With a Little Help from My Friends - Part A

It's one of the greatest titles you can ever give another person. Friend. You are my friend. I consider you a friend. But it's a title that is never to be taken lightly.

We live in a culture that touts the value of independence. And while there is something to be said for it, none of us can succeed in life all by ourselves. And today on Connect with Skip Heitig, Skip shares a message that encourages you to seek out friendships to support you in your Christian walk. But first, here's a resource that will encourage you as you relate to the risen Christ. Looking deep into the empty tomb by Skip Heitig consists of five messages, including Rise Up, Easter's Over, Now What?, An Empty Tomb, A Full Life, Jesus Died But God, and Come Alive. For those who knew Jesus while he walked this earth, the road to discovering and believing that Jesus was resurrected started in disheartening confusion, but it ended in decisive confirmation. And we're excited to send you a special set of resurrection resources by Skip that include five of his finest Easter messages for digital download or CD and a full video titled On the Road by Skip. Now behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened.

So it was while they conversed and reasoned that Jesus himself drew near and went with them. With your gift of support of $50 or more, we'll send you a copy of this hope-filled package of five audio messages for download or on CD and the full video On the Road as thanks for your gift to expand Connect with Skip Heitig to reach more people in major U.S. cities. So request your resource when you give and take a walk with Christ on the road to Emmaus. Just call 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskip.com slash offer.

Now we're turning to Colossians 4 as we join Skip for the lesson. There was an ad in the newspaper a few years back in Kansas and the ad said this, I will listen to you talk for 30 minutes without comment for $5. I will listen to you talk for 30 minutes without comment for $5. And you might think, what is that, a joke, a spoof, a hoax?

Nobody's going to call for that. This guy started getting 10 to 20 phone calls per day on that ad. So desperate were some people, so lonely were they that it was worth spending $5 to get a half an hour's worth of companionship. Now you might think that's the extreme, but after the last few years with COVID, that idea of loneliness, separation, isolation has been accentuated. Now we started using a phrase that we had never heard of before, social distancing. Whoever spoke like that, we never talked about social distancing, but we did the last few years. It became very, very common to hear that, social distancing. And we were told stay isolated, work from home, don't meet with people.

Some were saying don't even have Christmas or Thanksgiving with your own family. So essentially they were telling us cut off all social support, all encouragement. We saw last week this goes against how our Creator has hardwired us.

It was God who said it is not good that man should be alone. During that time, I'll tell you, the last few years we have seen as a church staff more despair, more discouragement, more depression than we have seen in a long time. Well, we're talking today a little bit about friendship.

Last week we looked at relationship. This week we take it a little step further in terms of friendship. We've been looking at Paul's friends in Colossians chapter 4, and we told you last week that this is essentially a verbal photograph of Paul's buddies, people he led to Christ, those he discipled in Christ, and those he sent out to do the work of the ministry.

They are Paul's friends. And so the name of this message is, With a Little Help from My Friends. Now, I stole that title.

I read it in the commentary. Somebody called and I said, oh, that's a perfect sermon title. But I realized that that person stole it from these guys.

So let me just give you a little instruction. For you young people, this is how we used to listen to music. This is called a record, and this is a Beatles record.

This is 1967, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. And the second song on the A side is entitled, With a Little Help from My Friends. It's an interesting song. Ringo is singing the song, and he sings, what would you do if I sang out of tune?

Would you stand up and walk out on me? Lend me your ear, and I'll sing you a song, and I'll try not to sing out of key. I get by with a little help from my friends.

I'm going to try with a little help from my friends. Now, I've always found that an interesting song. It's interesting because Ringo was singing it, and Ringo didn't have the greatest vocals, and he really needed help from his friends. And I'll tell you, he had some pretty good friends, so were it not for John, Paul, and George, Ringo would just have been another drummer singing out of key.

Friends make all the difference. And these are Paul the Apostle's friends. If you want to know what made Paul effective, at least in part, you've got to look to his friends.

