Address—Jim Hyland
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God's help and blessing our God and Father. How thankful we are this afternoon for the Lord Jesus Christ. And we thank Thee that we have indeed found a friend in that blessed one, a friend for time, and then the enjoyment of himself through all eternity in the Father's house. How our hearts rejoice as we think of the nearness of that moment when we will be caught away to be with and like Him forever. But now in the meantime, we thank Thee for a few moments together.
With thy precious living Word before us and our God as we open it and read it this afternoon, we pray that our meditation may be sweet, and that it may be of Christ, that there would be that which would be for the edification, the exhortation, and the comfort of each one. Our God and Father now knoweth the need of each young and old, and we pray that there might be something for every one of us to take away for our eternal profit and benefit.
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So we ask thy help and blessing. We only have no might of ourselves, but our eyes are upon thee. We look to thee for blessing in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and for his glory. Amen.
Turn with me first of all, please, to John's Gospel, chapter 15.
John's Gospel chapter 15 and verse 13.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you well as our him. And this portion we began with suggests, I have it on my heart this afternoon to take up the subject of friends or friendship. You know, it's a very wonderful resource that God has given us for the path of faith through this world.
And for our lives here, in a natural sense, usually when we think of friendship, we think of it in that way.
That which is given for time, that which a relationship that God has given for our blessing and happiness here on earth. And that's the way we're going to particularly look at it. And what I have on my heart to do this afternoon, at least for the first part of this meeting, is to go to 8 different portions of the word of God that bring before us eight different attributes or qualities of a friend.
As seen in the Lord Jesus Christ, because he's the greatest friend that anyone of us could ever have.
Someone was telling us just the other day that they met a little boy and uh, they got talking to him. And as it turned out, this little boy knew the Lord Jesus Christ as his savior. But you know, he said in parting with the person that was telling me this, he said, you know, I really don't have any friends, not very popular at school. I just don't fit in and I just really don't have many friends. But the person he was talking to said, I'll remember.
You always have the best friend, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ, and isn't that wonderful? Maybe there's someone here this afternoon, a young person or someone who's not so young, and you just feel like maybe you don't have many friends and maybe a good friend has disappointed you in recent time. But we want to bring before our souls the greatest friend that a person could ever have. And we're going to see as we go through these qualities and attributes of the of the Lord Jesus.
As the perfect friend that hears one who will never disappoint US1 who will never let us down. And so I began here in the book of John, where the Lord Jesus Speaking of what was ahead the cross.
He encourages his disciples, and he calls them friends. Isn't that wonderful? You know, I would think that as the disciples sat and listened to the discourse of the Lord Jesus, that while it's true as we if we were to turn back a page, their hearts were troubled. They were afraid. Many thoughts were going through their minds. Yet to hear the Lord Jesus tell them that they were his friends, not a tremendous thing.
Wouldn't you love to have the Lord Jesus come to your side this afternoon and say, you know, I consider you my friend, That's what the Lord Jesus was really saying to these, to these disciples, ye are my friends. What kind of friends were they? Well, you know, they weren't the most faithful kind of friends, were they? If we were to back up in their history and walking with the Lord Jesus during his public ministry, you would find there was quite a bit of failure here and there.
There was sometimes a strife who would be the greatest? Who would sit on his right hand and his left hand in the Kingdom. They often misunderstood what the Lord Jesus was saying and doing. There were many failures amongst the disciples during the Lord's pathway. When Mary poured out her ointment at the feet of the Lord, all the disciples spoke against her and so on. And there was plenty more failure to follow this. He calls them friends here, but He knew.
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He had a perfect understanding of what was going to happen, that all his friends were going to forsake him and flee, that one of those friends was going to deny him three times with oaths and curses, and yet he could say to them, ye are my friends, you know. Again, when we think of friendship, as I said, we usually think of it in the natural sense. And really, natural friendship depends on a response from the object.
It looks for something lovely in that object, and when it gets that response, sees that something lovely in the object, then your friendship flourishes and grows. And often, and I know we've all experienced it in our own lives. Often when that response isn't there, when sometimes little idiosyncrasies and other things come to the surface that aren't so pleasant, sometimes friends are those who were friends.
They separate. They split ways. There isn't a closeness any longer because of something that has come between them. But here was the Lord Jesus, as I say, the perfect friend. And he could say the disciples in spite of all that had happened during their walk with him in those years previous. And in spite of all that he knew what that was ahead in the next few hours and days He could.