Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / August 20, 2023 | Guardrails - Friends

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August 20, 2023 | Guardrails - Friends · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to be with you.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we are continuing our series called Guardrails this morning.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: But in this series on guardrails, right, if you're new with us this morning, what we're looking at is uh there are some things the Bible is very clear about black and white, and there are certain things the Bible presents us with guardrails on.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Don't go too far this way, don't go too far that way.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: The first week we talked about time, what it meant to view it from an eternal perspective and also finite, that we are like mist that goes away.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Last week we looked at work and rest.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this morning we're going to look at a third of four topics, uh, which is friends.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say friends, we're going to be very specific this morning and not just looking at what does it mean to be a good friend, which is something the Bible does spend a lot of time talking about.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: What is a good friend, how to do it, what it looks like and feels like, and all of those things.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, this morning we're looking at the guardrails of who should be our friend.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Who should be our friend?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because, see, the reality is pretty much if you're out of school, you've gotten to choose who your friends are.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I understand that there are some caveats to that, you know, the person you grew up with, the person you can't let go of, all of those kinds of things, but by and large, as adults, we are able to choose who our friends are.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And even when we are going to school, we have the opportunity to be able to choose who we spend more time with than other people.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to that, the Bible does present some pretty clear guardrails.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because the reality is our friendships change over time, and we need to be diligent in making sure that we are honoring God with them.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up or spent my grade school years living in Illinois, and I had one of those neighborhoods that is kind of in the movies where you know everybody is going over to each other's houses and we're always seeing who can play, and we're staying out late and you know, until the street lights come on, that sort of thing.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And my best friend at the time, who lived right across the street from us, best friend in the neighborhood, um, now smokes a lot of weed and thinks the earth is flat, right?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, there's a good chance that he and I would not still be great friends today.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it sort of brings us to this obvious point, which is that, you know, there are certain situations where we recognize that either we are friends with people maybe we shouldn't be friends with, there are certain people we need to distance ourselves from, but sometimes there are some people we need to draw closer to and make good friends.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first place we're going to go is to the book in the Bible that speaks the most about friendship, which is Proverbs.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs uses the word friend 14 different times, and that is far more than any other place in the Bible, though you can look at many different examples in the Bible, four great friendships.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: You look at David and Jonathan, Elijah and Elisha, you can look at Jesus, obviously, Paul and Timothy.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: There are many of them.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: But this morning we're looking at the principles, and that begins in Proverbs 13.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: The one who walks with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: What Solomon is presenting here in his wisdom is that there's a decision that needs to be made, and that is offered to us when we have the ability to choose who our friends are.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that discernment that is required in choosing those friends is something that does require wisdom.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it's wise to use that discernment to sort of make a full circle.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And what he's saying is that the one who walks with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so there is a difficulty here, which is that we recognize a lot of us are friends with fools.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe we have had friends who have done foolish things.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the fool that Solomon is speaking of here is a very specific kind of fool.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: See, to make a long story short, the the Hebrew word for fool, or that we get fool from in English, there are many different Hebrew words that are then translated that way.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so, for instance, like the Bible might use the word English word fool to describe a Hebrew word that refers to the specific kind of foolish that comes from being young, right?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: When we are young, we normally are not very f we are not filled with wisdom, just coming out, and as we get older, we grow more wise, right?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: That is a kind of fool, but certainly that's not the fool that's mentioned here.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's a fool that would be great to spend time with.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: The fool that is mentioned here, this Hebrew word, is this is used similarly in other Proverbs to describe a type of person who, excuse me, hates knowledge, lives in complacency, lacks common sense, spreads gossip, has shameful behavior, turns toward evil as opposed to a way, and is easily angered.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so the kind of fool that we're looking at here, that Solomon says we should not be a companion with them, right?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Which uh speaks more about the time spent in the closeness and familiarity with those friends, is somebody who has a lack of care for truth and a willing contentment to stay ignorant or sinful.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: They have a lack of care for truth and a willing contentment to stay ignorant or sinful.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the word fool is used over a hundred times in the book of Proverbs, all of the Hebrew words compared to the 14 for friends.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so a significant part of wisdom is not being foolish.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as a part of not being foolish, it also means that we aren't supposed to associate ourselves too closely with those who intentionally reject truth and do not care to draw closer to the things that are good.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon says it this way: Proverbs 17, better for a person to meet a bear robbed of her cubs than a fool in his foolishness.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Better to be meet a bear robbed of her cubs.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what does a bear robbed of her cubs do, right?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: It attacks, causes harm.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: People, the tourists at Yellowstone who know nothing about animals often discover this every year.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to not be wise in taking selfies with a bear or a buffalo, right?