Genesis 2.18-24
25 February, 2007

The Bible is a book about relationships, or better, it’s a book about being
a friend. Jesus taught us that all that God expects of us can be summed up
in two phrases: love God, love your neighbor. This is the language of
friendship. The Bible is filled with comments, examples and commands about
being a friend. Jesus said, ‘Greater love has no man than this, that he
should lay down his life for his friends.’ [John 15.13] The Bible is about
being a friend. The more that I think about the Scriptures the more it seems
that everything that we need to know about our God and ourselves can be
found – in seed form – in the first three chapters of the Bible. In a way,
that is the best place to start looking since most of those chapters are
before there was any sin. So, that’s where we are going to start this
morning. We’re going to look at this thing called friendship in the
beginning of the Bible.

Our text shows us Adam in the context of perfection. Adam is hot off the
assembly line. There is no sin. But God decides that, even for a sinless
Adam, ‘it is not good that the man should be alone.’ Translated that means
Adam needs a friend. To all who think that ‘me and Jesus’ is enough, God
says, ‘No’. So, God creates a friend for Adam. And what Moses has written
here about Adam’s friend, Eve, applies, with some adjustment, to every
friend. God is describing friendship in our text.

That Adam should need a friend is not surprising. Adam was made in God’s
image. He is a reflection of what God is like. You may not have thought much
about this but, God has eternally had friends. That’s the doctrine of the
Trinity. The Father had the Son and the Spirit as His friends, and vice
versa. Those who have said that God created us because He was lonely have
missed this very important point. God has always had friends. As a result,
He has created us, in His image, also to have friends. And so, you see, our
having friends is a creational necessity. It is built-in to who we are.

Now, you may have noticed that I haven’t really told you what the Bible
means by ‘friend’. It’s important that we understand this not as the world
defines friendship, but as the Scriptures do. So, what’s a friend, according
to our text? Listen: ‘And the man and his wife were both naked and were not
ashamed.’ I’ve told you before, and will probably repeat it in the future,
that this is not about sex. By this sentence, God is telling us that there
were no secrets between Adam and Eve. There were no walls that they hid
behind. Instead, there was complete openness between them. No secrets. No
walls. Complete openness. Again, think of the friendship within the Trinity.
This is what it means to be a friend. Adam hid nothing from his friend, Eve.
And she was the same toward her friend, Adam. Frankly, we cannot even
imagine what that would be like. We have lived our whole lives after the
advent of sin.

And that gets us to this next point. When Adam sinned, friendship was
shattered, utterly and completely shattered. When God called to Adam, ‘Adam,
where are you?’, what did Adam do? He hid. Secrets. Walls. When God
confronted Adam about his sin, what did Adam say? ‘It’s the woman’s fault!’
Hatred instead of love. And don’t forget the fig leaves, Adam and Eve’s
pathetic attempt at hiding from each other. When Adam sinned it was not just
that his friendships hit a bit of a bump in the road. Friendship became
impossible. We too often minimize the destructive power of sin. We do that
because we rush to the Gospel too soon. We need to linger here. The Gospel
isn’t something that was inevitable. It’s not an automatic. If it didn’t
show up, Adam would have continued friendless forever. Eve would have been
friendless forever. This is the legacy of sin. Walls, secrets and hiding.
Hatred instead of love. Arguments, selfishness, zings, anger. Sin destroys
everything, and that includes even the possibility of friendship. You need
to see this. Your grasp of the wonder of the Gospel is tied to your grasp of
the awfulness of sin. One famous writer, an atheist, pictured hell as being
with other people. Ironically, he understood the destructiveness of sin
better than many Christians today. He understood what it means to be
friendless because of sin.

Now, we’re ready for the Gospel. It’s first preached in the middle of
Genesis 3, after Adam has made a complete mess of things. What I want you to
see this morning is that the Gospel is about the restoration of friendship.
Jesus has come to make friendship a possibility. He has come to fix
friendships. Do you see the logic? The Gospel is about restoring what was
lost in Adam’s first sin. It’s about making us what we once were before sin
came crashing into this world. Because of Adam’s sin we have lost even the
possibility of friendships, real friendships, what the Bible calls
friendship. And so, the Gospel is about fixing friendship. It’s about being
able to be and to have friends once more. Taking the next step, that means
that the Church is the place where Jesus fixes friendships. That is what we
are about, the creation and restoration of friendships. All of this is tied
to what I said at the beginning of the sermon. The Bible is a book about
being a friend.

