Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 899
Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, NOVEMBER 7, 1869, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity.”- Proverbs 17:17.
THERE is one thing about the usefulness of which all men are agreed, namely, friendship. But most men are soon aware that counterfeits of friendship are common as autumn leaves. Few men enjoy from others the highest and truest form of friendship. The friendships of this world are hollow. They are as unsubstantial as a dream, as soon dissipated as a bubble, as light as thistledown. Those airy compliments, those empty sentences of praise—how glibly they fall from the lips—but how little have they to do with the heart! He must be a fool, indeed, who believes that there is anything in the complimentary affection but mere flattery or matter of form.
The loving cup means not love and the loud cheering of the toast means not sincere fellowship. With very many, friendship sits very loosely—they could almost write as Horace Walpole does in one of his letters. He says he takes everything very easily, “and if,” says he, “a friend should die, I drive down to the St. James’s coffee house and bring home another,” doubtless as cordial and enraptured with the new friend as with the old. Friends in this world are too often like the bees which swarm around the plants while they are covered with flowers and those flowers contain nectar for their honey. But let November send its biting frosts—the flowers are nipped and their friends, the bees, forsake them. Swallow friendship lives out with us our summer, but finds other loves in winter.
It has always been so from of old, even until now. Ahithophel has deserted David and Judas has sold his Lord. The greatest of kings who have been fawned upon by their courtiers while in power, have been treated as if they were but dogs in the time of their extremity. We say, as the poet of the passions—
“King Darius, great and good— Deserted in his utmost need, By those his former bounty fed. On the cold ground exposed he lies, With not a friend to close his eyes.” Of all friendship which is not based on principle, we may say with the Prophet, “You are weighed in the balances and found wanting.”
But there is a higher friendship than this, by far, and it exists among Christian men, among men of principle, among men of virtue where profession is not all, but where there is real meaning in the words they use. Damon and Pythias still have their followers among us. Jonathan and David are not without their imitators. All hearts are not traitorous. Fidelity still lingers among men. Where godliness builds her house, true friendship finds a rest. Solomon, speaking not of the world’s sham friends, but of friends, indeed, says, “A friend loves at all times.” Having once given his heart to his chosen companion, he clings to him in all weathers, fair or foul. He loves him none the less because he becomes poor, or because his fame suffers an eclipse. His friendship, like a lamp, shines the brighter, or is made more manifest because of the darkness that surrounds it.
True friendship is not fed from the barn floor, or the wine vat. It is not like the rainbow, dependent upon the sunshine. It is fixed as a rock and firm as granite and smiles superior to wind and tempest. If we have friendship at all, Brothers and Sisters, let this be the form it takes. Let us be willing to be brought to the test of the wise man and, being tried, may we not be found wanting. “A friend loves at all times.” But I am not about to talk of friendship at all as it exists between man and man. I prefer to uplift the text into a still higher sphere. There is a Friend, blessed forever be His name, who loves at all times! There is a Brother, who, in an emphatic sense, was born for adversity!
That Friend is Jesus, the Friend of sinners! The Friend of man! The Brother of our souls, born into this world that He might succor us in our adversities. I shall take the text, then, and refer it to the Lord Jesus Christ. And unless time should fail us, I shall then refer it to ourselves as in connection with the Lord Jesus Christ, showing that we, also, ought to love Him even as He has loved us, always and under all adversities.
I. First, then, IN REFERENCE TO THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. The first sentence is, “a friend loves at all times;” and this leads us to consider, first, the endurance of the love of Jesus Christ. My dear Brethren, when we read “a friend loves at all times,” and refer that to Christ, the sentence, full as it is, falls short of what we mean, for our Lord Jesus is a Friend who loved us before there was any time! Before time began the Lord Jesus Christ had entered into Covenant that He would redeem a people unto Himself, who should show forth His Father’s praise.
Before time began His prescient eye had foreseen the creatures whom He determined to redeem by blood. These He took to Himself by election—these the Father also gave to Him by Divine donation and upon these—as He saw them in the glass of the future He set His heart. Long before days began to be counted, or moons to wax and wane, or suns to rise and set, Jehovah Jesus had set apart a people to Himself whom He espoused unto Himself—whose names He engraved upon His heart and upon His hands—that they might be taken into union with Himself forever and ever! Meditate on that love which preceded the first rays of the morning and went forth to you before the mountains were brought forth, or ever He had formed the earth and the world. My Brothers and Sisters, you believe the doctrine of eternal love, meditate, then, and let it be very sweet unto your hearts—