I once preached a sermon entitled, "Can We Make the Gospel Simple?" Too many of us want to just get to the point. "Just give us the bottom line," we say. This perspective is probably due in part to the fact that we are accustomed to watching television. With so many commercials breaking our concentration and programs lasting usually only half an hour, our attention span is getting shorter and shorter.

Have you noticed there is a word we use a lot, especially in a religious context and usually when we pray, and that word is "just." We tell the Lord we "just" want to tell Him this or we "just" want to tell Him that. Sometimes we are "just" thinking this or "just" wanting that. Have you noticed how often we use that word? I don't know how this came about. It may have something to do with our impatience to get to the point, to get down to nitty gritties. It's as though we are saying, "Lord, I don't want to waste your time or mine. I just wanted to say . . ."

I agree that in spiritual things we ought not to beat around the bush; we need to get down to business. But there is a danger we will forget that the spiritual part of our lives is not something that can be solved in half an hour with commercials in-between.

You have no doubt heard a reference in the public media to what is called "sound bytes." They are short pronouncements that get the attention of the public with very few words. A sound byte may sound deep but may actually be shallow. It may give the impression that it is profound but may be of no particular relevance at all. Could it be that we are consciously or unconsciously reducing spiritual truth to sound bytes? We may be taking the deep things of God and making them shallow. The issues that have been a part of this planet for six thousand years cannot be solved in thirty minutes with commercials in-between.

There is something else that seems to be happening. That is, given we have a sincere desire to discover truth, the danger is that, as we come to a greater knowledge of truth, for some reason we feel we must discard old truth to make room for new truth. John 16:13 is a promise from Jesus Himself: "Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, [that] shall He speak: and He will shew you things to come."

Truth is as high as the heaven, as deep as the sea, and has as many components as the sand along its shores. I suppose we could say that ultimately truth is everything there is to know about God; and inasmuch as God is infinite, truth also is infinite. In another Bible passage, Jesus says that His ways are beyond finding out. Nevertheless, He is committed to guiding us into all the truth that pertains to us in our situation at this time in history.

Did you notice that I said "that pertains to us at this time in history?" There is such a thing as present truth, and that means truth that is especially relevant for a particular time. It is important that we understand this; because although the gospel is everlasting, there is a gospel that is relevant to the beginning of the 21st century, and if we are still preaching a gospel that was relevant to the time of the apostles or to the time of the Reformation, though it be a true gospel, it is not a relevant gospel. God has a truth that is always true, but He has always had a truth that was for a particular time.

The promise is that He will send the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will lead every generation into that particular truth which they need for that time. But here is where we need to be on guard, because all truth is built on truth. Truth that is built on error is not truth. This means simply that the Spirit goes from truth to truth. To put it plainly, when He leads us to a new understanding of truth for a particular time, take care that you do not throw out previous truth to make room for what we now call the new truth.

Let me give you a concrete example. As health-conscious Seventh-day Adventists, we were not wrong in saying we shouldn't eat catfish. It has never been the will of God for man to eat catfish. But neither has it been the will of God for us to be proud and selfish. If we were made aware only recently about God's rules for clean and unclean food, we should not toss out the window His will that His people not be proud and selfish. In the same way it was the will of God for mankind to keep the Sabbath, but it was also the will of God for His people to be kind and forgiving.

I am very thankful that here at the beginning of the 21st century we are finally waking up to the fact that we shouldn't be proud and selfish. But, low and behold, many are taking this to mean that it is now all right to eat catfish. Likewise, we are finally realizing the necessity of being kind and forgiving, but there are some who are taking this to mean that the Sabbath is not important anymore. Have mercy! How can the Spirit lead us into all truth if we keep on throwing out the old truth to make room for a greater understanding of truth? It would be like a blocklayer taking out two blocks for every one he put in.

I have entitled this sermon, "More Than a Friend." You will soon see why I have prefaced my remarks the way I have. But before I continue, I want you to think about something, and that is, I hope we understand that we all have what is called these days an "attitude." And that attitude is basically that we have this thing against God. The Scripture makes this point very clear. In Jeremiah 17:9 we read: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" This condition is the result of the initial rebellion that we read about in Isaiah 14:12: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"

Verse 13 explains: "For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north. "

Verse 14: "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High."

In II Thesselonians 2:7 we read: "For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way."

