A Friend that Loves

Published: 24 May 2026

Source: Morning service of MCBC. Preacher: Bro. Luke Sim.

Preacher: Bro. Luke Sim
Text: Proverbs 17:17
Supporting Scriptures: 1 Corinthians 13:1-8; 1 John 4:7-8; Romans 8:38-39; Matthew 5:16; Matthew 9:36; John 15:13
Theme: True friendship is marked by Christlike love that is constant, compassionate, and central to the Christian life.

Opening Testimony

Good morning, church. It is a great joy and privilege to be with you on this Friends Day service. I thank Pastor John for the invitation to speak and for the opportunity to introduce both myself and the work the Lord has laid upon my heart.

Many of you may not know me, so let me briefly share how God brought me into this season of life as a missionary.

I was born into a Christian family and grew up in church. Like many children raised in church, I learned Bible stories, sang Christian songs, attended Sunday school, memorized verses, and absorbed Christian values. Yet for many years, I did not truly understand what it meant to be saved, to be a child of God, or to have a personal relationship with Him.

At the age of fourteen, after two suicide attempts, I became interested in God. But my interest was not because I wanted to worship Him. I wanted to find out who God was so that I could scold Him for making my life so miserable.

By God's grace, He took me on a long journey. I almost became Muslim. I almost became Roman Catholic. I tried to prove the Bible wrong. Eventually, I accepted the Bible as absolute truth, but I was still not saved.

At seventeen, something my Sunday school teacher had said a year earlier came back to me:

Christianity is not so much a religion, but a personal relationship with God. What evidence is there that you have a personal relationship with Him?

I realized I had none. At that point, I confessed my wicked attitude toward God and asked Him to take control of my life. My prayer was simple: "Take me, change me, or let me die."

At nineteen, during a mission trip to the Philippines, I dedicated my life to be a missionary. Later, at Heritage Baptist Church, I learned how to share the gospel. I became excited and began reaching out to at-risk youth and gangsters in Yishun. I myself had been in that category, so I began bringing them to church, sharing the gospel, and telling Bible stories at playgrounds.

In 2014, during a missions conference, a preacher said that God loves the unlovable, the outcast, and those despised by society. He reminded us that Jesus ate with publicans and sinners. Then he asked, "What are you doing for such people?"

That question convicted me. From that sermon onward, I began ministering to Nigerian scammers who had contacted me online. It was not easy. I did not know how to begin. But the Lord kept bringing them, and I kept reaching them. Over time, God gave me a burden for the people of Nigeria, not only for scammers, but for their friends, families, and communities as well.

That is the brief story of how God brought me from my birth in 1987 to where I am today.

This morning, we will look at a message entitled:

Our anchor verse is:

Proverbs 17:17
"A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity."

This proverb is very straightforward. All of us have friends, and it is common to call many people our friends. But not all friends are friends according to the Bible, because the Bible says that a friend loves at all times.

Some of us may immediately think of people who have let us down, people who were not there when we needed them, or people who did not show us love at all times. Yet the Bible calls us to consider what true friendship really is.

We may have friends who are especially close to us. Some call them "bro." Others have close girlfriends whom they confide in. But times of need and trouble, what the Bible calls adversity, reveal who our true friends really are.

These friends are not necessarily siblings by blood. They are those whose bond with us is proven during hardship by self-sacrificing presence in our time of need. Such friends are precious and rare, and we ought to thank God for them.

Today, some of you may have been invited by friends. Some of you may have invited friends who did not come. But by God's grace, we are all here this morning to rally around the very best Friend, the One who has invited us into a beautiful relationship with Himself: our Lord Jesus Christ.

We cannot touch Him physically. We cannot see Him with our eyes or hear Him audibly. Yet His presence is with us, around us, and in every believer who has received His saving grace by faith.

When Christians partake of the Lord's Supper, we remember what Christ has done for us. His body was broken. His blood was shed. The bread and cup show the Lord's death until He comes again to take us to be with Him.

What an amazing promise. What joy. What hope.

Have you ever been loved in a more magnificent way by any man? Surely not. Because of this, we ought not only to love Him more and more each day, but the work He accomplished for us on Calvary should become increasingly dear to us.

As the years go by, the love of Christ becomes sweeter to those who understand how sinful, unworthy, and needy they are. The more we see our failures, the more we appreciate His mercy, patience, and ever-loving presence.

