The Relationship Equation: Part 2 Friendship with God

“Friendship with God”

Intro Series: Relation Equation

All about friendships.
Multiplication in this area.
All needs friendships.
Theme verse for 2025 –

Jude 1:1-2 ESV

I don’t need these 3 things if I am living in isolation.
- Its when we get around others that I need mercy, peace and love.
- Its when someone cuts me off driving that I need all 3 of these multiplied.

Its when I have been hurt, mistreated and betrayed.

It’s when trust has been broken and lost that I need mercy, peace and love multiplied.
But equally, when I’m the one that hurt someone, mistreated a friend or betrayed someone that I need mercy, peace and love extended to me and multiplied.

And the one we commit these acts of hurt and betrayal against most often is the one that it is said will never leave us or forsake us.
- The one who created us and gave his life as a ransom for us.
- Trans: My assignment today is to talk about our most important relationship.

Friendship w/God – look at John 15:11-17 NLT
- If look at v.15 – there’s a progression here.
  - Slave to friend
  - Too often – wanted to skip steps and go straight to: (song) “I am a friend of God”
  - Friendship is a journey that is built.
  - Exodus 33:8 NLT

There are 2 people in scripture that calls his friends – Abraham and Moses.

Concern – God calls Moses his friend.
To many people are calling God a friend but does he call us, me, a friend?

What are the qualities of a person God call’s a friend?
- We know from Matthew 7 – that prophesying, casting out demons or doing miracles doesn’t make us a friend.
- Yet, Mark 16 tells us these signs will follow those who believe.

I don’t want to be like the 7 Son of Sceva in Acts 19 – talking about mutual friend named Jesus, whom Paul preaches – boys ran out naked and beat down.

Trans: So, what made God call Moses his friend?
Exodus 3:1-5 ESV.

These verses are making the beginning of a relationship
- 5 – Take off your sandals on Holy Ground.
- We read in the book of Ruth, when Boaz is looking to become the kinsmen redeemer for Ruth – He has one guy in front of him in line to be her husband.

When turns over his rights for Ruth to Boaz, he takes off his sandal.
- The sandal symbolized the man’s property rights.
- To give up the sandal, meant he would no longer walk on property and claim as his own.
- He has transferred his rights to another.

When God tells Moses to take off his Sandals it is a picture of Salvation.
- Stepping out of the old into new.
- Jethro was a Midian priest and believed they worshipped all the Gods.
- Leaving a pagan life behind and Moses now stepping into a new life.
- No longer his own.
In the Middle East – barefoot was sign of a servant.
- In John 15 – we see progression goes from servant to friend.
- 1^st step is servant – some stay here – but how did Mo progress to friend?

When we look at the book of Exodus, could almost call it “God speaks to Moses”
- Everywhere you look in Exodus, you find the phrase:
  - And the Lord spoke to Moses.
  - In fact, find it 65 times in Exodus.
  - How do you get to know someone?
  - Through talking with them – honest conversations.

God can handle your questions!
- I love how God responds to each question – answering core issues.
- God doesn’t always answer the questions I ask, but the questions I should have asked.
- In Exodus 3 – God is calling and commissioning Moses.
  - So there is a very honest and open conversation.
  - We wee the back and forth between God and Moses.
  - Remember, he has been living in the home of a Pagan Priest the past 40 years.
  - So, he starts with WHO – Questions

In 7-10 – God lets Mo know; I have seen the affliction of my people.
- I heard their cries for help.
- I have seen how the Egyptians have oppressed them.
- In verse 8 – God says that he has come down to deliver them & take them to a land flowing with milk and honey.

Mo – I chose you to be my guy, to go to Pharaoh and lead the mission.
- In verse 11 – Mo asks what I initially thought was an identity question.
- Exodus 3:11 NIV
- Who am I seeming like a question of Identity.

But Gods answer shows us it’s a question of inferiority.
- Examples:
  - Not smart enough
  - Not gifted enough
  - Not from right social economic group
  - Who am I? I know me. I don’t fit the criteria!
  - Exodus 3:12 NIV
  - I will be with you.

In other words, you have made yourself to big a part of the equation.
- The answer to the question is not found in Who am I?
- The answer is But I will!
- Stop looking at you & start look at who’s with you!

In verse 13 – Mo asks, you’re going with me – who are you?
- God answers – I am who I am!
  - God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
  - Now, go to Pharaoh, he will say no, I will send plagues and finally let you go but you will plunder Egypt.

Exodus 4:1-4 NIV
- In 2014 I said, what if we plant a church, what if I work a separate job to help pay the bills and what if I also go back to school to get my Masters & I know we have a 2 year old but what if I go?
- To both church planting and look at 3^rd.
  - What if I reach out to people in the area?
  - What if I get a 2^nd job?
  - The what ifs of a risk taker.
- What if I have a propensity towards risk w/certain things.
  - I always think we can add another task, another project, we can do it all.
  - What if we did this and then we can do this and just for fun lets add more of that.

