TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles - Date: August 18, 2026. Lesson 162-2026. Title: Iron, Fruit, and Mirrors: How God Shapes Us

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

In today’s Morning Manna, Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart examine Proverbs 27:17–19 and three powerful pictures of how God develops His people through relationships and faithful service. Iron sharpens iron through necessary friction, the carefully tended fig tree rewards patient labor, and another person’s heart can become a mirror revealing our own. This lesson explores why genuine friends must sometimes challenge us, why faithful service is never wasted even when human recognition never comes, and how relationships expose things about our hearts that isolation can hide. God often uses other people to sharpen, reward, and reveal us. Lesson 162-2026 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 Manas. Your teachers, Rick Wiles and Dr. Burkla. Get your Bible and get ready to hear as you've never heard it before. Hello, I'm Rick Wiles, and this is Morning Manah. We serve nutritious meals for your soul. If you have never seen or heard morning manna, then I invite you to grab a cup of coffee or tea,

open your Bible, find your most comfortable chair, and participate with us over the next up to one hour if you're watching the full version. If you're watching us on Faith TV, we're a 30-minute program, but you can watch the full lesson at manna nation.com, manna nation.com or at Rick Walst Today channel on YouTube. Okay, so we serve the Word of God. That's our meal.

And we teach the Word of God in a way that many of you have never heard it before. Now, before you think, these guys are teaching a new doctrine, that's not true. What we're doing is that we're teaching an old doctrine. We're going back and we're studying how the preachers and theologians and the Bible scholars hundreds of years ago thought these verses. And then we do our best to bring it to you in a fresh new way and to give you insight into the Word of God that you probably have not heard in recent years. So it's not new doctrine. It's old doctrine presented in a new way. Our lesson number today is 162-2026.

162-2020. Again, it's at manna-nation.com. Let's pray and invite the Holy Spirit. Then Dr. Raymond Burkhart will introduce today's Bible lesson. Our Father in heaven, Father, we come to you as your sons and daughters from many nations who are watching and listening together through technology. And we come to your Father with open hearts and open minds, hungry and thirsty for your word.

And so we invite the Holy Spirit to lead this Bible study and bless the people who are listening and watching. Anoint and inspire Dr. Burkhardt and me, to teach your word. Father, let your church be edified and strengthened for the glory of your Son, Jesus Christ. In His name, we pray. Amen. Amen. Well, we're so glad to have you here with us on this edition of Morning Manor today. As Rick mentioned, this is Lesson 162-206. We continue our journey through the book of Proverbs, and we are currently in Proverbs chapter 27, making a lot of progress here as we move forward in this fascinating chapter of Proverbs, a number of associated couplets and

triplets throughout this chapter. And today is a triplet that we're looking at. Proverbs chapter 27 versus 17 through 19. Proverbs chapter 27 versus 17 through 19. Some of the verses are going to sound very familiar and you might come in with some presuppositions. I'm going to ask you, set those presuppositions aside today and just follow along with us in the lesson. And there might be some things that are revealed to you today that you never considered before. So let's get started by reading the King James Version and then the Septuagint Version of this passage, Proverbs chapter 27, verses 17 through 19. King James reads, Iron sharpeneth iron. So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. Whoso keepeth the fig tree, shall eat the fruit thereof.

so he that waiteth on his master shall be honored. As in water face answers to face to the heart of man to man. In the Septuagint, iron sharpens iron, and a man sharpens his friend's countenance. He that plants a fig tree shall eat the fruits of it. So he that waits on his own master shall be honored. As faces are not like other faces, so neither are the thoughts of men. That same passage today. So our passage together gathers three different images.

And the theme that we would look at today is reciprocity and reflection, all built in this three-verse unit today. Three different pictures of what a person receives back from what he gives, what he invest, or what he reflects toward another. Now, in verse 17, it gives the most famous of the three, and one that probably most of you're familiar with. And arguably, probably the single most quoted verse in the entire book, probably. Iron, sharpen's iron. You hear it used in a variety of different contexts. Friendship rightly conducted produces mutual sharpening. Each party emerging keener than he entered.

