The Power of a Friend

(Slightly edited transcript of a message preached at Faith-Grace Vietnamese Baptist Church on 28 September 2014.)

Texts: Proverbs 13:20; 17:17

Today I’d like to talk to you about something very important to all of you: friends. If you asked any young person, “What are the most important things to you in life?” friends would likely always be mentioned and often top the list, even before God and parents. It’s a very important subject, not just for teens, but for anyone. Friendships are powerful things: they can make you or break you, depending on who you choose for friends. The two verses we read show you how friends can help you or hurt you…for time and eternity, so it’s critical that you understand what friendship is and who to befriend. For this message, I’d like to define friendship, give some general principles about it from scripture, then look at two friendships in the Bible very closely to illustrate those principles.


Definition of Friendship
Friendship, most basically, is companionship, as we see in Prov. 13:20. It’s more than just someone you know—that’s what we call an acquaintance. A friend is someone that you keep company with and trust.

• Prov. 13:20 He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but the companion of fools shall be destroyed.

• Ps. 55:12-14 For it was not an enemy…But it was thou…We took sweet counsel together and walked into the house of God in company.

• Ps. 41:9 Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread (fellowship), hath lifted up his hand against me.

These types of relationships can be terminated, but a true friend is the one mentioned in Prov. 17:17. He loves you at all times, including adversity, or bad times. Ever heard of a “fair-weather” friend? He’s your friend when times are good but not in the storms of life. Prov. 27:10, “Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not…” A friend is someone who sticks by you no matter what. On the freezer in my basement I have a magnet that says, “Friendship is when people know all about you but like you anyway.” Do you have any friends like that? Well, you have at least one, but we’ll talk about him later.

Principles of Friendship
Next, I’d like to give you three principles about friendship:

• You choose your friends. Remember Prov. 13:20? The man chose to walk with the wise or fools. They didn’t come after him. People say that “S/he got in with the wrong crowd,” as if the crowd is to blame. No, you are the wrong crowd, if you attach yourself to them. Look at Prov. 1:10: sinners may entice you, but ultimately it’s your choice who you hang around. Prov. 1:10-19 describes a gang. Right before that—fearing God (v. 7) and obeying your parents (vv. 8-9). Who’s in gangs mostly? People who don’t fear God and don’t obey their parents. Remember Derek in the movie Courageous? His parents were gone and he lives with his grandmother, but he disobeys her and ends up in a drug-dealing gang, nearly gets killed by the police, and ends up in jail. He became the wrong crowd…and paid dearly for it.

• Your friends will influence you (you are who you hang around), for better or worse. Like it or not, you are who you hang around. We saw that in Prov. 13:20, but check out 1 Cor. 15:33 in the new testament. One good apple in a barrel of bad ones won’t make them all good, y’all. It’s the other way around. The bad apples will corrupt the good one. That’s what this verse is talking about. If the people you are communicating with, as in friendship, are evil, it will affect your manners, or the way you live.

• Friendships affect more (sometimes far more) than the friends. Some people think that their friendship with someone doesn’t affect anyone but them. Let me tell you, your choice of friends doesn’t just affect you and them. It affects those around you, because believe it or not, those friends are rubbing off on you, good or bad, and influence how you treat others. An old English poet, John Donne, said, “No man is an island…” Well, no friendship is an island either; it affects those outside of it, as well as those inside it, and we’ll see how far-reaching this can be in the final part of the message.

Two Friendships in the Bible
To get to the heart and conclusion of my message, I’d like to study two friendships in the Bible that illustrate the principles I’ve given you. One of these you’re probably familiar with, since it was a very good friendship, and we can certainly learn from it, but the other you may not be familiar with. It was a very bad friendship, with tragic results for one of the friends, but we can learn from it as well: who not to become friends with and the terrible consequences of developing bad friendships.

David and Jonathan (1 Sam. 18:1-4)
The first friendship we’ll look at is that of David and Jonathan. Most people know this story. David kills Goliath and wins the heart and admiration of King Saul’s son, Prince Jonathan. Jonathan is so impressed with David, that he gives him his clothes and arms…on the spot (v. 4). Though a prince, he makes himself naked to clothe someone else, his friend. Remind you of someone else? How about Jesus? He hung naked on the cross so that you could be clothed with God’s righteousness, if you’ll trust in him as your Saviour. Notice what else it says about Jonathan: his soul was knit to David’s, and twice it says that “he loved him as his own soul” (vv. 2-3). “A friend loveth at all times,” and Jonathan is a good, though not perfect, example of this. He pleads David’s case before an envious Saul, helps David escape from Saul, stands up for David when Saul is enraged, and even visits David in the wilderness (23:16-18). The only thing that he doesn’t do is follow David, the true king of Israel, but sticks with his wicked father and ends up dead with him in battle.

• Jonathan chooses to be David’s friend, and David chooses to be Jonathan’s friend. Not only was Jonathan’s soul knit to David’s, but vice versa. No one forced it; it was voluntary and an excellent choice on both men’s part.

