Iron Sharpens Iron (Wisdom, Week 6)

Texts: Ecclesiastes 4:9-11 | Proverbs 27:6, 17; 17:17; 18:24 | John 15:12-15

We explore one of the most important—and often overlooked—gifts God gives us: friendship. But, what does real friendship actually looks like in a world that prizes independence and self-sufficiency? Why does Scripture insist that we need other people? What does it mean for a friend to tell us the truth, even when it hurts? And why is loyalty so rare—and so valuable?

Every biblical description of friendship ultimately points us to Jesus Christ, the Friend who remained faithful when everyone else failed, who spoke the truth in love, and who laid down His life for His friends.

Transcript

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In Matthew 28, Jesus said, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. He calls you to be that disciple, to hear his word, to receive his promises, to repent, to believe. That Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And that by believing you have life in his name. Now here are the good news of Jesus for you. We covered this topic at the youth lock-in on Friday night, this topic of friendship. And we've been going through Proverbs and using Proverbs as this guide of what uh wisdom looks like. And we see this from King Solomon, who is the wisest person. The Bible says the wisest person that never lived. And so we're going to start off with our text from Proverbs today, and it's selected verses from Proverbs. And so Proverbs 17, we're going to start with that one. A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. Proverbs 18. A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there's a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Proverbs 27, better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy. And then Proverbs 27, iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. This is our text for today. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. I enjoy cooking, not fancy restaurant kind of cooking, but just everyday kind of cooking. And I've learned an important lesson about cooking and preparing during the process of cooking. As you are preparing in the kitchen, a dull knife makes everything much more difficult. When a kitchen knife starts getting dull, you notice it right away. Instead of slicing cleanly through a tomato, it crushes the tomato. And instead of cutting smoothly through the onion, it just kind of glides along the onion. And ironically, a dull knife, they say, is more dangerous than a sharp one. And it's more dangerous because you have to force it to work the way it was designed to. It wasn't designed to be dull, it was designed to be sharp. And so you're forcing it to do something it was never meant to do. And so that means that every once in a while, the knife has to be sharpened. And sharpening that process isn't a gentle process. Metal is scraped against metal. And when you do that, tiny blades are then removed. And if you look underneath the sharpening, you see tiny metal shards that are all over, if you're doing it on a counter, they're all over the countertop because the metal is being removed. It's being taken away. And it looks like it's being damaged, but it's not. It's actually being restored the way it was meant to be. The knife, by through this process, becomes more useful than it was before, even though it might seem awkward and uncomfortable. The friction isn't destroying the blade, it's refining it. And Solomon understood this. In Proverbs 27, he writes, iron sharpens iron, just as one man sharpens another. This morning we continue our series through the book of Proverbs, and we come to this idea of friendship. What it is, why we need it, and where it ultimately comes from. Real friends don't just make us feel better, they help us, they shape us, they encourage us and challenge us, correct us, as Proverbs says, as Solomon says in Proverbs, they sharpen us. Again, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon, mostly widely considered to be the wisest man who ever lived. And he, in the book of Ecclesiastes, is writing this book to come to the discovery of what this whole life actually means, what it is all about. He tried wealth, he tried accomplishments and achievement, he tried pleasure, and none of it satisfied him the way that he thought it would. And in the middle of this search, it's just kind of a throwaway section, although we've probably heard this section in Ecclesiastes more than any other. And we like that story. We really do. We like feeling capable and seeing someone that is capable. We like being the one who helps others more than they have to ask for help. We like the one giving advice rather than having to seek out advice from someone else. And so when life gets difficult, our instinct is often to go inward rather than outward. We tell ourselves that we can handle this all on our own, that we'll figure it out. We don't need anyone else involved. That's why Ecclesiastes is so important. Solomon is one of the most accomplished people in the history of the world. He had wealth, influence, power, wisdom, more resources than anyone could ever imagine. And yet, after chasing all of this, after chasing every avenue of life, this is what he had to offer. He concluded that independence isn't the answer. He says the opposite. That two, two are better than one. In other words, the wisest person that ever lived discovered something that many of us spend our whole lives trying to avoid. We try to live life by ourselves on our own with our own adequacies and competencies. But Solomon discovered that you are better with