Friends Sharpen Friends
Proverbs 27:17, NIV. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
KJV. Iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friends.
Define countenance: A look or attitude indicative of encouragement or of moral support. To encourage in the right direction.
NLT. As iron sharpens iron, a friend sharpens a friend.
Introduction:
Centuries before the birth of Christ, Solomon gathered the wisdom sayings that make up the book of Proverbs/ One of the wisdom sayings is, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”
The blacksmith in Solomon’s day was one of the most important individuals in town/ Not only did he spend hours between a hot fire and an anvil, he also was a potter, a weaver, and carpenter, and a fix-it man/ He knew how to make and repair household objects, and he knew how to sharpen farm tools and weapons as well/
Every village had a blacksmith like this/ People went to him every year to get their plows and axe heads sharpened/ They had seen the burly citizen with blackened hands often/ They knew the sounds that came from his workshop/ The repetitive pounding of his hammer against to anvil was a distinct sound/ Solomon’s audience immediately understood what was meant by the words, “Iron sharpens iron.”
They had also seen friends sharpen each other/ Friendships are forged out of many experiences/ Friendship is evidenced when storytelling turns to laughter/ Friendship is experienced when there are times of difficulty and hardships/ Friends don’t let their friends down/ The bonds of friendship grow stronger as friends face challenges together/ Friendships can last and entire lifetime/ God gives us the gift of being able to relate to others./ He expects us to use the gift to its fullest/ In Solomon’s day, and in ours, it is important to understand the challenge of the words, “Friends sharpen friends.”
Developing friendships is crucial in life:
Sometimes it is easier to remember the need to sharpen farm instruments than the need to sharpen our relationships with others/ The values have somehow switched/ Life gets busy/ Not so busy we can’t sharpen the hoe in time to weed the garden, just too busy to spend time with a friend/ This week it’s the hoe/ Next week, the shovel/ Soon we’re sharpening spearheads/ Before you know it, we’ll be sharpening the sword/ That’s what happens when we ignore the spiritual discipline of friendship & fellowship.
Solomon wanted his people to see the link/ Spiritual dullness has a tendency to keep us from seeing the obvious/ The image of iron sharpening iron reminds each of us that friendships really do matter.
Digging into the Hebrew words of this text is like digging into a gold mine/ The word that we translate “face” comes to us from the original language with the word “Paniym.”/ This common, everyday word has several shades of meaning, each of which could apply to the proverb before us/ The obvious meaning is a reference to the face/ Paniym is how a person looks/ Our facial expressions and characteristics let other’s know who we are as well as what we are thinking/ The writer is telling us that good friends help us look better/ If we want to have better looks, we need to choose better friends.
Friends lift the faces of friends/ We enjoy being with our friends because we share life together/ We laugh together, enjoying, “Inside jokes” and recalling stories from our past/ Friends lift the face of theirs friends/ Friends make life’s journey more enjoyable/ Seeing a good friend brings a smile to our faces and joy to our hearts/
Another shade of meaning expressed by the Hebrew word is similar to that expressed in our English usage of the word “face.” /Paniym can convey the idea of how a person sees things/ Friends help us gain a clearer perspective on issues that may concern or confuse us/ They help us understand the reality of situations when we are oblivious to the obvious. /Real friends place honesty over the opinions of others.
