TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles - Date: August 11, 2026. Lesson 157-2026. Title: God’s Gift of Faithful Relationships

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

In today’s Morning Manna, Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart examine Proverbs 27:9–10 and Solomon’s wisdom concerning the priceless value of faithful friendship. Heartfelt counsel from a true friend can refresh the soul more deeply than life’s finest pleasures, while a nearby friend becomes especially precious when calamity strikes. This lesson explores why genuine counsel must never be confused with flattery, why tested friendships require deliberate care, and how God uses the local church and nearby believers to bear our burdens. Solomon’s message is practical: cultivate faithful relationships before the crisis comes, and become the kind of friend who is close enough to walk through the door when someone needs you most. Lesson 157-2026 Teachers: Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart You can partner with us by visiting MannaNation.com, calling 1-888-519-4935, or by mail at PO Box 399 Vero Beach, FL 32961 MEGA FIRE reveals the ancient recurring cycles of war and economic collapse that have shaped history for 600 years. These patterns predict America is now entering its most dangerous period since World War II. Get your copy today! www.megafire.world Get high-quality emergency preparedness food today from American Reserves! www.AmericanReserves.com It’s the Final Day! The day Jesus Christ bursts into our dimension of time, space, and matter. Now available in eBook and audio formats! Order Final Day from Amazon today! www.Amazon.com/Final-Day Apple users, you can download the audio version on Apple Books! www.books.apple.com/final-day Purchase the 4-part DVD set or start streaming Sacrificing Liberty today. www.Sacrificingliberty.com

Welcome to Morning Manor. Welcome to Morning Manner. Your teacher's Rick Wiles and Dr. Burckhardt. Get your body before. Good morning and welcome to the Morning Manor Cafe, the best place to find good food for your soul to get your day started.

I'm Rick Wiles and my co-teaching partners, Dr. Ring and Burckhardt, and together we teach the Holy Bible verse by verse, taking our time to dig down deep into each scripture to find the wealth that God has placed in His Word. It's for our benefit. Our Father loves us as his children, and he has placed spiritual wealth in His Word. And His Word is alive because the Word is Jesus Christ of living Savior.

So presently, we are in the 27th chapter of the book of Proverbs. In today's study verses are 9 and 10. Our lesson number is 157-2026-157-4026, and it is archived at mannaation.com and also my channel on YouTube, Rick Wows, today. Morning Manna is a faith ministry, and it receives. receives his financial support from our Bible classmates. And so if you appreciate our teaching ministry, we ask humbly that you would visit Manna Nation and show your appreciation by making a generous gift to support this international Bible teaching ministry as God has continued to bless Morning Nana in 26 and has been spreading

and expanding our reach throughout this year. We're very grateful. Let's pray and invite the Holy Spirit, and then Dr. Berkharp will introduce today's lessons. Father, our Father in heaven. Father, your name is hallowed. And we come to you as your sons and daughters with praise and thanksgiving.

Father, we desire to know your word, because to know your word is to know your son, and to know your son is to know your son, is to know you. And so we're hungry to be taught. So Holy Spirit, please take your place at the head of the table and lead us Bible study class

for the edification of the Church of Christ and for the glory of Christ himself. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. And good morning, everyone. Welcome to morning, man, and we're so glad that you have decided to take time out of your schedule

to be with us today, to study the Word of God together. It's been a joy on this journey through the Book of Proverbs. We're in chapter 27 now, and we continue in chapter 27, this unique chapter here, associated wisdom. And so we're going to see a theme as we get through the entire chapter. But we have these couplets that we've been studying each day over the past few lessons here. And today is no exception as we look at verses 9 and 10. So I'll be reading from the King James first and then also from the Septuagint.

