Your Friend Jesus 09-22-2024

Text: John 15:13-15

                    This morning let’s take a look at friendship.  All of us have friends who are important to us.  When we’re lucky, we meet that one particular person who will become our “best friend.”  The dictionary defines a friend as ‘one who is personally well known and for whom one has warm regard or affection.’  A friend is typically one who knows us and all our faults yet loves us anyway.  There is someone else that many usually overlook as a friend, and yet still loves us in spite of all our faults.  That someone is Jesus Christ. 

                   Our text this morning is found in John 15:13-15 where he recorded Jesus telling us:  “(13) Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.  (14) You are My friends if you do whatsoever I command  you.  (15) Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knows not what his lord does. But I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father, I have made known unto you.”

                   Jesus loves each and every one of us.  He explained why in John 3:16.  God loves so much He sent His only Son to die for us.  That Son, Jesus, loves us as well.  We all know the children’s song of love, “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.”  These words are true regardless of our age.  All of us have experienced times when our friends have let us down.  But Jesus will never leave or abandon us as Paul reminds us in Hebrew 15:6.  And in spite of our sins, He still loves us.  Afterall, I Timothy 1:15 tells us He came to this world specifically to save sinners. 

                   The Cross is the proof of the love Jesus has for us.  He demonstrated the greatest love anyone can show for another by giving up His life for us.  He tells us in John 10:11 that He is the good Shepherd that gives up His life for the sheep.  And He tells is in verse 13 of our text:  “Greater love has no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends.”  How many of your friends can you say are willing to die for you?  Or how many of them are you willing to die for?  Romans 5:7 says it’s extremely rare that someone would willingly die for a good person.  Yet as we see in Romans 5:10 that even when we were still sinners, Jesus died for us.  It’s the Cross that shows the full depth of the love He has for each one of us.

                   Jesus will accept anyone as His friend wherever they are and in whatever condition they may be when they reach out to Him.  He died so that everyone could be friends with Him.  John tells us in 1 John 1:7 that if we walk in the light of God, as Jesus is in the light of God, we will have a real friendship with Jesus because His blood on the Cross cleans our sin from us.  We don’t have to change to come to Him and ask Him to come into our life.  We don’t have to be afraid that God won’t forgive our sins because Jesus didn’t come to rub our sin in our face.  He came to take them away as we are told in Isaiah 44:22-23.

                   Jesus wants to be our friend forever.  Friends want to be together because they enjoy being around each as much as they can.  Our Bible teaches us about Jesus and His eternal friendship.  He tells us in Matthew 28:20 that He is with us from the day we accept Him into our lives and for all of eternity.  We are also told in Hebrews 13:5 that He will never leave us or abandon us.  And He wants us to be with Him.  He tells us in John 14:1-3 that He is preparing a place for His friends.  Prepared places are for prepared people.  We have to be friends with Him so we can be prepared for that place.  He is doing this because He wants us to be with Him forever.

                   Life on earth as we know it – for ever long that life may be – is never going to be easy.  All of us will have to deal with pain, sickness, loss of loved ones, and setbacks in many forms.  But with Jesus as our friend, all we need to do is take our problems, no matter the size or scope, to Him in prayer and He will see us through them.  Then, when we finally do get to the place that He is preparing for us, all the problems we experienced in this life with be quickly forgotten.  We will finally see Him as He really is, and we will be reunited with all those who have gone before us.  The life we knew on earth will be a distant memory.  This is the promise Jesus gives to all His friends.

                   Some may have a problem with the part in verse 14 of our text where Jesus said we are His friend if we do what He has commands us to do.  Let’s think about this.  With our earthly friends, we do things to please them and often adopt as our own certain behaviors and characteristics about them that we admire.  Jesus is telling us that we are to follow His example as we live our earthly life.  That includes learning and following the Bible in how we live our life, being kind to others, obedient to those with authority over us, not cheating, lying or stealing, helping wherever and whenever we can, and loving others as He loves us. 

                    Accepting Jesus as a friend means we may have to give up some things in our life that are unacceptable to Him.  Some of our friends may think we have gone crazy and drift away from us.  But when we think about the long term benefits and the daily blessings we will receive during our life, I can honestly tell you that it is worth any sacrifice we may have to make, including the loss of those you once called friends.  I can also guarantee that you will make new friends.

                   If you haven’t yet accepted Him into your life, don’t wait any longer.  His arms are wide open, ready to receive anyone who wants to be His friend.  Take that leap of faith and open up your heart to receive all that He wants to give to you.  It isn’t necessary that we see Him physically face to face in order to accept His love and friendship.  We accept Him by faith.  Faith is accepting that which we can’t see or feel but still believe it to be real.  Pastor Magaw often used the light switch as a simple illustration of the concept of faith:  We don’t need to be an electrician to know that when we flip the light switch the light will come on or go off.  It’s faith that allows us to confidently know that the switch we flip will turn the light on or off.  When we let Jesus into our life and come to know more about His love for us, giving up things that go against what He teaches us won’t seem like a sacrifice.

                   Paul tells us in I Thessalonians 5:1 when we accept Jesus by faith, we are immediately justified.  This means that we are now sinless before God because we exercised our faith by believing that Jesus is God’s Son and His death on the Cross allowed our sins to be removed.  We can now be restored to the family of God.  As members of God’s family, we will have the supernatural abilities of an all-powerful God to get us through all the difficulties we will experience in the days ahead.  As we study our Bibles, we will continue the learn how to get through the hardest of days and know that no matter what happens, we will always have our friend Jesus to lean on when life gets hard. 

                   When we’re restored to God’s family, we will experience peace that only He can give us.  We can use that peace and our own experiences to help others get through difficult times and share with them how Jesus can be their friend as well.  It doesn’t mean we will no longer experience problems or painful situations in our life.  Nor will all our prayers be answered in the way that we may want.  It means we now have Jesus to help us through the hard times and understand why our prayers are answered the way they are.  And best of all, we have the promise that when we leave this life, we will live eternally with Jesus.  Don’t wait any longer to accept His invitation to be His friend. 

                    Until we meet again, may God bless and keep you, may He shine His light on you, show you grace, and give you peace in all the days ahead.