A third shade of meaning is, “That which goes in front of.”/In the midst of hard days, difficult decisions, or even personal failures, friends help friends see things in front of them a little better/ Friends provide a glimpse of a future with more possibility. Friends see what you think can’t be done, and help you believed you can do it/ The first lesson of this proverb is simple: Our choice of friends is critical/
In 2nd Timothy 2:22, Paul brings together a statement that helps me see the remedy for spiritual dullness in my life/ To his young friend in the ministry Paul writes, “Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace.”/ This is good advice and had Paul not given further instruction, it would be a very strong word of encouragement/ But this verse goes on to include the words, “along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” /
Paul told Timothy that his choice of friends was critical./ The people that you choose to call your friends are critical because your friends sharpen you; they determine how you see the future and how you set your values/
Just who are our friends these days?/ Our friends are not always the best friends for us/ They may be friends of a television sitcom or the cultural heroes from our sports and entertainment worlds/ Often, they don’t stand for the things we say we believe in, yet we spend time with them each and every week/ We adjust our schedules to visit with them, and we are always on time/ If we can’t be with them, we set our VCR’S./ In the process we grow spiritually dull/ I wonder what Jerry Springer stands for other than Trash…?/
Our choice of friends may even be taking a critical, unrecoverable toll on the relationships that are supposed to be primary to us/ We are left with a dull marriage, a dull relationship with our children, or even a dull sense of intimacy with our Heavenly Father/ God doesn’t intend for us to lose our sharpness in these arrears/ We choose spiritual dullness when we choose to wrong friends/
Spiritual dullness is dangerous for at least three reasons:
1) Spiritual dullness means that we have lost the discerning edge in life and no longer cut well.
A dull scalpel lacks the sufficient edge to remove a cancerous growth/ No surgeon would want to make an uncertain incision/ It’s too dangerous/ Just as sharpness is valued to the physician, so spiritual sharpness matters to the believer/
2) Spiritual dullness requires us to overcompensate in the flesh.
A dull knife can cause an accident due to the user’s overcompensation for its dullness/Using unnecessary force, the blade could slip and cause damage to others/ This happens when we are spiritually dull/ We overcompensate by relying on our own strengths instead of God’s strength/ When this happens, we always live with regret/
3) A danger is that pretty soon; we get used to dullness and learn to live with it:
We give up trying to please God because we feel we never will/ We get used to a life with no spiritual passion and no spiritual direction, we are not angry with God, we’ve just grown spiritually dull and assume that He understands or doesn’t mine/
It isn’t God’s intent for us to live spiritually dull lives/ This is why He gives us such a powerful image in this proverb/ Our choice of friends is critical/ Choosing better friends may be the most spiritual thing we do today/
Your choice to be a friend is critical:
There is a second lesson in this proverb, and it’s easy to forget/ Not only is your choice of friends critical, but your choice to be a friend is critical as well/ There are people in your sphere of influence who need a real friend/ Let me show you what I mean/
Take this knife for example, and think of it as someone God has put in your sphere of influence/ Now see yourself as this wet rock/ Listen to the sound that friendship makes. This is the sound of friendship/
I talked with several friends over the last couple of weeks since my daddy fell and then passed away/ Each time as we talked I was encouraged and lifted up/ When we talked this is what it sounded like in my mind and heart/ The godly friends cared enough about me and my family to take time for us/ I would share my thoughts and they would share their experiences from what they had already gone through/
Some of you have been like this knife in the past/ You were dull and in need of someone with love and character who would let you rub up against them for awhile/ Remember that was friendship/ Today, there are some of you who need to become like this wet rock/ It’s been around a while/ It’s sharpened many blades in the past. / Somewhere near you there is someone needing to be sharpened/ All you have to do is listen/
Next object I have here is similar to a wet rock or steele, but it’s for difficult task/ It’s a steel file/ A file smoothes out the rough spots in our lives./ Listen to the sound of friendship it makes/
God knows the rough edges in our lives/ I have mine, and you have yours/ In His wisdom, God allows people to come into our lives who serve as the file to smooth away the rough spots that have emerged from pride and ego/ These people love us, but they have the gift of confrontation and are not afraid to use it/ I don’t always enjoy the confrontation, but I have grown to appreciate the work that God does through them in my life/
The next object that demonstrates the truth of Iron sharpening is this old pair of shears/The shepherd holds the sheep with one hand, and with the other hand he carefully cut the wool off the body of the sheep…/…shears are made by joining two blades together with rivets/ These rivets were not intended to come apart/ You cannot shear the sheep with only one of these blades./ You can kill the sheep with only one blade, but you cannot shear it/
This serves as an important lesson for us/ The kingdom work that we’ve been called to do will not be accomplished by individual effort nor by complete union of thought/ It takes all of us/ Together, we can do more for the kingdom that we can individually/ These shears could represent our church, your marriage, this Sunday school class, or even our church staff/ But each time, they point to the image of us working together with others/ When the blades cross, they sharpen each other/ Iron sharpens iron, and friends sharpen friends.