So get your Bibles. Read along with me if you would in Proverbs chapter 27, verses 9 and 10. And beginning with verse 9, ointment and perfume rejoice the heart. So doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel. Thine own friend and thy father's friends forsake not. Neither go into thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity. for better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off. And from the subtergent, the heart delights and ointments and wines and perfumes,

but the soul is torn in pieces by calamities. For sakes not thine own friend nor thy father's friend, but go not into thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity, for a friend near is better than a brother far off. So as we look at Proverbs chapter 27 verses 9 and 10, we turn from what we've been looking at the appetite and the displacement back in verses 7 and 8 toward a specific and a treasured subject, the friend who proved genuine over time and remains within reach. So verse 9 begins with the pleasure of ointment and perfume.

The most immediate memory delights known to the ancient world, and then declares that a friend's sincere counsel produces the same rejoicing part. the comparison elevates friendship's counsel to the level of the finest bodily pleasures available. Then, verse 10 moves from the pleasure of friendship to its function in crisis. Do not forsake the tested friend and understand that in the day of calamity, a nearby neighbor will help you more effectively than a distant brother ever could. So these two verses together build a single argument about the value of a close, proven relationship. Verse 9 names what a good friend's present produces in ordinary times, joy,

and then verse 10 names what that same present produces when ordinary times in, rescue. Friendship is not merely pleasant, it's provided by God to meet needs that a distant family cannot reach in time. And so this pairing serves as a direct and necessary counterbalance to back in verse 8, warning against wonder. Having just taught the value of staying rooted in one's proper place, as we did in our previous lesson, Solomon now explains one of the primary reasons that rootedness matters, Rick. It is where the tested friendships live that will actually show up on the day that help is really needed. Rick begins our lesson today by looking at verse 9. Yes, sir.

Anointment and perfume, rejoice the heart, so doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel. The literal English translation of the Hebrew praises oil and incense make the heart glad. So it names two of the most valued sensory pleasures in the ancient world, as Doc mentioned earlier in his introduction, fragrant oil applied to the skin and incense burned to perfume a room. And both of those signal honor and celebration and refreshment in an ancient culture that lacks the modern comfort

that we know today. These two were not casual luxuries. Anointing oil marked guest of honor at a feast. We can read that in Luke chapter 7, verse 46. And precious perfumes were valuable enough to be given as gifts fit for a king. We read that in Matthew, chapter 2, verse 11. So Solomon reaches for the height of sensory delight available in his culture at that time. And that's his comparison starting point.

So does the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel. Another way of saying it, the sweetness of one's friend from counsel of a soul. The Hebrew phrase implies that counsel comes from the very soul, from deep inside of you. It's where you find wisdom to counsel or friend. Wholehearted advice given from genuine care and love rather than, you know, motivated by self-interest. It's because you literally truly care for that person.

So the comparison teaches that a friend's sincere, heartfelt counsel produces a pleasure equal to. And by implication, more lasting then the finest sensory delights available at that time. Anointment fades. Its fragrance dissipates within hours. But a friend's genuine counsel. given in love and rightly received continues producing benefit long after a conversation has ended.

So this is not a proverb phrasing flattering words or giving somebody comfortable agreement with their own thoughts. The Hebrew phraseology specifically names counsel. Why is it? advice given for the benefit, the genuine true benefit of the person who hears it, which sometimes

includes correction, as we have learned in previous proverbs. So the sweetness described here is not sweetness of being told what we desire to hear. It is the deeper sweetness of being genuinely cared for by someone willing to think carefully about your good and to speak it honestly into your soul for your benefit because they love you. Matthew Henry observed that the counsel of a true friend offered from the soul rather than from social duties, obligations, refreshes a man or woman's spirit the way a fragrance refreshes your senses when you walk into a room that is filled with a beautiful fragrance and that this refreshment is available nowhere else because no purchase service or professional advice carries the same weight as

counsel given freely from a friend out of their genuine love for you. Yes. So, Rick, verse 9 here is resting on the biblical value of embodied relational wisdom. What do we mean by that? It's the conviction that God's counsel to his people frequently arrives through the mediating voice of a trusted friend who speaks from genuine care. Isn't that true in our lives, that a wise word from a trusted friend can make all the difference in a particular situation? If we recall back in Proven of chapter 15, verse 23,

we had the same principle that we established. It said, a man hath joy by the answer of its mouth, and a word spoken in due season, how good it is. So that rightly timed word produces joy, because it demonstrates a tentative love rather than just mere information transfer. Now, if we look at the New Testament principle of this, there's the pattern of mutual exhortation, and it depends on this too. Hebrews 313, Rick, says that exhort one another daily. Exort one another daily.