So, with a little help from my friends. It's a Bible principle. The principle is one person, no matter how gifted, can go it alone.

One person, no matter how gifted, can go it alone. We need friends, and we see that throughout the Scripture. For example, Moses got by with a little help from his friends. He had Aaron and Hur lift up his arms in that battle against the Amalekites, and as long as they were there to hold up his arms, Israel prevailed. David got by with a little help from his friends. He had his own men, his own loyal following, but he had a special friend by the name of Jonathan.

The Bible says, the soul of David, I love this, was knit together with the soul of Jonathan. Friends, Naomi got by with a little help from a friend named Ruth, who also happened to be her daughter in law. And it says, Ruth clung to Naomi. Love that phrase, clung to her. Remember she said, where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people.

Your God will be my God. They made a covenant of friendship. Then there was Daniel. We love to talk about Daniel, how singular he was, how faithful he was, how strong he was.

But Daniel had a little help from three friends. Remember their names? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Wow, good Bible school students here.

Awesome. Okay, so that's their pagan names. Their Hebrew names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, but nobody knows them by that, so we'll just call them Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But those were his friends. Even Jesus had friends.

He had his disciples. And on one occasion, he said, no longer do I call you my servants, I call you my friends. Friendship. Friends run the gamut from just a casual social contact to a complex relationship of great depth. You can have distant friends. You can have Facebook friends.

But then you can have close friends, intimate friends, real friends. It's one of the greatest titles you can ever give another person. Friend. You are my friend.

I consider you a friend. But it's a title that is never to be taken lightly. I read this week that in Chinese, the word for friend is pinyu. And originally, way back when, the term pinyu meant completeness, the totality of all beauty. That's what it meant. Now, it has come to me, it's lost some of its meaning. It's now just come to me in a close association.

But originally, it had the idea of completeness or the sum total. But I love the Hebrew word for friend. It's the word chaver. Hard word to say because you've got to chaver.

And it is a word in Hebrew, and the root means to connect or to join. So with that in mind, I want to give you three life-giving attributes of true friendship that will connect you firmly to another person. There are plenty more, but I'm going to give you three because we're basing it on this text. Number one, friends overcome their barriers.

Friends overcome their barriers. Now, let's look at this text. We're going to look at five verses.

We covered two friends last week. We look at six more today, beginning in verse 10. He says, Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you with Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, about whom you received instructions. If he comes to you, welcome him. And Jesus, who is called Justice, these are my only fellow workers for the kingdom of God who are of the circumcision.

That is, they have a Jewish background. They have proved to be a comfort to me. Epaphras, who is one of you, he's a Colossian, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he is a great zeal for you and those who are in Laodicea and those in Hierapolis. Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you. We just read six names, six people, and these six friends, three of them are Jews, three of them are Gentiles.

Why is that noteworthy? Because in the ancient world, there were Jews and Gentiles, but they didn't mix as friends. It was unheard of to do this, what you are about to see and what we're about to uncover. In those days, especially in those days in the ancient world, they would naturally have been divided. Now, let's fast forward to us. I'm convinced that were it not for the gospel of Jesus Christ, it would be pretty impossible to get us all together.

I think there are enough cultural differences, personal differences, family differences, factors that divide us, that it would be hard to get us into fellowship together, let alone to become a family together. But Jesus has done that. The gospel does that. Now, let me give you a little background. In those days, the Jewish people divided the whole world into two groups. Can you guess what they are? Us and them. Us and them.

Those are the two groups. There's us, the Jewish people, and there's them. Us, we're the Jews.

Them, they're the nations. They're the Gentiles. They're the not-Jews. And that was significant because there was such animosity among some strict Jewish people that basically they said, it's in their writings, that God created Gentiles simply to make hell a little bit hotter.

In their words, to kindle the fires of hell. So, Gentiles were not admitted into their homes as guests. When Jewish people would walk through the streets, the strict ones would hold their robes close to their bodies so as not to touch a Gentile. They would shake the dirt off their sandals when they walked into Gentile cities. There was a barrier between Jew and Gentile.

