“A wicked envoy falls into trouble, but a trustworthy courier brings healing. Poverty and disgrace come to those who ignore discipline, but the one who accepts correction will be honored. Desire fulfilled is sweet to the taste, but to turn from evil is detestable to fools. The one who walks with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm.” (Proverbs‬ ‭13‬:‭17‬-‭20‬ ‭CSB‬‬ – Read the chapter)

One of the best observations about friendship I’ve ever heard was the big idea of a sermon: Your friends will determine the direction and quality of your life. That, as they say, will preach. The people we choose to surround ourselves with will unavoidably have an impact on our lives. And there’s a difference between people who are simply around us and people we allow to have access to our lives. It is the ones to whom we give access who will have the greatest impact. These people we need to choose carefully. Solomon agrees. Let’s talk about it.

One of the beautiful things about the proverbs is that they invite us to think deeply about them. Like we said yesterday, many of them seem simple enough at first glance, but there’s always more if we’re willing to wait for it. Consider the first proverb from this next set. “A wicked envoy falls into trouble, but a trustworthy courier brings healing.”

At first glance this seems like a simple observation that people who bring bad news are trouble, but people who bring good news bring healing. But let’s think about this a bit further. Is that the only thing it is saying? What is a trustworthy courier? That is someone we can rely on to accomplish the task they have been given. More specifically, it is someone we can trust to deliver a message faithfully. Why would this person bring healing? Well, that depends somewhat on the message he delivers, but when he can be trusted to deliver news that will reconcile relationships, healing is on the way. Generally speaking, when we can trust that our messages are being delivered faithfully and well, that’s going to be good more than it won’t.

On the other hand, you would think that the contrast to the second part of the proverb would be that a wicked envoy causes trouble. But what does Solomon say? “A wicked envoy falls into trouble.” The messenger who can’t be trusted may indeed cause trouble, but ultimately, he is going to find himself in trouble. Why? Because the one who sends him will be after him for his failures, and the one who has the message delivered incorrectly will be after him once he learns the truth. It’s a lose-lose situation. If you are called on to deliver a message for some reason, make sure you get it right. You’ll ultimately cause yourself headaches if you don’t.

“Poverty and disgrace come to those who ignore discpline, but the one who accepts correction will be honored.” We do not on our own know all the right ways to navigate our way through this life. We need discipline in two different senses. We need corrective discipline when we drift from the path of life, but we also need training discipline to help us stay on the right track in the first place. Those two forms of discipline act as guardrails to help us stay on the path of righteousness as we go. Sometimes we’ll bounce on one, and sometimes we’ll lean into the other. But when both are in place, honor will be our prize.

But when we refuse to heed those guardrails and the direction and correction they provide, very little will go right in our lives. We’ll face poverty for it, Solomon says. There is a formula that sociologists know will lead to wealth and flourishing in the vast majority of the cases. Get an education, get a job, get married, have kids, stay married for life. If you do those things in that order, the odds of your being financially stable and successful are infinitely higher than if you leave any of those out or get them out of order. And if you run into poverty because of the foolish choices you have made (most notably refusing to accept discipline when it was presented to you), you are going to bear the disgrace of that. When discipline comes to your life, receive it as the gift that it is. Adjust accordingly, and you’ll never regret it.

“Desire fulfilled is sweet to the taste, but to turn from evil is detestable to fools.” There are some things that it takes effort to learn to enjoy. Take classical music, for example. There is a reason so many of those pieces of music have endured down through history. They are beautiful in a variety of ways. They are objectively good pieces of music. But enjoying them does not come naturally to us. We have to learn how to enjoy them. We have to learn about their forms and structures. We have to learn about the kinds of things the composers did to make them so beautiful. When we do that, the pleasures they produce almost never end. But those who refuse to learn, persist in a state of ignorance. To turn from that ignorance isn’t something someone who hasn’t developed the necessary wisdom will be able to do.

In the same sort of way, when we learn to desire the good things of God’s kingdom, having those desires fulfilled will be a wonderful treat for us. These desires don’t necessarily come naturally to us, though. They take work to develop. The pleasures of this world are much easier to pursue and enjoy. But their enjoyment is fleeting at best, and offers only a series of diminishing returns. If we get too stuck on them, though, turning from them will seem a terrible thing. Why would we want to give up something so easy in favor of something so hard? Because the hard is better, but it takes wisdom to see that. Start developing that wisdom now. You’ll be glad that you did.

“The one who walks with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm.” If you hang out with people who love Jesus and pursue godly wisdom with intentionality and passion, you will gradually come to reflect the same things in your own life. I had friends in college who started hanging out with a very different crowd than I did. Because of that, our lives gradually headed off in two very different directions. To the extent that you are able, surround yourself with people who invite you to pursue and become the best possible version of yourself. If you are always being influenced by people who invite you into trouble, you’ll gradually start to get into trouble with them. Nothing good will come of that. Choose wisely the people you allow to influence you. Eventually they’ll succeed and you’ll have to deal with the results.