Sermon
#16 Series: Song of Solomon
Title: DO YOU NEED A FRIEND?
Text: Song Of Solomon 5:16
Readings: Office:
Merle Hart Auditorium: Rex Bartley
Subject: Christ The Friend of
Needy Sinners
Date: Sunday Evening - August 30, 1998
Tape # U-85a
Introduction:
Do
you need a friend; a faithful, powerful, and loving friend? Some of you, if I
may judge by the expressions of your faces, desperately need such a friend. I
have such a friend; and I want to recommend my friend to you.
I’ve found a
Friend, O such a Friend!
He loved me ere I knew Him;
He drew me with the cords of
love,
And thus He bound me to Him.
I’ve found a
Friend, O such a Friend!
He bled and died to save me;
And not alone the gift of
life,
But His own self He gave me.
I’ve found a
Friend, O such a Friend!
All power to Him is given
To guard me on my onward
course,
And bring me safe to heaven.
I’ve found a
Friend, O such a Friend!
So kind and true and tender,
So wise a counselor and
guide,
So mighty a Defender!
My Friend is my subject
tonight. You will find my text in the Song of Solomon chapter five and verse
sixteen - “This is my Beloved, and this
is my Friend.’ The Friend that I speak of, the Friend that I want you to
have, and know, and love is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Friend
of publicans and sinners.
Someone
once said, “Friendship is the only thing
in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.”
A friend is one of the
greatest blessings on earth. Tell me not of money: affection is better than
gold; sympathy is better than property. The poorest man in all the world is the
man who is friendless and alone. If you would be happy in this world, you must
have friends. And if you desire happiness in eternity, you must find a Friend
in the Person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only Savior of poor sinners.
The
world is full of sorrow, because it is full of sin. It is a dark place. It is a
lonely place. It is a disappointing place. The
brightest sunbeam in this dark world is a friend. A friend will make
our sorrows half what they would otherwise be. And a friend makes all our joys
double. But a real friend is a scarce and rare treasure.
There are many who will eat,
drink, and laugh with us in the sunshine of prosperity. But there are few who
will stand with us in the night of weeping. There are few who will love us when
we are sick, helpless, and poor. Above all, there are few who will care for our
souls!
The friendship of this world
is as bitter as it is brittle. Trust in it, and you will have trusted a robber.
Rely upon it, and you will have leaned upon a spear that will pierce your soul.
Proposition: The Lord Jesus Christ is a real Friend;
and he is the Friend you need.
May
God the Holy Spirit give me his special anointing and grace, as I endeavor to
speak plainly and personally to you about your soul’s greatest need. I want to
simply make three statements to you.
I.
The
Lord Jesus Christ is the Friend of sinners, the only true Friend sinners have (Matt. 9:10-13).
Matthew
9:10-13 "And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at
meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with
him and his disciples. (11) And when
the Pharisees saw it, they said unto
his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners? (12) But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be
whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. (13) But go ye and learn what that
meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
Matthew
11:19 "The Son of man came eating and
drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of
publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children."
The
Son of God came into this world specifically on an errand of mercy, love, and
grace. He came into the world to save sinners. He lived for sinners. He died
for sinners. He rose again for sinners. He intercedes for sinners. He loves
sinners. He saves sinners.
Romans
5:6-8 "For when we were yet without strength,
in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
(7) For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a
good man some would even dare to die. (8)
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us."
II.
The
Lord Jesus Christ is the “Friend that
sticketh closer than a brother” (Pro. 18:24).
Proverbs
18:24 "A man that hath friends must show himself friendly: and there is a friend
that sticketh closer than a
brother."
On a
purely earthly level, Solomon tells us that
if we would have friends, we must show ourselves friendly. “A
man that hath friends must show himself friendly.” That is a sermon
in itself. I have never known an
obviously friendly person who did not have an abundance of friends.
·
If
you would have people be thoughtful of you, be thoughtful of others.
·
If
you would have kindness shown to you, be kind to others.
·
If
you want people to speak well of you, speak well of others.
·
If
you want people to be generous toward you, be generous toward others.
I
have observed that usually those who are most easily offended are those who
think nothing of offending. Those who complain the most about doing things are
those who always do as little as they can without public embarrassment. Those
who are the most selfish are those who complain about the selfishness of
others. Those who are the most unfriendly are the very ones who complain that
others are unfriendly. That is not my message tonight; but it is a message that
needs to be preached and preached often. “A man that hath friends must show himself
friendly.”