Here, the barrier's gone. Now, the Bible gives examples of this barrier. One significant example is in Acts chapter 10 when Peter goes to visit a Gentile named Cornelius. He's the centurion.

He's in the Roman army. And remember the story how Peter's on a rooftop, and he sees a vision let down from having a sheet, and on that sheet are all sorts of un-kosher things to eat. And God says, Peter, rise, kill, and eat.

And Peter says, I'm a good Jew. It's not kosher. I'm not going to do that. I'm paraphrasing a bit. But no way.

I'm not going to do it. Well, as he's seeing this vision, he gets a knock on the door. It's some buddies of Cornelius, the centurion Gentile, saying, hey, Cornelius wants to see you. So Peter starts going with them to their house, and he's very nervous about it. And once he gets into the house, he says, this is Acts chapter 10. I'm reading in a modern translation.

Peter says, you know, I'm sure that this is highly irregular. Jews just don't do this, that is, visit and relax with people of another race. But Peter admitted, we have a barrier here, and I'm feeling very uncomfortable because I'm a Jew. You're a Gentile. Because by that time, Judaism had become highly discriminatory.

There was social prejudice that dominated the landscape. So Peter walks in. He's very, very nervous about it. And so he says, you know, this is just really weird. But then he says this, but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. In other words, God's taken me to school here. He's given me a crash course on grace.

That's one example. Another example is the Lord Jesus Christ visiting a woman in Samaria, the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4. He goes to the well. He sees a woman. She is drawing water, and he asks for a drink. Remember her response? She says, how is it that you, being a Jew, ask water from me, a Gentile woman? That's just weird.

That's unlikely. There was a barrier, and that barrier had not come down. Now, the only thing in the ancient world that kept all these groups that were at odds with each other together, there was one thing that kept them together.

You know what it was? Force. Force. It's called the Pax Romana. Ever heard that term, Pax Romana? It means the Roman peace. It was Caesar Augustus who came up with this idea of making a huge police force in Rome, beefing up the police force. So any riot, any group that wants to picket or anything like that, he was going to slam that down hard. And he raised up a standing army that went worldwide, wherever the Romans conquered, to enforce a peace so there would be no uprising. And I actually believe in that policy. I think if you want to have peace in a world that has fallen, you have to have a strong peacekeeping force.

You have to enforce peace because left to its own, the world would not be peaceful. But that's in the world. What I want you to see is this is the church. And in the church, there is no police force forcing these groups together. Here are Paul's friends, some Jews, some Gentiles, voluntarily getting together, both groups meeting willingly and lovingly and displaying an amazing sense of unity. That's what friends do. Friends overcome their barriers. Friends don't say, oh, I'm a Jew and you're a Gentile. We can't be friends. They go, we're in Christ.

We can be friends. Those barriers are taken down. R. Kent Hughes said this, it is impossible to hold racial prejudice in the heart and be spirit-filled. Such goes against everything Christ taught and teaches. The one place that is the most accepting place ought to be the church.

Friends saved that admit other friends in. Ever heard of Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi? Sure, we all have. Did you know that Gandhi, who became a political leader, had a law background? He was a Hindu. But did you know that he considered becoming a Christian? He was reading the New Testament. He was compelled by the life of Jesus. And he said, this is it.

This is the solution. The gospel is the solution to the problems in my country, in India, the caste system that divides everybody. And so he said, I'm going to go to church on Sunday, and I want to talk to the minister about converting.

I want to know the way of salvation. So he goes to church on Sunday. He walks through the doors, and they don't let him have a seat because he's Indian. And instead, they tell him, we suggest you go worship with your own kind. They turn him away. He left.

He never came back to another church his entire life. And he said this, if Christians have caste differences also, then I might as well remain a Hindu. But friends overcome their barriers. And these three Jewish friends of Paul and these three Gentile friends of Paul, all were friends of Paul and friends of each other for the gospel's sake.

