What a Friend We Have in Jesus

Let it be your first love to enter into an everlasting friendship with Christ that never shall be broken. Jonathan Edwards. This is The Bright Forever. Hello and welcome to The Bright Forever, where we explore the power and the richness of some of the greatest hymns of the faith. I am Andy Peavyhouse, and I am your host on this adventure through hymnody. It is always great to be back with you all. Last week, we dove into and learned about Abide With Me by Henry Francis Light. A hymn that reminded us that even in our darkest hours, hardest times, or even when life is coming to an end, we have a God that does not forsake us. He does not leave us to fend for ourselves, but He is ever present with us. Until we open our eyes anew with Him, If you have not had a chance to listen to that episode, abide with me. It's episode number 12. It was last week's episode. We also have Beat Out My Vision the week before that. We have our special Christmas episode, if you didn't get a chance to hear that as well, and the other nine episodes before it. So if you haven't had a chance to listen to all the episodes, please take a moment and listen to those episodes. You can start from the very beginning and go back through or just kind of jump around in it. However you want to. They're all kind of self-contained. You don't have to listen to them one by one in order to get the idea of what we're doing here. But if you want to know more about me and about why I'm doing this podcast, episodes one and two go much deeper into why I'm doing this podcast and who I'm doing this podcast for, for my girls and for teaching them what hymns have meant to me. And so if you have a We're going to talk about friendship. Is God our friend? Can God be our friend? What does the Bible say about friendship with God? We will look at these questions and seek to answer them while we dig into the hymn, What a Friend We Have in Jesus by Joseph Scriven. Before we go too far into into looking at this hymn, let's look at this title and see if it actually is possible and true. Is Jesus our friend? It seems so informal to call him a friend. He is savior, king, Lord, conqueror, our shelter. He is Jehovah. He is Adonai. The alpha, the omega, the beginning, the end. He is the I am. Friends seems too easy and not as big or as important as it should be. I remember having a conversation with one of the support staff of a church I was serving at at the time. And we had just started singing Friend of God by, I believe it's Israel Houghton. in our worship services. And she didn't think it was right to sing about Jesus being our friend. She felt it demeaned him and it demeaned his role as Savior. It lessened his significance. And not wanting to get into an argument in the hallway of our offices, but not being able to resist at least coming back with a little something, she I said, well, what if we sing what a friend we have in Jesus? And her response has stuck with me for years. Well, that's a hymn. It's not the same thing as those modern choruses. So I dug a little deeper and I found that she didn't like it because it repeated the line, I am a friend of God over and over again. She said, singing it over and over again took away the significance of God being our friend. It was a terrible reason for not singing a song. Now, I don't know about you. It's probably not my favorite song, but I'm a friend of God. Not a horrible song, but there's a lot of better songs out there. There's a lot of better hymns out there too. And so I'm sitting there thinking, This is a terrible reason for not singing a song. Even some hymns repeat lines over and over again. As a matter of fact, the hymn that we're talking about today repeats the line, take it to the Lord in prayer multiple times. So I'm like, that's not really a great reason not to do it. But it did make me stop and think, is focusing our attention on God's friendship of us helpful? Or even right? Is it right to be thinking of God as our friend, like just as a pal? Does what Christ did for us lose significance when we focus on his friendship over his lordship or his power or his sacrifice? The simple answer is no.

No.