How often do we fall short on that? While it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, And so that daily exchange of heartfelt counsel between believers is one of the regular, appointed means of grace and also a defense against sin, according to Hebrews 313 as well. So what is the distinction between counsel from the soul and empty flattery? How can you tell the difference? Well, flattery aims to make the hear just feel good regardless of what the truth is. counsel from the soul

aims at the hearer's genuine good. Sometimes it requires difficult words, but always from a heart weighing the hearer's actual welfare. And so the sweetness of verse 9 belongs only to the latter.

So Solomon's wisdom is an invitation for us to cultivate this kind of friendship. As I mentioned, I think we really fall short in this area, a lot of us. both to seek counsel that comes from genuine care rather than just mere agreeableness, and to become for others precisely this kind of friend for others as well.

So Charles Spurgeon observed that a friend's sincere counsel was sweeter than perfume precisely because perfume pleases only the senses, while genuine counsel reaches the soul, and that the believer who has never experienced the sweetness of hearty, soul-given counsel from a trusted friend. Really, they've missed one of the ordinary graces that God intends as people to enjoy through one another, Rick. Now, let's take a look at the Septuagint Translation.

The King James says, Ointment and perfume, rejoice the heart, so doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel. Listen to the situagent. The heart delights in ointment and ointment. and wines and perfumes, but the soul is torn in pieces by calamities. So the Septuagin, we see two differences here. First of all, Septuagint adds wines as one of the pleasures,

but it departs significantly from the King James in the second clause, where the Hebrew and the King James compare the pleasure of a friend's counsel to the pleasure of fragrance. The Septuagint instead contrast the hearts to light in pleasant things with the soul's devastation in calamity. The soul is torn apart, ripped in pieces by misfortunes. Again, King James says, so does the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel, but the Septuagin says, but the soul is torn in pieces by calamities. How do we explain this difference in the translations? Rather than making friendships counsel the direct point of comparison to fragrance,

the Septuagint places fragrance pleasures alongside calamities' devastation, setting up the two extremes of human experience that verse 10 coming up will address the good times when ointment and whine to light the heart in the day of calamity when the soul is torn apart and needs a true friend to give them wise counsel. Doc, what do you see in the Septuagin translation? Well, Rick, that Greek word for torn apart, the Katare Nuttai, that's the Greek word there. You know, it's not like just a rip and a cloth. It's torn. It's rent asunder. It's basically destroyed.

The picture here is supposed to be vivid and violent, describing how calamity's effect on the soul in terms of physical destruction rather than just mere sadness. So we're not just talking about, well, I feel a little bit down. I wish I had. had a good word. But we're talking about the calamity that sometimes that we're faced with in life, that wise counsel and a wise word from a trusted friend to make a genuine difference in. And so this intensifies the urgency behind the instruction of verse 10. So the idea here is that a soul torn apart by calamity, they're not just inconvenienced. It requires a kind of a medium. present help that only a nearby friend can supply in time. It's the idea of a rescue, like a lifeguard saving someone who's drowning in the water. So if we put these two together,

read them together, the King James and the Septuagint translations, they actually complement rather than contradict one another. So whereas the Hebrew emphasizes what a friend's sincere Council produces in what we consider ordinary, pleasant times of life, the Septuagint emphasizes that devastating need that arises when calamity strikes, setting the stage precisely for that friend who proves faithful in that time of trouble that we talk about in verse 10. You're about ready to talk about here, Rick. Right. Verse 10, the King James, by an own friend and thy father's friend, forsake not.

