All right, title of my message today is, Are You a Friend to Your Father? James chapter 2, if you have your Bibles with you, turn to there. James chapter 2, in verse 23, it says, And the Scriptures was fulfilled, which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. Now one cent before we believed on God, we were all enemies of God. The Bible says while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. While we were yet his enemies, he loved us so much that he even died for us while we still an enemy of God. And once he died for us and we believed that and accepted that free gift, we become a friend of God in one sense. We're no longer, in one sense, an enemy of God, but we are now a friend of God. We know the story that James chapter 2 verse 23 is talking about. Let me recap it a little bit. If you turn to Genesis chapter 22, this is one of the most intriguing story, you might say, because here we see an act that was given to Abraham to do this thing. And it was an act that I don't think I could have done or even attempted to do. My faith is not that strong in one sense. But Abraham was known to be called a friend of God because of this thing here. Starting chapter 22 verse 1, And it came to pass, after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and sent unto him Abraham. And he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell of thee. So you know the back story of Abraham and how he was old, his wife was old, and the Lord blessed them with a child in their old age, and Isaac was the result of that. So now, God is telling Abraham, after waiting for such a long time to get a son, he's telling Abraham, go and take your son and offer him to me. In verse 3, Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his ass and took two of his young men with him and Isaac, his son, and claimed the wood for the burnt offering and rose up and went on to the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar. Go down to verse six, and Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it upon Isaac, his son. And he took the wood in his hand and a knife, and there went both of them together. And Isaac spake unto Abraham, his father, and said, my father. And he said, here am I, my son. He said, Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went both of them together. Now Abraham knew that the promises of God will come to pass. He knew that God told him that his seed's gonna multiply like the sands of the seashore. And so he knew that whatever this testing, whatever this trial might be, God will provide himself a lamb. And it's a pathetic knowledge as well, because I believe he kind of knew and foreshadowed of the lamb of God, which is Jesus Christ. Go down to verse 11. One thing to note, how when God is speaking to us, speaking to you, how we answer is very important to note. He says, here am I. He's not busy doing things that he's so busy to not listen to the word of God or listen to the voice of God. He says, here am I. And he said, lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him. For I know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thy son, thy only son, from me. So in James chapter 2, it talks about him being a friend of God because of this act. And so we want to be in such a way where we are considered friends of God by our actions. In one sense, we are friends of God through what God did through his son, Jesus Christ. But in another sense, we're a deeper friend, a more intimate friend of God. In Proverbs 27.10 it says, thine own friend and thy father's friend forsake not neither go into thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity. For better is a neighbor that is near than a brother that is afar. You know, when I was growing up, I don't have too many friends. I could probably count, you know, friends, probably like a dozen or so that I have, and I could probably count with one hand the close friends that I have. I probably have three or four that I'm close with. But even that, I lose contact with them, so they're not... you know, close in a sense to where I talk to them every day or anything like that. But God wants us to be his friend and he wants to be our friend and to be able to be that close to where you could want to talk to your friend, want to read his word, want to know what he's feeling, want to know what, you know, you could do to strengthen your friendship. The Bible says that You know, if you have good friends, you will do well in a sense. The friends that you have, and you have to be careful what friends you have as well, too. The Bible says in Proverbs, it says, you know, when you go after friends that do mischief and they do evil, you're going to most likely participate in those things. So it's very important as young folks to choose your friends wisely. Make sure that your friends are, first of all, safe. I'm not saying that you can't have unsafe friends, but it's important to have friends that are like-minded. It's important to have friends that believe what you believe in one sense or an agreement and a lot of things. So that way there's not friction and if there's friction, friends should be able to talk and should be able to work things out through the Word of God, make sure everything's through the Word of God. But in Proverbs 1, Verse 10 through 15, it says, my son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If they say come with us, let us lay wait for blood. Let us lurk privileged for the innocent without cause. Let us swallow them up alive as the grave and whole as those that go down to the pit, into the pit. We should find all precious substance. We should fill our houses with spoil. Cast in thy lot among us. Let us all have one purse. My son, walk thou not in the way with them. Refrain thy foot from their path. So here we see an example of not allowing friends or companions to be, for them to influence you. The Bible says here in Proverbs says not to walk thou in the way there. refrain