Now all these these guys know MMA & Israel defense
- I will blink and be back on my back in some submission move with my pinky toe in my ear while they are jumping on my chest.
- What if we get lost and start hearing deliverance banjos?
- What if we just stay in tonight?
- I am good with risk until we travel somewhere unfamiliar to me.
  - Now I’m in full paranoia.
  - I watched Criminal Minds, what if a serial killer in old van shows up?
  - Flew here, so don’t have my gun.
  - I’ll fight, bite, kick but I am old and pain last longer now.

Crazy how our mind can take us down a path of crazy what if scenarios.
- God answers his what if with what is.
- What is in your hand?
- God wants to move you from what if to what is.

Mo is talking to God, and he is already playing out how this is not going to work!
- Moses has been hiding in Midian for 40 years because of a mistake.
- He killed an Egyptian while protecting an Israelite.
- Now he is hiding because of a mistake he made 40 years ago.
- Some of you here today have been hiding in your what ifs because of a mistake.

A mistake you made last month, last year, when you were a teenager, something from 40 years ago.
- Now stick in the wilderness called what if?
- Never fully stepping into what God has for you because of what if?
God sent me to tel you what is – to set the record straight.
- He took our mistakes into account when he called us.
- He saws our failures, our short coming, mistakes and said, I can work with him/her.

I can be friends with them.
- What I love about this exchange between Mo and God.
- God can handle open, honest conversations filled with our questions, our doubts, our what ifs?
- But it doesn’t let me off the hook.
- Because the one who calls you is faith, and he will do it.

So, the first thing that moves us from a servant to a friend is honest conversation.
- 2^nd is TRUST.
- Exodus 32:7-10 ESV
- I love this exchange – God says the people Mo brought out of Egypt.
- Verse 11 – Mo – I didn’t bring them out, you did.

Mo goes on to stand in the gap for Israel.
- Even though God said after he wipes out Israel.
  - He will make a great nation out of Mo and his family.
  - Nothing can be trusted until its tested.
  - Could it be that God was testing their relationship?

Is he in this for his own personal benefits, for what’s in it for him or did I find a friend?
- A friend will protect your integrity, your rep even when it doesn’t serve your own self-interest.
- Exodus 32:12 – ESV
- Could easily posted a passive-aggressive social media post.
- When a certain God gets mad at people and wants to kill them for a mistake, such a narcissist.

Last week – Comrades, Constituents and Confidants.
- A confidant is with you – could this be moment Mo moved into this category?
- Wonder if 2 people God called friends were the 2 that were confidants. Abe and Mo?

Remember how Jesus defines a friend in: John 15:15 ESV
- Friends get to know plans, secret things.
- Able – destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
- Mo – tent of meeting, laws, etc.
- The 3^rd Quality of a friend – God and Time.
- Exodus 33:9-11 ESV

Some of deepest, closest friendships
- Hard time remembering how it started
- But can look back at times and circumstances where time was spent, and friendship was strengthened.
- Face to face – friend
  - Old days – dating- on the phone – breathing but not talking.
  - Felt close but wanted to be able to see them face to face.
  - Says there was a pillar of cloud- 2 words in Hebrews for clous that are similar – both give of thick – dark cloud.

Exodus 20:21 ESV
- 5:22 – ESV
- Scholars call these Theophanic clouds, God in the cloud.
- Remember, 1 John 1:5 ESV
- Considered a cloud of purification.
- Cloud filled with rain.
- Moses would step into this cloud.

Often enough that God would speak with him face to face as a friend.
- Time spent alone with God begins to create a history with him.
- Moses had a history with God in tent of meeting.
- Encounters w/God in the cloud.

What I find interesting:
- Moses was drawn to the cloud of thick darkness while Israel drew back.
- It’s why the Psalmist would record that he showed Mo his ways and Israel his acts.
- In our darkest moments, we can look for Gods acts and think he is distant because we don’t understand his ways.

It’s in his nature – when we are in our darkest moments – he draws near.

Closing: Luke 23:44-46 ESV

The word for Darkness, thick darkness is the same word for shadow.
- I cam to tell you that you may feel like you are in the darkest moment of your life – surrounded by thick darkness.
- But the closer you are to the object – the darker the shadow.

You thought he was distant; you thought you were alone.
- God is getting close.
- You are getting caught in the shadow.
- He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of the most high.
He is our refuge & strength and very present help in trouble!

Sociologist discovered it takes 8 minutes with a friend for a person to no longer feel alone.
- Asking a friend for help, do you have 8 minutes?
- Feel like in the think darkness?
- Do you have 8 minutes? 8 minutes in his presence

8 = New beginnings.
- He is closer than you think.
- You though you were in a dark season. I came to tell you it’s a shadow.

The Relationship Equation: Part 2 Friendship with God

Email my notes