other people. You're not designed to do life by yourself. Friendship is not a bonus, an add-on to the rest of life. Friendship is what it means to be human. This isn't new information, by the way. Go back to the sixth day of creation. God makes everything and he says it's good. And then it comes to the sixth day, and he comes to the one thing that he makes with his own hands. And what does he say? Finally, he says, it isn't good. And he describes why it isn't good. It's very specific. He says, it isn't good that man is alone. It's not good. Not the sin, not the fall, before any of that. It's not good that man is alone. So before anything breaks in the creation, God has already decided that isolation, being by yourself, isn't good enough for you. And yet, here we are in a season in history and a season in our culture and society where we are more digitally connected than any other generation that's ever gone before us. And yet, loneliness, if you read about it and search it a little bit, loneliness is climbing at a rate that is increasingly more and more rapid. And so you can have a phone that's full of context and people that are following you on Instagram and social media websites and are there at your fingertips, and yet you don't know who you'd call at two in the morning if you needed them. You don't know when you're carrying something, who's gonna be there for you and who's gonna tell you that you're not alone. And so Solomon says the opposite of where our minds naturally go, that the strong are not the ones that keep everything bottled up inside and don't let anybody in. No, those are actually the weak, those are the vulnerable. The opposite is true. That you need someone when you fall, because we do all fall in various ways. We fall when we have a diagnosis of some kind, when we have a job loss, when our marriages come under some kind of strain. We fall when we have a sin that we can't seem to shake. And again, we need someone that's there and says that you don't go through this alone. You're not by yourself. It's necessary. And so friendship is necessary. The next question is what kind of friend does God want us to be? What kind of friend do we need? Because not every friendship helps you. Solomon writes, faithful are the wounds of a friend, and profuse are the kisses of an enemy. And again, this at first sounds backwards from what we naturally think, because most of us assume that a good friend, a good friend is someone who makes us feel good. And when we're down, they make us feel good. Someone who agrees with us and supports us, and they never create any kind of tension. We don't like that kind of tension. And so, in fact, those kinds of friends we often push out because that's not what we're looking for in terms of friendship. We naturally gravitate toward the people who affirm our choices and tell us that everything we're doing is great. No problems. But Solomon says that that doesn't necessarily make a good friendship at all. Because the easiest thing, the easiest thing in the world is for someone to tell you that you are great. You're awesome. It costs them nothing. It's much harder. It's much harder for someone to tell you the truth, for someone to be honest. And so if a friend is making a foolish decision, it's easier to stay quiet. It is. Because you don't have any tension, you don't have any risk of that friendship growing, having any issues. It's much harder to be honest with them and have that awkward conversation. The same thing if somebody's going down a destructive path, it's easier to tell them, you know what, you do life your own way. It's fine, not a big deal. Even if it does lead to their destruction. Honesty, this kind of honesty in friendship that is from Scripture, is biblical. This kind of honesty costs something. It costs comfort. It is, it's discomforting to have these kind of awkward conversations with people. It costs approval. Not everybody's going to approve when you correct them. It costs the potential future of that friendship, of that relationship. It puts it all at risk. And that's why so many people choose to be silent. Not because they don't care, but because speaking the truth is uncomfortable. And yet Solomon says the friend who is willing to risk it, who's willing to risk this discomfort, is the one who's actually being faithful, are the words that he uses. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. He doesn't call these enjoyable. He doesn't say that these wounds will be peaceful or pleasant, that you'll like them in any way, but he says they're faithful. The wounds that come from a friend, a true friend, real friends, those wounds are faithful. Sometimes the most loving thing a friend can do is tell you what you don't want to hear. That's faithful. It hurts. That's not what makes it faithful, but it hurts sometimes. They love you enough and care about you enough to tell the truth, to be honest. That's the difference between flattery and friendship. Flattery says, I'll tell you whatever you want to hear, as long as it keeps you happy and it makes us at least be able to get along. But friendship says, I care too much to just tell you that flattery stuff. I gotta be honest and truthful. And Solomon warns that the two things can those kinds of relationships can look very similar because they both sound kind and they both sound supportive, but only one of them is truly motivated by love. It's a desire to see the best for you. Again, and you can say this in a way that doesn't have that person's best interest at heart. You can say it in a way that is argumentative and it's self-righteous, and it's really