There is a great mystery that cannot be understood. It can be described, but it cannot be accounted for; and that is that one day the archangel decided he wanted to be equal with God. Of course, a painting can never be greater than the one who painted it. Before it was over, the heart of Lucifer (and from the beginning all those who are lifted up with sin and pride) had become corrupted. This is our heritage. And the only way it can be rectified is by a clean install, to use computer language.

The point is that in our natural condition we are not comfortable with having someone over us, even if it is the One who made us. If we can't deny that we were created by Someone, then the next best thing is to drag Him down to our level. Of course, it is impossible to actually get the true and living God down to our level, but that doesn't seem to keep us from trying. He doesn't lose when we try that tactic, we lose. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. What we end up doing is creating what amounts to a false god. That is, we make gods in our own image. Friends, we must never forget that we were originally created in the image of God. However, you cannot reverse-engineer this process and make God to be like us. The fact that we were created in the image of God most certainly doesn't make us gods.

The theme of some recent evangelistic meetings was man's forever friendship with God. What a wonderful and thrilling thing to contemplate! There is a current ideology which is teaching that, ever since Jesus said to His disciples the words recorded in John 15:15, "Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you," our relationship to God has been elevated. The fact that we are referred to many times in Scripture as being children of God and other times as being servants of God seems to have been superseded by the concept of friendship. Somehow children and heirs and servanthood are out the window, and now we are "buds" with the Almighty.

If this is what Jesus meant when He added the concept of being His friends, then I respectfully suggest this is not a promotion but actually a demotion. If I have to choose between being a friend of God at the expense of being a child of God and a faithful slave of God, then I will stay as I am, thank you. There is no doubt that salvation is about having a relationship with God. But it is not just every relationship or any kind of a relationship. The word "relationship" as it is commonly used these days is very generic and doesn't mean very much.

On one occasion I visited in the home of a person who had left the church and had resumed a worldly lifestyle, but who assured me they had all that really mattered because they had a relationship with Jesus. You see, the word relationship doesn't mean very much unless you ask what kind of a relationship they are talking about. A couple that lives together before they are married has a relationship, but it is not blessed by God. People who are in a partnership to buy and sell drugs have a relationship, but it is illegal and immoral. I suppose you could say that the devil has a relationship with Jesus. He hates him! So much for relationships.

Salvation is not about having a relationship with God per se; it is about having a right relationship with Him. All that has to do with truth and doctrine will ultimately shape the kind of relationship we have with God. This is why truth and doctrine are so important. Having a wrong concept of who God is, or having even a narrow or very limited concept of who He is, can lead to having a wrong relationship to Him. The crux of the matter then is that salvation is about taking a wrong relationship with God and, through Jesus Christ, making it a right relationship.

This brings us back to the question of how shall we relate to God, and of the three options that are most commonly presented in Scripture, which one is the way to go? Remember, there are those who suggest that anyone who is less than a friend of God is a spiritual primitive. Let's take a deeper look at the matters of sonship, servanthood, and friendship, and then we can decide which we would prefer.

To do this we illustrate with a little story. Let us suppose that Bill Gates, who is one of the richest men in the world, had a child. I don't know whether Mr. and Mrs. Gates have a child, but let's suppose that they do. Bill's little boy becomes an heir of his daddy's great fortune. His dad can take him to the office and show him off. But he is just a little guy, and the only thing that matters to him is whether his dad is going to get him what he wants for his birthday.

Microsoft is a huge company. It has all kinds of people to whom Bill has assigned responsibility for keeping the company moving forward. A number of these people have been delegated the right to make important decisions that could involve large sums of money. They can hire and fire and otherwise carry on the business of the company. They get a nice salary and maybe even some stock options, but they are not Bill's heirs. They do the business of the company and they do it well.

To sum it up, Mr. Gates, for purposes of this illustration, has an heir and hundreds of employees. The Bible would refer to these employees as Bill's servants. Bill also has other people in his life who are neither his employees nor his family members; they are his friends. I don't know whether Bill likes to play golf or not but, supposing that he did, let us imagine that one day he is out playing a round with one of his best friends. As they go around the course, Bill shares with his friend some of his plans for the company and even asks his friend for his opinion. This friend is not an heir, neither is he authorized to do business on behalf of the company; but the CEO is sharing with him some of his plans as they ride in the golf cart together.