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the situation that's presented here is that it is not just about a reputation or ease of mind or something like that, why we shouldn't be a companion of fools, but that there's actually harm associated with it.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 15.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Do not be deceived.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Bad company corrupts good morals.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Funny enough, bad company corrupts good morals.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: That phrase is known before biblical times.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is quoting something that was just like pop culture reference, right?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like God was like, you know what's a great summary for the way that I feel about friendship and uh avoiding foolish behavior?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Use that phrase that people have already created for themselves.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Bad company corrupts good morals.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know it, you've felt it, you've experienced it.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who volunteer at the Harvester's food distribution that we do as a church uh second Tuesday of every month at the Stormont Vale Events Center, um, if you've ever volunteered, you know that they bring these pallets of produce that then the volunteers sort and administer to the cars based upon how many families are there.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you've might have also been in the situation where you get a palette of potatoes, loose potatoes, not in bags of any kind, and you begin sorting through them and you pick up one that has a bit of rot on it.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then you begin looking to the potato that that was touching and diving deeper and deeper until about two feet down in this palette, you found patient zero of the mushy potato that isn't really a potato any longer.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is just everything else.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, it does have a smell associated with it too.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's very present.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what's going on is it's not every single potato in that palette has been sort of corrupted by this mold, but some of them, and the closer in proximity they are to the one that hit did it first, right, they need to be thrown out.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: They need to be thrown away because they aren't fit to go into somebody's car.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's an element of that that's true when we associate ourselves with those who are foolish, and remember again, right, the definition we're using for foolish is not somebody who just got like duped at a you know carnival game or something like that, or they're, you know, don't always understand what um the word severity means.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is not the fool that we're talking about.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: The fool that we're speaking of has this intention and this desire, they have a willful lack of integrity, all of these kinds of things.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: The person who becomes a companion of that individual oftentimes is going to be drawn into their behaviors, their attitudes, their lifestyle, their actions, all of these things.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And see, there are two ways that we find these kinds of people in our life.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that some of us grew up in an environment where there was a lot of foolishness, right?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: You grew up in a place, maybe you ran with the wrong crowd, maybe you were the reason that they were called the wrong crowd, right?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there were various different reasons why it wasn't the right group of friends to be in.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: But normally there came a point in time where either because somebody held a mirror up to your face, or because you became a Christian and began to examine your life, you recognized that you were living amongst people where everybody was a fool and you were doing the same thing.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first situation.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: But the second situation is one that can be a bit more painful, which is you see a good friend change and they become foolish.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right, our friends, I wish, right, best friends stayed as this static relationship, but right, we're all dynamic, we all change, we all adapt and you know move on, and life circumstances hit us different ways and various things, and sometimes people change.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes people change for the worse.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you've had a close friend who has revealed themselves to be a fool, and now you found yourself a companion of somebody who you know is not the person you originally were a companion of.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the Bible talks a lot about foolishness, the harm that it can do by associating too closely with it, and the fact that, in fact, we might need to take a step back.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: But if this is the first guardrail that we're presenting this morning, that we should not be a companion of fools, right?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: There is a place of going too far, right?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: There is a point that we can get to where we begin to create this like um unassailable wall, right?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody gets through it unless they agree with like the same exact 15 things that I agree with.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: That uh we create this echo chamber where everybody is the exact same as us.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: They look like a clone.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And while it's good to have high standards, we've maybe made our standards so high that either we don't have many friends in the first place, or we have excluded a lot of people who could make great friends, but we've been a little bit too intense with how we've applied this rule, right?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: This invites us back towards the middle because we've seen people do this incorrectly.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: It is good to not be a companion of fools, but not everybody in the world is against you.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody is a fool because we are often fools ourselves.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: See, when we travel back towards the middle, and in fact to the other extreme, or the other guardrail, I should say, what we see is that Jesus Christ himself was referred to by his enemies as a friend of sinners, of a friend of those who the world saw as being a fool.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: That Jesus in Matthew, which we'll go to here in a moment, has to defend himself, or I should say has the privilege of defending himself against the Pharisees, because they look at him and they say, Why are you friends with so many fools?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus just goes, Hey, that's kind of my thing, right?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let's look at that.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 9, verses 9 through 11, Jesus went on from there.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, Follow me.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he got up and followed him.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: While he was reclining at the table in the house, meaning he followed Matthew back to his home.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Many tax collectors and sinners came to eat with Jesus and his disciples.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Step back.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Who's Matthew?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: The guy who wrote this gospel is the guy who's in the story.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we know there's a future here to Matthew.