Sunday (Father’s Day)
There are so many lessons to be learned from reading them. It talks about making good decisions, about choosing the right path, how to parent, how to guard your heart and your words. We learn how to be better followers of God. Today I want to focus on 27:6, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” (NKJV) The New Living Translations helps to explain this verse a little better, “Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy.”
Although we love flattery, it can actually do more harm. It fills our minds to the point where we could easily start thinking we are better than others, start thinking our wants are more important than anyone else’s. We think the world revolves around us and soon we become proud and boastful. (We see it happen with celebrities all the time.) Honest words that will stop someone from doing something wrong is what we need to hear. Unfortunately, we like to hear only what our “itching ears want to hear.” (2 Tim 4:3). Take for example, someone tells you, you are a good singer and because you want to be a good singer you believe them, when actually you are terrible. But you might be their boss and they don’t want to offend you. So you go along singing in front of people and everyone applauds you (and behind your back they laugh and roll their eyes) and before you know you find yourself on American Idol and you are now in front of millions of people, you are humiliated, because in truth you can’t sing at all. Wouldn’t it have been better to have had one of your friends tell you the truth in love and stopped you before it got that far?
I think maybe King Solomon probably experienced too many people flattering him and leading him down the wrong path, the path that would only lead to his demise.
Now think about David and Nathan (2 Samuel 12). Nathan stood up to the King and told him he was wrong in taking Bathsheba. I am sure that David felt the “wounds” of this chastisement, but because of it David was able to repent of his sins. And to be forgiven.
I don’t know if Solomon ever repented of his sins, or if anyone ever disagreed with him, but I do know that Solomon also wrote in Prov 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”
So my question then is, who are you listening to? Friend or enemy? Truth or flattery?
Blessings on the day!
Pastor Kathy