I called a dear friend this week. I met this friend the first week of our college freshman year. He of late has had a difficult life. For some reason, I remembered a book I read years ago: How to Win Friends and Influence People. Why has this book been so popular? This book written by Dale Carnegie in 1936 has sold 30 million copies worldwide. It still sells 250,000 copies annually. The Library of Congress in 2013 ranked this best seller as the 7th most influential book in American history.[1] Why has this self-help book been so popular?
Warren Wiersbe answered: We need Proverbs “Because just about everybody has ‘people problems’ and wants to know how to solve them.”[2] God’s manual on developing people skills was written long before Carnegie’s best seller. God wrote Proverbs to sharpen our people's skills for his glory.
In God’s manual for honing our ability to minister to one another, Solomon gives us a choice of two roads to travel in life i.e., two lifestyles: The road of the wise or the road of the fool. The road of the wise leads to righteousness. The road of the fool leads to sin.[3]
On these two life journeys are contrasting traveling companions. If you choose the road or life of wisdom you will journey with the hard worker, the moral, the humble, and good friends. If you pick the road or life of foolishness you will travel with the lazy, the immoral, the proud, and bad friends
Who are your friends? Why is this question so important? Our friends reflect who we are! The Old Testament prophet, Amos, knew this and asked, “Can two walk together except they be agreed? (Amos 3:3)” The answer is No! Notice Amos also used the example of walking on a road for living a lifestyle. Solomon writes similarly in Proverbs 13:20: “He that walks with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” Friends are like mirrors in Proverbs 27:19: “As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man.” The ancients used a still body of water to see themselves. Mirrors don’t lie and neither do our friends. When we look at our close friends we see ourselves.
In Proverbs 1-9, Solomon gave lengthy, fatherly talks to his “son.” Now, Solomon changed his method, perhaps to keep the attention of his son. What follows in Proverbs ten are almost four hundred isolated Proverbs built around different themes that his “son” and we need to live with God’s wisdom. Notice, that even though Solomon had introduced himself as the author in Proverbs 1:1, he again identifies himself as the author in 10:1. His style altered so drastically, Solomon wanted us to know he is still the writer of these Proverbs. One of the themes is Friends. This includes good friends and bad friends. There are at least five principles for being a good friend.
1. Good friends don’t destroy their friends (11:9)
Our English Bibles translate the Hebrew רֵעַ (re) as “neighbor” (11:9), “companion” (13:20), and “friend” (17:17). According to 11:9, hypocritical friends destroy friendship with their words. Judas was the consummate example of a friend and hypocrite who sought to destroy his friend, Jesus Christ. Peter in Acts 1:16 quoted Psalm 41:9 and applied that verse to Judas. In Psalm 41:9, David identified Ahithophel, his friend who betrayed him (2 Samuel 16:20-17:23): “Mine own familiar [close] friend, in whom I trusted who did eat of my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.” Peter by the Holy Spirit named Judas as Jesus’ close friend who betrayed him. J. Vernon McGee wrote, “I have always been afraid of the man who is nice to his preacher to his face but who criticizes him behind his back. I have always felt that I needed to watch out for that kind of man.”[4]
The righteous, however, do not stoop to the level of bushwhacking friends and retaliate (11:12). Woodrow Kroll applied this principle: “If your friend neglects to send you a birthday card you do not neglect to send a birthday card to your friend.”[5] Now only do good friends not destroy their friends, but positively, they love their friends.
2. Good friends love their friends in adversity (17:9)
Friends don’t expect perfection from their friends (17:9). True friends do not have OCD and nit· pick their friends to death. In times of trouble, you find out who your real friends are (17:17). True friends reveal their friendship through their loyalty. The theme of Ruth is loyalty in the time of the Judges or the times of disloyalty: “In those days, every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:16; 18:1; 21:25). The book of Ruth has been described as a white lily pad floating on top of sewage. Ruth by stark contrast did that which was right in God’s eyes and was loyal to Naomi. Boaz was loyal to Ruth. Are you loyal to your friends? Do you visit them in the hospital? Do you ever call just to check on them?
According to 18:24b, often friends are more helpful than family. Solomon in 19:4 and 6 notes that in good times you will have “fair weather friends” who can financially benefit from your friendship. In times of adversity, those alleged friends disappear. We need to be friends who will stand with our friends who are weathering the storms of life. A good friend who loves is an honest friend.
3. Good friends are honest with their friends (27:5-6)
Genuine friends don’t gossip [they openly rebuke or speak the truth in love to your face]. True friends practice Jesus’ three steps for handling interpersonal conflict in Matthew 18:15-17. They don’t go behind your back and gossip. Paul calls these kinds of friends “backbiters” (2 Cor. 12:20 KJV). Such gossip “separates close friends” (16:28). Solomon also calls the gossiper a “whisperer.” You can almost see the untrue friend cupping his hand over his mouth and spreading a rumor in low tones in someone’s ear. Paul confronted Peter to his face in Galatian 2:14 and Peter was big enough to accept the truth.