Now, let's briefly go through this list just so you know who these friends are. Let's look at the three Jews first of all. First on the list in verse 10 is Aristarchus. Aristarchus was a Macedonian, and like Tychicus, again, I bet you never hear sermons on Tychicus or these guys, but you do now. So this guy, Aristarchus, like Tychicus, was with Paul during the most tumultuous times of Paul's life. So he was there in Ephesus when the riot broke out. He was with Paul on the way to Jerusalem when Paul got arrested in Jerusalem. He was probably with Paul on that journey to Rome. And now, though he's not arrested for anything, he's sitting with Paul while Paul is in prison. That's why Paul refers to him as a fellow prisoner.

That's Aristarchus. Second man is Mark. Mark is none other than the writer of the second gospel in the New Testament. He is also called John Mark at another place. He was a Jewish native of Jerusalem, and the church met in his mom's house for prayer, Acts chapter 12. When Peter was in jail, they were in that house praying that he gets out. We're also told here that he is the cousin of Barnabas. Notice that in verse 10.

Now, Barnabas was Paul's companion on his first mission trip. Hold that thought. I'm going to circle back to that in a minute. So we have Aristarchus, Mark. Third on the list is Jesus who is called Justice. Now, the reason you're told that it's Jesus who is called Justice is so you wouldn't get confused. So, oh, it's not that Jesus because you see the name Jesus, you think that's Jesus. But we're given his Jewish name, Joshua, Yeshua, Jesus, and his Roman name, Justice, so that you can distinguish between the two. There were a lot of kids back then who were named Yeshua. That's why in the Bible it says Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus son of Joseph or Jesus son of Mary, because it's to distinguish him from the other kids named Yeshua in the neighborhood. So this is Jesus named Justice. He's a Jewish believer. He served with Paul.

We know nothing more about him. So those are the three Jews. The Gentiles are Epaphras. Now, you know Epaphras. We met Epaphras.

We met him six months ago in the very first chapter of this book. Epaphras was the founder of this church at Colossae. Epaphras heard Paul the Apostle when Paul spent three years in Ephesus.

Ephesus wasn't too far away. He returned back home to Colossae, started the church, became the pastor, and he may have even started churches in these other areas mentioned. So he's a Gentile church planter. Next on the list is Luke. You know Luke. He's the writer of the third gospel in the New Testament. Luke is the only Gentile writer in the New Testament. He wrote the Gospel of Luke. He wrote the book of Acts. He was a very careful historian.

The way he compiled information and sized it up and wrote about it is noteworthy. You can find that at the beginning of Luke and Acts. He was also a medical doctor. He's a medical doctor who traveled with Paul. Now I like this because you got Paul the Apostle who could heal people by God's power, yet he traveled with a personal doctor. So Paul is very pragmatic traveling with his personal doctor. Also something to note about Luke.

Luke was with Paul to the very end of his life. That wraps up Skip Heitzig's message from his series Always Only Jesus. Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now here's Skip to share how you can keep these messages coming your way to connect you and many others around the world with God's Word. As Christians we have a calling and that is to win souls for Jesus even as we await our glorious future with him in heaven. And so our goal is to come alongside friends like you to encourage you to keep sharing Christ with others as long as you have the chance to do so. That's why we share these faith-building messages and today you can take action to ensure these teachings keep reaching you and so many others worldwide. One major push this year is to grow the reach of these broadcasts into more major U.S. cities and you can help make that possible with your generosity.

Can I count on your support? Here's how you can give a gift today. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give a gift that's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.

800-922-1888. Thank you for your generosity. And did you know there's a great biblical resource available right at your fingertips through your mobile device? You can access several of Skip's Bible reading plans in the YouVersion Bible app and dive deeper into several books of the Bible to gain new insights. Just search Skip Heitzig in the YouVersion Bible app. Tune in again next week for more verse-by-verse teaching from God's Word with Skip. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on his word. Make a connection, a connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.