Personal relationships matter/ Remember what Paul said in closing his letter to the Philippians church?/“I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord.” (Phil: 4:2) Again he said, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18.) We simply do not have the luxury of living out of fellowship with other believers/ If we think we do, we are duller than we thought.
My last object is an anvil/ I was going to bring one but it was just to heavy to lift all by my self/ This just shows that I need help to do the things that need to be done/ The anvil was my daddy’s/ It weighs about 150 pounds/ When I was young I could pick it up several times in succession/ It has not changed much in all these years./ It came from a blacksmith back in my daddy’s family’s history/ It was made in the eighteen hundreds./Unlike me, it has not lost its shape in all the years since it was made.
The smitty would heat the object in the fire until it was white-hot/ Then, he would place it on the anvil and strike it with a hammer over and over again/ When necessary, he would heat it again in the fire and repeat the process—from the fire to the hammer, the fire to the hammer, again and again—until the object was perfected.
But listen to the lesson I learned/ You are not the fire/ You are not the hammer/ But in a world where both exist, we need friends who are as steady as the anvil/ God uses the fiery trails and the hammering struggles we go through in life to perfect our character/ God also used the friends who are willing to come along side us supporting us, encouraging us in difficult times/ Being a friend means that we are going to remain loyal in tough times/
These objects provide for us the feel and sound of friendship/ “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friends.”
Friendship is characterized by the sounds of praying, mentoring, holding high expectations, listening, confronting, forgiving, caring, and modeling/ “Friends sharpenfriends.”
The Seven Keys to Choosing Your Friends Are:
1. Do they have a good track record?
You can tell a lot about people by what they have done/ A lot of people talk the talk but the question is, are they actually living what they are talking about?/ Jesus said we can know a person by his fruit or actions (Matt. 12:33)/ They can say they are moral and have high standards, but what do their actions say?
2. Do they respect your principles?
You have strong morals and say, I’m going to do what is right and your so called friends try to get you to do otherwise then you need to get rid of these so called friends/ Then GET AWAY! (Prov. 13:20).
3. Do they give or receive ministry from you?
Jesus said if you are not hot or cold, He will spew you out of His mouth/ Don’t be neutral/ I also don’t want to spend most of my time with people that are neutral/ I really enjoy hanging around people that I can give to, and will receive from me; or people that deposit good character into my life/ I’ve found that my close friends do both/ There are some days God really gives me something for them and other times they have something for me.
4. Do they sharpen your ax?
Are you improved by being with this person? / I thank God for people that sharpen me and make me a better person, and that’s exactly what good friends will do (Prov. 27:17)/ It’s essential to have friends that sharpen and challenge us, egging us on to excellence.
5. Do they build you up?
God wants us built up, not beat up/ I’ve found some people, because of their personal self-esteem, love to rip the people they are around to shreds with their words/ I wonder, why would anybody hang around somebody like that? / Just to be accepted by them?/ You don’t need to waste your time with people like that/ We are to encourage one another and build each other up/ Make sure the people you spend your time with do the same (1 Thess. 5:11).
6.Do they treat others well?
I’ve got a friend that told me the quickest way to find out about someone is to find out what he is saying about others/ If people are selfish and judgmental toward others, I can promise eventually they will be that way toward you (Rom. 13:9).
7. Do they encourage your destiny?
I am so grateful for the people God brings across my path! / Those friends will believe in you more that you believe in yourself/ They see something in you that nobody else sees!/ They don’t want to take advantage of your gifts or control you for their personal advantage, but they want to see you walk in God’s destiny, reaching your full, rich potential.
The people we should be hanging with should be encouragers and not discouragers. God puts it this way in Ephesians 4:29: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”
If a person is not a wholesome talker, and isn’t building you up for your benefit, find someone who is.
If you want to grow and maximize your gifts and calling, choosing your friends is one of the most important decisions you will ever make/
Remember, if we want friends in our lives that have these seven qualities, we need to show ourselves friendly with the same qualities (Prov. 18:24).
