Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Friendships Can Flourish | The Writings | Proverbs 27

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

Do you have deep friendships? Do you have the humility to accept your friend's honesty? Are you prioritizing your friendships? In today's episode, Patrick shares how Proverbs 27 reminds us that God created us for friendships.  Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Proverbs 27

Welcome to 10 minute Bible talks. Where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Here's an interesting question. Do you think most people are happier at home with their family or happier out with friends? You'll probably answer that based on your own disposition, but research conducted by the University of Chicago gave a definitive answer. Most people prefer to be with friends.

It doesn't matter whether you're a teenager, or you're in your 20s, your 30s, or your 50s. Now, I'm not here to argue whether that's the way things should be, but I do want to say there's something special about friendship, and it's almost universally recognized by everyone. If we don't have friends, we want them. If we do have them, we want to be with them. And yet, friendship is a subject we spend little time thinking about. This is partially because we live in a hyper-individualistic culture, and if there's any form of love that we're obsessed with, it's probably erotic love.

But as C.S. Lewis pointed out in his book, the four loves, there are many kinds of loves, and the love shared between friends, well, that was often considered the deepest of loves by the ancient world. Consider what David said when he grieved the death of his closest friend, Jonathan. This is in 2. Samuel 216. I grieve for you, my brother, Jonathan. How dear you were to me. How wonderful was your love for me? Better even than the love of women.

our culture is so obsessed with erotic love that I once had a public university professor suggest that the only way to interpret this passage is as an admission of a gay love affair between Jonathan and David. Now, I feel sorry for that professor because his clear misreading of the text will, it reveal nothing but the shallowness of his own friendships. He didn't understand the depth of true friendship. Indeed, while many people may prefer to be with friends above all else, That doesn't mean that their friendships are actually enriching, deep, and meaningful. Perhaps the longing we all have for time with friends is a signpost meant to point us toward

a deeper, truer longing for friendships that cross decades, draw together stories, interweave families, plug the depths of our stories, offer life-giving encouragement and open doorways to fun, joy, and play. No book in the Bible speaks more about friendship than the book of Proverbs. This is no surprise, because Proverbs is designed to train everyday humans how to live with the grain of God's creation. And God designed us for deep friendship. So this is how we live well in this creation. I want you to reflect on your own life. Do you have deep friendships? Do you have friends you practice total honesty with? Do you have friends who can encourage you with wisdom because they deeply know your soul. Do you have friends that you speak with regularly, see regularly, and do life with?

In Proverbs 27, the wise man lays out some of the benefits of friendship, and in doing so, he guides us towards the friends we should seek after, and he shows us the kinds of friends that we should seek to be. Let's pick up in verse 5. Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. The first gift a friend gives us is honesty. A true friend confronts you when you're unkind, selfish, lustful, or crass. A true friend sees sins like pride and greed that are often hard to define and sometimes hard to see, and the friend says the hard thing.

For example, a true friend hears your frustrations with your spouse and doesn't merely say, oh, she sounds terrible, or, oh, he's the worst. Instead, a friend empathizes and challenges. A friend helps you to see your faults in your marriage, helps you to see your faults in your workplace, in your parenting, in your friendships, in your school, wherever you're at. And do you know why this is a gift? Well, let me tell you a story.

This is true. The other day, I took my car to a mechanic, and the mechanic told me there were no problems. Two days later, the brake pads fell off on one side. So I took it back in, and this isn't what happened, but imagine what I would have said if the mechanic told me this. Well, I saw the loose brake pads the other day, but I didn't want you to feel bad,

so I didn't say anything. I would have never gone back to him, because if he said that, it would show that he was willing to risk my life just to make me feel better. In the same way, true friends care less about each other's feelings than they do about each other's lives and futures. If I'm a jerk to my coworkers or my wife,

if I'm condescending or selfish or unkind to my kids, then I need to be told. Because if I'm not told, I will ruin my life. I will wreck my relationships. I don't want to feel good. I want to grow. I want to change. And this is why the wounds of a friend are such a gift. The wise man says that these wounds can be, quote, trusted. And that's precisely because they come from a friend. When a cut comes from someone who loves you, you know that he cuts to heal you like a surgeon. Conversely, enemies, they multiply kisses. A friend who doesn't love you enough to say hard things, to rescue you when the brake pads are coming off your life, well, that kind of friend is tantamount to a enemy in reality. This is why the wise man says in verse 17, as iron sharpens iron,

so one person sharpens another. That is a picture of true friendship. But that could give a picture of friendship that honestly sounds a bit critical, like you're always critiquing each other, a bit dour, we're never having fun. And that wouldn't be true at all. In this same chapter, the wise man warns against quarreling and fighting. Good friends don't pick fights and argue just for the sake of argument. Instead, this ought to be true of friendship. In verse 9, perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice. A friend gives heartfelt advice. A friend gives heartfelt wisdom. A friend is pleasant. A friend brings joy to your heart. Do you have a friend like that? A friend who

you can have fun with, but a friend who can also offer heartfelt encouragement, a friend who is pleasant to your heart? Then don't ignore him. Don't ignore her. Pursue that friendship. Here's a better question for you to ask. Are you a friend like that? Because if you're not, you can go point your finger and say, oh, no one will be a good friend to me. It starts with you. One challenge we all share in the modern West is that we are highly mobile, and that means that we no longer live in close proximity to one another. And so the odds of seeing the same friends, unless those are friends at work, well, the odds of that are very low. That means we have to be very intentional about our friendships. We have to call. We have to text. We have to use all the technology

and tools we can to stay connected. We have to make sacrifices to see them, to put things on our calendar. Maybe it's a weekly time. Maybe it's regular times of hanging out with families. it's going on vacations together. Honestly, it's probably all of these things at once. You cannot have friendships like what the Widesman is describing without years of hard work, years of showing up, years of calling on the phone, years of asking questions, years of having fun, years of life together. There's no easy button on friendship. But there is good news. God designed you for this and no one can take that away. God designed you for friendship. And by his grace, he can make you into a good friend.

Thank you.