“What a friend I have in Jesus,” starts the old song, but did you know that God isn’t friends with everyone? It’s true. God reserves his friendship for a certain group of people and this thought was something I had never considered. I have always thought that God was simply a friend to all.
We know that God was friends with Moses. In Exodus 33, it says that Moses built a tent of meeting outside of the camp in order to spend time with God. Moses and his servant Joshua would go out to this tent and it says in Exodus 33:11 that Moses met with God “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.”
One obvious conclusion here is that God is a friend to those who want to meet with Him. He is a friend to those that will remove all distractions and spend time with Him. Moses was that kind of guy. He knew the importance of spending time with God. But I think there is more to friendship with God than just that.
Jesus tells us of those that aren’t his friends in Matthew 7 at the tail end of the Sermon on the Mount, even though they know all of the religious lingo and they do good works.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then I will declare to the, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”
Matthew 7:21-23
Jesus says that just because you may say the right things and do some good works, does not mean that He knows you. What a sobering statement. Many who go to church may fall into this category — they know how to walk the way and they know how to talk the talk, but they don’t know Him. What a scary thought!
The key to knowing Him is found in the first sentence, “not everyone…will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father…” Jesus here is saying that if you want to be known by Him, if you want to be a friend of God, then you must do His will. We must seek to accomplish His desires. In one sense friendship is all about what you can do for others, not what they can do for you. And friendship with God is very much like this. Jesus is saying our friendship with God is dependent upon us doing the will of the Father. And doing for Him requires a relationship with Him.
One of the problems we have is that we have watered down that word “relationship” so much, that it’s almost void of any meaning at this point. “It’s not about religion, it’s about relationship,” we hear people saying. But this isn’t just about a self-identifying verbal acknowledgement from us, it’s deeper than that. Paying God some lip service or simply “showing up” on Sunday mornings doesn’t constitute a true relationship.
So how do we become friends with God? The Bible gives us the answer.
“The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant.”
Psalm 25:14
The fear of the Lord truly is the beginning of wisdom and it’s also the beginning of friendship with Him. If we truly see Him for who He is and we honor and respect Him, guess what? We are His friends! God reserves His friendship for those who revere Him!
Just as Moses feared the Lord, we too should fear the Lord. Just as Abraham feared and honored the Lord, we should do the same. When we become friends with the Lord, he allows us to enter into a place of special knowledge. He makes known to his friends, his covenant. In other words he enters into a special relationship with His friends. Do you want that today? Then the answer is to fear Him.
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