Neither go into thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity, who better is a neighbor that is near than a brother for all. Doc, this one, I was fascinated in studying this one. And I learned things. I saw several things that I really had never seen before. By an own friend and by a father's friend, forsake not. Do not forsake your friends and don't forsake your father's friends. Amen. Don't abandon your friends and don't abandon your parents.

parents' friends. Doc, I had never really focused on that second part, your father's friend, which, you know, I think you can expand that to say your parents' friends. So Solomon named two categories of proven relationships that are worth actively preserving friendships that you have personally built and friendships inherited. from your family's history that already stood the test of full generation. Right. All right.

That's what got my attention. Solomon is instructing us. You have to go beyond preserving your own friends. You have to honor your parents' friends. Those friendships were built over decades. They've already stood to testify. Don't throw them away. Obviously, the phrase forsake not.

It means active maintenance, telling you that those friendships can be lost through neglect. And I think each of us we need to remember friends, when's the last time you call them? When's the last time you talk to them? When's the last time you sent them something? You have friends in your life. Don't let them be neglected.

They're valuable. Doc, don't you wish I do? Don't you wish you had nurtured and kept all your friendships from your lifetime? Yes. I look back and there's people that I don't even know where to contact them anymore. And yet I've got fond memories of them. I mean, why did we let that friendship? fade away.

So actively cultivate your friendships. Solomon does not assume that friendship maintains itself automatically. He's telling us it must be tended to. Or it can be forsaken through simple inattention and through distance or the slow drift of, a just unreturned effort. Have you ever reached out to a friend and they don't return the phone call? Have you ever sent an email to somebody

hoping to reconnect and you don't get an answer? Or maybe the answer comes a month later? See this? He's saying, don't let that happen to your friendships. Now, here's the next one. The next one is really fascinating. Neither go into thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity. At first glance, that doesn't make sense.

You're in trouble? Why not go into the home of your brother or sister? It just seems like that's where you should turn in a day of crisis. But the context resolves itself. The warning specifically concerns a distant brother. Listen to what it says, for better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off. The comparison is about proximity in the speed of health. It's not about the value of friendship versus family bonds.

Your brother or your sister's love for you may be deeper. but if your brother or sister is far away when calamity strikes, that deeper love cannot arrive in time to help you. Whereas a nearby friend who may love you less than your brother or sister, but is close to you, physically closer to you, can immediately respond to your health, to your need. So the Proverbs wisdom is intense. intensely practical. In the day of a genuine crisis, a calamity, a sudden illness, a financial collapse,

an auto accident, your house is on fire. I mean, we're talking to calamity. Help that can arrive within the hour is worth more than the help that much travel days, regardless of the relative with closeness of the bond. So love that cannot reach you when you are in need at the time you need it, there's really no help at all. If you live in Massachusetts here in the United States and your brother lives in California and you have a crisis, the earliest that they're going to arrive is the next day.

Maybe. Maybe. But if a neighbor who cares about you is next door down the road, down the street in the neighborhood. Adam Clark, he said that this proverb does not diminish the value of family affection, but simply states an unavoidable truth that proximity determines who can actually help in an emergency. And wisdom counsels the cultivation of nearby relationships precisely.

because calamity by its nature doesn't give you an advance warning. Yes. That would notify a brother or sister that they need to travel. There's no advance warning that your house is going to catch on fire, or you're going to be in an auto accident, or some calamity is going to strike. You don't know. So a distant brother or sister must make arrangements to leave their,

family, leave their work, get transportation, travel to you. But a nearby friend in your neighborhood can respond now today. That's what this proverb is telling us. Yeah, Rick, so the theological application here in verse 10 concerns the doctrine of the local church and local fellowship and the value of an embodied nearby Christian community. It's that conviction that God's ordinary provision for his people in crisis comes through a visible, present body of believers immediately around them. You know, in a lot of Western countries, we've lost that, Rick. We've lost that sense of neighborliness, if you will. Galatians 6-2 establishes a pattern in the New Testament, says, bear you one another's burdens and so fulfill

the law of Christ. So the idea here is that burden bearer. assumes someone nearby, assumes proximity. A burden cannot be borne by hands that aren't present to bear it, right? If we look in James chapter 5, verse 14, it gives a specific instance. It says, is any sick among you, let him call for the elders of the church? And so in this instruction, it assumes that the elders are near enough to come and, you know, to be called on. So the entire structure of New Testament pastoral care depends on believers be physically present with one another, which is why Hebrews 1025 commands not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.

