Understand that so let's pray first God We need your help Lord as we as always as we study your word your mind That you've presented to us in this book that we call a Bible. It's actually words that you've been the sufficient for us to know everything we need to know about you and And God, based upon that, I cannot believe that you would give us something that we can't understand. Otherwise, you're not a good communicator, but you're perfect. So, you've given us your word, you've given us the Holy Spirit, guide us into understanding. Help me tonight Lord as as I begin to present your scripture on on Friendships such an important area of our lives. Hopefully tonight. We'll understand why it is so important and Help us to have clarity from your word in Jesus name Amen Facebook allows a person to have up to how many friends and 4,999 friends and then they cut you off. I guess Zuckerberg decides you don't need to have any more friends than that. Time to share with other people or something. Can anyone really have that many friends? I think I included this in my email to you. 4,999 friends? Okay. So my next question was how many friends can a person realistically have? How many do you think a person could have realistically? Jackie, what is your number? And there's no right number. 150. OK. All right. And oh, I know. You're talking about the Dunbar number. OK. Yep. Someone else. Two. I've got someone saying two. Yes. Five. OK. Yes. Oh, that's not the question. You don't answer a question with a question. OK. What do you think? 20. OK. All right. I saw another five. Karen? 100. OK. Any others? Yes. 10 or 15. OK. The number that Jackie mentioned, 115, that actually comes from Robin Dunbar. He's an anthropologist. the career paths of some people. Anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist. They have no idea what that looks like or how it comes out in practice, but he proposed that humans have a cognitive limit of around 150 individuals with whom they can maintain stable, meaningful, social relationships. Okay? So, based upon that number right there, On Sunday mornings, when we average 180 people here, 30 of you are out in the cold when it comes to my mind. Sorry, you're not connecting with me and I'm not with you. I cannot handle any more than 150. Based upon this. Now, a 2023 study by the Pew Research Center found that 53% of people in the US say they have between one and four close friends. Now we're venturing into where Ethan wanted to go. He wants everything precise, so he knows what he's answering, and I understand that. Okay? Between one and four close friends, 53% of the people in the U.S. said that characterizes them. Eight percent said they have none at all. Well, we have to back up, you know, how do you define friends, close friends, friends, acquaintances? Are there different kinds, levels of friendships? What are those levels? What do you think are some of those levels? Acquaintance, there's one, yep. Co-workers, okay. Close, close friends, right. Depends on which family you're talking about, OK? And what's currently going on in that family. Yes, you're right. You're right. Yep. Any others? Yes. Ooh, BFFs, the what buddies? Ride or die? Ride, like motorcycle riding? No. I don't know. OK, Jackie. Lifelong friends. Okay. Intimate. Yes. Absolutely. Good answer, Karen. Yep. So there's a lot of different levels, so what are we talking about when we say the word friends, okay? Is there a difference between Christian fellowship and biblical friendship? Throw in two more concepts here. Christian fellowship and biblical friendship. So there's both have two words, okay? is an adjective for the word fellowship. Biblical, an adjective for the word friendship. So we got two adjectives, Christian and biblical. Are they the same or are they different? Then you have the word fellowship and friendship. If there's a difference, this was one of the questions I sent home earlier, what's the difference? Anyone want to throw out their thoughts on that? Okay. Okay. There's not a wrong answer. Ethan. Okay, okay, so Would everyone agree with that the difference is biblical friendship is something more of a deeper level, right? Okay Hopefully we'll define both of those Before the night is up and actually biblical friendship is something that we will be defining over the next several weeks Okay, and looking at a lot of different aspects of it so why why do we I'm going to say this statement assuming that everyone feels this need. Why do we need friendships? Why do we have this need for friendships? Say again, Kimberly? God created us to need friendships. Okay, because you have some people that say, well, I don't need friends. I'm okay on my own. And they appear to be okay with no friends, right? I don't, well, right, in that there are some people that think that, okay? But are they okay? I don't know if I can agree with that. So, God created us. He just like, throughout the Sunday school answered, okay, we might as well go home now. Thanks, Kimberly. Let's, let's, let's, basic understanding. We all have a need for friendship, okay? Why? Okay, let's first look at the source of that need, where it's coming from, and I'm going to take you to the beginning, Genesis chapter 1. Please take your Bibles, open there, Genesis chapter 1. This first part here I think will help us understand why we have this need for friendship. And