Friend

DEVOTION

PROVERBS

FRIEND

Prov 22:24-25

24 Do not make friends with a hot-tempered man, do not associate with one easily angered, 25 or you may learn his ways and get yourself ensnared.

NIV

The key word here is friend. The idea in the Hebrew means do not pasture with him, to not be part of the same flock as this hot-tempered man is. This certainly does not relieve us from sharing the gospel with him, or giving a witness of Christ working in our lives. But the idea is that we should not be running in the same crowd or socializing with this type of person on a regular basis, becoming close friends. We know it is true that it is easy to become somewhat like the people we associate with. That is for the most part we want to be like what people expect us to be. That old saying that we are not who we think we are, and we are not who they think we are, but we are who we think they think we are, may be at the center of this truth. That is if we hang around with this hot-tempered man we begin to think they think we are like them and in order to associate with them we begin to get like them. It sounds confusing, but this is what Solomon is saying. If we associate with them, we will get caught up in the same kind of thinking and start being short-tempered ourselves. Again, this is not to say that we should exclude ourselves from all society so as to not allow any faction of it to have influence on us. We are to be involved with society, but being the influence rather than being influenced. However making friends with it, pasturing with it, implies we are living as the same flock, being led by the same shepherd. This is absolute not the case nor should it be. We have the Good Shepherd, Jesus who leads us beside still waters. The hot-tempered man has an entirely different shepherd that leads him into anger, into chaos and has but one agenda to snare us into his fold. But Jesus said we know the voice of our Shepherd and we listen only to his voice. So we can be in the world, telling the story of Jesus, but not of the world, living in the same manner as those in the world under the leadership, the shepherding of the evil one. We truly have but one real friend. He calls us friend. Let us not make friends with the world, but live as a friend of Jesus, calling out to the world, come unto him and he will give you rest. Let us be like our friend.