We have three classes of people in this story--the son, the servants, and the friend. Which would you rather be if you could choose to be only one? I would choose to be the son. Though I don't know what is going on in the company, and though I do not have authority to carry on the business of the company, I have a privilege that no one else has, and that is that Dad is going to leave his fortune to me. If it were not my option to be a son of Mr. Gates, and I were left to choose between being one of his highly paid executives or his golf partner, I believe I would prefer to be one of his servants and have a part in carrying out an important responsibility of the enterprise.

But, thanks be to God, we do not have to choose between the relationships. We have the gift of becoming all three--a son, servant, and friend. When we receive Jesus as our personal Savior, we are adopted into the family of God. Listen to these texts (Galatians 4:5): "To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." And in Ephesians 1:5 it says: "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will." That means we become heirs of all He has prepared for His children. Again, in Titus 3:7, it states: "That being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." In no way would I give up the relationship of being a son of God.

And I am not at all embarrassed by the concept of being a slave of God. Paul was so proud of being a slave of God that he mentioned it over and over in describing his relationship with his Savior. In Romans 1:1 he writes: "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God." In the book of Titus he says (Titus 1:1): "Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness."

Paul wasn't ashamed to be called a slave of God. When he describes the ministry of Jesus, he even said that Jesus came as a slave. Though the concept may be offensive to some, those who are sons and daughters of God are not ashamed to be servants of God. You see, a servant follows orders, and those who are sons and daughters of God take delight in following the orders of their Savior. As it is written in Psalms 40:8: "I delight to do Thy will, O my God: yea, Thy law is within my heart;" Psalms 119:16: "I will delight myself in Thy statutes: I will not forget Thy word;" Psalms 119:47: "And I will delight myself in Thy commandments, which I have loved."

We get into trouble when we emphasize one relationship with God above the others. Although being God's friend is illustrative of some aspects of our relationship with Him, it does not say it all. It is easy to lose perspective when we favor one above the others. For instance, obedience, the bedrock of the Christian experience, becomes at risk. I have a lot of friends, but generally unless those friends are also family or those who work for me, I don't tell them what they must do. If I did, then we probably wouldn't be friends very long.

My friends and I share together. We even ask each other for advice. But in an on-going way, we are not much into each other's lives. My friends have their lives and I have mine. This is not what Jesus was trying to develop with us when He said that no longer would He treat us as servants but as friends. He followed it up by explaining that servants don't know what the boss is thinking--they only follow orders.

Jesus was not saying that we should stop being His children or that we no longer have to do what He tells us to do. He was declaring that He was now going to share His thinking and His plans with us as friends do with one another.

What we have then is the best of all the worlds. We are children of God, and so we are heirs of His riches. We are servants of God, and so we do what He tells us to do even if we don't happen to understand it all at the time. And now He carries His relationship with us even a step further-- He shares things from His heart with us.

It boils down to this: It is a matter of Who, What and How. Who are we? We are His children. What are we? We are His servants. How does this all come about? In an intimate atmosphere of friendship.

To play off one relationship against another is to short-change the whole. To throw out sonship and servanthood in favor of friendship is to miss the point. Truth builds on truth. You never have to throw out one truth in order to make room for more truth. To do that is to remain narrow and shallow. If we are faithful to the light we have, the Lord will give us a greater revelation of truth. He will at the same time increase our capacity to implement it.

Those who are the strongest advocates of making friendship with God everything in the relationship also say that God doesn't expect us to obey what we don't understand. There is no consistent Scriptural authority which states that so long as we don't understand all of the whys and wherefores of the will of God we don't have to obey. God gave the human race a rather scientifically complicated list of health laws covering areas from hygiene to diet. It has not been until recently that we have understood why He gave these rules. For instance, when I was growing up I don't think I ever heard very much about cholesterol. But He knew, and tried to steer our diets away from the problem.

To live by faith is the opposite of the concept that you don't have to obey if you don't understand. Abraham didn't get to realize the promise of God until he obeyed. As long as he tried to obey according to the way he saw things, he did everything wrong. And so it will be with us.

The Gospel is not complicated, but neither is it simple. If it were, we could put it all in one line. It is not simple because evil is not simple. The human heart is like a spider's web; it is extremely complex. Human nature is so at war with God that it will use every excuse and try every avenue to escape submitting to the sovereign God.

