Day 169 – Proverbs 27-29

Talking Points

• You do not know what a day will bring! Isn’t that the truth?
• Again, God tells us that it is better to have a genuine, voluntary compliment, than to praise ourselves.
• We are to be hardworking, generous people, taking God at His Word.
• For some reason, we like to flirt with sin. Even knowing the dangers, we try to get as close to it as possible, skirting around the edges. God tells us “a prudent man sees evil and hides himself.” He warns us, “Proceed and pay the penalty” (27:12). The New Testament tells us to flee, meaning to literally run.
• Hiding sin, concealing, or ignoring it does nothing to remedy it. We believe time and distance will eventually bring relief. It never does. But, God does have a remedy! Confessing our sin to Him and forsaking that sin (turning from it, literally abandoning it) brings forgiveness, restoration, and relief. Praise the LORD!

Thoughts

“Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (27:17).

A literal reading says that one man sharpens his friend’s countenance. To sharpen is to make keen or alert. The idea is to be a tool that is better and ready for use as a result of the process. The word for countenance carries the meaning of the face or simply, the person — probably best understood as the self.

Don’t miss that the interaction in this relationship is mutual; it’s reciprocal. Both are sharpened, both are sharpening. And, it happens because the participants are both “iron.”

The full picture here is two like-minded friends interacting with each other with the result that both are better for it. In a world full of interactions that wear us out and pull us down, a world of “friends” who lull us into compromise, thank God for the actual friends who sharpen us, making us better!