All right, so we are coming to the very end of Proverbs now. We are in chapter 27, and there are 31 total chapters, so we only have a few more lessons that we can actually do right to the end of the year. So, like we said a few weeks ago, we didn't have any weather cancellations, so we're gonna basically be right on track to finish out right at the end of the school year here. So, we are in Chapter 27 tonight, and like a lot of these, go ahead and put your head down. Thank you. Like a lot of these chapters that we've gone through, there's a lot of really good, wise sayings that we could take a lot of time, you know, taking a look at and learning from. But what I wanna focus on tonight is there are several verses that are gonna teach us about how to be, how to be a good friend, and how do you identify someone else who would be a good friend, okay? So there's kind of two different things we can be looking at as we look at these verses. So the very first thing we're gonna look at is verse one in chapter 27, and it says this, it says, do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring. All right, what do you think that means? Somebody raise their hand. Don't just like say, oh, tomorrow's going to be... Well, like, if you're doing something, you'll, like, brag about it. Okay, right. So the idea here is don't talk about tomorrow like it's already happened and you're in complete control of it. How many of you are in complete control of what is going to happen to you tomorrow? Oh, good. Nobody raised their hand. That's awesome. Good job. You've learned this lesson already, right? How many of you have thought that you knew exactly what was going to happen the next day, and all of a sudden, just everything goes sideways, and nothing you thought was going to happen actually happens? All right. I think we've all had that, right? I think the last two years have proven that we don't know what's coming tomorrow. If we ever needed something to teach us that, These last two years have shown us some things that we never thought we were going to see. So yeah, that first verse there, and now how does that apply to being a good friend or seeing who a good friend is? Well, to be a good friend, you should not be arrogant and selfish. And that's kind of what this first verse is talking about. Someone who brags about tomorrow and all the great things that they're going to do as if everything revolves around them, That's probably not going to be a great person. They're probably not going to be a great friend. And if you're behaving that way, you're probably not being a very good friend to those people around you either. Because it's all about me, and it's all about what I'm going to do, and my plans. That's what that first verse is talking about. We need to be careful that we don't start to fall into that trap of thinking that we're in control of everything, and everything revolves around us. And that's going to lead to it. to problems. All right, that kind of falls into verse number two here, okay? Verse two says, let another praise you and not your own mouth, a stranger and not your own lips. You may have an idea of what that might be talking about. What does it mean to let another praise you and not your own mouth, Ian? All right, good, good. Here's another version. This is maybe a little more common, kind of a common way to say this, but it says, let someone else praise you, not your own mouth. A stranger, not your own lips. Now, if you're doing something that's good, That's good, right? We're supposed to do good things. We're supposed to be helpful. But if you're doing something good and you take a lot of time making sure everybody knows that you're doing a lot of good things. That starts to change it a little bit, doesn't it? It becomes more about you and everybody thinking that you're a really good person than it does about the good things that you're actually doing. So what this is talking about is if you want to be a good friend or if you want to find someone who's a good friend, then you just need to do the right thing. Good. Be helpful. Be a good friend. Don't spend all your time talking about how you've done all these good things. Spend your time doing good things and helping other people. All right? And if you do that, what this is saying is you won't have to worry about talking about yourself because people who don't even know you are going to see how you live and how you treat other people. And they're going to be telling other people about that. You don't have to worry about it. That's what God is telling us here, what Proverbs is telling us. Okay, so those are our first two things. First two ways that we can be a good friend or that we can tell if someone is going to be a good friend. All right, now we're going to move down to verse number five and six, and they kind of go together. Verse five says, better an open rebuke than hidden love. Better an open rebuke than hidden love. What do you think that means? What is a rebuke? Do you know? That's not really a word we probably use a lot. What's a rebuke? Yeah, kind of. It's telling someone, if you were to rebuke me, you would say, wait, wait, wait, I think you're wrong about that. Yes, correct. That's a good word for it. Right. So what it's saying is, if someone corrects you and you actually need to be corrected, you've done something wrong and they correct you, that is helpful, right? How helpful is someone not actually telling you that they love you or that they care about you? Is that helpful? No, that's not helpful, is it? So what this verse is saying, it's saying, You should, one, we should be honest with each other, not cruel or mean in the things that we say. But if someone is doing something wrong, it's OK to say, hey, that's not a good thing. You should stop doing that. But it also means that you should be very open with your encouragement of other people. If someone does something really well or they do a good job, don't just hide it and be like, well, they did a really good job, and I'm kind of jealous. So I'm not going to tell them. That's not very helpful, is it? In fact, that causes problems. We've talked about that in some other proverbs. So, to be a good friend, you should encourage people when they do something well. All right, that's what it means about being, that hidden love is not a great thing. Love is supposed to be something you show other people, right? It's supposed to be something you share with others, not hide. Okay? So let's go on to verse number six here, it says, Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuses are the kisses of