KJV. Iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friends.
Define countenance: A look or attitude indicative of encouragement or of moral support. To encourage in the right direction.
NLT. As iron sharpens iron, a friend sharpens a friend.
Introduction:
Centuries before the birth of Christ, Solomon gathered the wisdom sayings that make up the book of Proverbs/ One of the wisdom sayings is, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”
The blacksmith in Solomon’s day was one of the most important individuals in town/ Not only did he spend hours between a hot fire and an anvil, he also was a potter, a weaver, and carpenter, and a fix-it man/ He knew how to make and repair household objects, and he knew how to sharpen farm tools and weapons as well/
Every village had a blacksmith like this/ People went to him every year to get their plows and axe heads sharpened/ They had seen the burly citizen with blackened hands often/ They knew the sounds that came from his workshop/ The repetitive pounding of his hammer against to anvil was a distinct sound/ Solomon’s audience immediately understood what was meant by the words, “Iron sharpens iron.”
They had also seen friends sharpen each other/ Friendships are forged out of many experiences/ Friendship is evidenced when storytelling turns to laughter/ Friendship is experienced when there are times of difficulty and hardships/ Friends don’t let their friends down/ The bonds of friendship grow stronger as friends face challenges together/ Friendships can last and entire lifetime/ God gives us the gift of being able to relate to others./ He expects us to use the gift to its fullest/ In Solomon’s day, and in ours, it is important to understand the challenge of the words, “Friends sharpen friends.”
Developing friendships is crucial in life:
Sometimes it is easier to remember the need to sharpen farm instruments than the need to sharpen our relationships with others/ The values have somehow switched/ Life gets busy/ Not so busy we can’t sharpen the hoe in time to weed the garden, just too busy to spend time with a friend/ This week it’s the hoe/ Next week, the shovel/ Soon we’re sharpening spearheads/ Before you know it, we’ll be sharpening the sword/ That’s what happens when we ignore the spiritual discipline of friendship & fellowship.
Solomon wanted his people to see the link/ Spiritual dullness has a tendency to keep us from seeing the obvious/ The image of iron sharpening iron reminds each of us that friendships really do matter.
Digging into the Hebrew words of this text is like digging into a gold mine/ The word that we translate “face” comes to us from the original language with the word “Paniym.”/ This common, everyday word has several shades of meaning, each of which could apply to the proverb before us/ The obvious meaning is a reference to the face/ Paniym is how a person looks/ Our facial expressions and characteristics let other’s know who we are as well as what we are thinking/ The writer is telling us that good friends help us look better/ If we want to have better looks, we need to choose better friends.
Friends lift the faces of friends/ We enjoy being with our friends because we share life together/ We laugh together, enjoying, “Inside jokes” and recalling stories from our past/ Friends lift the face of theirs friends/ Friends make life’s journey more enjoyable/ Seeing a good friend brings a smile to our faces and joy to our hearts/
Another shade of meaning expressed by the Hebrew word is similar to that expressed in our English usage of the word “face.” /Paniym can convey the idea of how a person sees things/ Friends help us gain a clearer perspective on issues that may concern or confuse us/ They help us understand the reality of situations when we are oblivious to the obvious. /Real friends place honesty over the opinions of others.
A third shade of meaning is, “That which goes in front of.”/In the midst of hard days, difficult decisions, or even personal failures, friends help friends see things in front of them a little better/ Friends provide a glimpse of a future with more possibility. Friends see what you think can’t be done, and help you believed you can do it/ The first lesson of this proverb is simple: Our choice of friends is critical/
In 2nd Timothy 2:22, Paul brings together a statement that helps me see the remedy for spiritual dullness in my life/ To his young friend in the ministry Paul writes, “Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace.”/ This is good advice and had Paul not given further instruction, it would be a very strong word of encouragement/ But this verse goes on to include the words, “along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” /
Paul told Timothy that his choice of friends was critical./ The people that you choose to call your friends are critical because your friends sharpen you; they determine how you see the future and how you set your values/
Just who are our friends these days?/ Our friends are not always the best friends for us/ They may be friends of a television sitcom or the cultural heroes from our sports and entertainment worlds/ Often, they don’t stand for the things we say we believe in, yet we spend time with them each and every week/ We adjust our schedules to visit with them, and we are always on time/ If we can’t be with them, we set our VCR’S./ In the process we grow spiritually dull/ I wonder what Jerry Springer stands for other than Trash…?/
Our choice of friends may even be taking a critical, unrecoverable toll on the relationships that are supposed to be primary to us/ We are left with a dull marriage, a dull relationship with our children, or even a dull sense of intimacy with our Heavenly Father/ God doesn’t intend for us to lose our sharpness in these arrears/ We choose spiritual dullness when we choose to wrong friends/
Spiritual dullness is dangerous for at least three reasons:
1) Spiritual dullness means that we have lost the discerning edge in life and no longer cut well.
