How should we choose friends?
Text: Proverbs 18:24-19:4
Hosts:
J. Kent Edwards
Vicki Hitzges
Nathan Norman
Narrator: Brian French
The CrossTalk Podcast is a production of CrossTalk Global, equipping biblical communicators, so every culture hears God’s voice. To find out more, or to support the work of this ministry please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org
Produced by Nathan James Norman/Untold Podcast Production
© 2026 CrossTalk Global
Brian: MUSIC] Solitary confinement is one of the worst punishments ever devised. Consider the psychological trauma. There's severe anxiety and depression. Psychosis and hallucinations, cognitive decline, and thoughts of self-harm and suicide. The physical trauma is no better: heart and body stress, chronic pain and fatigue, and sensory and nutritional loss. Being locked alone in a cell for days causes severe psychological harm, physical decline, and an increased risk of death. In New York State, the suicide rate was more than 5 times higher among people in solitary confinement than in the general prison population. That's why God said in Genesis 2:18, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a helper suitable for him." God exists in Trinity. People need to live in community. We need friends to survive. The question that remains is not "Should I have friends?" but Who should be my friends? Who are the people who will strengthen me when I am weak, guide me when I am confused, walk with me when I am lonely? If you long for relationships that go beyond the superficial to the significant, you will want to join Nathan Norman, Kent Edwards, and Vicki Hitzkas as they reflect on Solomon's advice about forming genuine friendships in Proverbs 18:24. Welcome to Crosstalk, a Christian podcast whose goal is for us to encourage each other to not only increase our knowledge of the Bible, but to take the next step beyond information into transformation. Our goal is to bring the Bible to life into all our lives. I'm Brian French, and today Dr. Kent Edwards, Vicki Hitzkas, and Nathan Norman continue their discussion in the book of Proverbs. If you have a Bible handy, turn to Proverbs chapter 18, verse 24, as we join their discussion.
Kent: Aristotle defined friendship as a single soul dwelling in two bodies.
Vicki: Oh, I like that.
Kent: But this kind of sacrificial, life-giving relationship with another requires far more commitment than just waving at neighbors as we drive through the neighborhood. Nathan, Vicki, Do you see people making deep friendships today, the kind of friendships that Aristotle was pointing us towards?
Vicki: I think some people absolutely do. They go out of their way for it. They take time for it. But I also find it very interesting that one of the biggest problems facing certainly Americans right now is a lack of friendship. It's loneliness.
Kent: Hmm. Hmm.
Vicki: And I think it's harder as you get older. You're not in school together. You don't run around together. You tend to stay in, and that makes making friends difficult.
Kent: Yeah, aging certainly makes it difficult. The people that you worked with in your employment days for your whole life, you lose contact with them. They are gone. The neighbors that you knew so well that were in your community, you may have done block parties and had meals together. They all moved to old folks' homes and you moved to live live with the kids. So they are gone. I know that as a pastor visiting people in Pershing, or in an old folks home, that was the longest visit I'd ever have to make. Yeah. Ah, because I not only had to spend quality time with them, which I wanted to do, but every person there, almost without exception, wanted to talk to me as well.
Vicki: When I even picture you're calling them old folks homes, retirement centers, I think it's what we're supposed to call them now. Um, it's people sitting in chairs reaching out because they're just hungry for touch and they're alone.
Nathan: Yeah, yeah, you're right. I remember when I moved from New York to California to go to seminary, uh, I was engaged to be married, but we knew that we were going to wait a year to get married. My wife needed to finish up her bachelor's degree, and so we were apart for over here and in my brain, I thought it was going to be the most fun year of my life because here I am unencumbered and in California. And then, I don't know, about 35 minutes after I settled into my apartment, I realized I don't have any friends here, stupid. I built some relationships, but it wasn't the same. Not anywhere close to the relationships I'd had in New York. Been built over the course of a decade plus. Uh, yeah, I, I realized that, um, but it— I, I did not consciously think that going out there. Same thing with my mother-in-law, uh, she got remarried and they moved down to South Carolina, and within I think 3 months they moved back to Staten Island because, as she said, none of my people are here. I don't have any of my support system. My, you know, I don't know anyone here, and I don't have, have the time to build those deep relationships. Um, that, that, that I'm looking for. But I do think, like Vicki said, I think it's a problem today. I think many men— there's many people who do have deep relationships, but I think there's even more who don't and they're lonely. And as I had a conversation, not with someone from my church, but a 50-year-old professional, highly regarded in his, in his area, asked me, how do I make friends?