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: But Matthew is writing about himself in the other gospels he's referred to as Levi.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what is happening is Matthew is somebody who, by that culture, would be absolutely called a fool.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because even though Matthew was a Jew, he had exchanged his national identity to become a tax collector for the Roman government, which meant, amongst other things, that he was bilking his fellow countrymen and women out of their hard-earned money, was often or could be certainly assumed to be greedy, and was somebody who at the very least was willing to exchange all of their natural friendships for the privilege and esteem of rising up within the Roman government, the oppressor of the Jewish people.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: People didn't like tax collectors, right?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was worse than it is today.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, Jesus says, Hey Matthew, um, do you want to follow me?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Want to be my disciple?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not presented as a question, actually.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus just tells him to follow him.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens here is Jesus is going to somebody who many people, the Pharisees, would say, is an absolute fool.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And yet Jesus does it anyway.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's our big question.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because this, finding the why between these two things is how we're going to stay in the middle between the guardrails.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because there is a way that we go too far and we are friends with too many people who really are uh foolish, right?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not that we've excluded them all, but now we've become friends with far too many of them.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: We have become the companion of fools.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the guardrail here that Jesus is maintaining is he is going to be known as somebody who is friendly to those who don't always fit in with the culture, who are unlovely and often seen as untouchable.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyhow, they say, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says this it is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Go and learn what this means.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I didn't come to call the righteous but sinners.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, bit of context here, uh Jesus does one of my favorite things, one of my favorite argument strategies he uses, he quotes the Old Testament back to the people who should know it the best.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And here he uh recites from Hosea 6, chapter 6, verse 6, which more fully says, For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burn offerings.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: In context, what Hosea, the prophet Hosea, was saying is that God doesn't desire the technical obedience to the law as much as he does people who are desiring to follow after him and who are looking to God for guidance, understanding that following these rules leads them closer to him.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: But see, the Pharisees have uh misconstrued this, and they are technically correct in many of the ways that they are following the law, but their heart misunderstands the purpose behind it.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, Jesus at the Sermon in the Mount will criticize them because they might give money, but they care more about people seeing that they give money.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Or they pray on the street corners, but they came care more about people seeing that they're praying on the street corners.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here in this situation, Jesus is quoting Hosea back to these Pharisees who are asking him the question because he says, You have cared more about being known as somebody who avoids fools than trying to understand the heart behind that sentiment.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on here is that Jesus is not in conflict with the previous command, but he is on a mission.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus has a specific mission.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the mission of Jesus Christ is that the world would know him as a savior.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so what happens when Jesus goes and hangs out with the tax collectors and sinners, right?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: As if that's not a hypocritical statement that the Pharisees say that Jesus is hanging out with the sinners, which is why Jesus responds by saying, It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick, which is this very cutting remark, because the Pharisees think that they are well, when in reality they are sick just like everyone else.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so what Jesus is doing is going to a group of people who, let's look at this in context, are unloved, often untouchable.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: This extends into those who have physical ailments like leprosy or paralysis or blindness, which the culture is absolutely rejecting, right?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because they think it came from sins of them or their parents.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus is going into this environment, right?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: He goes back, follows Matthew back to his house for dinner, where he might expect and know to find other people who, like Matthew, have been rejected by the religious elite.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he is going to go to that group of people who the world is calling foolish, and he is going to say to them, I love you, and I care about you, and I want you to know what life and life to the fullest looks like.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus isn't just going to stop at having dinner with Matthew.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's a reason Matthew later wrote the gospel.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's because ultimately Jesus led him to himself, to the Savior of mankind, to the Messiah.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Matthew's life was transformed.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see that a second guardrail is presented here.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: That it we should not be known so much as people who are exclusive, that friendship with us is like membership to an exclusive club or something that you have to pay dues to.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: But like Jesus, that you are friendly so that those who are a little too extreme might even look at you and say, You're friends with a few too many of these people who I wouldn't spend time with.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing that saves us from going too far, if you're tracking with me, and what keeps us right in the middle is we understand that in either situation we're on a mission.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: We are on a mission because the greatest and most important thing in our life is Jesus Christ.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: That is not just how we get to heaven, which is so often what it's reduced to, but it is a way of life and of living that is committed not just to the gospel, but to living with obedience in every walk of life and how we think and act and do.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're committed to good works and all these such things.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, because of that, how we interact with those who don't know Jesus is what defines our ability to walk within the guardrails of friendship.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: That there is this balance that takes place, the balance that Jesus perfectly walked, which said, look, well, you look at the first guardrail, right?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, even though Jesus was inviting all of these people to follow him, you know who his closest friends were?