an enemy. All right. So faithful for a wound doesn't sound good, does it? How many people want to be wounded? No. No. We don't really like getting hurt, do we? Either physically hurt, like how fun is it to fall down and scrape your knee really bad? Not so much fun. We don't like to have our feelings hurt either, do we? No, it's not fun to have your feelings hurt, but sometimes we kind of need to have our feelings hurt. If we're doing something wrong, like we talked about earlier, someone needs to step in and say, you're actually wrong. You need to change what you're doing. So it's saying a friend, a real friend, is someone who will step in and tell you that. So that's kind of like that wound. Like maybe they're hurting your pride. Maybe you thought, oh, I'm really great. I'm awesome. And they say, well, there's actually a few things that you need to work on. And then you might be like, oh, that hurts my pride. So that wounds me. But that's a good thing, isn't it, for a friend to help keep us humble, right? What if you're just around someone who's just always telling you how great you are, all the time, no matter what you do? And this is where it's saying here that profuse, that means like constant, all the time, no matter what, good or bad, this person is always telling you you're doing awesome, you're doing great. Now, we talked about encouragement, that's a good thing, right? So we have to be careful that we don't say, well, encouragement's bad. We shouldn't do that. No. This is saying that the person doing that, they actually might not have your best interests. So in the culture that the writer of Proverbs lived in, it was a common thing for people to greet each other with a kiss. And it was just something you did, whether you like that person or not. Like, they would just come up and maybe hug and kind of kiss each other on the cheek. Have you ever seen that in other countries where people do that? OK, well, that's what they're talking about. They're talking about you meeting someone and they come up as if they're your closest friend in the world, but they're really your enemy. You need to be careful about that. So just because someone maybe tells you the truth and it hurts your feelings, that doesn't mean that they're not your friend. And just because someone is always telling you how awesome you are, that doesn't always mean that they're your friend. So We need to be careful. What are they talking about when they tell us those things, when they're behaving that way? Do they really care about who we are? All right, verse number nine. Verse number nine says this, it says, oil and perfume make the heart glad. And the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel. So this is talking about two really important, valuable things. Just hang on a second. Two really valuable things during that time, oil and perfume. They were very expensive. If you had that, it probably meant somebody had given you a really great gift or you were wealthy. And so when you receive those things, when you get a really good gift, that makes you happy, right? It says it makes your heart glad. It says the real gift from that friend is not necessarily the value of any gift that they give you. The real value is do they give you really good advice? When you have a hard decision, it's better to have a friend not just who likes to give good gifts, but someone who is wise, right? Someone who can give you really good wise counsel. And on the other side of that, we should be that type of friend too, right? We should be the type of friend that we don't just give nice gifts to people, but we actually are able to help them when they have a problem and help them out, help them figure out the right decision to make. All right, now number 10 is a little bit strange, and maybe when you get older, you'll understand this a little better. But it says, do not forsake your friend or your father's friend, and do not go to your brother's house in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away. All right, what is the writer of Proverbs talking about here? Well, what they're talking about is sometimes, have you ever heard the phrase, blood is better than water? Or closer, what is it? Blood is, I can't remember the saying. Thicker. Blood is thicker than water. That's what I was thinking. All right. So what that says is that family is everything. That no matter what, family is always going to be there for you. And that is true a lot of the time. Family is a blessing from God. But what the writer is saying here is, don't be so insistent that family is the only people that you'll ever talk to about a problem you may have or look for help from, because you might be ignoring a great friend that's right there next to you. Someone who's right there and can help you. Sometimes you're not close to your family. Sometimes you don't live close to them. Sometimes you're a long ways away and counting on your family to come and help you when you're in trouble, that might not work. And so what God is saying is here, you need good friends. You need a good neighbor that you live close to. And I would say this is something that that's why we have a local church that we attend. And we can become good friends and be neighbors and all those things inside the church. That's one of those things that the church is supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be helping out, looking out for each other, encouraging each other. Maybe when our family isn't close, all right? This can be a family to us as well here at the church. So let's keep going. We've got a couple more verses here. So this one's kind of funny, verse 14. So this might be a good one for you as kids because sometimes I think maybe you think this would be funny. to do. Verse 14 says, whoever blesses his neighbor. Now that sounds good, right? Whoever blesses his neighbor. We should be blessing people, right? We should be helpful. We should be doing good things. But listen to what this person does. Whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing. What does that mean? What do you think that means? Well, I don't know if it's exactly talking about that. It's talking about somebody thinking that you did something really nice for them or something that was kind of mean. Now, how many of you like on a Saturday morning when you don't have to get up, you don't have school, and you don't have any plans, how many of you would really love it if your brother or sister came in and just shouted, Wake up! It's Saturday! At like six o'clock in the morning. No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No