Proverbs 18:20-24

Take these two together, because they are the chapter's verdict on the tongue. A man ends up eating his own words — fed, for better or worse, by whatever his mouth has produced. And the stakes could not be set higher: "Death and life are in the power of the tongue." Your tongue is a field, and you will be obliged to eat its harvest — and a man is bound to eat that fruit even if it turns out worse than hemlock. The tongue is either the poison or the antidote, depending entirely on how it is used; and it is the habitual use, not the occasional slip, that decides which crop comes up. So sow it carefully. Whoever loves the tongue — who lives by it, for blessing or for cursing — will eat accordingly. The only safe place to leave it is in prayer: O my God, take my heart within and my tongue without both into Thine own keeping.

A good wife is not a lucky break — she is favour from the LORD, a gift handed down from heaven. Notice what the verse takes for granted: the wife it means is a wife as she ought to be, which is why the word "good" is almost too weak; a bad wife, in the Bible's blunt reckoning, is no wife at all. Such a marriage is one of the most powerful instruments for good in the whole world — a godly spouse can do more to draw a man's heart toward God than almost any other earthly means; a good marriage is a means of grace. So find her the way Isaac found his — as an answer to prayer, received from the Lord's own hand — and "only in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 7:39). The unequal yoke is a fearful thing: picture two ships lashed together at sea by short chains — riveted into one hull they are safe, fully separated they are safe, but chained side by side while the waves move them differently, "they will rasp each other's sides off, and tear open each other's heart, and go down together." (Solomon, of all men, knew the wreck a wrong marriage makes — his thousand wives were the rock his happiness broke on; even the broken timbers serve to light a warning fire.) Choose with prayer, or you choose a curse.

A simple observation of how the world runs — the poor man has to plead, even for what he needs, while the rich man answers him roughly. The verse does double duty. To the poor man insulted: nothing strange has happened to you; this is the world, and your entreaties are quietly disciplining you toward the poverty of spirit God loves to bless. To the rich man: beware. The world's fine manners are often only the polish on selfishness, gracious to equals and brutal to the man underneath. And lift your eyes to the contrast that should melt every hard answer out of you: the One who is supremely rich is meek and tender, while we who are profoundly poor are the loud and demanding ones — yet our gracious Father never once answers His poor begging child roughly. Treat the powerless the way God treats you.

The chapter ends on friendship, and it ends on Christ. The first half is plain wisdom: if you want friends, be one — love begets love, and a friendship no one feeds will burn out for want of fuel. A true friend is a jewel as rare as it is precious, and the bond can run closer than blood — Jonathan stuck closer to David than David's own brothers did.

But the verse is not finished until it reaches its last clause, and that clause is only completely true of One. There is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother — and the full picture of those words is the Lord Jesus Christ. We need not force the verse into a coded prophecy; we reach Him by a surer road than word-study: the very idea of a friendship closer than a brother's is only ever complete in Him. He is at once the Brother born for our adversity and the Friend that sticks closer than any brother — present in temptation, in affliction, in sickness, in death, and through all eternity, "having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end" (John 13:1). Every earthly friend, even the truest, must finally let go — one man told of holding his dying brother's forehead until the aching stopped, and even that hand had to slacken in death. But "in the day of your deepest adversity, when even a born brother must let go his hold, that extremity is the opportunity of your best Friend." Make Him the first Friend of your youth and the Friend of your eternity. All other loves disappoint; that One never will.