As a matter of fact, Jesus himself points this out to us in John 15. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. He's talking about himself. And a couple of verses later, he explains what he means. In verse 15, he says, no longer shall Do I call you servants for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends for all that I have heard from my father. I have made known to you. Does what Christ did for us lose significance when we focused on his friendship? No. If nothing else, it strengthens it. The God of the universe is revealing himself to us, making known to us who he is. He says, you're my friends. If you were just mere servants, you would have no need to know this stuff. but I call you my friends. As I was preparing to talk about this hymn, I came across an article that if you have a chance to read it, you should. It's called, ironically, What a Friend We Have in Jesus by Drew Hunter from desiringgod.com. Hunter says, you were made for friendship with God. God does not just want us to know about him. He wants us to know him and to experience his friendship. Later in the article, he says, Jesus wanted his disciples to see the cross and think, I understand now. He substituted himself for me under God's wrath and And he did it because he views me as a treasured friend. He wants us to view the cross as an affection-filled sacrifice for friends. Friendship, as Hunter says, is in the deepest heart of Christ. And it's at the very center of the gospel. And then he hits the nail on the head. He says, yet for some friendship with Jesus seems to diminish his glory. We just talked about that. Friendship with Jesus for some people, it tends to make them think it diminishes his glory. He says, I've often heard the sentiment, Jesus is not our friend, he's our king. But we don't have to choose. Both are true. Jesus is our exalted king and he is our truest friend. This doesn't minimize his glory, it magnifies it. Because it displays the immeasurable riches of his grace. And then he shares Ephesians 1, 6-7. To the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace. Only grace explains the sovereign king welcoming sinners. as his friends. If you have a chance to read the whole article, it really is good. It's Drew Hunter called What a Friend We Have in Jesus, and it's on desiringgod.com. So Jesus is our friend, and he is our king, and we can trust him. This brings us to our hymn today, What a Friend We We have in Jesus all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. Oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. We should never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful? Who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our every weakness. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care? Precious Savior, still our refuge. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Do your friends despise, forsake you? Take it to the Lord in prayer. In his arms, he'll take and shield you. You will find a solace. there. That looks like a sober man. I think I'll hire him to cut wood for me. That was said of a man on the streets of Lake Rice, Canada, as he walked along carrying a wood saw and a saw horse. The response from a man nearby was, that's Joseph Scriven. He wouldn't cut wood for you because you can afford to hire him. He only cuts wood for those who don't have enough money to pay. That seemed to be the philosophy and attitude of our author today. Joseph Scriven was a devoted member of his church. He had a sincere desire to to help those who are truly destitute. This is the character of the man who wrote our hymn. Joseph Scriven was born on September 10th, 1819 in Ireland. His parents were of means and could afford for their son to attend Trinity College in Dublin. where he graduated with his bachelor's degree in 1844. In Scriven, we find a man with lofty ideals and remarkable ambition. He fell in love with a young woman. Both were eager to marry and begin their life together. Yet on the day before their wedding, she was thrown from her horse while crossing a bridge between Joseph stood powerlessly, watching from the other side. With the purpose of attempting to overcome his grief, he began to travel. By 25, his journeys had led him to Port Hope, Canada. He was a tutor to the local children. and became extremely well thought of by the people who lived there. He met another young lady, Elisa Roche, and they fell in love. However, tragedy struck once again when she died of pneumonia just weeks before they were to be wed. The following year, he wrote a poem to his mother in Ireland that described the profound friendship he cultivated with Jesus while praying through the hardships of his life. The poem was first published anonymously under the title, Pray Without Ceasing. You see, it was never Scriven's ambition to publish this poem. It was personal. It was him working through the hardships of his life. And he thought he would send it to his mom. Ten years later, he acknowledged this well-loved text had been written by him and his friend, Jesus. In 1868, attorney Charles Converse set the text to a tune and renamed it, What a Friend We Have in Jesus. You can read all about it in 101 Hymn Stories by Ken Osbach. Joseph Scriven treasured his friendship with Christ. He could have blamed God for all the hardships and trials. He could have felt God was punishing him for some misdeeds in his life. But instead he found God's friendship in the midst of hardship. And he discovered this friendship through prayer. When life seems to take away the things you love, when trials and tribulations come, may we all discover that deep friendship with God through Christ and realize that to watch that relationship grow, we need to do nothing more then take it to the Lord in prayer. Thank you as always for listening to this podcast. Please take a minute to subscribe or to follow this podcast either through Apple or Spotify or Google, Amazon, iHeartRadio. There's so many. any of the other podcast platforms that you find us on. You can also find us always at www.thebrightforever.com. And we always want to hear from you. Let us know what you think of the show. Give us hymn suggestions, comments, your stories, prayer requests, whatever you want to tell us about. You can send your comments to podcast at thebrightforever.com. Again, that's podcast at thebrightforever.com. Again, thank you for listening. I hope you have a great week. Let me close us out in prayer. Father, we have such a friend in Jesus. We can turn to you with all that we have and lay it at your feet, the good, the bad, the ugly, and lay it at the foot of the cross because you call us friends. And so, God, we thank you for that friendship. We thank you for your love. Help us to live a life worthy of your friendship. In Jesus name. Amen. God bless you all. Have a great week and we'll see you back here next week. We're out.