Are you going to think that that's a good thing? No. No. All right. So what the writer is saying in here is sometimes you have to consider the intention of what you're doing. And is the person that you're doing this thing for, are they going to consider it a blessing? All right? Sometimes you need to take that into account. Sometimes you think, oh, well, I'm going to do this good thing for this person. But then it turns out, well, that wasn't really helpful to them. Or they didn't really see it as a blessing. All right? So we need to be thinking of all those things. If you want to be a good friend, maybe you find out exactly what would be a blessing to them and do that for them instead of just thinking, I'm going to do this awesome thing. I think it's great. And so they have to think it's great too. Because really, if you're thinking that way, who are you thinking about? Yourself. Yeah, you're kind of thinking about yourself, right? So when you want to do something nice for someone, you should be thinking about them and how they're going to appreciate the thing that you want to do for them. OK, so that one's kind of a funny one, because I think we can all agree that somebody coming in and shouting, wake up, in the morning is an annoying thing, right? Okay, so let's keep going. We've got a couple more verses here. Verse 17 says, iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. How many of you have ever watched someone sharpen a knife? How do you sharpen a knife? What do you use to sharpen a knife? Right. Do you know? OK, you scrape it against what? What do you scrape the knife against? A steel rod? OK, yeah, some sort of other metal, right? But normally you think, well, if you rub a knife on metal, that's going to make it more dull, right? But the idea is if you do it just right, if you know what you're doing, you have that angle right, you actually will sharpen that blade against another piece of metal. And what the writer of Proverbs is saying here, he's saying that's what good friends do. They kind of knock off those rough edges, or maybe the negative things that are in your life that you shouldn't have as part of your life. Maybe a good friend can kind of help you, hey, that's something you should get rid of. And they can help you to change the way you behave or the way that you treat people or the way that you act. They can help you keep track of that and help you to recognize, oh man, I'm being selfish right now. Remember, we talked about that friend that would maybe say something that's a wound, but it's intended to help you. It's intended to help you maybe follow God a little more closely. That's the kind of friend that we're talking about here, where two people help to sharpen each other, make themselves more useful. A dull knife is not as useful as a sharp knife, right? Well, that's what it's talking about here. We want to be useful. We want to have our lives be something that is useful to serve God, right? All right, well, we're just about done. We've got one more verse. You guys have been listening really well. So the last one is this, and it goes back to that first part about not boasting about yourself and telling everybody how great you are, but about other people saying good things about you. There can be kind of an issue with that too. Verse 21 says, the crucible is for silver and the furnace for gold. So when you want to use silver and gold, you have to heat them up really hot. And then they melt, and they get soft, and you can form them into something. And it burns away. It burns away all the bad stuff that you don't want when you make your piece of jewelry or whatever it is, and so that it's more pure. So they're saying that's how you make metal better, is by heating it up. But listen to what this says. It says, and a man is tested by his praise. What that means is, When other people are praising you, when you have done some good things, and everybody's talking about how good of a person you are, and how they love having you around, and you're so great, what starts to happen? Yeah, it's tempting to start thinking of those things about ourselves. And we go right back to that first verse where now all of a sudden we're letting somebody else say good things about us, but we're starting to think about ourselves too. And so what this verse is saying is you need to be careful When you start hearing other people praise you, you need to make sure that you don't let that start making you arrogant and selfish and thinking more of yourself than you should. So that's where it's saying you'll be tested by how you respond to other people praising you and saying good things about you. Because there have been a lot of people who started out humble and then once a A lot of people started saying a lot of great things about them. They become famous. And then all of a sudden, there's kind of this change where, well, now they're famous. And so now they start to act like someone that's famous. And they start treating other people maybe a little bit different, like maybe they're a little too important to be bothered with some people. How many of you have seen that? Maybe on a small scale, but I think we see that sometimes with famous sports stars or movie stars, people that started out, maybe they started out as really nice and humble people, and then as they got more and more fame, all of a sudden they became, people that you didn't really want to be around. Yes. All right. So that's kind of our last one. So that's something we need to be careful of, to be a good friend. Please sit down for a second. Thank you. We're just about done. All right. So to be a good friend, one, we need to be humble. We need to stop spending our time. We shouldn't be talking about ourselves and puffing ourselves up. And the other big thing is we need to be willing to allow someone else to tell us that we have some faults, some things that need to be corrected, some things that need to be fixed. And we need to understand that they're doing that to help us, okay? All right, let's pray and then, yes, we'll go to the park, all right. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time. I thank you for just the good listening. And I just thank you for all these good things that you teach us about how to be a good friend, how to tell if someone is a good friend for us to have. And I just pray that you would help us as we go through our life, that we would use our lives to honor you and to bless other people and to help them in the struggles that they may have. and to look for ways that we can encourage people. In Jesus' name, amen.