I appreciate each one of you
that's been a friend to me. And I hope that I've been one
to you. I do want to be a better friend to every one of you. May God own the message and use
it today for His glory.