• Both men benefit from the relationship, David more in my opinion, since the friend that follows God the closest will get the most out of the friendship, I think. David should not have fled from Saul, since God promised to make him king, but he still made a better choice than Jonathan, who, as I mentioned above, will not part with his father, and reaps the consequences.

• Their friendship affected far more than them. Saul is greatly affected by their friendship, and actually the whole kingdom, since Jonathan helps David stay alive and ultimately attain the throne, once Saul is taken out of the way.

Amnon and Jonadab (2 Sam. 13:1-5, 30-36)
This friendship is a timeless example of the worst kind of friendship. As we’ve discussed already, the Bible provides guidance on who to befriend and who not to befriend. Prov. 22:24-25 says, “Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man that shalt not go: Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare unto thy soul.” So in this passage we’re warned about befriending angry people and the bad influence that they can have upon us, but here in 2 Samuel 13 we see another type of person that we should avoid: the worldly-wise man. Now the first time that you see the word “subtil” in the Bible is in Gen. 3:1, in reference to the serpent. Then in Mt. 10:16, Jesus told the apostles, “…be ye therefore wise as serpents.” So subtility is like wisdom. But wisdom can be used for good or evil.

• James 3:15-17. Here we see two types of wisdom: wisdom from above (v. 17) and devilish wisdom (v. 15).

• Prov. 1:4-5. The context of subtilty here is godly wisdom. So subtilty, or wisdom, isn’t necessarily bad, but it can be, as we see here with Jonadab.

Jonadab is actually Amnon’s cousin. He is the son of David’s third brother, Shimeah (13:3, 32), who fought under king Saul against Goliath (1 Sam. 17:13-14). He also had a brother named Jonathan who turns out to be a great warrior and kills one of Goliath’s sons in battle (2 Sam. 21:20-22). But instead of being brave and heroic like his brother, Jonadab is a crafty, cowardly low-life sort of person. He counsels Amnon how to sin, and you need to avoid befriending anyone like that.

• Amnon chooses him a friend. While it’s true that they were related, Amnon wasn’t obligated to be his friend, and there were plenty other good people at court for him to attach himself to (how about Nathan the prophet and Zadok the priest?). But something about Jonadab appeals to Amnon, showing that he himself has character issues which, as we see, this friendship worsens.

• The friendship is unprofitable to both men, much more so to Amnon, who loses his life over it. Amnon has a tender conscience at first, as we see in 13:2, and doesn’t want to harm his half-sister, but Jonadab does not have the same noble character. He tells Amnon how to sin, and then when Amnon has fallen, he tattles on him to King David without taking any blame for anything. What a creep! On top of that, he tries to make himself look good to the king by explaining what’s going on; but God overrules him, he gets no praise from anyone, and he fades out of the picture. Amnon, on the other hand, due to this friendship, goes from tender to cruel because of this friendship, refusing to marry the woman that he’s mistreated. He picks up Jonadab’s cruelty through the association, and it costs him his life.

• But as we saw with David and Jonathan, the friendship affects far more than Amnon and Jonadab. Tamar’s honour is lost for life, Absalom takes vengeance on Amnon and becomes a fugitive, and the conclusion of the matter is a full-scale revolution led by none other than Absalom, who ends up stuck in a tree and slain by Joab and his men. All because Amnon picked the wrong friend! See how important this is, y’all?

I don’t think that it’s a stretch at all to say that friendship is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. As we’ve seen in these two friendships, the character and fruits of friendships literally affect world events. So it’s utterly important that you choose the right friends, since not just you and your friend are affected, but everyone else.

Let me close this message by introducing you to the perfect friend. Jonadab was a lousy friend, and Jonathan was a good friend, but the best friend that anyone ever had was Jesus Christ. Prov. 18:24 says that, “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly…” Emerson said, “If you want a friend, be one.” You can’t expect to have friends if you aren’t friendly to others. You can’t reap where you haven’t sown. But what does the rest of Prov. 18:24 say? “…and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” Sometimes you’ll find that your friends stick closer to you than your siblings or relatives. But that’s not all that the verse is saying. It’s also pointing to the Lord Jesus, who will closer to you than literally anyone in the world. As a matter of fact, if you receive him as your Saviour, he will come to live in your heart through the Holy Spirit, and fellowship with you forever. No friend or relative can get inside of you and minister to your heart moment by moment like the Lord Jesus can. And if you don’t become friends with him, you miss out on the greatest friendship any man could ever have. Jesus himself said in John 15:13, “Great love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” and that is exactly what Jesus did for you 2000 years ago. He “shew[ed] himself friendly” by laying down his life for your sins, the payment that God requires for them; now, will you be his friend? Right now, if you’re a sinner, you’re his enemy. I realize that little children are innocent, but if you’re here and you know that you’ve sinned and you haven’t accepted Jesus as you’re Saviour, you’re God’s enemy, even if you don’t know it. Folks, don’t stay in that condition! That’s the worse place that anyone could be, and God doesn’t want you there. He has already proven himself to be your best friend by giving the very best he had for you, his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Now, will you be his friend?