You Are Your Closest Friends

It's inevitable.  If your closest friends are ungodly, they will rub off on you and lead you astray.  They will slow you down and ultimately hinder you from your God-given destiny.

King Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, but he surrounded himself with ungodly women, and they led him astray (1 Kings 11:1-10).

Before the Israelites inhabited the Promised Land, God commanded them to destroy the Canaanites and to avoid intermarriage, because He knew that the Canaanites would pull them into idolatry.  And that's what happened.  After failing to completely destroy the Canaanites eventually rubbed off on the Israelites.  The Israelites committed the sin of idolatry, which ultimately led to their destruction (Ps 106:34-43).

King Joash was a godly king as long as he was under the influence of the priest Jehoiada.  But after the death of Jehoiada, he surrounded himself with the wrong men, and they influenced him to abandon the Lord and worship false gods (2 Chron 24).

Mike Tyson had a tough upbringing.  He was arrested 38 times before the age of 13.  He had no father; he grew up on the street.  But for a brief time he was living an upstanding life.  Why?  An older man named Cus D'amato became his legal guardian, took Tyson into his home, and mentored him.  Tyson's was headed in the right direction until he got a new mentor, a man by the name of Don King.  From then on Tyson went south, and we will never know the greatness he could have achieved.

When I was growing up my dad bought a movie called "Lonesome Dove," starring Robert Duval and Tommy Lee Jones.  It was one of my favorites, and if you haven't seen it, you're missing out.  Robert Duval played the character of Gus McRay.  One day Gus and his buddies catch a group of thieves, and among the thieves was an old friend of theirs, Jake Spoon, a former Texas Ranger.  Robert Duval said, "Go find some rope and a tree so we can hang these boys."  Jake said, "Come on Gus.  I'm not one of them.  I couldn't do what they did.  I was just riding with them."  God replied, "You crossed the line, Jake.  You ride with an outlaw, you die with an outlaw."  And they hung him.

King Solomon said it well in Proverbs 13:20b (CSB).  "A companion of fools will suffer harm."  The Apostle Paul agreed in 1 Corinthians 15:33 (NIV).  "Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”

When I was a kid I saw an illustration that has stuck with me over the years.  If you stand on a chair and try to pull someone up, it's virtually impossible.  But getting pulled down is easy.  It illustrates the truth that it's easier to get pulled down than to pull someone up.

So be careful about your closest friends.  Be careful about who you spend the bulk of your time with.  "If you are going to sleep in the sewer, you are going to smell like the sewer."

(Inspired by "Peer Pressure," a sermon by Tommy Nelson.)