1 John 4:19
"We love him, because he first loved us."

It is not too demanding for God to command us to love Him and serve Him, because we did not love Him first. We could not have loved Him first. We were sinners, enemies, blinded by the pleasures of life, self-sufficiency, pride, and ego. But Christ loved us first, and His love drew love from us in return.

When I was trying to prove the Bible wrong, one command I refused to accept was the command to love your enemies. I thought, "How can this be from God? I want to destroy those who hurt me. What do you mean, love them?"

But I decided to try it. I began showing kindness to the person I hated most. I bought him drinks on hot days. When he fell asleep in class, I copied notes for him so he would not be scolded. I helped him with drawings because he could not draw well.

One day, he came to me and said, "I do not know why I am saying this, but you are way too nice to me even though I am mean to you. I am sorry. I will not be like that anymore."

I gained a friend. Not only that, he began defending me against those who mocked me, even though he had once been one of the main people hurting me.

Love can change people.

What changed my life was the fact that I was a terrible person, yet God was patient with me. He spared me from death twice. He helped me in many ways, even while I complained that He was fake and did not care. I was ungrateful, yet God did not give up on me. He kept pursuing me again and again.

Romans 2:4
"Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?"

The same principle works in everyday relationships. When you love someone with genuine love, that love draws a response. People notice. People become curious.

If we love our friends with the love of Christ, they will respond. But we must not love them to draw attention to ourselves. We want them to recognize that the reason we love them is because the love of Christ enables us to do so.

Matthew 5:16
"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

If people cannot see or trust our love for them, what trust will they have in the Savior we proclaim?

An Illustration of Love: My Friend Renel

Let me tell you about a friend of mine named Renel.

When I studied at Bethany Baptist Bible College in Makati, I spent five months with him. During that time, I saw that he was one of the purest and most loving people I had ever known. He loved with a pure and selfless love that I could not get over.

Renel passed away on January 4 at the age of twenty-one. I was given the privilege of preaching at his memorial services in the Philippines. Those who knew us recognized that I was his closest friend.

His life revolved around God. Every morning at 3:30, he woke up to read his Bible and pray. At 4:30, he began cleaning the church. At night, after finishing his work around 11:30, he ended the day by reading his Bible and praying again.

Wherever he went, you could hear him sharing the Word of God. When I preached at his church, I asked how many people were there because of his outreach. Three quarters of the church stood up. He had been a Christian for only five years, yet by the age of twenty-one, he had led three quarters of his church to the Lord.

Because of his great love for the Lord Jesus Christ, God's love overflowed from his life in an undeniable way.

The more we love God, the more His love will be evident through us.

Love is the first virtue in the fruit of the Spirit. Charity is the height of Christian maturity. By love, people know that we are the disciples of Christ, beyond denominational labels and outward distinctives.

God is love. Christ is love. Therefore, we ought to reflect His love in our lives.

This morning, we will consider three principles from the Word of God on what it means to be a friend that loves:

The constancy of true love
The compassion of true love
The centrality of true love

We must ask ourselves: Has Christ left such a mark on us that when people look at us, they can see His love flowing through our lives?

I. The Constancy of True Love

Proverbs 17:17
"A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity."

A friend loves at all times.

When we claim to love someone, we love them in good times and bad times, when it is convenient and inconvenient, in small acts and in costly sacrifice.

The greatest example is Christ dying for our sins.

John 15:13
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Even unbelieving soldiers may be willing to take a bullet for a friend. If unbelievers can show such loyalty, how much more should Christians show a love that is different from the world?

Sometimes love is not only shown by dramatic acts, but by faithful presence.

Consider the apostle John. When Jesus was betrayed in the garden, all the disciples fled. Even John ran. Peter denied Christ three times. Yet at the cross, John came back. He was the only disciple standing there, unafraid to be identified with Jesus.

John could not remove Jesus from the cross. He could not stop His suffering. But his presence mattered. His presence spoke of loyalty and love. Jesus even entrusted the care of Mary into John's hands.

God does not expect us to be perfect friends with no fear and no flaws. But love is seen when we do not desert our friends. John came back. He stayed until the end.

That is constancy.

A Warning from My Grandmother's Story

My grandmother was saved around the age of ninety-three. She is now ninety-five, almost blind and almost deaf.

For many years, she hated Christianity and rejected the gospel whenever my father mentioned Jesus to her. She later explained why. The only time Christians came to speak to her about Jesus was when she was in the hospital, preparing for an operation, or unwell. They came with gifts, prayed with her, told her Jesus loved her, and then disappeared once she recovered.

She said, "After I am well, where is everybody?"

What finally moved her was the persistence of an aunt who continued loving her. I also tried to share the gospel with my limited Hokkien. I would end up in tears because I could not find the vocabulary to explain it clearly. She would hold my hand and say, "I know. I know you love Grandma."

Eventually, she asked my father to invite his pastor over. Pastor Lim came, shared the gospel with her again, and baptized her. She gave away her idols. Today, she prays to Jesus and tells Him her problems.

Just before she lost her sight and hearing, she gave her life to the Lord Jesus Christ.

But imagine this: she once rejected Christ because of the inconsistency and seemingly fake love of Christians.

Brethren, how many of us are guilty of this?

Perhaps we shared the gospel once or twice with a friend, loved one, classmate, or colleague. Then they rejected us, spoke unkindly, or seemed uninterested. After that, we never mentioned it again. Maybe the friendship even became distant. We treated them like strangers, as though our only purpose in the friendship was to make them Christians.

But true love remains.

If there are friends we have neglected for years, we can still begin again. We can say something like:

"Recently I realized that we have all aged, and I know I have not spoken to you for a long time. But there is this burden in my heart. I would regret it if anything happened to me and I never told you something important. You know I am a Christian, and I have always wanted to share with you the message of God's love and our home in heaven. I neglected to do so all these years. Could you spare me some time to share this with you?"

If they say they have heard it before, you can gently say, "But you have never heard it from me."

The consistency of true love means a true friend loves even when rejected. If a person does not receive our message, we continue to be there. We continue to show kindness. We continue to help. We continue to love.

Then, when they find themselves in deep need, they know there is a reliable friend they can turn to. At that moment, we can point them to the Friend who never fails: Jesus Christ.

Christ's love is constant.

Romans 8:38-39
"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Nothing can separate us from the love of God. His love does not disappear when we mess up. His love endures. This is the kind of love we are called to show.

Let us build consistency in our love for others so that it reflects the consistent love of our Savior for us.

II. The Compassion of True Love

Matthew 9:36
"But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd."

Compassion is love in action. It is love that gets off the chair and looks for something to do when it sees a need.

Christ was not focused on His own needs and wants. He saw the multitudes. He saw their need. He had compassion on them. He fed them not only with the Word of God, but physically as well.

If we say we love people, but never act when we see genuine need, then our love is incomplete.

This applies even in difficult situations. When I began reaching Nigerians, I did not know how to reach them. From 2009 to 2015, I had contact with more than thirty Nigerians, but none of them stayed. They came for a short while, talked, and dropped off.

Then, in 2015, I met a young man named Samuel Cinello.

Samuel was the first non-scammer from Nigeria with whom I shared the gospel. At first, he rejected Christ. He was angry with God. His father had worked in a church, and while opening the church one day, someone on a motorbike drove by and shot him, mistaking him for the pastor. After his death, the pastor sent people to take valuable things from the family home, claiming the father had owed him money.

Because of that, Samuel and his siblings hated Christians and hated the church.

He asked, "If there is a God, why would all this happen?"

I shared my own life with him: the ups and downs, my anger with God, and how I came to see that God truly loves us even when we do not understand why He allows certain things to happen.

After hearing this, Samuel asked, "What must I do to have that relationship with Jesus Christ like you have?"

I shared the gospel. He was saved. He became excited and asked how to pray, how to know God, and how to hear from God. He asked me to do Bible study with him.

Within three months, after receiving Bible discipleship materials and audio messages, Samuel had led eight souls to the Lord. He searched online for ways to share the gospel. He shared with people in his own language. He wanted others to know Christ.

Later, I helped him start a food business because he wanted to make sure no one in his area went hungry. From that business, he set aside one-third of his earnings to help people cement their floors, build fences, install locks, and improve their living conditions.

He did this without asking anything in return.

People began asking him, "Why are you doing this for us?"

He would answer by telling them about his Singapore friend, and then he would say, "Can I tell you about Jesus Christ?"

Not a single person rejected him. Why? Because he showed love first. His compassion opened the door for the gospel.

In eight months, Samuel led more than sixty people to the Lord.

In September 2015, Muslim rebels stormed his village and killed him along with many of his neighbors. Samuel had stayed behind to look after an old lady. I had warned him to leave because it was dangerous. He replied, "Then who will look after my neighbor?"

