Transcript, outline, and summary generated by AI—please comment if you notice any errors.
Friendship with God
I. Introduction (Genesis 18 and the Book Plug)
* Opening Scripture: Genesis 18
* Book recommendation: Enjoying God by Tim Chester
* Explores how to experience and enjoy God's presence in daily life
* Key question from the book: "Do you want more from your relationship with God?"
* Warning against seeking spiritual experience in unbiblical ways (mysticism, drugs, etc.)
* Proper longing for more of God must be tethered to Scripture
II. Abraham – The Friend of God
* Scriptural basis: Isaiah 41:8, James 2, 2 Chronicles 20
* Abraham is uniquely called “friend of God”
* Not reserved for spiritual elites—James presents Abraham as a model
* God desires us to experience that kind of relationship
III. Characteristics of Friendship with God (Genesis 18:16–33)
* God initiates the relationship
* God doesn’t hide his plans from Abraham (vv. 17–19)
* Abraham was chosen not because of merit but because of belief (Genesis 15:6)
* Friendship includes self-revelation
* God reveals plans to Abraham
* Parallels with Jesus revealing God to the disciples (John 15, John 1)
* Real friendship involves vulnerability and honesty
* Friendship includes response and intercession
* Abraham boldly intercedes for Sodom (vv. 22–33)
* Shows humility, courage, and concern for justice
* Demonstrates trust in God’s character (v. 25: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”)
IV. Application – Building Friendship with God
* God still speaks today
* Through Scripture: divinely inspired, breathed out by God (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1)
* Jesus as the Word made flesh (John 1)
* God reveals himself and offers friendship
* We must respond
* Trust that God initiates
* Seek deeper relationship through:
* Regular Bible reading and teaching
* Extended times of focused prayer (challenge: 45 minutes/month)
* Scripture memory (Psalm 119:11)
* Encouragement to follow a 52-week memorization plan
V. Conclusion
* Model of spiritual growth: elderly believers who have invested in friendship with God over time
* Evaluate priorities: invest in what lasts—friendship with God
* Jesus as the ultimate friend
* He bore our sins to bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18)
* Not just Savior—He wants to be our Friend
* Greater access to God now through the Holy Spirit than even Abraham or the disciples had
* Closing challenge:
* Do you know Him?
* Are you investing in that friendship?
Closing Prayer
* Gratitude for God's invitation to friendship
* Request for humility, diligence, and grace to pursue it
Transcript
If you want to take your Bibles and turn, we're going to primarily be in the book of Genesis, chapter 18.
Before I get going with the sermon proper, I'm just going to hold up this book. I am going to order a few more copies of these. It's on the topic that we're going to talk about today. This book is called Enjoying God by a guy named Tim Chester. He's a pastor in the UK. If you've been in my house or been in my office at the shop, you know, I like books. I have a lot of books. I read a lot of books. There's probably four or five books that I would say have been radically life shaping for me. That's one of them. And like I said, it's called Enjoying God. And what Chester does is he just walks through the scriptures and tries to help you understand how in everyday life you can experience and enjoy the presence of God.
One of the questions that he asks there is a question I'm going to ask in the sermon today: do you want more? Do you want more out of your relationship with God, your interaction with God? His point there is that if we look at the scriptures, we probably should want more than what we have in our experience of God. But often when people have that feeling, it leads them off in like weird places that are untethered from the scriptures. And so they get into mysticism and other religions that they give you some kind of experience of the divine. Honestly, like I've talked to people who use different drugs trying to connect with some higher power. There are all sorts of things people do to try to have a deeper experience of life or deeper experience of spirituality. What Chester does very well in that book is just tether that desire for more—that's good, that's made because we're in the image of God. Like, if we are made in the image of God and he exists, our daily experience—at least if yours is anything like mine—probably isn't what it's supposed to be like in my awareness of him and my understanding of his presence. So that desire is right, but it must be tethered to how God has actually revealed himself in the scriptures.