let me say it this way, I think it's going to help us understand that when this need isn't realized or we feel like it's not being realized, why it bothers us so much. Okay? And we're not going to have a raise of hands and confession who it bothers because I think it affects many people. So look with me at Genesis chapter 1 in verse 26. Why do we have this need? It says and God said let us make man in our image Right there in just that portion of that verse in the beginning of the Bible is a picture of of community of connection of Relationship with that one little word. Do you see what it is? us God in the beginning before creation, okay, or during creation, he says, let us, the Trinity, it's a reference to the Trinity, and what did us do during creation? Us, God the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, us created man in their image. So He created man, not just to be in the image of God, but to be in the image of this triune community relationship, if you will. It's not just created in God's image. God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, this relationship that existed as one, we were created in that image. to be in relationship. As Kimberly said, God created us that way. But there's the verse where it comes from. So they created man in their image to be like them, to be an image of the Trinity, to be an image of God. And one aspect of God, the Trinity, is this relationship. We were created to be a reflection of that. We were created to live in relationships. Another way that it's said is we are relational creations, OK? Created to be in relationships. That's why when someone says, well, I don't need friends. I'm OK being by myself. There's something wrong there, OK? Not that they have deep-seated psychological issues, but if they are okay with that, they're missing a very important element of what God created them for, which was to be in relationships. They, even if they know the books of the gospel by heart, And they preach every Sunday, and they hand out 452 tracts every week. They are violating God's will for their life. They're not reflecting the image of God if they seclude themselves off from all relationships. God then confirms this thought in chapter 1. If we go to chapter 2 and look in verse 18 now, God said, it's not good That man should be alone. I will make him a helpmeet for him. Oh, don't you love that verse? I've heard, I've heard, I've heard a feminist slant on this verse before. I've heard comedians on this verse. Yeah, guys are so stupid. God had to make a woman to fix them. Guys are deficient in some way, and that's why God had to bring in a woman to help them. There's that concept, help me, right? Okay. But all of those approaches, some of them are meant just to be humorous, some of them are meant to downgrade men, whatever the case is, they're missing this component here of relationship. God created Adam. Everything, by the way, here's why I say There was nothing wrong with Adam, and so God had to create Eve because there might have been something wrong with him, or he was deficient. That's not true. Because when God created man, what did he say? It's good. No, he said it's very good, okay? That means perfect. Adam, perfect. I didn't say all men are perfect, so easy there, feminists, okay? God created man. to be absolutely perfect. But Adam, this perfect creation, was missing something. He was lacking something, and Adam saw that as he looked around creation. That would mean that if Adam was wrong or deficient, God created something deficient, and God can't do that. So why did God make Eve? Because Adam was lonely. Because Adam needed help. He couldn't do everything on his own. Nope. God made Eve so that man Humankind, okay, created in the image of God could reflect God in this matter of relationship. Reflect God according to His image, His attributes. We were created to reflect God in all of His attributes, but also this matter of relationship. So God created Eve, one of the reasons was so that man could fulfill this aspect of reflecting God. Man cannot do that alone. He needed community, okay, in order to better image the God who is a community. Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Trinity, perfect. There's nothing lacking in that community right there. And we are supposed to reflect that. So God gave Adam Eve, procreation, lots of people, and we are to reflect that aspect of God. Adam, think about this. I mean, do you ever think, I would be less stressed out? I would be less angry, I would be less fearful, less emotional, whatever, if this situation didn't exist in my life. If I could just have free time, I wouldn't be so on edge and biting everyone's head off all the time. If I could just have some time If I could just have, do you ever wonder what it would be like if you could, for an hour, two hours, every day, just walking through God's creation, enjoying God's presence and sunshine and sandy beach on one side and snow drifts on the other side. And one side is totally at room temperature, and the other side is totally cooled from air conditioning. And you're just having this extremely intense, deep experience with God for two hours every day. Wouldn't it be nice to start your day off that way? Wow. Think about this. Adam had that perfect quiet time every day, 24-7. God made him in his image. Adam never, ever had a dry day. We have those sometimes, like, it just wasn't a good day. Never had one of those. And yet, he needed friends. He needed that. We were made for, here's the term, biblical friendship. God made man in his image, and part of the image-bearing is living in relationship with others. That is why when we read through the Bible so many times, division, discord, you get into the New Testament, Paul sounds like a broken record talking about unity, unity, unity, one accord, one mind, the mind of Christ, blah, blah, blah, all of this constantly going on, because the lack of that within the body of Christ is totally destroying the image of God. that we were created to reflect. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, okay? The summary of that is this. We reflect God's image with how we live in God-centered relationships. That reflects the image of God. But then, we move on to Chapter 3. Everything's perfect until Chapter 3, right? What happens in Chapter 3? Sin, oh, let's see what that does. That's number two in your outlines, the effect of sin on relationships. Genesis chapter three and verse eight, and they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord amongst the trees of the garden. Verse nine, God asks, where are you? And then we see the first effect of sin on relationships. Separation. There's no longer that community, that intimacy. Someone over here mentioned intimate friendships. Genesis chapter 2 in verse 23 Listen to what Adam said back in the previous chapter before sin God gave him Eve Adam said this this is now bone of my bones flesh of my flesh She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. She is bone of my bone flesh of my flesh We are one Chapter 3 in verse 10 Adam, look what he's saying. I heard thy voice in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. There's no we in those statements there. Sin totally separated their relationship and here's where some people would say Adam just threw Eve under the bus. The woman that you gave me, okay? Whoa! What happened? Sin has this effect on relationships. When we have division in our relationships, okay? Disunity discord we're not getting along whether it's a husband and wife of friends or church members You can't talk to each other. You can't look at each other. Whatever the symptom is the the problem is sin and God's image is not being reflected with a divided relationship especially within the house of God there are Yeah, and we're going to – we'll go deep here in just a minute on that. There's three parts to sin's connection to friendship. Here's how sin affects friendships. The first one is what we're going to call a vertical component, okay? Colossians 1 and verse 21, Paul wrote this, and you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now half irreconciled. We were, at one time, alienated from God, this vertical relationship, us and God. We were enemies. Another word used there is wickedness. Separation. If this separation, this isolation between us and God is not addressed, then the ability to have biblical horizontal relationship is impossible, because this one has to come first. And friends, that's why, and I think you're all pretty much past this, we have, excuse me, we have a few unmarried, marriageable people here that are unmarried, so this is for you, okay? The rest of us, it's too late. Those of you that got kids, oh, it is so important. be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. And that's why our children sometimes are going to maybe marry an unbeliever. And here's why it's wrong. They don't have the capacity to have the relationship because their vertical relationship is not established. So they cannot have a biblical horizontal relationship. So a person, and oh, remember the purpose of a relationship is to reflect an image of the Trinity. How can a person be part of reflecting the image of the Trinity when they're not even connected with the Trinity through salvation? So a person gets saved, the vertical relationship has been restored, but we continue to sin. And our sin continues to hinder our relationship, our vertical relationship with Him. And that hindering pressures us toward what we'll call relational isolation. Just like it did with Adam and Eve. They sinned. What were they doing? Hiding. They isolated themselves from God. And when there is personal sin between us and God, It affects our horizontal relationships as well. And we tend to start avoiding people. So that leads us to two horizontal problems. The first one, a motivational component. Now here's how sin affects us motivationally when it comes to our horizontal relationships. Martin Luther observed that sin causes us to be self-focused. Have you ever noticed that? It's all about me, myself, and I. Take this spoiled little five-year-old brat that some of you raise. I've already raised mine, so I've done my tour of duty with that. They are so selfish. They want what they want. It's mine, mine, mine, mine. And adults do the same thing. I didn't get my respect. I want my way. I want to be heard. I have my rights. Self-focused, and that's what Martin Luther was commenting on, sin causes us to be more self-focused. That affects our motivations. So let me ask you this. Give me the Sunday school answer. When we go to work, what should our purpose be when we're at work? Say again? Do our job. Why? The purpose for doing our job. Say? So we get