401: James Walker - Exhortation: Friendship

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:03

   Welcome to Good Christophian Talks. Thank you for joining us this week on this podcast. We select one talk a week to help us get the Bible in our Daily News feed. Each week we post a talk that we previewed from suggestions sent in by listeners from around the world. Then we record a short intro beforehand as a personalized recommendation to you on why we are sharing the talk. And now let’s talk more about this week’s talk. This week’s talk is an exhortation by Brother James Walker given at the Simi Hills Ecclesia on May 3rd of this year.

2. 0:40

   I have attended Simi Hills for most of my life, so this I did hear this in the audience. This is my first time posting exhortation from Simi Hills. Obviously massive bias here. I’ve known Uncle James my whole life. He interviewed me for baptism and I so enjoyed this talk. And to be frank, it’s because usually Uncle James talks for a very long time in a very unfocused way.

3. 1:07

   I think he would say that. I would say that to his face. That’s something he knows about himself. And this excitation was not that. It was a, a, a, a, a really wonderful excitation talking about the difference between kind of human friendship, godly friendship or Jesus’s friendship to us. And that was something that I really enjoyed thinking about and was really refreshed by listening to.

4. 1:33

   And I hope it’s the same for you. So I guess, yeah, usually I, I pull a talk down from the recommendations list, but this one was kind of kind of one for me. So I hope, I hope you enjoy it. I hope it’s beneficial for you as well. So here is James Walker on friendship.

5. 1:53

   Oh, good morning everyone. Good to see everyone here today. And I want to talk to you today about what Jesus said. It’s printed on the board when he says you are my friends, you

6. 2:14

   are my friends and I would have this chapter serve as a backdrop to what we’re going to talk about today. It contains the elements of everything that I have put together tryingly and I just hope it it it it’ll come out in such a way that it helps us to think about our our friendships and friends. And probably more importantly is when Jesus looks at his own that he’s called his friends that be you and that be I. We are his friends and in that friendship we are in friendship with each other.

7. 3:10

   He adds to that when he says, I am your friend if you do what I command you. And I often looked at that and I go, Oh my goodness, that’s a that’s a heavy load to carry if I do what he’s commanded me. But I’m not too sure that we want to venture too far out of this chapter to determine what that is, because what he’s commanded us is to love one another. What he’s asked of us is to be part of the vine, to be the branches of the vine that he is, and to bear much fruit. That’s our goal of being friends of Jesus, to be a branch grafted into the vine, bearing much fruit, fruits of the Spirit. That’s what he’s commanded us to do, to love one another, that in that love with one another, we bear much fruit. That’s the backdrop to what we’ll talk to about to today and the reason why I want to talk about it because sometimes I feel very friendless.

8. 4:28

   I don’t feel as though I’m friendly. And you would think out of all of the places that you can befriend somebody, it would be in the ecclesia of God.

9. 4:49

   I don’t think I’m alone in this. There are those that I befriend, I have a closeness to that I speak to every Sunday. There are those that are a distant in this meeting that I speak to, not at all. I don’t know if you have that same experience, but I think you do.

10. 5:23

    There are those that you say hi to every Sunday and there and there’s those that say hi to you every Sunday. And then there are those in the medium and then those on the outside, often the fringes of our company.

11. 5:43

    Friends, Jesus says Jesus has come to each one of us. He says, you’re my friend. Hello. Every Sunday he does that, doesn’t he? Every Sunday when we come here, we befriend him. We come here and we partake of bread and wine to remember him

12. 6:07

    because he’s befriend us and we enjoy that experience and we come to befriend him. Sometimes we struggle in friendships. We we know the difference. We experienced that with just said it this morning. Went to the Philippines to see to to encamp with friends.

13. 6:41

    And we all do that. We as human beings are fundamentally social creatures who generally desire friends and companionship to combat loneliness, boost happiness, and improve physical and mental health. So when Jesus says you are my friends, we come here and we, we may come not feeling friendly or like we have friends, we may be not feeling that connection. But yet when we leave, by the time we leave, we, we, we feel more happy about our experience here with one another, with what we have done together and remembering he who befriended us.

14. 7:48

    So when we think of Jesus befriending us, what do we look for when we think of a friend? What is it that we see in others that we are friendly too? Well, certainly there’s a lot of things, right? There’s that, that compatibility. You know, if you were in a motorcycle club, you’d all have a motorcycle and we could hang out together and be friends and talk about our motorcycle, right? Or whatever the club may be or whatever the group might be. We have similar interests.

15. 8:25

    We have similar passions. We might even find and say that a friend is somebody that we can trust, we can have confidence in, we can confide in, we can tell them perhaps our closest secrets. So, so to speak, things we wouldn’t just tell anybody. We could tell our friend, right? Somebody that has your back, somebody that can be there for you and stick up for you and, and, and fight your battles with you, your challenges and help you get through whatever those challenges might be. Those are friends.