Not only do bonafide friends not gossip behind the back of their friends but don’t they don’t flatter them to their faces for self-gain (26:24-28). In Proverbs 26:20-22, Solomon exposed the gossiper. Next, in Proverbs 26:28, Solomon turned on the flatterer calling flattery nothing less than “a lying tongue.” Someone noted: Flattery is like perfume, smell it don’t swallow it. A good friend is not a gossiper, nor a flatterer, but an encourager.
4. Good friends encourage their friends (27:9)
The encouragement of a good friend is like medicine. For a friend who is stooped over with life’s burdens, the words of his friend can lighten the load (12:25). I was walking mom down one of the halls of her nursing home. Her therapy is over, and she needs to exercise. This elderly lady whose name is Mary was standing in the doorway of her room as we walked by. Mary smiled and said to mom, “You are really doing well.” Mom after a few steps said to me, “That lady is an encourager.” Mary smiles a lot and speaks encouraging words. Barnabas (son of encouragement) was the nickname given to Joseph in the early church in Acts 4:36. What a great way to be remembered by our friends. Good friends who love, are loyal and encourage make their friends better.
5. Good friends sharpen their friends (27:17)
Solomon declares that when steel strikes steel it sharpens. When our friends come in contact with us, we can sharpen and make them more efficient. Jonathan made David better. Barnabas made Paul better. On whom am I putting a cutting edge?
Jesus who is a friend of sinners can make you and me not just better but righteous. Jesus was reproachfully called “a friend of sinners” in Luke 7:34 i.e., a friend of the despised. This is illustrated in Jesus’ call of Matthew, the despised tax collector. In Luke 5, Jesus chose Matthew and ate with his tax-collecting and socially ostracized friends whom the Pharisees considered “sinners.” The Pharisees criticized Jesus in 5:30, “Why do you eat with sinners?” Jesus countered, “They who are well [physically] do need not a physician, but they who are sick. I came not to call the righteous [the self-righteous Pharisee] but sinners to repentance.” If you are banned by your friends, Jesus will never shun you.
Woodrow Kroll wrote of a shy, quiet boy named Chad. One day Chad came home and told his mother he wanted to make a valentine for everyone in his class. Her heart sank. I wish he wouldn’t do that, she thought because she had watched how other children treated him when they walked home from school. They laughed and hung on to each other, but Chad was never included. He was always a few yards behind then. Nevertheless, Chad’s mom bought the paper and glue, and crayons he would need to make the valentines. Night after night for the next three weeks Chad painstakingly made his valentines until all 35 were done.
Valentine’s Day dawned. Chad was beside himself with excitement. He put his precious valentines in a bag and bolted out the door. His mom knew he would be disappointed, so she baked some cookies to help ease the pain. It hurt her to think that Chad wouldn’t get many valentines—maybe none at all.
That afternoon she heard the children outside. Sure enough, they were laughing and having the best time. And, as always, there was Chad in the rear. His hands were empty and she fully expected him to burst into tears as soon as he come inside. When the door opened she choked back the tears and said, “Mommy has some warm cookies and milk for you.” Chad hardly heard her words. He just marched right on by mumbling, “Not a one, not a single one.” Her heart sank until she listened more carefully and heard Chad say, “I didn’t forget a one, not a single one!”[6]
Jesus is a friend of sinners and he will be your friend and Savior. He will never forget nor neglect you. He has already proved his love for you by dying in your place on the cross for your sins. Receive Him today as your Savior and let Him be a “friend that sticks closer than a brother.”
[2] Warren W. Wiersbe, Proverbs (Wheaton: Victor Books), 1996, 96.
[3] Roy Zuck shows this metaphor of lifestyle is a major theme in Proverbs: “Proverbs frequently uses the metaphor of the way or the path .... By metonymy a way or path came to represent the conduct of the person walking in that direction or along that path .....”Way” and “ways” occur sixty times; “path” and “paths” twenty-nine times; and “walk,” “walks,” and “walking,” seventeen times (Roy Zuck, A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament, Chicago: Moody Press, 1991, 239). These two ways of life give unity to the apparent randomness of Proverbs (Peter A. Steveson, A Commentary on Proverbs, Greenville: BJU Press, 2001, xxiii).
[4] J. Vernon McGee, Proverbs (Nashville: Thomas Nelson) 1991, 104.
[5] Woodrow Kroll, Proverbs: God’s Guide for Life’s Choices (Lincoln: Back to the Bible) 1996, 137.
[6] Ibid., 142.