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According to a recent poll only about ten percent of American males say they have a good friend. And while women fare somewhat better, neither do they set a record.

Why is this? I believe it is because we place such an emphasis on doing, producing, and having that we have very little time and energy left for developing relationships. In short, we'd rather have things than people.

Actually, the Bible predicts this is how it will be in the end of times. Revelation 18:11-13 describes the economy of Babylon, that quintessential city of sin. And it lists in order of priority the things her people value most. Gold is first on her list. Then follow such things as silver, linen, jewels, oil, and grain. And would you believe people are last on the list?

Revelation 21:1-21 describes the kingdom of God. And there, the economic priorities are exactly the opposite. People are mentioned first. And gold is mentioned last. It is used to pave the streets.

Clearly the typical friendless American male is more like a citizen of Babylon than he is the kingdom of our Lord.

A few years ago a lovely woman from Kenya worshiped with us for some time. Her name was Adihambo Otineo, which means "Beautiful Dawn." I asked her once if she liked it better here in the United States or back home in Africa. She grew quiet for some time. Her face worked with emotion. And finally she spoke with deep feeling. "I think I like it better in Kenya," she confided. "Here in the United States people are very busy and wealthy. And instead of giving you themselves they give you things. But in Kenya we are very poor. And we have nothing to give to one another but ourselves. But that we do give. And I miss the gift of people." God help us!

The late Dr. Francis Schaeffer once remarked that the true religion of the western world is not Christianity, but private peace and affluence, a really horrible value system that negates friendship. Consider: in our nation we value our privacy. Daniel Boone, several hundred years ago, kept moving west looking for "elbow room." And that same attitude is prevalent in our national psyche today. Witness the American automobile. It has killed the bus and train public transportation systems. And we're not even interested in car pooling. We just want our privacy. "Elbow room."

"Convenience" is another value in our national religion of private peace and affluence. We like our instant breakfast, drive-in windows, Instamatic cameras, and instant credit. Why, just use your razor and throw it away. The same with a writing pen, soda bottle, and mind you, a marriage. All for the god of "convenience."

I've only seen the previews, but the movie Three Men and A Baby seems to be about this very thing. Someone not wanting the trouble of a newborn infant leaves her child in a basket on the door step of three practiced bachelors. And the three men, adopting the child, soon realize that children, indeed -- people in general! -- are not at all convenient. So we instinctively avoid messy entanglements with others.

Beyond convenience and privacy is yet a third value we're really into today, and that is mobility. The average American moves every three years. Life is reduced to little more than a game of musical chairs. We don't want to be tied down. We live for the weekend, then take off! And there is very little time for real relationships to develop.

So the logical result of our values is a lifestyle that is friendless. We are little more than high tech human tumbleweeds passing our lonely way through life privately, affluently, with our things -- our A/C, CD, VCR, Condo, and Z. For us there is no one, just our "stuff." We don't belong to a club, guild, union, clan, church, or league. Loners, floaters -- we are.

And the Bible warns us this is all absurd. We were made for more! Why, in the Bible, the first negative statement God uttered was, "It is not good that the man should live alone" (Genesis 2:18). So God made us for relationships. He made us to love him and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:29-31).

Think, if you will: Does not even our church building reflect this value? In the nave we learn to be friends with God in Christ as we worship. And then in the fellowship hall we learn to be friends with each other as we eat and talk, laugh and share and encourage.

In chapter 1 of Second Samuel, David learns of his good friend Jonathan's death. As youths they'd covenanted together trading cloaks and swords. They'd hunted and camped together, worshiped, traded stories, and suffered together the corrupt intrigues of King Saul's court.

Now Jonathan is slain in battle. And David grieves. "Very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women."

So adroit was David at cultivating friendship that his son, Solomon, commented on it years later in his book about wisdom. And this leads us to our second text. In Solomon's insight into the example his father set in relationships, he lays out the value of friends most succinctly.

Synergism

"Two are better than one," Solomon says. "For they have a good reward for their toil." Right away we are told that true friendships are a "toil." One has to work at it!