Now, I’m going to quote the famously un-famous Mr. Brundage. He was one of
my seventh grade teachers. He wasn’t really all that good a teacher, but
there was one thing that he said that has stuck with me over the (many)
years. He told us that if we grew up to have more friends than fingers on
one hand we would be very lucky. We all thought he was crazy. What do you
think? Relative to you, everyone in the world is in one of three categories.
They are either strangers, acquaintances or friends. Strangers are people
you’ve never met. Acquaintances are people that you’ve had some sort of
interaction with. And there is quite a broad range here. These are the folk
that you’ve worked with on some project at the job, talked with about sports
or babies, greeted in passing at the store, graduated high school with.
These are people you’ve bumped up against in one way or another as you have
proceeded on your pilgrimage called life. Then, there is the third category:
friends. But remember, we are defining that not as the world does but as the
Scriptures do. In terms of our text, a friend is someone who has seen
something of the nakedness of your soul. This is someone with whom you have
shared something of the real you that you hide away from everyone else. That
’s what the Bible means by ‘friend’. So, to repeat my earlier question, what
do you think? Was Mr. Brundage crazy, or did he know something? How many
friends – in the biblical sense – do you have? Actually, as I look at our
world, I wonder sometimes if Mr. Brundage was being a bit too optimistic.

Jesus has come to restore friendship. As you consider the world around us,
this is a desperate need. And it is a need that Jesus deals with through the
Church. But if that is going to happen, then we, the Church, need to have
Jesus do His work in us first. I think that it is safe to say that for too
many of you, the people in this room are not friends but only acquaintances.
But when we get to heaven, there will be no acquaintances, and there
certainly will be no strangers. There will only be friends. Jesus will have
completed His glorious work in our lives so that it will be like the Garden
once was. No hiding, no secrets, no walls. Jesus calls us to move toward
that goal now. We will not arrive at the goal until He returns but we can
make great strides. We need to become friends.

Now, let me anticipate a few questions. First, why is this important? Isn’t
the Gospel just about dealing with sin and getting to heaven? Why do we need
to deal with all of this? Well, the Gospel is about dealing with sin. But it
does that as a means to a goal. And the goal is friendship, that we might be
a friend to God, and our neighbor. The climax of all of this is heaven, but
what is heaven? It is a place where we will be friends. So, this is
important because it’s the Gospel. And that leads to this. If this is the
Gospel then this helps to define our mission. We are called to spread the
Gospel so that it might conquer lives and institutions. If we are going to
be able to do that well, then we need to show the world that what we are
talking about is true. Mere talking won’t do it. We have lost our audience.
More than ever, we need to show them the truth. And then, as a last reason
why this is important, having this area of our lives fixed is just part of
our enjoyment of eternal life. Eternal life is the life of eternity, the
life of heaven. Eternal life includes enjoying real friendship, now and
forever.

So, what do we do? How do we make progress in this area? It always goes back
to prayer. We need to pray. First, you need to repent. You need to repent of
your hiding and your secrets and your walls. In so many ways, you have
hidden the real you from people that you should not have. Once you repent
you will need to pray for the Spirit to change you. Change will be
difficult. Being able to come out from behind your walls is hard. And to
make it more difficult, not everyone will respond well when you try.
Nevertheless, it is something that we need to do. Don’t try to develop some
master plan to change your life. Simply pray that the Spirit will show you
what to do and how to do it. Pray that He will keep you at it even when
others disappoint. Pray for yourselves and pray for your children. They have
all been in the process of learning how to hide.

I really do think that the Spirit is at work in our midst. I really do think
that He can take what has been a fairly mediocre church and change us into a
people whose lives make it abundantly clear that Jesus is alive and at work.
All that is needed is a simple trust in Jesus as He leads us from one stage
to the next.