Ecclesiastes 4:8-9

Three's Best

One alone. Ecclesiastes 4:8 (AV).

Two are better than one. Ecclesiastes 4:9.

A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12.

Instead of one text we are going to have three this morning. Three texts! That sounds alarming! especially if we are expected to remember them and repeat them when we get home. I don't think we shall forget today's texts, however, for they are very easy to remember, and they are all close to each other. Look up Ecclesiastes, the fourth chapter. Have you got it? Now put your finger on the eighth verse. Miss out the first two words, but take the third and the fourth. There you have our first text, “One alone.” That's easy, isn't it? Now bring your finger down a little farther to the ninth verse. At the beginning of it you will find a well-known proverb, ‘‘Two are better than one.” That's our second text. Now skip on to the twelfth verse and read the last seven words of it: “A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” There you have our last text. One, two, and three you see those words come into the texts in order. That helps us to remember, doesn't it?

1. Our first text is for the only children and the lonely children here today. I wonder how many only children there are in this church? If there aren't many here, at any rate we can all count a good many only boys and girls whom we know. Some of us, perhaps, who have crowds of brothers and sisters, are even inclined to envy them. We think that they get everything they want. There's no one to snatch away their toys or books, or even quarrel with them. They do not have to wear boots to small for someone else or have they to wear someone else's hand-me-down clothes. They get all the treats instead of having to wait their turn, and so on.

Well, I think we are making a huge mistake in envying the “only's” The “only children”, or families having just one child, may have all these things, but there's one great thing they have not got that counts for more than all these. They haven't got companionship. All their games have to be played alone, or with grown-ups, who, after all, are usually only second-bests. Or they have to pretend their toys are real people.

There was once a little girl who was very sad because she had no sister. She climbed up on her mother's knee and said, “Oh, Mommy, I want a little playmate. Couldn't you give me just quite a wee little playmate?” She wanted a playmate so badly that she imagined one for herself. When you went into the nursery you heard her talking to an invisible somebody whom she called “Gladys.” She and Gladys had no end of games and romps together.

That was one way of getting rid of the loneliness; but I think I can tell you of a better way, and that brings us to our second text: “Two are better than one.”

2. If you are lonely, get a friend. If you haven't a brother or sister, get someone who will be your own special chum. That will stop the aching longing for a playmate. Even if you have brothers and sisters, get a special friend. Of course there is nothing to prevent your choosing that special friend from among your brothers and sisters. That's often done. If there is a large family you will find they usually go in pairs.

The first good that comes from going in pairs is that you have somebody with whom to share. It's good for everybody to share. It doubles the joys and halves the sorrows. If anything particularly nice happens to you, you know how your first thought is to rush round and tell your best friend, and if anything sad comes your way, you know how much easier it is to bear if your best friend knows of it.

But companionship means more than sharing. It often means giving up our own way, and that's a grand thing for us. We all like our own way, but if we truly love a friend we shall love his way better than our own. We shall be ready to give up. We shall learn the lesson of self-sacrifice.

If we learn to share and give up, as friends should, we shall find, not that “two are better than one,” as the text says, but that “two are one.” We shall become such close friends that we shall have but one thought and one desire.

Do you know the story of Alexander the Great's best friend? The daughter of a captive king was led in to do homage to the conqueror, but instead of bending down before him she made the mistake of bowing low before his greatest friend. She was terribly upset at having made such a stupid mistake, but Alexander smiled and said, “Don't distress yourself, madam. He, too, is Alexander.” That was a fine way of saying that he and his friend were one, wasn't it? And that is what all true friends should be able to say of each other.

3. That's text number one, and text number two. What of text number three? It says, “A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Did you ever try to break a very strong thread? It gave with a snap, didn't it? But if you had twisted three such threads together like a cord you would have tried to break it in vain. Each thread by itself was breakable, but the three twined together were more than three times as strong.

Now let us take that and put it alongside of the friendship idea. I'm not going to tell you that three friends form a stronger friendship than two, for I think that “two's company, three's none,” is very true of friendship. Three is an awkward number when it comes to friendship, for one is usually a little out in the cold. It is difficult to be as close friends with two people as you can be with one, though some famous men in history have managed it and managed it splendidly. Generally, however, two is the ideal number for friendship.

And yet I'm going immediately to tell you the very opposite and say that three is the ideal number for a friendship. But then the third must be somebody very special. There is only one “Somebody very special” who can be the perfect third in a friendship. I need not tell you His name. You have often heard Him called your “best Friend” and “the Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”

I have read somewhere how they make the king's ropes in the dockyards at Portsmouth. Every one of the royal cables has a strand of red twisted in it. Twist the red thread of Christ in the cord of your friendship, boys and girls. Then it will be three things.

(1) It will be a royal friendship. How tremendously proud any of us would be if we could call the king our friend. We can all call a King our friend, and He is the greatest King there is the King of kings.

(2) It will be a good friendship. You couldn't ask Christ to share a bad friendship. That would be impossible.

(3) It will be a strong and lasting friendship, one, like the threefold cord, not easily broken, one that will last not only in this world, but in the world to come.