In American society today casual relationships are full of laziness and polite insincerities. "Friends" may pause briefly to chat as they pass on the street, but neither really hears what the other says about himself nor is either moved to any kind of meaningful response to the other. We hurry through our "Hello, how are you?" "I'm not too well." "Take care of yourself" conversations and move on. Like two ships passing in the night, we are prisoners in our own self-imposed solitary confinement.

The great people of God, though, always had their friendships. Elijah had his Elisha, Paul his Silas, David his Jonathan, and Adam his Eve. Robert Peary, the first man at the North Pole, had his Matthew Henson. Mr. Bell, inventor of the telephone, had his Watson. Even singer Smokey Robinson had his backup singers, "The Miracles."

"I will make a help mate fit for you," God promises (Genesis 2). And so it is that the finest accomplishments of the human race are not done solo, but in the community of friends. We talk about Jesus and the twelve, a writer and his publisher, Neil Armstrong -- first man on the moon -- and his support crew, a coach and his team, a president and his congress, a doctor and his nurses. Fact is, life is a team sport. And it is in coming together that we find a power given to friendships that is denied the individual. Or as Solomon put it in the text, we find "good reward for our toil."

Example: Geese flying south for the winter leave the Hudson Bay in Canada and fly non-stop to the Chesapeake Bay. Using their famous V-formation they can achieve speeds of over fifty mph! Flying alone, however, a goose can only go half the speed and for hour and a half flights before resting. Why the difference between a flock and an individual bird?

Scientists point to a phenomena they call synergism. In formation, the lead bird breaks the air resistance creating in his path a helpful updraft for the birds who follow. When the lead bird tires, he drops back and allows another bird to lead. The others are pulled along in V-formation with a helpful wind suction. And scientists even believe that the incessant honking is a form of verbal encouragement to stay together, to keep up. Thus can birds accomplish more together than they can apart.

And this is what Solomon is observing in friendships. "Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil."

Encouragement

Solomon not only points us to the synergy of friendships, he also says that relationships provide us with much needed encouragement. "For if they fall," he writes, "one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up."

I like the play on words in this portion of the text. At first it says, "if they fall." But then it kind of corrects itself and says, "when he falls." In life, you see, it is not really a question of if we shall fall but when. All of us sin. All of us get discouraged. All of us will grow disillusioned and want to quit. All of us will suffer confusion, fatigue, and bouts of depression. And the text says, "Woe be to anyone of us who is friendless when such a down time comes."

In today's world the friendless American male who is discouraged has to buy a friend by going to an analyst or he buys his fellowship at the bar, communing on highballs while tipsily telling his troubles to a stranger. But in Christ we have Christian friends and fellowship that offer so much more.

Jeremiah lived around 600 years before Christ. His name means "The Lord hurls!" Called to preach at age eighteen, Jeremiah was thrust into a forty-year ministry spanning the reign of a half-dozen kings of Israel. His message went largely unheeded. He was reputed to be a troublemaker. And in the end, when his nation was besieged and near collapse, his own people threw him into a miry pit. There wallowed Jeremiah -- unheeded, rejected, thirsty, and depressed, But he was not friendless. The Bible says Ebedmelech the Ethiopian came and pulled him out and ministered to him.

That's what friends are for. In the down times when all the world goes out, a friend comes in. A smile, an arm around a shoulder, a phone call, a listening ear. With a friend, grief is halved, but joys are doubled.

Comfort

Next, Solomon says that friendship not only brings synergy and encouragement, it brings comfort as well. "If two lie together, they are warm: but how can one be warm alone?"

Perhaps Solomon is remembering his own father's death. King David evidently suffered from exposure. The Bible says he shivered and no amount of blankets could warm him. So they put another human being in the bed with him and he was warmed and comforted. In other words, more and more "things" could not comfort him. Only another person.