your foot from their path, not even cross path with them because they're going to do things that will get themselves in trouble and that will also get you in trouble. That's one advice that I give to young folks. Your father knows a lot about what's best for you, especially when you're younger. And strict things, things that they say that they want you to do in a certain way, they want you to be home at a certain time, they don't want you to hang out with certain people, they don't want you to dress a certain way, they don't want you to have tattoos, they don't want you to have to do drinking and all that stuff, because they know that those things could lead to these types of friendships of people that do those types of things, and you might end up in jail or even worse, dead. So, going back to my title, are you a friend of your father? Your father, your heavenly father, you should be a friend with because he's perfect and he's not going to fall short. He's not going to disappoint you in any way. He's not going to be a hypocrite. He's not going to lie to you. He's not going to make you, feel a certain way that's not right, he's going to be perfect. So the best friend that you could look up to, the best friend that you could have first and foremost is God himself. And that's because we know that he is perfect, so we're not going to be disappointed because sometimes you have friends that might disappoint you in life. They might do certain things that might rubbed you the wrong way, or even worse, might cause you harm. But God, he will never cause us harm. He would never do things that would hurt us in that way. When Lazarus was dead, the Bible says in John 11, 11, it says, these things said he, and after that, he saith unto them, our friend Lazarus sleepeth. but I go that I may awake him in our sleep. Would it be nice for God to say our friend Topek, our friend Mike, our friend John. We need to go to him, we need to go to them to see them and refresh them. So we should have that type of mentality to be what Lazarus is, to where he was a friend of God, where God was concerned about him and wanted to travel to meet him. We know in the Bible there's lots of examples of fathers and sons and young people And even older people were sticking together as long as they could. The parable of the prodigal son, it says in Luke 15, verse 11 to 13, it says, a certain man had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me. And he divided unto them his living, and not many days afterward, the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with righteous living. I want to shift focus a little bit, and this is something I see in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, how a lot of times these sons stay with their father until they're ready to get married. A lot of times these sons, you know, you get an example of Isaac, he was 40 years old until he got married. So he was with his father until he was 40 years old, until he met Rebecca. I'm not saying that you should have a 40-year-old son in your house at the time, but it seems like back then their ways of living was a little bit different. A lot of times it was farming and ranching, and there's not a lot of this. going outside of work and all that stuff is more within a tight-knit family unit. And so there's no rush for these folks to get out of that, because what's the point of getting out of that and getting on your own? and not really establishing something. In one sense, you know, once you get stuff established, you get wealth and all that stuff, you might venture out. But it seems like, you know, you have the example of Jesse and his sons, you know, David and all his brothers. We have the example of Jacob and all his sons and such. It seems to me that they had something going back then. Like I said, Isaac was 40 years old in Genesis 25, when he took Rebekah, the wife, and the daughter of Bethiel, the Syrian, of Paddan Aram, and the sister of Laban, the Syrian. So I'll close with this, you know, the Bible says in Genesis 2, 18 through 24, and all the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found and help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. And he slept, and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God hath taken from man made he woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. and she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh. God wants the best for us, and He knows what's best for us, whether you're a man, woman, child, teenager, anything. He knows what's best, and there's examples in the Bible that God could show us to lead us in the way that He thinks is best for us, and I believe that especially for you know, in these last days where people are so quick to throw away their parents into a nursing home and let them rot. And likewise, it's also some people are so quick to just throw away the kids after they turn 18 or 20 and just go, leave, you know, throw them into the wild. But I think there's got to be a balance somehow, and that, you know, obviously there's cases where, you know, God calls you to minister, to evangelize and stuff. Maybe God calls you to be a missionary somewhere, and then you're not married yet, and that's a different story. But if there's no good reason to leave, why... put that stress upon you where you could like stay and build yourself up and get, you know, get right and get financially fit and then you could go and do that. So with that, let's pray. Dear Lord, I thank you so much for this word. I pray that you'll please use it, Father. Thank you Lord for this congregation. I pray that Your Holy Spirit be upon us that we could ponder some of these things. Thank you for your word, Father, and for the examples of people throughout history that we could lean upon, Father. And we thank you for just the ability to learn from these things, God. And I pray that you'll bless us. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.