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Those who trusted in God, those who were not foolish, right?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: The disciples, those who knew Jesus as their Savior, they were people who shared the same convictions that he did.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: But then also, Jesus had a ministry to those who didn't trust in him, who didn't believe in him, that he was constantly working for.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, the way that Jesus defines true friendship, get this.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: The way that Jesus defines real authentic friendship is that they would lay down their life for their friends.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus is laying down his life for those, many of whom who have rejected him, and he is known as a friend of sinners.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is the space that we are trying to walk within.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: So what does this look like to kind of go in between these two guardrails, right?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because chances are one of we gravitate towards one or the other.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: We often are too exclusive or too open in our relationships, right?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: So what does this look like?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it means that we are supposed to desire to have relationships with both people who share our values and people who don't share our values, but that the difference between the two is the proximity to our lives that we give them, right?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: How close to our inner circle they come.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: I have three things that I think might help us to walk this in a very practical way.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And three of them, which each in their own right, might be a little controversial.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that your closest friends should be Christian.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is especially troublesome for those of you who are new to the faith or have very close friends, maybe you grew up with them, um, that aren't Christian.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Here's why I'm saying this.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: If the most important thing in your life is Jesus, which it should be.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: If the most important thing in your life is Jesus, then the people who you spend the most time with, who you trust with your deepest secrets, who are your accountability partners.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Partners, who you rely on when you are in trouble, who they rely on when they're in trouble, right?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: The people that you bring in the closest to you are people who should also have an understanding and a similar view on life.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: If the people that you allow the closest to you don't share your framework for even what it means to get to heaven or to be a sinner or to have hope or joy or any of the things that are based upon our belief in Jesus Christ, if your closest friends don't feel that way, you are going to realize that you are gravitating more and more towards their way of life, their way of living, which is not what God has for you.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that your closest friends should be Christian.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what does that look like in the messy middle of not all my closest friends are Christian?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think it requires wisdom.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think it requires praying to the Spirit that He would give you guidance as you maybe start to take a few steps backward from those people who are acting foolish right now, even though you are still showing love and compassion for them.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And hear me, one thing I'm definitely not saying, like our culture way overuses the term toxic to describe friendships that we just don't like any longer.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Even though there is such a thing as toxic friendships, we have begun to use that to somebody who just doesn't align with like our goals for our job, right?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or that they can't get us where we want to go, or maybe as we're ascending through society, like they can't keep up or keep pace.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: These kinds of things.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: The reason that people say, if you make it big, remember us, is because it's part of human nature that as we are enraptured by the world, we often forget our truest friends.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Anyhow, that's not what I'm saying.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm saying is that your closest friends are people who genuinely love Jesus because that is the thing that is going to pull you forward as well.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: See, even though Solomon says a companion of fools suffers harm, the flip side to that is the one who has great friends in Christ receives great gain.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Second, friendship with non-Christians has a primary goal, evangelism.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it does.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because your primary relationship is with Jesus Christ, which means that all of your other relationships should revolve around that relationship, should be based in that relationship, should be influenced.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And even if your friend doesn't know Christ, which, right, we're living in the middle.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, we have some friends that don't know Jesus, that are acting foolishly at times.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: But you have a primary goal, which is based in the fact that the greatest gift that you can give your friend whom you love is the knowledge of Jesus Christ as their Savior.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: More than comforting words, more than a meal when they're sick, more than a phone call when they need you late at night, even though all those things are well and good, the greatest thing that you can give as a friend is knowledge of eternity and true hope.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, it means that the context of your relationships with those who don't know Christ might need to change a little bit.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Those who have who live sort of near this guardrail, being friends of sinners, as the Pharisees use the phrase, sometimes are comforted too much by the concept that I'm friends with all these people who don't agree with me, right?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we have no problem interacting with each other.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe that's a bit of a problem.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: If so many of your friends have divergent viewpoints from you, right?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Don't believe in Jesus, don't believe in the things that he teaches, and in the last two years, your answer is, you know, the topic of faith just hasn't really come up yet.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now we've skewed too far, right?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is the thing that Jesus did that keeps us near the center, is he was always on mission.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: You think of not just Jesus, but think about Paul, right?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine talking with Paul about the friendships that he was making as he was going from city to city to city and planting churches.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't just doing that because it gave him some renown.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: He was often rejected, often referred to himself as being reviled, he was persecuted, he was stoned, he was shipwrecked.