God knows exactly who you are and STILL calls you friend

My sermon Sunday is going to be about the story of Esther.  It’s an exciting story.  Esther was chosen by the king to be the new queen.  And Esther was chosen by God to be the one to save the Jewish people from being exterminated.  When the king chose Esther, he didn’t know exactly who she was.  When God chose her, he knew exactly who she was.

That has been on my mind and then when I read some from the beginning of Acts this morning, it caught my attention when it talked about the resurrected Jesus giving instructions to the apostles He had chosen.

So as I was thinking along these lines of God/Jesus choosing, I then read some AW Tozer.  Tozer talked about being a ‘friend of God’.  It would be absurd for us to simply call ourselves a friend of God.  There’s no way we could ever call ourselves a friend of the Creator of the universe, unless…  Unless, of course, the Creator chose us to be His friend.  And through Jesus Christ, that’s exactly what He did.  And He knew what He was getting – or should I say who He was getting.  So that when we repent and turn to Him and follow Him, He calls us friend.  Throughout the Bible, we read that we were His enemy before we turned to Jesus.  (See Romans 5:10 for one.)

Some of us cannot accept that God would choose us to be His friend.  But we have to remember that unlike the king who didn’t know everything about Esther (namely that she was a Jew), God knows everything about you and me.  There is nobody that can tattle on you to God.  He already knows it all… and He chooses to love you, save you, and call you friend.  Tozer says it’s an audacious faith that dares to believe the Word of God and claim friendship with God.  When we shy away from God’s work for us because we consider ourselves unworthy, when we won’t take Holy Communion, when we try to hide our sin from Him, we are disrespecting God.  Tozer wrote:

“We do God more honor by believing what He has said about Himself and having the courage to come boldly to the throne of grace than by hiding in self-conscious humility among the trees of the garden.”

When Jesus makes you worthy, you are worthy indeed:  worthy to serve Him, worthy to share in Communion with Him, and worthy to call Him friend.  You have nothing to prove or hide, He knows exactly who you are.  And He calls you friend.