So that connection is important. This proverb offers corrective for believers to invest heavily in distant relationships. We're talking about extended family, seen only at holidays or strictly digital communities, while neglecting present relationships within their own local church and their own local neighborhood. How are valuable those distant bonds may be, and there are valuable distant relationships. There's no doubt. What verse 10 teaches is that they cannot substitute for a nearby friend who can actually walk through the door.

So every one of us is encouraged to become the neighbor who is there for others, precisely for the sake of the day when calamity arrives and the question who can actually helps becomes urgently practical. You know, there's a big difference between living in the West and living here in the Philippines for me, Rick. and you know I remember living in Florida

and I knew a couple of my neighbors I knew you know I knew my next door neighbors on either side and the neighbor across the street but really that was about it I lived in several different houses in Florida and that but that was the limit of my you know neighborliness

if you will not so here in the Philippines that that's not up a case at all. You know everybody on your street. Everybody. Everybody knows who you are. If you're not taking food over to their house, they're bringing food over to your house. All the kids know each other. You can take your kids and drop them off with neighbors three or four doors down the street. They'll watch them. If you lack something for the house that you need, like to cook with or anything, remember the old days where you can, go and borrow a cup of sugar from a neighbor, you can still do that here in the Philippines.

And so it's a much different cultural mindset, much more of a neighborliness. Now, I think a lot of us in the West have lost, and it could be because we're so busy in the West. Both mom and dad are working, and then when the kids, you know, get old enough, what do they do? They leave not just the home. They usually will lead the whole area. They'll move to a whole different part of the country. And so the idea here is, Rick, that knowing your neighbors like we do here in the Philippines, man, it really is a blessing.

You know, if you have an issue or a problem or something, you can go, you know, you'll have neighbors come over and help you out. It's a big difference here, Rick. How great what you described was life when I was a child when I grew up in in Western Maryland? That was life. And I didn't live in a town. I lived in the country, but everybody knew everyone. Everybody helped everybody.

And all the neighbors' kids were in somebody's house, you know. I mean, everybody just took in everybody's kids different days and fed them and took care of them. But that's the way life. was. So when you, when you understand, if you had memories of that, then this proverb makes more sense. It doesn't make much sense to our modern disconnected life, where everybody's locked up inside their house inside their gated community and nobody knows each other. And Susan and we I lived, I'm trying to think, I don't know, seven years, Doc, in a gated community.

I'd rather be in a prison than to be in a gated community again. I mean, just think about it. Hey, you're inside a compound, we shut the gate. And yeah, I don't think, I don't think we knew more than one or two neighbors in an entire neighborhood. people didn't come outside. They didn't talk yet. You say, where are the kids? Where are the people?

They'd come home and go inside and, you know, watch television or get on their devices and whatever, you know, but there was no interaction with any other humans. That's sad. Now, where I live now, I'm out in the country, and it's like going back in time. neighbors bring food to us neighbors bring fresh eggs

from their hen house over to us I mean it's it's like going back 50 years I love it all right unless as we close up today's lesson we'll take a look at the Septuagint interpretation of verse 10 the king James says

thine own friend and I own and thy father's friend forsake not, neither go into thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity for better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off.

Septuagint, almost the same. Word for word, it's very close. They track closely in this verse, and there's not a lot of difference. I would point out of course the key word is the calamity. Okay. The Greek word for calamity is tomatos. It actually looks like tomatoes, spelled with a PT, tomatos. And it shares the root with the same word used in verse 9 for the soul torn in pieces by calamities. So the satuagin is focusing in on its calamity. Okay.