still more about you than it is about them. But when it comes from a place of love and it truly is for their des for their best interest, for their good, that's what a true friend is all about. Proverbs 17. So friend is a friend is necessary, a friend is honest, and then a friend is loyal. Uh Proverbs 17, a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. Uh adversity, that that's what we have friendships for adversity. Not when it's convenient, not when it's fun, not when you're fun to be around, but at all times. It's born for adversity. Uh that includes seasons, by the way, when you have nothing to offer. When uh you're distracted or you're discouraged, or you're simply not bringing much to the relationship at all. You still need a friend, somebody who's loyal. I have a friend named Josh. I shared this at the youth um thing on Friday night. I have a friend named Josh. Uh we didn't grow up together, but uh we we met each other after after college, and we became friends, and we started hanging out in the same friend group, and we became really fast friends, and in a couple years we hung out all the time, and we really enjoyed one other's company, and we really were really great friends. And then I met my wife, and Josh and I stopped, as the nature as it happens, uh, we stopped hanging out uh as much. Um, and then I made the decision that I was gonna go to the seminary, and so the seminary happened to be seven or eight hours away from where we were living at the time, and so um our conversation got a little bit further and further apart. And then uh I took a call and I had a son, and as the nature of relationships, of friendships, it just kind of drifted. And Josh continued to call and he continued to text, and my responses got a little bit further and further apart. And then one day Josh left me a voicemail, and he laid it all out in there. He said, Hey, you haven't called, you haven't texted, and it really bothers me. And he said that I wasn't the friend that he needed, and he'd been going through some really tough stuff, and he really wanted to talk about it, but I wasn't there for him. You see, a friend is loyal, and Josh was helping me see that I wasn't that kind of friend during that season of life where he really needed me to be. And I can make all the excuses in the world, well, proximity made that really difficult, and that's true. But he needed a friend, and he needed one that was loyal, even though he really didn't have much to offer me at that point because I was, I had a lot of stuff that was going on, but he needed a friend that was loyal. And during that season of life, I wasn't it. Here's where all this leaves us. You see, when it comes to loyalty, we all know what it's like to have that friend that when we need them, they're there. And we also know what it's like when you need a friend and they aren't. Solomon's right. He's the wisest man who ever lived, but we shouldn't be surprised. Solomon's right about all of this. But notice what happens when we start talking about the nature of friendship and how it is necessary and how it does require honesty, and it we need to be friends that are loyal. We are by nature not that friend as much as we'd like to be. We we are uh isolating often. We push people away and push them out, we flatter people instead of telling them the truth and being honest with them, or we try and wound because it's you know that says more about us than it does about them. Uh we stay loyal, but we stay loyal until it costs us something, or until there's nothing really to be gained by maintaining that friendship. And so Proverbs is the standard. None of us keep it. None of us. Uh none of us have kept it toward each other, and none of us have kept it in our relationship with God. And so this is where Jesus meets us. Not with another rule to try harder and be a better friend, but with this announcement. On the night before his crucifixion, he's gathered with his disciples, the very men who will abandon him. And he says this says, This is my commandment that you love one another just as I loved you. Greater love has no one than this. He laid down your life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing. But I've called you friends. Again, look who he's talking to. Jesus knew exactly what every single one of these disciples were about to do. Abandon him. And he calls them friends, anyway. Not because they earned it, not because they were about to prove their loyalty to Jesus, quite the opposite, actually. He called them friends the night that they are about to fail him completely. And then he did exactly what a friend does. He laid down his life for his friends. Jesus didn't just teach about this kind of friendship and this kind of uh love in friendship. He walked to the cross, he bled, and he died. He absorbed the betrayal, he absorbed the abandonment, every failed friendship, ours included. He was the friend who stayed when everyone else ran. He was wounded, faithfully, deliberately, not to teach us a lesson, but to take our place. The the sharpening that Proverbs talk about talks about the iron-sharpening iron. That took place, Jesus, on the cross. And it took place so that restoration and healing could happen. And then he tells the disciples everything, he tells them everything that the Father has in store for you and for me. Because we're friends of Jesus, this is what that means. He says that there's forgiveness and there's adoption and there's a seat at his table forever. That's what it means when Jesus calls you a friend. And you are a friend. Because he's made you one. Thanks be to God. In Jesus' name. Amen.