A dull scalpel lacks the sufficient edge to remove a cancerous growth/ No surgeon would want to make an uncertain incision/ It’s too dangerous/ Just as sharpness is valued to the physician, so spiritual sharpness matters to the believer/
2) Spiritual dullness requires us to overcompensate in the flesh.
A dull knife can cause an accident due to the user’s overcompensation for its dullness/Using unnecessary force, the blade could slip and cause damage to others/ This happens when we are spiritually dull/ We overcompensate by relying on our own strengths instead of God’s strength/ When this happens, we always live with regret/
3) A danger is that pretty soon; we get used to dullness and learn to live with it:
We give up trying to please God because we feel we never will/ We get used to a life with no spiritual passion and no spiritual direction, we are not angry with God, we’ve just grown spiritually dull and assume that He understands or doesn’t mine/
It isn’t God’s intent for us to live spiritually dull lives/ This is why He gives us such a powerful image in this proverb/ Our choice of friends is critical/ Choosing better friends may be the most spiritual thing we do today/
Your choice to be a friend is critical:
There is a second lesson in this proverb, and it’s easy to forget/ Not only is your choice of friends critical, but your choice to be a friend is critical as well/ There are people in your sphere of influence who need a real friend/ Let me show you what I mean/
Take this knife for example, and think of it as someone God has put in your sphere of influence/ Now see yourself as this wet rock/ Listen to the sound that friendship makes. This is the sound of friendship/
I talked with several friends over the last couple of weeks since my daddy fell and then passed away/ Each time as we talked I was encouraged and lifted up/ When we talked this is what it sounded like in my mind and heart/ The godly friends cared enough about me and my family to take time for us/ I would share my thoughts and they would share their experiences from what they had already gone through/
Some of you have been like this knife in the past/ You were dull and in need of someone with love and character who would let you rub up against them for awhile/ Remember that was friendship/ Today, there are some of you who need to become like this wet rock/ It’s been around a while/ It’s sharpened many blades in the past. / Somewhere near you there is someone needing to be sharpened/ All you have to do is listen/
Next object I have here is similar to a wet rock or steele, but it’s for difficult task/ It’s a steel file/ A file smoothes out the rough spots in our lives./ Listen to the sound of friendship it makes/
God knows the rough edges in our lives/ I have mine, and you have yours/ In His wisdom, God allows people to come into our lives who serve as the file to smooth away the rough spots that have emerged from pride and ego/ These people love us, but they have the gift of confrontation and are not afraid to use it/ I don’t always enjoy the confrontation, but I have grown to appreciate the work that God does through them in my life/
The next object that demonstrates the truth of Iron sharpening is this old pair of shears/The shepherd holds the sheep with one hand, and with the other hand he carefully cut the wool off the body of the sheep…/…shears are made by joining two blades together with rivets/ These rivets were not intended to come apart/ You cannot shear the sheep with only one of these blades./ You can kill the sheep with only one blade, but you cannot shear it/
This serves as an important lesson for us/ The kingdom work that we’ve been called to do will not be accomplished by individual effort nor by complete union of thought/ It takes all of us/ Together, we can do more for the kingdom that we can individually/ These shears could represent our church, your marriage, this Sunday school class, or even our church staff/ But each time, they point to the image of us working together with others/ When the blades cross, they sharpen each other/ Iron sharpens iron, and friends sharpen friends.
Personal relationships matter/ Remember what Paul said in closing his letter to the Philippians church?/“I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord.” (Phil: 4:2) Again he said, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18.) We simply do not have the luxury of living out of fellowship with other believers/ If we think we do, we are duller than we thought.
My last object is an anvil/ I was going to bring one but it was just to heavy to lift all by my self/ This just shows that I need help to do the things that need to be done/ The anvil was my daddy’s/ It weighs about 150 pounds/ When I was young I could pick it up several times in succession/ It has not changed much in all these years./ It came from a blacksmith back in my daddy’s family’s history/ It was made in the eighteen hundreds./Unlike me, it has not lost its shape in all the years since it was made.
The smitty would heat the object in the fire until it was white-hot/ Then, he would place it on the anvil and strike it with a hammer over and over again/ When necessary, he would heat it again in the fire and repeat the process—from the fire to the hammer, the fire to the hammer, again and again—until the object was perfected.
But listen to the lesson I learned/ You are not the fire/ You are not the hammer/ But in a world where both exist, we need friends who are as steady as the anvil/ God uses the fiery trails and the hammering struggles we go through in life to perfect our character/ God also used the friends who are willing to come along side us supporting us, encouraging us in difficult times/ Being a friend means that we are going to remain loyal in tough times/
These objects provide for us the feel and sound of friendship/ “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friends.”
Friendship is characterized by the sounds of praying, mentoring, holding high expectations, listening, confronting, forgiving, caring, and modeling/ “Friends sharpenfriends.”
The Seven Keys to Choosing Your Friends Are:
1. Do they have a good track record?
You can tell a lot about people by what they have done/ A lot of people talk the talk but the question is, are they actually living what they are talking about?/ Jesus said we can know a person by his fruit or actions (Matt. 12:33)/ They can say they are moral and have high standards, but what do their actions say?
2. Do they respect your principles?
You have strong morals and say, I’m going to do what is right and your so called friends try to get you to do otherwise then you need to get rid of these so called friends/ Then GET AWAY! (Prov. 13:20).
3. Do they give or receive ministry from you?
Jesus said if you are not hot or cold, He will spew you out of His mouth/ Don’t be neutral/ I also don’t want to spend most of my time with people that are neutral/ I really enjoy hanging around people that I can give to, and will receive from me; or people that deposit good character into my life/ I’ve found that my close friends do both/ There are some days God really gives me something for them and other times they have something for me.
4. Do they sharpen your ax?
Are you improved by being with this person? / I thank God for people that sharpen me and make me a better person, and that’s exactly what good friends will do (Prov. 27:17)/ It’s essential to have friends that sharpen and challenge us, egging us on to excellence.
5. Do they build you up?
God wants us built up, not beat up/ I’ve found some people, because of their personal self-esteem, love to rip the people they are around to shreds with their words/ I wonder, why would anybody hang around somebody like that? / Just to be accepted by them?/ You don’t need to waste your time with people like that/ We are to encourage one another and build each other up/ Make sure the people you spend your time with do the same (1 Thess. 5:11).
6.Do they treat others well?
I’ve got a friend that told me the quickest way to find out about someone is to find out what he is saying about others/ If people are selfish and judgmental toward others, I can promise eventually they will be that way toward you (Rom. 13:9).
7. Do they encourage your destiny?
I am so grateful for the people God brings across my path! / Those friends will believe in you more that you believe in yourself/ They see something in you that nobody else sees!/ They don’t want to take advantage of your gifts or control you for their personal advantage, but they want to see you walk in God’s destiny, reaching your full, rich potential.
The people we should be hanging with should be encouragers and not discouragers. God puts it this way in Ephesians 4:29: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”
If a person is not a wholesome talker, and isn’t building you up for your benefit, find someone who is.
If you want to grow and maximize your gifts and calling, choosing your friends is one of the most important decisions you will ever make/
Remember, if we want friends in our lives that have these seven qualities, we need to show ourselves friendly with the same qualities (Prov. 18:24).
posted by Fisherman For Christ at 8/16/2007 01:04:00 PM
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