So other than that, Doc, I don't see a lot of difference. How about you? Well, there is a structural length that strengthens the force of rating these two verses together. I don't think it's any accident that the Holy Spirit put these two verses together like this. So the Septuagint's ordinary times pleasure, you know, talks about those ointments, the wines and the perfumes. You know, the things that make life a little bit livable. And the calamity day devastation, that torn soul, that rent soul in verse 9, aren't incidental observations, but they're really the deliberate setup for verse 10's practical counsel.

Cultivate that near friendship now, that near neighbor now in the ordinary time because in the devastation, in the devastating calamity, whenever it arrives, it's going to require exactly that friendship to already be in place. You won't make those friendships when calamity strikes. They have to already be in place. So the Septuagint has a consistency here across both verses on this point that teaches a subtle but important lesson. Friendship is not to be cultivated reactively,

but in other words, after the calamity has already struck, but proactively during the ordinary seasons of that shared ointment and perfume, precisely so that it stands ready and near when that torn soul day inevitably comes in. Rick, I wanted to ask you one question on this passage here that we really didn't get in too much here, is that the development of the father's friends, too. We didn't go either that. Solomon makes a point to bring that out. What are your thoughts on that?

Again, that your parents spent decades. Think about, let's say you're 30 years old. Your parents had friends perhaps that were older than you were, all right? And Solomon is saying you should respect your parents' friends. They have friendships that are older than you. And they've been tested. And they're true to the family. And you can rely on these people.

And I think that's the meaning of it. If your parents have had lifelong friends, you shouldn't discount them. You should consider them part of a family. They've stood the test of time. I've never really considered that before, Rick, in that. you know, it's one thing, you know, we fall short in developing our own friendships, but maintain those friendships that are, that the previous, of the previous generation, I never really thought about the importance of it before, Rick.

Talk, I think about my grandparents. You know, they were both born in the 1890s. And I can remember as a child, they're friends, their childhood friends. were still friends with them when they were in their 70s and 80s. And I remember my grandparents visiting their friends and their friends visiting my grandparents' homes. And, you know, at the time, I don't think I really understood it. As I grew older and I looked back and I was waiting at it.

That woman went to elementary school with my grandmother in the early in the early 1900s you know 193, 4 or 5, you know, or that man knew my my granddad, you know, they were friends throughout the Great Depression, came through it together. It really, as I got older, I looked back and I realized that's what, that was the bomb between them. They came through calamities. They came through troubles. You know, my grandparents lost a child at age, They had friends that were with them when they lost that child who stayed with them, knew about that calamity.

This is what it's saying is honor those friendships of your parents, people that stood with your parents throughout decades. And, you know, don't, don't just, as you get older, don't discount those people. They're valuable for advice and wisdom because they stood with your family. when you were child, they were standing with your family. I wish I could honestly say I maintained those relationships that my dad had. But to be honest with you, I haven't. And I never really considered the wisdom of that until now. I observed my mother-in-law here in the Philippines, Rick.

She's 87 years old. And she still gets together about once a week or once every two weeks with classmates. she went to school with. I'm talking to elementary school. Yes. And this was when the Japanese were in control of the Philippines for a while. I mean, that's when they were hiding in holes in the ground here. They survived a calamity together.

That's right. But they've maintained those relationships now for eight, nearly nine decades. that's the kind of relationships that and each one of those friends of my mother-in-law they consider me and my wife Mia a daughter right so I can see the value of that extended now I observe that in my own life and in Mia's life and now I sit here and think man I missed a real opportunity to cultivate those friendships that my father had growing up back home. So how much wisdom have I not taken advantage of?

Let's hope that the Philippines will never be westernized. It's Western culture has deteriorated. Yeah, it creates distance for sure. Yes. Technology communications did it to us. The more technology, the more entertainment, the more distractions we had, the more fragmented we became. we became. And there was a deliberate agenda in the 60s and 70s and 80s to break up the family.

And the breakup of a family is what has damaged America so much. You can blame it on a lot of stuff, but at the heart of it is to break up of a family. Because that's the bond, and that's where there's friendships are maintained. Amen. All right. Hey, Albert, this has been a blessing to you,

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