Look
at the next line of this text. Solomon tells us, “There is a Friend that
sticketh closer than a brother.”
He did not find this Friend in his unbridled pleasures, nor in the
wanderings of his unlimited research, but in the pavilion of the Most High, in
the secret dwelling place of God, in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I can tell you, both from
the Word of God and from the experience of more than thirty-two years, that our
all glorious Christ, my Lord, my God, my Redeemer, my Savior, is the greatest,
best, wisest, most loving, disinterested, and faithful of Friends.
How happy is that family
whose family Friend is Jesus Christ! How happy and blessed is that man whose
best Friend is the Son of God! “There is
a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother,” and his name is Immanuel,
the Christ of God. “This is my Beloved,
and this is my Friend.” I have never been much of a friend to him; but, oh,
what a Friend he is to me!
Poor, weak, and worthless,
though I am,
I have a rich, almighty
Friend;
Jesus, the Savior, is His
name:
He freely loves, and without
end.
He ransomed me from hell
with blood;
And by His power my foes
controlled:
He found me wandering far
from God,
And brought me to His chosen
fold.
He cheers my heart, my wants
supplies,
And says that I shall
shortly be
Enthroned with Him above the
skies:
Oh! What a Friend is Christ
to me!
But, oh! My inmost spirit
mourns;
And well my eyes with tears
may swim,
To think of my perverse
returns:
I’ve been a faithless friend
to Him.
Sure, were I not most vile
and base,
I could not thus my Friend
requite:
And, were He not the God of
grace,
He’d frown and spurn me from
His sight!
III.
Christ
is the one Friend we all need.
The Son of God is a Friend in need. And man is the most needy creature on God’s
earth, because he is a sinner. There is no need so great as that of sinners.
Poverty, hunger, thirst, cold, sickness, all are nothing in comparison with
sin.
As sinners, we need righteousness; but we have no
power to get it. We need atonement;
but we have no abiity to make it. we need pardon;
and we are utterly unable to provide it for ourselves. We need deliverance from a guilty
conscience and the fear of death; but we have no power in ourselves to obtain
it.
Christ, is a Friend to
sinners in need. He came into the world to relieve us of the great need caused
by sin. He came to remove our guilt, save us from sin, and deliver us from the
curse of the law. It was said of the child Jesus, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from
their sins” (Matt. 1:21). “This is a
faithful saying, worthy of all acceptation, Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners, of whom I am chief!” (1 Tim. 1:15). Let me show you from the
Word of God why we all need Christ as our Friend. If you will listen to me, I
am certain that your conscience will echo and say “amen” to every word I speak
in this regard.
A. All of us by nature are poor, diseased, dying
creatures.
From the President in the White House, to the
farmer in the field, from the professor at the University, to the school-boy in
kindergarten, we are all sick from the mortal disease of the soul - sin.
Whether we know it or not,
whether we feel it or not, we are all dying, because of sin. We are as “a sinful nation, a people laden with
iniquity, a seed of evil doers, children that are corrupters: we have forsaken
the Lord, we have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, we are gone away
backward…the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the soul of
the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in us; but wounds, and
bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up,
neither mollified with ointment” (Isa. 1:4-6).
1.
The plague of sin is in our
hearts.
“The
heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
(Jer. 17:9). “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). “Out of the heart proceed evil
thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses,
blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man” (Matt. 15:19-20).
a.
Our problem is that we have
a heart disease, a disease incurable except by the blood of Christ and his
almighty grace.
(1.)
The
root of all sin is in your heart and mine by nature.
(2.)
It is
the heart that must be changed. We must have a new heart implanted within us.
Christ alone can change the sinner’s heart.
b.
This plague of the heart has
so permeated our being that every faculty of man, both body and soul, is
defiled with sin.
“We have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that we are all under
sin; as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that
understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. We are all gone out of the
way, we are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no,
not one. Our throat is an open sepulchre: with our tongues we have used deceit;
the poison of asps is under our lips: our mouth is full of cursing and
bitterness: Our feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in our
ways: and the way of peace have we not known: There is no fear of God before
our eyes. Now we know that what things so ever the law saith, it saith to them
who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may
become guilty before God…For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of
God” (Rom.
3:9-19, 23).
(1.
)
Our understanding is so perverse that we will never seek God.
(2.