Then in verse 18, it gives the reciprocity of faithful labor. The man who tends a fig tree eats its fruit, and the man who serves his master faithfully, receives honor. investment yields return and the return is proportional to the caretaking of the Tendent. And then as we get into verse 19, it gives the reciprocity of the heart itself. As water reflects a face back to the one looking into it, so the human heart reflects the person it encounters. A proverb whose most precise meaning has generated considerable and also fruitful discussion.

But the three verses together today teach that human beings are formed by what they engage with. They're sharpened by the friends they keep, rewarded by the work they tend, and revealed by the hearts that they encounter. So you see that theme of reciprocity all through this. Nothing in relational or vocational life is neutral. We all impact somebody. Everything gives back in kind what has been put into it. Wisdom's practical aim is to make the audience deliberate about what they submit themselves to, because the sharpening, the harvest, and the reflection will all come,

and their quality is determined by choices made long before the return arrives. Rick starts our lesson today by examining, first of all, that well-known phrase, iron-sharkens iron. Rick? Agadoc. Verse 17. Iron sharpeneth iron, so man sharpeneth a countenance of his friend.

This describes the practice of honing a blade against another piece of iron. The friction between the two hard surfaces produces an edge that neither could develop alone.

The image contains three features worth drawing out carefully. First, sharpening requires contact. Iron kept a safe distance from another iron never sharpens anything. Number two, sharpening requires friction. Process is abrasive by nature, and there is no version of it that does not involve resistance and pressure. Third, sharpening is. mutual. Both pieces of iron are affected by the encounter. Neither emerges from the process unchanged. So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. Solomon did not say that a man or woman sharpens his friend. He said that a man or woman sharpens the countenance of his or her friend.

your countenance is your facial expression. The look upon your face, it can be positive or negative. It can be cheerful or gloomy. The face is where a person's alertness, engagement, and readiness are visibly displayed. A sharpened countenance is a face that has come alive, a face that is attentive, engaged, no longer dulled by isolation or complains. Now, as Doc mentioned in his introduction, this verse has been voted widely by many people over centuries. And at times, it has been considerably softened in its popular usage.

Basically, it's been reduced to a general endorsement of Christian friendship. The image itself resist the softening. Iron sharpening iron involves friction, resistance, and the removal of material. The proverb describes friendships in which real disagreement and uncomfortable correction and discipline actually occur. This connects back directly to provis. verse 27, verses 5, and 6 that we examined earlier in this chapter. Open rebuke is better than secret love, and faithful are the wounds of a friend. Versus 5 and 6, and now verse 17, describe the same relational reality from different angles.

The friend willing to wound, honestly, is the iron that sharpens, and the friendship that never produces friction is the blade-left doll in the drawer. Matthew Henry, a great Presbyterian theologian in the 1700s, observed that the sharpening describes two parties of compatible substance. Iron sharpens, not iron sharpens wax. and that a man or woman is genuinely sharpened only by friends' substance and conviction who had the willingness to press back rather than by companions who agree with everything you say. It's the friend who truly loves you.

And says, because I love you, I've got to resist, which you just said. I got to sharpen you. I've got to, we're going to have a little bit of friction here. But it's a loving friction. It's never mean. It's never abrasive. It's friction done in love to sharpen both.

Because there's not one person saying, I got to sharpen you. No, when you, when you do this process, both sharpen each other. Amen. And so, Rick, the framework that we're looking at, beneath verse 17, really is, you get down to it, it's the biblical doctrine of sanctification through community.

And a lot of people miss this. They think of sanctification simply as something that the Holy Spirit does transform them, which is an important work. But how is that applied in reality? It's implied by our interactions with others. So it's the conviction that God forms as people, not in isolation, right, but through friction. through the friction of relationships, the encouragement, and the correction of other believers. And in the New Testament, Hebrews 1024, we have this direct instruction.