I'm thinking here of the comforting friendship that developed between Ruth and Naomi. Ruth was young, a widow, dirt poor, and hopeless. Yet she befriended her mother-in-law who was just as bad off as she was except she was old as well. "Entreat me not to leave you," Ruth urged Naomi, "for where you go I will go."

You'd think two such desperate people who find each other would end up a double drowning! But didn't Solomon say there was synergy and encouragement and comfort in friendships? And so it was that Ruth, in helping Naomi solve her problems, found that she also solved her own. Talking, sharing, dreaming, crying, hoping, scheming, and laughing with Naomi, Ruth's quality of relationships came to the notice of Boaz who asked for her hand in marriage.

Charles Dickens wrote, "No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else." We get cold alone. But together we can stay warm. In coming to you for friendships I acknowledge I need you. I need your listening ears, your insight, your wisdom, your help. Alone I am weak and vulnerable. Together with you I find what I need to go on. Leslie Weatherhead wrote, "He who hugs life to himself loses all joy in living; he's lonely and self-excluded from joy. He who gives himself away to others shall find a fullness of life that will develop into the wholly satisfying life that is everlasting."

Trouble

Comfort, synergy, encouragement -- these are what friends are for. And now this: trouble. Solomon writes, "And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him."

In the army the command to "dig in" means to dig a foxhole big enough for yourself and at least one other person. The idea is that if trouble comes at least we'll face it together.

So much of our private peace and affluent lifestyles today are spent running away from trouble and the responsibility to do something about it. Yet trouble has a way of nipping at our heels no matter how fast or far we run. Divorce. Emotional illness. Substance abuse. Financial reversals. Illness. Death. And unless we're "dug in" with a friend, the text says we'll not "withstand."

I asked an old man, "What is life's hardest burden?" And he answered, "To have nothing to carry."

This portion of the text calls us to get involved with others, to help them carry their burdens, withstand their adversaries, overcome their problems. That's what my favorite Old Testament character Jonathan did for David.

David was a young lonely shepherd boy when Samuel anointed him a future king. He later killed the giant Goliath with his slingshot, excelled as a poet and musician, and proved himself again and again on the battlefield. The women used to sing, "Saul has killed his thousands, but David his ten thousands!"

But there was a problem. King Saul grew jealous. And he tried to kill David. Fleeing into the desert, David lived a wanted man, hounded, often hungry.

That's when Jonathan befriended David. Now Jonathan was Saul's son, and as such, he was the rightful heir to the throne of Israel. Still, he accepted David's anointing by Samuel, so selfless was he. And the really beautiful thing is that Jonathan managed to balance his relationships with his tormented father and the fugitive David without being disloyal to either. In fact, he died on Mount Gilboa fighting the Philistines at his father's side. When David heard of his friend's death in battle, he mourned deeply. Jonathan had so loyally helped him out of so many tight spots. And now he was gone. And in 2 Samuel 1:17-27 David wrote his most beautiful poetic lament, "How are the mighty fallen ... The glory of Israel is slain upon the high places ... I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me, your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women."

That's what friends are for.

In a world where the population doubles every 37 years or less, it is ironic that so many feel isolated, so alone these days. The stuff of good friendships is all about us, if we'll only heed the word of God and desire it and work at it. For all of the synergy, encouragement, comfort, and strength to face trouble awaits you in intimate relationships.

But let me do one thing more as I close. Proverbs 17:17 says, "A friend loveth at all times." And this friendship spoken of must surely speak of God. For, indeed, our earthly friends will die as Jonathan did, or they'll wed and pull away from us as Ruth did. But Jesus Christ alone can promise to love you at all times. "I will never leave you nor forsake you," Christ promises.

In Christ your life can have the synergy of the Holy Spirit, the encouragement of the promises of God, the comfort of eternal life, and the companionship of Jesus who will "dig in" with you to face life's troubles one at a time.

Solomon ends his testimony to companionship saying, "A threefold cord is not quickly broken." Why not decide right now not to go it alone any longer. By repentance and faith in Christ braid your life together with God and some of his people. For --

"Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they are warm; but how can one be warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken."