FOUR PROPHETS OF YOUR FUTURE
5/7/23
“Who Your Friends Are”
Proverbs 12:26 “The righteous should choose his friends carefully, for the way of the wicked leads them astray.”
Want to begin a series today called Four Prophets of Your Future—They are:
1. Who your friends are
2. What Your habits are
3. What you worship
4. Who you’re learning from
So let’s begin with the crucial importance of Who Your Friends Are.
Now, when I say friend I mean who you primarily run with, talk to, share your secrets with, and spend most of your time with.
These are the people who you have allowed into the innermost recesses of your heart and life.
They know you better than anyone else, and you them.
You might call them your BFF, or your close friend, or your soul mate, or the one or ones you’re closest to.
Now, next to Jesus, no one influences who you become more than your friends.
In fact, show me who your friends are and I’ll pretty accurately predict who and where you will be spiritually five years from now.
Notice the warning—be very careful and wise about who you choose as friends, because if they’re the wrong kind of friends they will lead you astray—away from God and the kind of lifestyle he wants you to live.
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On the other hand, if you choose the right kind of friends—godly friends who are seeking Jesus and are submitted to His word—it will be an incredible blessing to your walk with God!
The Bible says, “As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.”—Prov. 27:17 NLT
Listen to the same verse in the ERV: “As one piece of iron sharpens another, so friends keep each other sharp.”
The right kind of godly friend helps keep your walk with God sharp—they add to your spiritual keenness, help you to avoid sin, and encourage you to follow the path God has laid out for you!
Conversely, the wrong kind of friend dulls your walk with God, leads you into compromise after compromise, and influences you to go down the wrong path in life.
—Someone once said, “When God wants to bless you, He puts a person in your life. When Satan wants to destroy you, He puts a person in your life.”
In other words, both God and Satan understand the awesome power that friendships and relationships exert over us.
So we are to be very wise who we bring into our inner circle, who we allow into the inner sanctuary of our soul,
who we trust with our deepest secrets,
and who we allow to capture our heart.
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Let me give you two examples from Scripture of both good and bad friendships.
First,
I. David and Jonathan
We all know who David was, but maybe not so much about Jonathan.
Jonathan was King Saul’s son, and was the heir apparent to the throne of Israel.
David and Jonathan first met on the heels of David’s spectacular victory over Goliath.
The Bible says that as Saul was interviewing David following his victory, Jonathan was standing nearby when, “Saul said to him (David), “Whose son are you, young man?”
So David answered, “I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.”—1 Samuel 17:58
The Bible goes on to record, “Now when he had finished speaking to Saul, ‘the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.’”—1 Samuel 18:1
Now, when it says that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, it means “bound up,” or melded together…metaphorically, “to be allied with.”
It is an expression of deep, pure affection, a joining of two godly souls under the influence and touch of God.
They were both heroic, kindred spirits who saw in each other a mirror expression of their own powerful faith in God.
One commentator writes, “Jonathan and David possessed one thing in common—an intense, unswerving belief in the power of Jehovah of Israel to keep and to save all who trusted in Him.”—Ellicott
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And then secondly, it goes on to say in verse 3, “Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan took off the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, even to his sword and his bow and his belt.”
Jonathan giving David his robe, his armor, sword, bow, and belt was not only an expression of honor, he was also helping clothe David with what he would need to walk in the court of the king, for:
“Saul took him (David) that day, and would not let him go home to his father’s house anymore.”—vs. 2
So we have a picture of what godly friendship does—it unselfishly adds to, contributes to, and helps prepare a friend with what they need for God’s highest and best!
A godly friendship is a huge boost and blessing from God for your spiritual growth!
Again, listen to this verse: “As one piece of iron sharpens another, so friends keep each other sharp.”—Prov. 12:26
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And we find that this godly friendship proved to be a lifesaver for David.
When Saul began to turn on him through jealousy and sought to kill him, Jonathan became his lifeboat, warning him of what his father’s next move would be.
It was through Jonathan that David, the future king of Israel, was preserved alive!
Think about it: Without Jonathan and their friendship the majority of psalms and other large sections of the Bible wouldn’t exist,
And the lineage through which Christ came—the lineage of David—would have been cut off.
See what an incredible value this godly friendship proved to be!
God was glorified through it,
David’s divine purpose on earth was fulfilled,
and Satan’s wicked plans to stop God’s Messiah were thwarted!
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And now we have the flip side to a GOOD friendship—a BAD friendship.
1 Cor. 15:33 “Don’t be fooled: “Bad friends will ruin good habits.”—ERV
Now, this verse tells us what makes a bad friendship, or how you can know you’re in one—it ruins good habits.
The Greek word translated into habits is ‘MORALS.’
The Bible is warning that over time you will be heavily influenced in your moral, ethical life by who you run with.
—You will become like who you run with because Scripture says,
“Can two walk together unless they be agreed?”
You won’t walk down the road of life very long with someone unless you come into agreement with how they’re living.
If you’re not in agreement at the first, you will either part ways or begin a slow slide of one compromise after another in order to be with them.
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When you read the OT about God’s dealings with his own people, you soon see that God constantly warned his people not to hang with or intermarry with pagan idol worshippers.
Listen to God’s warning, “You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods.”—Deut. 7:3-4 ESV
And amazingly, this is exactly what happened with the wisest man on the earth—King Solomon.
The Bible says that Solomon was the greatest man of his day.
Scripture says, “The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart.”—1 Kings 10:24 NIV
Solomon wrote much of the book of Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, the book of Ecclesiastes, and two psalms.
“He could speak with authority about all kinds of plants…He could also speak about animals, birds, insects, and fish.”—1 Kings 4:33 NLT
So aside from being king of the greatest nation on earth, he was an authority on botany, zoology, ornithology, entomology, and ichthyology!
With all this wisdom, all this knowledge, all from God in answer to prayer, you would think such a man would never walk away from the Lord!
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But he did, and it happened through relationships.
1 Kings 11:4 NKJV “For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods;”
The great king Solomon was taken down by wrong relationships!
He wound up worshiping idols: “Solomon worshiped Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech, the detestable god of the Ammonites.”—1 Kings 11:5 NLT
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Now, how do you know you’re in a wrong friendship or dating relationship? Here are 4 warning signs:
• You’re having to compromise your Biblical convictions to stay in it.
• Your walk with the Lord is not what it was before the relationship.
• Your joy and peace are gone—you may even be having to drink or use some other type of numbing drug to silence your protesting conscience.
• And lastly, people that know you best are noticing you’re not the same, you’ve changed.
So what do you do if one or more of these are true?
Make a clean break!
Don’t sacrifice your walk with God on the altar of a wrong relationship!
Jesus said, “Those who love their father or mother more than they love me are not worthy of me. And those who love their son or daughter more than they love me are not worthy of me. 38 Those who will not accept the cross that is given to them when they follow me are not worthy of me. 39 Those who try to keep the life they have will lose it. But those who give up their life for me will find true life.”—Matt. 10:37-39