16. 9:07

    In the Proverbs, it talks about a friend. A friend’s chastisement is respectful. Sometimes a friend needs to do that for a friend to let us know that perhaps we may be a little out of line here or there.

17. 9:28

    And certainly there’s that social connection that, you know, there’s just people you have easy time communicating with back and forth. And there’s that social connection. But I think All in all, we all know what a friend is. And so the bottom line is, is to have a friend. Friends are important. So if you’re coming in the door and you feel friendless, this, this that it represents Jesus says, you are my friend.

18. 9:56

    And he’s telling each one of us that. And later on he, what does he say? He says something. He says Jesus says you’ve not chosen me, I’ve chosen you. That’s an interesting statement to find someone that you choose to befriend and you want them to be friends with you too. And sometimes you can say I want this person to be my friend, but they don’t want to befriend me.

19. 10:29

    It’s like the old sandbox days, right when you were little kids, you know, when the guys, when the little kid says I don’t want to be your friend, you know that hurt. What do you mean you don’t want to be my friend? I, I try my whole life to be friendly and be and, and I know I’m not I’m not sometimes I’m the most unfriendliest person there is why I can find more reasons to not be your friend than for reasons to be your friend.

20. 11:04

    Why do I do that? The prejudices, the judgments outweigh love. Let me say that again. Our prejudices, our judgement, our sizing people up. We used to say you’re not my friend, you can’t be friends with me. I have a higher standard for you to be friends with me. So our prejudices, our judgments outweigh love. Jesus chose us.

21. 11:52

    Jesus loved us while we were in our sins. He had every reason to build that list of why we cannot be friends with Him. Jesus did not sin. Jesus was just and holy, but Jesus was like his Father God in heaven above God is love, full of compassion, full of mercy. He looks at you and I and he says you know because you believe in my son, I cleanse you and absolve you of your sin and he makes us right before him despite our awkwardness.

22. 12:45

    What we see in each other that sometimes say that I just wish they were a little more. Jesus is asking us to love him. He’s asking us if we love Him, to love whom He has chosen, the brothers and sisters that make up who He is. Remember the Vine and that we are the branches grafted into the vine. We become one with Him.

23. 13:20

    Jesus is asking us to abide in Him, not independently. We’re not here today independently. Yes, it is. We have to size things up in ourselves to make right, right. We, we, we want to, you know, beef set afresh and new and go on our way. But brothers and sisters, this is the, the, you know, what I see in my head as of late is that when Jesus is speaking the gospel message to us, yes, it’s individually, but we have to remember that we’re not alone. We are not an island.

24. 13:55

    We are connected together. We are part of the vine. We abide in Him, and He abides in us, not me, us. The letters to the seven churches were written to the churches, and most of the letters were written to churches, to people not individually, but collectively. Together, as an ecclesia we will live and die, I think, by our disposition in the ecclesia of God.

25. 14:31

    I think more that way today that I have to give up my own passions, my own likenesses, and concentrate and focus more on the health, the spiritual health and direction of the ecclesia of God, which I am responsible to, which is this ecclesia most importantly and foremost, my relationship with you and you with me, each one of us responsible for one another.

26. 15:01

    That’s what Jesus is asking. He laid down his life for us and He’s asking us because friends lay down their lives for one another. I wrote a 20 minute exhortation that I know that if I gave it, it’d be 35.

27. 15:28

    I’m off my notes. This, I hope you can see, is from my heart and it’s what I am passionate about, the spiritual health of this ecclesia, the relationship each of us have for one another. I guess if I was to say anything from my notes, I would say that Jesus is broadening our concept of what a friend is. Typically, we look at it very selfishly, how I feel about a certain individual.

28. 16:08

    I think he’s asking us to broaden our scope, to be more inclusive with one another and to bring each to think that we’re all together in this together, right? We’re moving forward through, you know, the children of Israel move forward together through the wilderness. It was almost like they were blessed and punished collectively. We together are highly blessed with a large ecclesia, with a healthy Sunday school, a healthy meeting, and together we want to continue and, and, and do that.

29. 17:00

    I had a lot of important things to say, but I think I said it. So now we remember he who befriended us and now all we have to do is befriend him by befriending one another and helping each other. That we together will be ready, waiting, watching for Jesus when he comes, so that when he knocks on our door, we’re ready to go together with him, wherever it is that He takes us, and we’ll enter into the joy of the Lord together. Thank you for listening to the good Chris Adelphian Talks podcast.

30. 17:57

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31. 18:14

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32. 18:47

    God bless and talk to you next week.