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, nobody actually wanted to be his friend.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: The only and he wasn't paid for it either.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: He had to have a side job just to support himself.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, in each of these areas, he's going forth into a group of people that don't know Christ and is genuinely able to look them in the eyes and say, I want you to know the most important thing.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then as they do, you look back at his letters, at the beginning of his letters, and the end of his letters, and how many of them are addressed to individual people, to individual circumstances, across countries.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: This guy had a network.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that network was based upon being on mission when he was going to make friends.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the third and final thing, and the one that sort of encapsulates all of these, is that you can't have real friendships if they're not genuine.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: True friendships are genuine and not forced.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: See, if you go in, you recognize, maybe after this morning, like, I've got a few too many foolish friends.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: I need some more friends who believe in Jesus.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then you just like send out letters to everybody that you know who goes to TBC, right?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's not real friendship.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: The reason our philosophy for discipleship at TBC is discover, connect, and serve is because we do believe that fellowship within the church is critically important to your spiritual health.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: But those things have to be genuine, right?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: The relationships that you build here in the church have to be genuine.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because just seeking out friends so that you might benefit from their wisdom is not fair to that person.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because it is not friendship the way that the Bible describes it, and in fact, you're using them.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it cuts the other way as well, right?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you are now going to go out and just seek to become friends with a lot of non-Christians, just so you can use that relationship to manipulate them into trusting in the gospel.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, God can work without you needing to manipulate them.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: But second of all, they can see it coming from a mile away.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know what it's like when you have had a friend, right?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was probably somebody you went to high school with who then reached out to you and said they wanted to get together and then wanted to sell you something.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: We've had that.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Happens on Facebook a lot.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know what it's like to have your friendship turned and have that influence used.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're going to speak to your non-Christian friends, which you should, make sure that it's genuine.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's a genuine friendship in the first place, that shouldn't be hard to do.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had a conversation with somebody out in the lobby after the first service, and they said, you know, man, I am I'm struggling because I have a few too many of those friends that don't know Jesus, and we haven't had a lot of those conversations, but it's hard because I'm worried that if I share my faith or even just talk about it, that they're going to reject me.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you have somebody who has been your friend for years, and you sharing in a loving, gentle, and kind way that you have been saved by faith in Christ, and that is now where you find your hope, and that person rejects you, they are not your friend.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: That is not a good friend.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because what you should expect is if you have friends who don't know Jesus and you give them, let them know sort of where you're coming from, if they're a good friend and they disagree with you, you should expect to get something in return, right?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it might not be what you're hoping for, but that is what it means to be on mission with a genuine heart.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I step back from all of these things and I say, look, this morning is not about what it means to be a great friend, though that is defined by Jesus Christ in his sacrifice for others.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the Bible speaks so much more about being a good friend.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: This morning is simply who should be our friend.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the guardrail is that we should not be a companion of fools, but we should also be known as a friend of sinners to those who might criticize us.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the difference and the thing that keeps us in the middle is that we are on mission and we are not being too exclusive, and we are not being drawn into the behavior of those who we are ministering to.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Our relationships in every part of our life is centered on Christ.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, we can move forward and say that one of the things that touches every single that's the whole point of guardrails.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: All four of these topics time, work, friends, and next week is finances.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: You should still show up.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry, it's not gonna be bad.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um four of those things touch all of us.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, we need to live within this space.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, we're going to be imbalanced at times, and there's always growth that to be had, and so on and so forth.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: But we need to be on mission and we need to be wise.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you today, and Lord, I thank you for a Savior who is known by his enemies as a friend of sinners.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because, Lord, we are sinners in desperate need of a savior.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, for those who have accepted you as their Savior, God, you have forgiven us and shown us what it means to be a true friend.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: But Lord, we also know that it is hard at times to know who should be a close friend, who should be closer, and who we should maybe distance ourselves from.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, as we walk this road and as people probably come to our minds even at this moment, Lord, that you would just give us grace, both for ourselves if we're doing things that we shouldn't be doing, and for other people, Lord, if we recognize that maybe we shouldn't be spending as much time with them as we were before.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: But God, I also pray that every single one of our relationships would be based in the knowledge of you.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Whether those who know you already or those who need to know you, Lord, that we would be people who are on mission for your gospel.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And God, that we might have genuine relationships that revolve around it.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we love you and we thank you.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, everyone.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.