)
Our throat is so corrupt that it is like an open grave.
(3.
)
Our tongue is a deceitful weapon.
(4.
)
Our lips are full of poisonous words.
(5.
)
Our mouth is but a vehicle to express his wrath.
(6.
).
Our feet run to do evil.
(7.
)
Our ways are full of misery and end in destruction.
(8.
)
Our eyes look to do evil, having no fear of God.
These
things are not true of a few, very wicked, depraved people. They are true of us
all. We are all, at the very core of our beings abominably wicked and totally
depraved. There are no exceptions.
2.
This disease of sin, this
plague of the heart, is an inbred, family disease, passed on from father to
son, generation after generation.
3.
It is a disease which grows
worse and worse, with every passing hour.
4.
Christ alone, can cure our
souls of the disease of sin.
We
could never cure ourselves. No angel or man could produce a remedy for sin. But
the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to cure us of the plague of the heart
- “Behold,
I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them, and reveal unto them the
abundance of peace and truth” (Jer.
33:6). He came “to abolish death, and bring life and immortality to light through the
gospel” (1 Tim. 1:10).
B. All of us by nature are debtors to God.
We were bankrupt sinners, head over heels in
debt to the Almighty. We owed our God ten thousand talents, and had not one
penny with which to pay. We could never have freed ourselves from the debt of
sin; but only got more deeply involved day after day. But the Lord Jesus Christ
came to pay our debt. He canceled the bill, paying the full requirements of
God’s holy law.
Jesus paid it all, all the
debt I owed! O my soul, how I ought to love him! There is not a soul out of
hell whose debt was so great as mine (Lk. 7:40-43).
C. All of us by nature were under the curse of the law.
The sentence was upon us - “The soul that sinneth, it
shall die.” We could never
satisfy the demands of the law. We could not keep its precepts. We could not
appease its wrath. We could not atone for sin. But Jesus Christ came to do for
us what we could never do for ourselves. He kept the precepts of the law as our
Representative before God. He died under the curse of the law as our
Substitute, putting away sin.
“Christ hath redeemed us
from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed
is everyone that hangeth on a tree” (Gal. 3:13). “Who
his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to
sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed” (1
Pet. 2:24).
D. All of us by nature were shipwrecked, perishing, and
sliding into hell.
We could never, in ourselves, have reached
the harbor of everlasting life. We were sinking in the midst of the waves,
shiftless, hopeless, helpless, and powerless.
We were tied and bound by
the chain of our sins, in bonds under the burden of guilt, imprisoned under the
yoke of the law, and slipping into hell. All this, our Lord saw and undertook
to remove. He came down from heaven to “proclaim liberty tot he captives, and the
opening of the prison to them that are bound” (Isa. 61:1). He came “to
seek and to save that which was lost” (Lk. 19:10). He came to “deliver
us from going down into the pit” (Job
33:24).
E. Yes, I say that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Friend in
need. He is the Friend you need.
1.
We could never have been
saved without the Lord Jesus Christ coming down from heaven.
Soalvation would have been
an impossibility without Christ. The wisest men of Egypt, Greece, and Rome
combined could never have found a way of peace with God. Without the friendship
of Christ, we would all have been lost forever in hell.
·
Could
we have changed our hearts?
·
Could
we have satisfied the demands of the law?
·
Could
we have delivered ourselves from the bondage of sin?
·
Could
we have paid our debts to God?
·
Could
we have delivered ourselves from the jaws of hell?
No!
No! A thousand times no! Without our Friend, Christ Jesus, we would be forever
damned.
2.
It was our Lord’s own free
love, mercy, and pity that brought him down from heaven to save us.
He was in no way obliged to
do so. He came and saved us, unsought, unasked, unwanted, because he was
gracious, just because he loved us!
Search
the history of the world. Look around the globe. Examine all of those whom you
know and love. I tell you that there never was such a friend as Jesus Christ,
my Friend.
There’s not a friend like
the lowly Jesus,
No not one! No not one!
None else could heal all our
souls diseases,
No not one! No not one!
Application:
1.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the
only true Friend a sinner has.
2.
The Lord Jesus is the one
Friend who will always be your Friend, the one Friend who sticks closer than a
brother.
3.
The Son of God is the Friend
you need.
4.
Sinners can have this Friend
unconditionally, forever!
5.
“This is my Friend!” May God the Holy Spirit
make him yours.
AMEN.