paid, right? Think of the Sunday school answer. To honor and glorify God. Yes. That should be our motivation for everything, whether therefore you eat or drink, whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God. OK. Yes. So that should be our motivation. But what happens when we go to work? A person goes to work. I want a raise. I want that promotion. And then the corporate infighting begins, and backstabbing, and manipulating, and positioning yourself so you can get the best this or the best that. Teachers, you see it in your classroom. The kids want the best seat, OK? Or the best pencil that the teacher's handing out, or they want the best sticker on their paper. And it's all self-focused. The motivation is self. Now, bring that into friendships. What are the self-focused questions that people ask as a result of sin affecting our motivations when it comes to friendships? Do they like me? Can I make them like me? How can I get them to like me? Will they accept me? Will they love me? What will they give to me? What needs of mine will be met if I can get them to like me? What are they expecting from me? Will they hurt me? Who is the motivating, driving center of every one of those questions? Right here. That's the motivation that sin causes us to have when we're thinking of relationships. Those aren't necessarily bad, okay? But can you see the focus of those questions? Me, me, me. What's missing? God and his purpose for that relationship to reflect his image. It really changes this whole concept of friendships. So we often will pursue relationships not in order to present an image of God, but for personal benefit and what it's going to bring for me. So here's a summary so far. Our vertical problem has created a motivation problem. which then comes out externally in this last component, a missional component. This is the external. This is how it shows itself. What story is told by our friendships? People on the outside, okay, looking at our friendships, when people look into our relationships from the outside, what do they see? Do they tell the story of the gospel? That's kind of a foreign thought, I know. When people look, if we're reflecting the image of God relationally, reflecting the Trinity relationship through our relationships, should they not see God in our relationships? Genesis chapter 4, things get even worse after Genesis chapter 3, because now you've got cold-blooded murder taking place. And it doesn't get any better until we fast forward to the New Testament. Enter Jesus. And through His perfect life and His righteousness, Jesus stands in our place. The Bible says He became sin for us. He took our penalty because of our sin. We were alienated from God, Colossians 1.21. We read that earlier. But now we can be brought near to God through what Jesus did. Now, this, I hope, is going to become one of your newest favorite verses ever. John 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 you do whatsoever, I command you. You can look at the rest there. I'm just stuck on that right there. Jesus called us his friend. This isn't like our acquaintance that I get stuff from, like we view our friendships now, the self-focused motivation for our friendships. Jesus called us. He befriended us and got nothing out of it. Totally opposite of the way we approach relationships. He called us his friend. He befriended us. Think of this. Think of this, the perfect fellowship and communion of the Trinity. When did that begin? Well, God is eternal, so it had no beginning. For hundreds, thousands, billions of years, this perfect relationship that we call the Trinity At the crucifixion, it was, for the first time ever, broken. Temporarily, but it was broken so that our relationship could be restored. And Jesus calls us his friend. That is what separates this thing called biblical friendship from our self-focused, feelings-based ideas of friendship that we have now. So in this series, Biblical Friendships, we're going to be looking at what it's not, what it looks like, how it's formed, what threatens it. We've all been burned, haven't we? We've all been rejected, dismissed, cold-shouldered. by people, and it's worse when it's other believers that have done that. Biblical friendship is Christ-centered so that when someone on the outside looks at you and the relationship with this other person, they don't see tension, turmoil, they don't see cold shoulder, they see Christ. That makes it biblical. because now it is reflecting gospel, reflecting Christ and God the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Biblical friendship has Christ at the center. And then he gives us the ability to follow his example and befriend other people. So I've included some questions there at the end for you to maybe take some time to think through here tonight. And be looking for the assignment for next Wednesday sometime before 7 o'clock next Wednesday at some time. Heavenly Father, God, I pray that you will help us with this as we begin to consider friendships as something more than something that benefits us. That there is a reason that you created this thing called friendships. Help us to understand it and maybe dispel our preconceived notions and ideas of what a friend is and who gets to be my friend or whatever. But just to focus on your purpose for friendships and then what you describe as a friend. In Jesus' name, amen.