I would not want to leave the impression that I am in any way against a relationship with our God that has friendship as one of its components. Jesus said He was going to treat us as friends, and we are called upon to talk to Him as we do to our friends. Yet it must not start and stop there.

Sometimes we hear it said that parents ought to be friends to their children. There are even cases where this has occurred to the point where the children call their parents by their first name. In my older years my dad and I related to each other as friends. But there was something between Dad and I that went beyond friendship. I had a relationship with my dad for the simple reason that I came from him. That made it impossible for me to relate to him as merely a friend. After all, I don't remember a text that says, "Honor thy friends that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee!"

Yes, Jesus is "More Than a Friend" as the title of this sermon indicates. At the beginning I said that sin was born with the desire to be equal with God. When that happened, what we now call selfishness and pride were born. Since that time the human heart resents God and is in a struggle against Him. All the pagan religions that have ever existed are simply attempts to avoid acknowledging the true and living God and are attempts to create gods that would be more like us, in spite of the text that warns us not to try to make Him like us and the one that says His ways are not our ways or His thoughts our thoughts.

It was some years ago that the time had come for the constituency meeting here in the Florida Conference. This meeting is conducted every three years, during which time the delegates elect the president, secretary and treasurer, as well as the executive committee. There is also a committee elected which is responsible for keeping the constitution and by-laws up to date.

This particular year it became known that a certain member of the constitution and by-laws committee was proposing that the Florida Conference remove its reference to Revelation 14 from the constitution because he objected to the words, "Fear God and give glory to Him." He was quoted as saying that he didn't like the idea of fearing God but rather wanted a God you can sit down on the couch with and talk to as a friend. That is a nice concept, but far from complete. We don't worship our friends. Neither did they make heaven and earth.

The prophet Isaiah saw the Lord. It was hardly what could be called an experience like sitting in the family room on Saturday night having a good time eating chips and dip. Isaiah 6:1-5 states: "In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."

Job received a vision of God and said, "I am ruined." Paul saw God and went blind. Both Daniel and John the Beloved fainted. You may be thinking by now that I am trying to set you back in your relationship with God. Just when you were beginning to not be afraid of Him anymore, I am insisting on the old stereotype that we used to have and that didn't do anything for you.

Forgive me, please. Of course I am not trying to do that. My concern is that in trying to correct an incomplete view of God, we could end up with another distorted view. If the concept of God that we had in the past was one of a cruel judge, then the concept that is now being advocated in many places is that of a wimp who desperately needs our approval or He could be voted out of office.

The mindset here at the beginning of the third millennium is one of self-affirmation, of self-promotion, while it seems to be demoting God to just "one of the boys." Like a young man told me one time, "Me and JC get along just fine." The proud and selfish mind of this generation refuses to acknowledge that it must one day stand before the judgment bar of a sovereign God who dwells in unapproachable fire and before whom angels veil their faces and who no man can see and live.

In a Sabbath School Quarterly not long ago, dedicated to a study of the Father, it said, "If Christians view God as a chief accountant, they will not want Him too near. The account book, with its debits and credits, may have too exact a record. It would be better if God were not too close. However, if Christians view God as their friend and themselves as His special possessions, the thought of God's presence will bring vigor and delight to each hour." (December 2, 1998, My Father and My God .)

It is unfortunate that we cannot bear to face God as He really is. How is it against us that we should have a heavenly Father who is keeping an account of our lives? Or, if you please, who is even a heavenly policeman? When I am traveling down the freeway at 60 miles an hour when the speed limit is 60 miles an hour, I am not concerned with the thought of a speed trap. However, if I am going more than 60 miles an hour, I ought to be concerned. We must understand that without our so-called heavenly accountant or, if you please, heavenly policeman, there will be no justice, and our very existence on this planet would be in greater danger than it already is.

If we cannot face the reality of a Creator God who is judge of all the earth, then we have some real problems to resolve. Because that is the reality of it all and the foundation upon which the whole plan of salvation is premised, including His grace, mercy, and intercession.

This generation cannot face the reality of a coming judgment, and so has created a God who is well within their comfort zone. For those who live in apartments, we have even put the concept to music with the song, "Have you talked to the man upstairs?"

You may say that if God is like I describe, then you don't want to have anything to do with Him. How can you love a God like that? Listen, my friend, it is only when we have a concept of God as He really is that we can really love Him. It is only when we have a concept of God as He really is that we understand the enormous truth that He loves us.

I am convinced that the God that many people have in their understanding is so inferior that it makes forgiveness, grace, and mercy almost meaningless. You see, friendship is usually about being on the same level.

I may have a friend who works at the bank, but when I don't make my house payments and he initiates foreclosure proceedings, could I say, "But I thought you were my friend?" Somehow we seem to equate friendship with a kind of "if I do something wrong, they will get me off the hook" mentality. It is true that our friends will often do what they can to help us when we get into problems, and Jesus is no exception; however, we must be careful not to take advantage of our friends.

Although the Scriptures tell us that God is our friend, it also commands us to fear Him and give glory to Him, to reverence Him, to worship Him, to humble ourselves before Him, to love Him with all our hearts, and soul, and strength and mind, just to name a few. If we in any way think that somehow our friendship with the Almighty gives us a discount or some kind of an exemption to the rule, we will have completely missed the point and will end up with having created a God in our own image.

The God who we worship is the One who has created and sustains around 150 billion galaxies, with who knows how many planets inhabited by who knows how many billions of trillions of unfallen beings. The true and only God demands worship and allegiance. Because He is forgiving and merciful, He has not treated us as we deserve to be treated. But His Spirit will not always strive with men.

The day is coming in which things will be restored to the way they were meant to be in the beginning. In that great day of the white throne judgment, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father. Oh, my brother, sister, our God is more than a friend. Make Him your friend, but don't do that unless you have first surrendered your life to Him. Make Him your friend, but don't do that unless by the power of the indwelling Spirit you have determined that you will obey Him in every aspect of your life. Make Him your friend, but don't do that unless you intend to worship Him with reverence, awe, and respect.

We will not know and understand ourselves, and so be able to deal with the reality of this existence, until and unless we understand and know Him, whom to know is life eternal. We have studied the abnormal until we have accepted it as normal. We have studied sin until we have accepted it as an incurable fact of life. There will be no hope for us in our fallen condition until we study who God is--His holiness, His sovereignty, His majesty--that He is the Creator and so the Judge of all that He has created and made. From there we then are able to appreciate, though we will never comprehend, His love, His forgiveness, that He is merciful and long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth.

We seem to have gotten the idea somewhere that if we could somehow bring God down to our level it would make us look better and give us hope. Nothing could be further from the truth. The more we misunderstand the truth about God, and the more we in fact seek to conceive of Him as being like us, the more we are sealing our fate and making it impossible for Him to work in us, both to will and to do His good pleasure.

We will not be able to be restored to the place He meant for us in the beginning until we have restored Him in our thinking and appreciation the place that He occupies in the universe and from which He can never be dethroned or equaled. He is indeed high and lifted up. His glory does indeed fill the temple, and His glory will not be able to fill the temple of our hearts until we see Him as high and lifted up.

When we describe the Father in terms like this, we may immediately tend to feel that there is in some way a difference between Him and the Jesus who walked the earth as a man two thousand years ago. But we must understand that Jesus is verily the God who communicated with man in the Old Testament, and we are talking about the One who set the top of Mt. Sinai on fire. His glory was completely veiled when He was here as a man, except for some moments when He was revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration. You will remember that when He stood on trial before His accusers who had beat Him and spit on Him, He said the next time they saw Him it would not be this way.

The Scriptures tell us that when these very people see Him next time, they will cry to the rocks and the mountains to fall on them and hide them from the face of Him who sits upon the throne. Even when Paul saw Him, he became blind. His friend John the Beloved in vision saw the glorified Christ and fell to the ground overcome by it all.

It is not my purpose to try to bring back a concept of God that might have driven people away from Him. A right concept of God will attract sinners who want out and will repel sinners who like themselves the way they are.

We must not tinker with the Almighty. We must not try to play up one of His attributes and play down others. Though this does no damage to what He intrinsically is, it does huge damage to us and to what we may become when we have a clear concept of who He is.

He is our friend, of that there can be no doubt. But you have never had a friend like He is for the simple reason that our friends are not our Creator, our Savior, the Lord of heaven and earth, the Judge of the quick and the dead. Only when we see Him as He really is will our friendship with Him be what it was meant to be and what it must and will be, as the power of the Holy Spirit of a crucified and risen Savior is being implanted into our hearts and lives and we are, in fact, being changed before our very eyes and the eyes of those who we love and with whom we work.