Let us consider one another to provoke, provoke unto love and to good words. And that word provoke in the Greek is paroxuma. And it's not a passive term at all. It's notably a strong term describing a stirring up that carries real energy rather than some sort of passionate or passive well-wishing. So the critical qualification needs to be drawn out of this verse. First, that not all friction is sharpening. Some relationships produce only damage. They just produce sparks.

The contentious spirit that we saw. back in verses 15 and 16 is friction without sharpening, abrasion that dulls and exhausts. So the distinguishing mark is outcome. Genuine sharpening leaves both parties more

effective and alert, and mere conflict leaves both depleted and damaged. So the criterion that Scripture supplies is both intent and love. Back in verse 6, chapter

27 here in Proverbs, it established that the faithful wound, the faithful wound, comes from a friend, someone who's genuinely invested in the other's good. And the same words from an adversary, wound without sharpening. Okay, if sometimes words from a friend can make, do that sharpening, but if they're from an adversary, they're meant to damage, they're meant to hurt. That's why verse 17 specifies friend here. The relational foundation makes honest friction constructive rather than destructive. And so the proverb challenges each of us to examine our own circle of relationships. Are there friends with sufficient substance and courage that are willing and love us enough

to push back, to disagree? and say what you would rather not hear. A circle composed entirely of everybody in agreement is a drawer full of dull blades. Amen? Comfortable, safe, and really progressively less useful for the work that God has assigned, Rick. Yes, sir.

Doc, let's move on to the Septuagint, verse 17. The King James, we'll read them. We always read. side by side so we can compare. It's iron sharpening iron, right? So the King James says iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. Satuagin says iron sharpens iron,

and a man sharpens his friend's countenance. It's remarkably identical. I don't see about any major difference here. Both of them preserve the Merrill Lurts image and specific reference to the friend's countenance. Now that word, the Greek word for countenance is Possepaw. It means your face. So it's not just saying iron sharpens iron, okay?

So man, it doesn't say, so a man sharpens his friend. It's man sharpens his friend's face. In other words, your glow, your countenance is your glow. And that glow can be positive or negative. I mean, some people are just gloomy. They're depressing to look at it. I mean, you're just like, oh, what? That looks like a black storm hanging over that person.

Look at people cheerful, happy, and positive, okay? That's your countenance. But your countenance shows up when you're, your face. Right. And so what Solomon is saying that is that a man or woman sharpens his or her friend's face, their countenance. What do you see, Doc?

Well, that Greek word prosopon carries really a slightly broader semantic range than the English countenance. Because when you get into that word, it encompasses not only the physical face and what you can but the person's presence, their bearing, their outward aspect, how one appears and how they carry themselves in front of others. And the sharpening that's described, therefore, affects not merely a person's private alertness, but his visible bearing, the way he presents himself, the way he engages others, and the way he occupies his place in the world. And so just this slight broadening here from the Septuagint really enriches the Proverbs application.

A genuine sharpening, a genuine sharpening friendship changes not only what a person thinks privately, but how he shows up publicly. He's more engaged. He's more alert. He's more capable of the presence his calling requires. That's what that sharpening really requires. It's not just you know, a slight change of attitude, but really the sparks that come across with that iron-shorting iron in a friendship situation is meant to change the internal character of the individual. That's right. For those of you who are watching us on Face TV, I would like to remind you that the full lessons are available at manna nation.com or you can go to YouTube and find my channel, Rick Wiles, today. And that's where you find these lessons in their entirety. Today's lesson is 162-2020.

And while you're at Manana Nation, I'd like to encourage you to show your appreciation for this Bible teaching ministry by giving a generous offering to keep us going. We don't say much about funds. We trust the Lord every month. Just like in your home, the bills come in every 30 days, whether you like it or not. they're going to be there.

And we have the same thing for our ministry. The bills come in every 30 days. So we appreciate those. When you give for ministries, the purpose of that ministry is to continue teaching the Word of God, ministering in the name of Jesus, so that that ministry's bills are paid. The Lord himself gets involved in making sure your bills are paid.

That's the way God's economy works. And you can try to skip out of it, but it doesn't work. It's his economy. So let's look at verse 18. Who so keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof. So he that waiteth on his master shall be honored. This actually goes with what I said.

So the one guarding, the one tending, the one keeping a fig tree eats its fruit. this verse describes the most basic reliable form of reciprocity in an agricultural society why the fig tree why didn't Solomon say an apple or you know why didn't he pick some other kind

plant that bears fruit you know a vegetable fruit tree well here's why he chose a fig tree Feed trees require patient, sustained cultivation over many years before producing substantial fruit. Fig trees cannot be rushed. They reward the cultivator who remains long enough to see the investment mature. It's like olive trees. It's like great vineyards.

It takes time. You don't get a harvest the very first year you plant. You get to harvest years after you plant. In between the planting and the harvest, there's a lot of cultivation, a lot of work, tending to the plants. So Solomon selected a plant, a tree whose fruit is specifically the,

the reward of persistence rather than quick effort. The Hebrew word used here and the King James, this is here, no stare. Not my best pronunciation, but it's something like no stare, okay. It means keeping, guarding, watching over, preserving. the word describes ongoing attentiveness rather than a single planting. You know, you plant corn, and a couple months later, you got corn.

It just comes out and it produces stocks of corn, and there it is, and it's done. Yes. You harvest the corn and you chop down the stocks, and next year you plant again. That's not how you do it with a thick tree. So what's the lesson? Why is Solomon using a fig tree? The fig tree's fruit belongs not to whoever planted the tree originally, but to the one who tended to the tree over many seasons to see that the tree would grow, to prune it, to protect it from pests. And that person was patient, waiting years to see the tree produce fruit.

Now, Solomon says, so he that waiteth on his master shall be honored. The one keeping, guarding, attending his master, will be honored. The same verb family is used for both halves of the verse. And that draws a very tight parallel, handing a tree and attending a master, are the same category of faithful, sustained, patient service. So does this make sense now? Who is our master? If you are a Christian, then your master is Jesus Christ.

If he's not your master, you're not a Christian. Do you understand what I just said? If Jesus Christ is not your master, if he is not your king, then you're not a Christian. You're just a religious person, and you show affinity to the doctrine of Christianity. True Christians have a master, have a Lord, a king, and what are we doing?

We are to wait on him. Does that mean to sit on a chair and look at your watch? wait and wait and wait and wait, so I'm waiting on my master. No, that's not what it means. It means to tend to him, to wait upon him. What do you need, master? How can I serve you today? What do I have of mind that I can give to you?

What could you use? What would you like to do with my day? What would you like to do with the skills and talents you gave me? You're waiting on the master, and you do this over years. You just don't do one time, go, okay, I waited on you for five minutes now. Give me my reward. This is a lifetime. This is years and decades of waiting on the master of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So he that waiteth on his master shall be honored. There's a time when Jesus Christ will honor you. And you can't make it happen and nobody can stop it. That's the great thing. You can't make it happen and nobody can stop it from happening. When God decides to honor a person. So this proverb speaks to anyone in a position of service. Oh, subordination.

So, I mean, it goes into your daily length. Who are you under authority to? I mean, we're all under authority of Jesus Christ. What about your employment? Are you under authority? Do you have supervisors? Who do you report to? I mean, even presidents and prime ministers report to the people, the people who elected them.

Everybody's under authority. So the promise is that faithful sustained attention to a master's interest produces honor in due course over time, just as faithful tending of a fig tree produces fruit over the years. Adam Clark, Clark was a man. Methodist theologian in the 1700s. He observed that both halves of this problem described rewards that cannot be seized in advance, but only received in season,

that the impatient manner woman who demands the fig tree, demands the fig harvest before it ripens, or the honor before he or she has served, destroys the very process that would have produced what he or she desired. You can't rush it out. That's right. Yeah, you talk about the fig tree, Rick. It's just an amazing coincidence that just a couple days ago,

my wife and I were watching a documentary about traveling across Italy, and they came to this fig orchard. And there were trees in that orchard, Rick, And this is hard to comprehend that have been around since 600 years before Christ. That's how old some of these fig trees are. Wait a minute. Six years before Jesus? 600 years before Christ.

They're talking 2,600-year-old trees, still producing fruit, still producing figs. You know, it's really, it was a fascinating story. and it was just an amazing thing to think. How could a tree be sustained that long? And think about the nations that have come and gone in Italy. You know, over that 2,600-year period of time, Rick, nations have risen and fallen. And yet, these trees were sustained by faithful tenders for 26 centuries.

It's hard to imagine. that you know some relationships required time it's no accident that solomon used the fig tree as an example here and so when we consider all this the proverb gets connected to the new testament's teaching on faithfulness and faithful service and its rewards teaching that consistently locates ultimate honor in god's hands rather than any human master's recognition. In Colossians chapter 3, verse 22 to 24, we read this, servants, obey in all things your masters, not with eye service as men pleasers,

but in singleness of heart, fearing God, knowing that of the Lord, ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ. And so the connection here, of course, is our faithful service to the Lord. the Lord as well. So Paul redirects the servant's motivation entirely. This redirection is essential because verse 18's promise read by itself, read in isolation, could produce disillusionment.

Many faithful servants have tended diligently and received no honor from unworthy or ungrateful masters. But Scripture accounts for this honestly. The promise is anchored in God's justice rather than any employer's fairness. And so Jesus alluded to this in his parable of the talents, Matthew 25, and he says, the faithful servants receive proportional reward, the master's own commendation. well done, thou good and faithful servant. And because of that, they receive an increased responsibility. The reward for faithful tending is more to 10. Luke 1610 governs this whole area, this whole domain.

He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also and much. So the fig tree, really when you get down to it, it's a small trust, that over time can become a bigger trust. Faithfulness in tending it is the demonstrated qualification for a larger trust to follow. And so this proverb really is a word of encouragement to those in seasons of unrecognized service. You know how I'm talking about? The tending is never wasted, my friend. I'm telling you now, the tending is never wasted.

The fruit comes in due season and the honor, whether or not it arrives from the human master being served, whether the human master ever pays that obligation of honor, the Lord sees it. It's guaranteed by the God who sees every act of faithful attention rendered in obscurity. And, you know, that's why the scripture says, when you work, work hardly as unto the Lord, not even to a master, although that's the implied implication there, but to the Lord himself.

The Lord has the balance sheet wreck. He'll bounce it all out. That's right. Let's take a look at the Septuagint, and I'll tell you, there is just one major difference between the King James and the Septuagint. I'll see if you can spot it. I'll give you a clue. It's in the first half of the proverb, okay? So King James, this is verse 18. King James says, So, so keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof, so he that waiteth on his master shall be honored. The Greek Septuagin says, He that plants a fig tree

shall eat the fruits of it, and he that waits on his own master shall be on it. Did you catch the difference? The King James says, keeps a fig tree. The Septuagin says, plants a fig tree. It's a slight shift from the ongoing maintenance

that's in the King James, which the word keepeth. You're taking care of the fig tree. And the situogen puts the emphasis on the person who put the tree in the ground to start with. That's the main difference. Are they contradictory? I don't think so. I think, Doc, they, I think they're very complimentary because I think the person who plants the tree

typically is the one who tends to the tree. Probably, yeah. I mean, you saw them here about somebody who just, it's not Johnny Anfoceney, not somebody just going around planting trees and never going back to see them. The person who plants the tree is also the one who tends to the tree. So I think that they together, both King James and the Septuagint cover the full span

of what faithful stewardship requires. The initial investment, that's the Septuagint, planting and the sustained attention through the years that followed. That's the King James. Neither alone produces fruit. A tree planted and abandoned yields nothing. And a tree tended but never planted does not exist. Right.

So you need more. No, I agree with you, Rick. And the one who planted it is probably the one who's going to love it and keep it. Because it, really, it's not easy to grow a fig tree. You've got to really take care of it when it's young. Same thing with olive trees. I'm going to go back to what you said earlier. I'm still astounded by those fig trees that you saw in a documentary film in Italy that are 2,600 years old.

Do you know how many generations of humans ended to those trees? Yeah, it's. it's something else, Rick, when you stop and think about it. And think of the number of hands that tended for that tree across that span of time, that single tree. They think there's other trees that are that old, other fig trees and olive trees that are that old. But this one, they know for sure. It's 2,600 years old. That means thousands of generations took care of that as trees.

That's astounding. That is amazing to me. Well, I'll let you, you've got some points. I think you want to make about the Situagint version of this Pramor. Yeah, the only thing I would add there, Rick, is that the Septuagint has this addition of his own master and adds a note of specificity about absent from King James as his master. It sounds like the same thing. but listen carefully here the emphasis falls on the servant attending to the master

actually assigned to him rather than to some other master he might prefer someone else he might admire more or wish he had served instead there's a distinction there it's a slight distinction but it's an interesting one that slight sharpening carries genuine if you'll pastoral force

faithfulness is demonstrated in service to the master, the employer, the congregation, or the assignment actually given. Not in the imagined faithfulness, one would supposedly render if there were better circumstances or more deserving leadership. The honor promised attaches to the one who tins to the tree he was actually given. And you may say, well, what's the difference here? Well, Rick, there was a period of time in my life where I could say I was serving the Lord. But was I serving the Lord in the assignment that he had given?

No, I was far from it. I was doing good things for the Lord. I was preaching. I was pastoring churches. I was working in Christian radio. I was doing a lot of good things. But was I doing what he had called me to do, what he had assigned me to do? It took decades to figure out, no, that wasn't the case.

at all, that, you know, I wasn't serving my own master. I had masters, and they were good ones. They were fruitful ones. They were blessed ones, but were they the right ones. His own master, I mean, that's the thing that jumps out to me in the Septuagin on this, Rick. It's interesting. And also, Doc, I'm thinking about church planters. There are men and women that God uses to plant a church.

They go into a town, a city, a neighborhood, and they fill the call of God on them, and they plant a church. How do they do that? Usually they start, they get a group of people together meeting in living rooms and people's homes. They rent a very small assembly room somewhere, and they get that church planted. And then typically, Doc, what happens, because I think you've probably done both,

is that after the church is planted and the church starts to grow, usually God moves the planter someplace else to plant another church and then brings in a pastor to shepherd that church, and that could go on for decades. Right. And what happens, Doc, is that 20 years later, the people attending that church don't even know who planted it. Yeah.

the person who is honored is the one who stayed for 20 years and God has produced fruit. And yet both were doing what God called them to do. Yeah. It's that principle that Paul talked about, one plants, another waters, another harvest. But you're faithful in whatever your role is. It doesn't mean that you stick with a particular assignment past the time that your role has been fulfilled. So we have to be careful there, too, that we don't read into this proverb or something that's not there. We each have an assignment.

Some assignments, Rick, are for decades. Some are for short-term. If anyone's ever been in the military, you understand this. Sometimes you go on what's called a TDY assignment. And what that means is not tidy. It doesn't mean clean up. It's a temporary duty assignment. In other words, they send you someplace for anywhere from two months to six months.

months to fulfill a role and then what you're done there, they move you maybe to your permanent assignment. Sometimes it's that way in the kingdom of God, too, that God places some in roles for specific periods of time. But the attitude has to be in ministry, at least, and for those that are watching or listening, if you feel called a ministry, who is your master? Is the master your career? Is it your family?

is it your denomination or is it the Lord, your own master, your own master? And true men and women of God have to be obedient to their own master, not to their, as difficult it is sometimes, not to their personal preferences, not to sometimes their family. That's the big Achilles heel for some, sometimes to career, sometimes to denominational demands. So you have to really balance this out with an understanding. understanding that we each have an assignment for sometimes a period of time. Sometimes we're called to tend that olive tree for decades, Rick, but we do it gladly, and we work hardly as unto the Lord.

Doc, I can hear some people, I can hear their brains turning, and they're thinking, wait a minute, you just said a moment ago, there could be a church planter, a husband-wife, who goes into a town, starts a church, gets it started, then somebody else takes over and is the pastor for 10, 20, 30 years, and nobody remembers the planter, but the honor goes to the one who stayed and tended to the church. And I can hear you saying, but wait a minute, why is it that the one who did the planning doesn't get any on?

Okay, here's, I'll explain it to you. Don't look to people as the source for the honor. The master is the one who honors. If you're the planter, let's say in church planting, it's true. You're probably not going to get honored by people because God's going to move you to another town and another town and another town. You're just going to start congregations everywhere the Lord sends you. But the Lord himself will give you his honor because you waited on him. And you did it the way he said.

You did it according to his ways, his timing. The honor comes from the master, not from the people in the organization. Always keep that in your mind. Now, typically we do two verses in a lesson today. We're doing three because they go together. And whenever, especially in Proverbs, if it's two as a set, that's easy. Sometimes we've got to do three, sometimes four. So today is three.

verse 19, as in water, face answereth to face. So the heart of man to man. What is this? As in water, face answereth to face. So the heart of man to man. I first thought, it was like, what is someone then talking about? But you got to go back. You got to go back.

to ancient times. You've got to go back to old times before there were mirrors. What did people, how did they know what their face look like? They looked at still water. They saw the reflection in the water. That was their,

that's how they had an image of themselves. As in water, face, anthraithous, to face. So the heart of man to man. So still water was the primary means which a person saw his or her own face. You lean over a pool and the face looking, that is your own, accurately returned to you. So the proverbs meaning has generated a lot of interpretations. This is one of those proverbs that has a variety of interpretations.

And I'm not going to say any particular one is right or wrong. I'm going to give you two interpretations. I'll tell you the one I think for me that I think is the preferred interpretation, but the choice is yours. Okay. Both of these interpretations are legitimate. There's nothing wrong with either one of them. And you can teach either one and I could make an argument for either one of these interpretations.

they're both theologically sound and you will benefit from hearing both of them. So the first reading takes it as describing self-knowledge through others.

Just as water shows a man or woman's own face so encountering another person's heart shows a man or woman his or her own part. That's one interpretation. In relationships, we discover what solitude never reveals. Impatience

surfaces. Generosity is tested. Hidden assumptions become visible when they collide with someone else. If you're a hermit and you avoid people, you never deal with these issues. Because in your mind, everybody and everything is like you. It's only when you get out of your house and meet others, you realize, hey, they've got different opinions. You've got different attitudes. They see things differently. The second interpretation describes it as common humanity. As every face reflected in water follows the same basic patterns.

so all men's and women's hearts resemble one another fundamentally. In other words, in that one, it's not that we're different, it's that, hey, we're all the same. What moves me, moves you. This is the second interpretation. What moves me, moves you. What tempts you tempts me. The reading grounds both compassion and self-s suspicion.

that I should never, I should neither imagine myself uniquely virtuous or treat another person's failure as foreign to my own capacity to fail. Charles Bridges observed that the second reading guards against self-deception, that the heart that condemns another person's failures, most frequently, most fiercely, is often a heart most closely resembling it. So many of you already know this. Listen carefully to how a person criticizes and condemns another person,

the names that they call them, the faults that they point out, the sins that they say, I know that person commits these sins. Ordinarily, many times you'll find out secretly that person is guilty of those same things. And that's why they see it in another person or they're projecting it on an other person. Well, if we observe this, the theological significance of verse 19 rest, you know, really on the biblical doctrine of common human condition. the conviction that beneath

cultural and personal variation between different countries, different parts of the world, human hearts share a fundamentally unity of nature, both in capacity for good and really a bent toward evil. Jeremiah 179 says

the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? And it applies universally rather than just select or individually. The reflection principle means that a believer examining another's heart honestly will find reflected back features sometimes uncomfortably present in their own. And so this proverb really is rich in the domain of judgment and mercy.

Jesus himself had a warning in Matthew 7, verses 3 through 5 about, if you recall about the moat and the beam, you know, you've got a beam in your own eye, but you're criticizing your brother for the moat and his on exactly this reflection. The failing so visible in another is frequently visible because it is present, perhaps larger in the one who's harshly judging someone else. And so that same principle grounds genuine compassion.

Delation 6.1 instructs us to restore a fallen brother in the spirit of meekness considering thyself lest thou also be tempted and that assumes this reflection that we're talking about here in this problem the one who's restoring must recognize

in the fallen brother's failure a possibility genuinely present in his own heart and that recognition makes restoration gentle rather than condemning so we As far as the King James is concerned, we close out the three-verse unit where it began with the formative power of relationship.

Verse 17 taught that friends sharpen us. Verse 18 teaches that faithful service yields honor. Now verse 19, that other hearts reveal our own. And all three of them together describe a life and genuine engagement with others as the ordinary means by which God forms, rewards, and exposes. as people. When I say exposed, I don't mean just, you know, to rip something open and

reveal everything, but to bring things to light, to change us and transform us. In a life of isolation doesn't allow that at all. It forfeits all three. Rick have some thoughts about the Septuagint and its views on this. Of course. I like talking about the Septuagint. The King James says, as in water, face, answer it defaced so the heart of man to man. Septuagent as faces are not like other faces. So neither are the thoughts of men.

This reverses the King James' sense entirely. Where the King James emphasizes resemblance, answering face, the Septuagent emphasizes difference that no two faces are alike. No two men, no two women's thoughts are alike. This is one of the more striking divergences in the Book of Proverbs between the King James and the Septuagint. They're not harmonizing in this one, Doc.

The King James is speaking of, this is common among all humanity. All hearts share in nature. What is one is reliably in another, but that's not how the Septuagency is. Yeah, the subterigent really focuses on the individuality, on genuine individuality. God has made each person distinct with an interior life genuinely their own, not reducible to a single interchangeable pattern. Now, neither truth is safe by itself, okay? and so the common humanity without individuality produces the error of assuming everybody thinks like we do

and prescribing our own experiences as universal. So individuality without common humanity produces the error of imagining ourselves categorically unique, beyond comparison, beyond the reach of warnings addressed to ordinary people. So how do you reconcile these two? Well, 1 Corinthians chapter 12 teaches on the body of Christ, and it holds both precisely in context here. You've got one body, we have that connection in common, one spirit, one baptism, genuine unity of nature and calling, and yet you have many members. And those many members, just like in a body, those many members have distinct functions and individual. individuality that can't be flattened into just a uniform pattern.

So really, this verse, when we take both the King James and the Septuagint, it all bounces out together, Rick. We share a common humanity. We have the same basic nature, the same basic fallen nature, and yet each one of us is formed differently. I think it's really fascinating, Rick. You know, if you've ever really looked at a diamond, a diamond has many faces. We call them facets, but they just mean it's just another word for face.

It's all part of the diamond, and yet each facet is a different distinction of the diamond itself. When it says that we're made in the image of God, I think of it that way, that each one of those faces reflects the uniqueness, and the total quality of the diamond itself, and yet each face has a uniqueness of its own. And so, you know, I think both balance each other out and complement each other pretty good here, Rick. Yes, you do. An interesting Bible lesson.

I have three verses today. I hope this has been eye-opening to you and thought-provoking. It gives you something to think about throughout the day, meditative. This is the thing to do. meditate on the scriptures. Take the scriptures that you hear and the ideas that we present and then meditate on it throughout the day. And what does that mean? You just continue to think about it and

asking the Lord, give me more understanding, more revelation, teach me deeper about what I learned today in morning bath. That's meditating on the word. And the Lord will expand and bring new clear thoughts to you and help you apply it to your own life. Be blessed today. Invite somebody to Morning Matter and help us grow this ministry. That's the way it's done. You're the best advertising that we could have. Because if you tell people what Morning Matter means to you, what it's done for you,

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