The last message I received from him was: "Please pray for us. They are going to kill us."

Because of his compassion, many people were ready to meet God when that day came.

We do not know when the end will come for our friends, loved ones, and family members. If there is anyone who has not heard, we need urgency to tell them.

Love can cost us something. It cost Samuel his time, his money, and finally his life. But if our compassion costs us nothing, we must ask whether it is truly compassion.

We must ask: What can we do to show love to others in such a way that they ask, "What makes you different?"

When that door opens, we can tell them about the love of Jesus Christ.

Some of us may be introverts. It may be hard to start conversations. But when we love people, we create opportunities for others to start conversations with us.

Every day, look for someone whose face you can put a smile on. Look for someone to encourage. Look for someone to love.

When we love, we eliminate some of the hardest parts of witness because people begin to ask why we are different. Then the remaining challenge is simply this: Do we love the Lord enough to talk about Him?

Matthew 5:16
"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

III. The Centrality of True Love

1 John 4:7-8
"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."

If a man claims to know God but has no love, he is deceived. He may know about God. He may know theology. He may know hymns. But he does not truly know God, because God is love.

A person who truly knows God has been changed by that love, and that love will flow through him. He is a new creature. God has put His love in him.

1 Corinthians 13 teaches that we may speak eloquently, understand mysteries, possess great knowledge, display great faith, feed the poor, or even give our bodies to be burned. Yet without love, we are nothing.

This is sobering.

We can build vibrant church ministries. We can give generously. We can preach impressive sermons. We can even die for our faith. But without love, we gain nothing in eternity.

Why?

Because God is love. Anything done without love does not flow from God. It is merely human effort dressed in religious clothing.

Love is not optional for a Christian. Love is proof that we belong to Him.

The love of God is the beginning of everything:

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
Christ demonstrated His love by dying for us while we were still sinners.
He showed the greatest love of a friend by laying down His life.
He rose from the dead and ever lives to intercede for us.

Christ did not say, "I have done the hard part; now it is up to you." He continues to love, keep, and intercede.

In the same way, we should pray for and intercede for our unsaved loved ones and friends.

This is the perfect demonstration of God's love, and we ought to imitate it in our lives.

My friend, love is not optional. Love is central. Love is the mark of a transformed life.

If you are a friend to anyone, ask yourself:

Am I a friend who loves?

Conclusion: Three Marks of a Friend that Loves

Today, we have seen three marks of a friend that loves:

Constancy - A friend that loves remains faithful at all times.
Compassion - A friend that loves acts when there is a need.
Centrality - A friend that loves makes love the center of thought, word, action, and witness.

Be that friend who loves.

Be a friend who points your friends to Christ.

At this point, Bro. Luke recited a sobering evangelistic poem commonly known as "My Friend", often attributed to D. J. Higgins, though it is also circulated as author unknown:

My friend, I stand in judgment now,
And feel that you are to blame somehow.
On earth I walked with you by day,
And never did you show me the way.

You knew the Savior in truth and glory,
But never did you tell the story.
My knowledge then was very dim;
You could have led me safe to Him.

Though we lived together here on earth,
You never told me of the second birth;
And now I stand before eternal hell,
Because of heaven's glory you did not tell.

May none of our friends, neighbors, or family members stand in judgment one day and say, "You knew, but you did not tell me."

So go. Tell as many as you know about the Lord Jesus Christ. Tell your colleagues. Tell your classmates. Tell your brothers and sisters. Tell your father and mother. Tell them while you still have time.

As long as they are alive and breathing, there is still time.

Do not delay.

Be a friend that loves, and you will not regret it. One of the greatest joys is seeing someone you have prayed for and shared the gospel with receive the Lord Jesus Christ, their face lighting up with joy because they have found the Friend who loves them most.

To the friend who came today because you were invited: thank you for coming. The person who invited you did so because they love you. But the Savior we preach this morning loves you even more, and He wants to fill you with His love.

Come into a personal relationship with Him. Do not delay. Come to Him today.

And to those of us who have not loved Jesus Christ as we ought, let us begin loving Him more. As we love Him, His love will overflow through us.

Imagine a whole church full of love: loving one another, looking out for one another, and bringing people to know our very best Friend, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Be a friend that loves.

Tags: Bible Study Sermon Notes Friendship Love Christian Living Gospel Witness Proverbs