And so we're going to talk about that this morning, but I just want to plug that book right away before I get going. It'd be awkward later on. And so I want to put a plug in there, and I will have some available here in a week or two.
In the book of Isaiah, chapter 41 and verse 8, God is speaking. And there, God refers to Abraham—the center of the story here in these parts of Genesis—he refers to Abraham as “Abraham, my friend.” It is a remarkable thing. It's the only place in the scriptures where God specifically calls someone his friend as an individual. Now, in the Gospels—we'll talk about this a little bit later—John 15, Jesus refers to the group of the disciples as his friends: “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” But in one person in particular being referred to as a friend of God, the only place that happens is with reference to Abraham. And it takes place three times: there in Isaiah 48, 2 Chronicles chapter 20, and James chapter 2 all refer to Abraham as a friend of God.
Now, is that just for spiritual superheroes? Someone like Abraham is, prior to Jesus, the most important character in the Bible. Maybe that's why he's a friend of God. But in the book of James, when he is put forward and referred to there as a friend of God, the way James uses that phrase is he's putting Abraham forward as a model, as an exemplar for us. And the implication is that we as Christians, even here in the 21st century, should know what it is like to be a friend of God.
You think of the disciples in the book of Acts, where they're going up against the religious elite and the religious leaders look at them. And as these guys are speaking the word of God, they realize that these are uneducated, unskilled men. They're not trained teachers. They're not rabbis. But they could see that they had been with Jesus, that they were friends of Jesus. And there was something that transformed their life in that reality.
The thesis of this sermon is this: that God wants that kind of friendship with you. That kind of life-transforming friendship with you. Such friendship will include him revealing himself graciously, and it will require of you that you reveal yourself to him and humble yourself before him.
Now, when I just included that language of humbling, that may not sound like friendship the way you picture it. Oftentimes in our society—we're a very egalitarian society—we think everybody has to be equal. And that's not the picture in Scripture. No one is equal with God. He is the Creator. We are created. Abraham is not equal with God. We've discussed this multiple times as we think about the concept of covenant. God initiates this covenant. He dictates the terms, the stipulations of the covenant. God is the greater. And yet the relationship he enters into with Abraham is a genuinely mutual relationship. There are obligations and opportunities, responsibilities, blessings for both—both God and Abraham. And again, God wants that kind of friendship with you.
We see this in Genesis 18. We're going to start in verse 16.
If you remember, for those of you who weren't here, I'll just catch you up. First part of chapter 18, God had come back to Abraham. He's already promised that they are going to have a son within a year, which is remarkable because Abraham's 100 years old and Sarah's 90 years old. And Sarah laughs at this. Sarah says, “Really, God? I don't think this is quite the right time of life for this promise.” And God rebukes that laughter and said, “Is anything too hard for the Lord? Is anything impossible for God?” It's not.
As Sarah kind of fades from the scene here, God had appeared in visible form—it's a theophany—and he'd come with two companions, angelic companions. And so these three, what appear to be men, are walking away now from Abraham's tent. And Abraham walks with them.
The men set out from there, and they looked down toward Sodom. And Abraham went with them to set them on their way. And the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.”
Then the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they've done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.”
So in these verses, verses 16 to 21, we see God speak to Abraham, his friend. In verses 16 and 17, Abraham accompanies them as they seek to walk away. And God asks this rhetorical question. It's funny because Abraham's standing here, but God asks this question out loud, this rhetorical question: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do?” And he decides not to, and there are two reasons that he gives.
The reason in verse 18 is because of Abraham's status, as the head of this covenant nation that God is forming. God has made promises to Abraham. He's going to make Abraham a great nation. People are going to come from him. And God says, as part of my interaction with this people, I will not hide from the head of this people—from Abraham—what I am about to do. I'm going to reveal it to him.
But why does Abraham have this status? Why is Abraham the head of God's chosen people? Is it because Abraham has done something to achieve God's favor or he's done anything to earn his place with God? Clearly not. We see over and over again the sins of Abraham in the passages that we've looked at over the last several weeks. Abraham is a sinner just like us. And yet, according to chapter 15 and verse 6, he believed the promises of God for salvation, and that belief was counted to him as righteousness. And so God chose Abraham, and he said, “I am going to make of you a great nation.” And Abraham believed that, and God counted it to him as righteousness.
Verse 19 speaks of God choosing him: “For I have chosen him that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” So God initiates. God is the one who chooses. Again, I'll reference this passage again, but in John chapter 15, Jesus speaking to his disciples in the upper room the night before his crucifixion says to them, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” And this is important in our interaction with God—recognizing that we are not the initiators. He is.
And we do—like, Abraham has a choice, right? When God comes to him, God offers this promise, God gives this promise. And Abraham has to do something with it. He has to believe or not believe. And it is likewise with us. We have a choice whether we believe God or not, but we're not the initiator. He's the one coming and saying, even in a sermon like this, or when you read the word for yourself, God is confronting you with his promises and giving you the opportunity to believe or to not believe what he has said.
And Abraham has believed, and God reminds him, “I chose you.” And because he has chosen Abraham, God is going to speak to him. And I think what we see here is that this self-revelation, where God is going to show his plan to Abraham—self-revelation is a necessary component of friendship.
Again, referring to John chapter 15, Jesus speaking to the disciples said—right before he says, “You didn't choose me, I chose you”—before that he says, “I no longer view you as servants. I view you as friends because I've shown you, I've told you all that the Father has shown me.” Jesus came and he revealed the Father to his disciples. Again, John chapter 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Verse 14: “He became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” And verse 18 says, “No one has ever seen God,” like, no one has beheld God directly. “But the only God who is at the Father's side”—again, the Son who came to earth—“he has made the Father known.” Jesus came to earth to reveal what God is like.
So he did that revelation directly, first of all with the disciples. And he told them his plan. Two and a half years into his ministry, he starts explicitly teaching them that he is going to be crucified and killed and then risen from the dead. And then in the upper room discourse there in John 15, 16, and 17, he tells them that he's going to go away. He's going to depart and go back to the Father and send to them another helper. So Jesus shows them his plan ahead of time, and he says that's an evidence of his friendship.
That kind of self-revelation, again, is necessary even in human friendship, right? Think about your plans. When you have an idea or you're really planning something, who do you want to tell? The people that are close to you, the people that you trust, the people who are going to be excited for you.
Now, when we have unhealthy understandings of friendship, or maybe we've had bad experiences with friendship, we can see the flip side of that too. We'll start to hide things from people. We don't want people to know, even those who are close. Proverbs 27:6 says that wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. When we are not engaged in healthy friendships, we'll start just looking for people who will tell us what we want to hear—who are just going to scratch our ears and tell us, “Yeah, everything you do is great.”
We live in a world that is soaked in that right now. Anytime you disapprove of something someone says or does, well, you're a hater, or you are a bigot, or like, you're a bad guy. But scripture says love, friendship, is honest. And it's risky because you do have to—if you're going to engage in a genuine friendship with someone—you're going to have to open up about who you are and what you're like and what your hopes and dreams are, what your plans are. And that's a scary thing to do.
But it's remarkable that God is not afraid of that. God is not afraid to enter into this relationship with a lesser being—a human being—and show him his plans and welcome Abraham's feedback. That’s what we see in the verses that follow.
Verses 22 and following. So God has told Abraham that he's going down to Sodom. And what we get in verses 20 and 21 is probably an abbreviated version of what he has said, because Abraham clearly understands—or maybe just has enough background information that the reader doesn't yet have—to know that Sodom and Gomorrah are really bad places. And so when God says He’s going to see if their sin is as grave as reported, Abraham understands that destruction is on the table.
Verses 22 to 23: So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham stood still before the Lord. And Abraham drew near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to put to death the righteous with the wicked—so that the righteous fare as the wicked. Far be that from you. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”
And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
And Abraham answered and said, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking. Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.”
Again, he spoke to him and said, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.” Then he said, “Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”
He said, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but this once. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” And the Lord went his way when he had finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.
Next week, we're going to come to chapter 19 and talk about the sin of Sodom and why it would deserve the destruction of the Lord. But what we see here in Abraham's interaction is that after God has spoken to Abraham, his friend, Abraham is bold enough to speak to God, whom he sees as a friend.
Abraham, in verses 22 to 23, draws near to God. These two other men—the angelic beings—head down into Sodom, look at the city, enter Lot's house—they’ve left. But this third being, this theophany, this visible manifestation of God, stays. This man, visibly a man, stays and speaks with Abraham. And Abraham draws near to him.
And I wonder, that’s a... it’s a phrase that's going to be picked up and used in other places in the scriptures, Hebrews 4 most notably. But I wonder if you feel confident enough to draw near to God.
Abraham's speech as he draws near is clear, it's honest, and it's humble. I think those are all things that we need to pay attention to: that he speaks clearly and honestly with God, and he also speaks humbly. We see the humility just in the way that he approaches God.
Verse 27: “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord.”Verse 30: “Oh, let not the Lord be angry.”Verse 31: “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord.”Verse 32: “Oh, let not the Lord be angry.”
Abraham recognizes the difference between the creature and the Creator. He understands the difference better than I do. Abraham’s clear on that. He gets the distinction. He knows he's not speaking to an equal. He knows he's speaking to the Almighty God of the universe. And yet that does not stop him from boldly speaking to God.
Verses 23 to 25: “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” That's the first thing out of Abraham's mouth here. Like, God says, “I am going down to check this place out because the outcry against it is very great,” and Abraham’s response is, “Will you indeed sweep the righteous away with the wicked?”
Now, Abraham knows Lot is down there. And though we're going to see some pretty questionable things about Lot, the New Testament refers to Lot as a righteous man. So Lot, in Abraham’s mind, he is—he’s left his homeland with Abraham, he’s followed the God of Abraham, he's obviously got some level of faith himself, he has trusted in the Lord. And so Abraham's thinking of his nephew Lot and going, “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked, Lord? Will you let Lot and his family and whoever else he's influenced—will you let them be killed when you destroy this wicked place?”
“For fifty righteous, will you not spare the city?” And God says, “Yes, I will spare it.”
Verse 24: “Suppose there are fifty righteous in the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing.” That's a pretty bold thing to say to God. “Far be it from you to do such a thing—to put the righteous to death with the wicked so that the righteous fare as the wicked. Far be that from you.” Twice over, Abraham is able to look at God and say, “I don't think you'd act that way.”
That's interesting. I don't know if you've ever seen kids who have an extremely controlling father who is unpredictable, who is volatile in his anger—they don’t talk to their dad that way, right? But if you have maybe a very strong father who obviously loves his kids and he's about to do something that they don't think is right, they might have a lot more boldness to say, “That's not how you do stuff. That's not you.”
That’s what we have here with Abraham. He has confidence in the character of God. We see that at the end of verse 25: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” Abraham has settled, firm confidence in the character of God. And that's why—even though he does approach humbly—he is willing to speak boldly, clearly, and enter into what seems like a used car negotiation, right? He's going back and forth. He’s haggling with God over this.
But he's able to do that confidently because he knows even though he is dealing with a just judge, he's also dealing with a God who is merciful and gracious, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
I think this conversation that Abraham has with God is a model for us of what our prayer life should be like.
The question that I have is, how can I, 4,000 years later, hope to have such a friendship with God as Abraham had?
The very extended conclusion of this sermon goes this way: God still speaks, and he offers that same friendship to you and me. Like Abraham, we need the Lord to initiate. We need the Lord to reveal himself to us.
The next book in the Bible is the book of Exodus. God had promised Abraham that, yes, his family would inherit this land, but he had also told him that there would come a time when they would spend 400 years in captivity, and then the Lord would lead them up and back towards Canaan. And when that happened, the Israelites had been in captivity in Egypt, and through Moses, God leads them out. He leads them across the Red Sea. He leads them into the desert. They are heading towards the Promised Land.
But then they stop, and Moses goes up on Mount Sinai to receive the law from God. And while he's up there for 40 days, the people forget everything that just happened. They forget that God just brought them out of 400 years of slavery. They forget that God just brought them across the Red Sea. And they're like, “Moses has been gone for a month. God must have forgotten about us. So Aaron, we need you to make us some gods.” And so Aaron takes all of their gold and he fashions these golden calves.
When Moses starts down the mountain, he sees what's going on, and he's got his assistant Joshua with him. Joshua says, “I hear the sound of war in the camp. What's going on down there?” The people are partying it up around these two golden calves who “led them out of Egypt.” Moses smashes the tablets. He heads back up on the mountain after grinding up the calves and making the people drink the water. He heads back up to talk to God again. And God says, “I'm going to kill them all. Here's my plan, friend Moses. I'm going to tell you my plan. I'm going to kill them all and I'm going to start over with you.”
And Moses, like Abraham, doesn't just accept that God is actually going to destroy everybody like that. He instead intercedes. He pleads for the people. He first asks God for mercy on them. God says, “Okay, I'll have mercy on them. I'll send you all into the Promised Land, but I'm not going to go. I'll let you have the Promised Land, but I'm not going to be there.”
And Moses says, “Well, if you're not there, what good does it do us to be there? The whole point of going to the Promised Land is it's the place of your blessing and your presence. That’s no good either. Leave us here in the desert. We’d be better off in the desert with God than in the Promised Land without God.”
He asks God after this interaction—he says in chapter 33, verse 18—“Please show me your glory.” And God's reply to him is, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you the name of the Lord. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” And in chapter 34, God actually does pass by Moses. He shows him his glory.
Verse 6: “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.’” God shows himself to Moses. And then Moses and then the rest of the Old Testament writers put this down in Scripture for us. And the Apostle Paul tells us that this is for our instruction. It's for our understanding. This is God speaking to us.
Jesus says in John chapter 5 that all of the Scriptures bear witness to him—they are pointing to him. So the whole point of the Bible is to show us that God wants to speak to us, that God is speaking in the Word to us. That's why the Scriptures are described as the Word of God throughout. But then in 2 Timothy 3:16, it says that it comes by the expiration—our English Bibles usually say “inspiration”—but it's literally the breathed-outness by God.
2 Peter 1 says that the Scriptures were written as the Holy Spirit carried the writers along. This is God speaking to us. And so the message of the Bible is a message that is initiated by God and sent to us. God is speaking.
That Word, that message that he's speaking in the Bible, culminates in the coming of the Son. Again, in John chapter 1, Jesus is referred to as the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
That’s the message of Christmas—that when the world was walking in darkness, God sent forth the Son. As Paul says in Galatians, born of a woman, born under the law. At the fullness of time, God sent his Son to show us what he is like.
God had every right in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve rebelled against him, to just cancel the whole thing. And for thousands of years since, as human beings, each of us being born in sin—Ephesians 2:3 says we are by nature children of wrath. John 8 says that we who practice sin are slaves to sin. He is just to punish us like Sodom. And yet his response has been continually to initiate and to offer friendship to sinners.
Romans 5 says we are by nature God's enemies. And yet he offers us friendship. And he's so serious about that—that he himself, the Son, entered human history and became one of us. The divine Son added to his divinity humanity and lived a real human life where he had all of the suffering that we do—all the pain, all the abandonment, all of the grief.
Hebrews 4 says that he was tempted in every way as we are. And he came not just so that we could be freed from hell—the penalty of sin paid for so that we don't have to go to hell. That's true, that's glorious. But that is not where God wants it to stop. He doesn't want you to put on belief in Jesus like a life preserver so that when this thing ends, you're okay. He wants friendship with you right now. That is God's desire.
1 Peter 3:18 says that Christ suffered once for sins to bring us to God—to lead us into his presence.