Kent: Right?
Nathan: It's not a bad question. And I don't think that was an abnormal position for people to be in.
Kent: It's interesting how the emphasis the Bible gives on friendships and what kind of friendships that we should form. Solomon begins his discussion on this in Proverbs 18:24.
Vicki: He says, One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Kent: The assumption of this proverb is not if people have friends, because it's assuming everyone has some kind of friends, but the emphasis is what kind of friends they have. And Solomon is warning us, first of all, about Unreliable friends. Let's just think about the word for a minute. Have you ever experienced something being unreliable? Something you thought would work but didn't prove to be trustworthy?
Vicki: My refrigerator, and I would love to name the manufacturer, but I won't. I would never buy another one of theirs. Every 3 or 4 months it just totally conks out. I've had more repairmen out here. I will tell you, Allianz has been my insurer and they have stepped up every time I wouldn't. I'd be done with that. Oh yeah. But man, yeah, that's what unreliable is. You expect it to be there, expect it to work, and it's not.
Kent: Well, I had the opposite experience with a car I owned once. I bought this used car from a dealer and got a warranty that came with it. And a couple of thousand miles after taking possession, it needed some major work. So of course I applied for my warranty. Would they cover it? Absolutely not. We fought and fought, and finally I just canceled the whole thing. Give me my money back for this warranty. Let me apply it to the cost of my car. That warranty was unreliable, undependable. So we're saying that something or someone that is unreliable is not achieving their intended purpose. Yeah, they're unreliable. They're not accomplishing what we want them to do. That's true in all of life. It's also true with friends. One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin because they don't do what a friend should do. I found it interesting looking at the word there, unreliable, in the Hebrew to see how it's used in Scripture. And one of the prominent examples of that is found in the Book of Job. Do you guys remember the trouble Job found himself in almost immediately when the book begins? The Book of Job begins?
Vicki: Yeah, I think the first thing that happened is there was a huge storm, like a hurricane or a tornado that hit. Is that what you're looking for? And he lost everything. He lost his money, he lost his family. His wife stayed around so she could bug him later, but all the kids were killed. Imagine losing all your children. He lost his oxen and donkeys, and I mean, he just lost everything. Camels, servants.
Kent: He lost his wealth because of some raiding parties, but he also lost some because of fire that fell from the sky. That's a really bad day.
Vicki: I don't even know what kind of fire fell from the sky. Do you think it was lightning, or do you think it was fire?
Kent: Well, you know, this is Hebrew, and Hebrew is an imprecise language. So I'm not sure which of those either could be true. But either way, it all got burned up in a fire.
Nathan: But at least he's still got his health, right?
Brian: Wrong.
Vicki: Wrong.
Kent: Because what happened?
Nathan: Well, then he developed painful sores, that he had to scrape his skin. Trying to break these sores open and get them off his body and put dirt and ash in them to close up the wounds that he just opened up and got rid of the pus. I mean, it's terrible. It was awful.
Vicki: When you want to clean a wound with dirt, you're in bad shape.
Kent: So if there's ever someone who needed a good friend, it'd be Job, right?
Vicki: Yes. Yeah.
Kent: Well, good news, he had 3 of them. Do you remember how they, uh, helped their friend Job.
Vicki: Yeah, Job was a righteous man, a true— not self-righteous, but actually righteous. And they came and said, this would not have happened to you if you weren't doing wrong. You've sinned.
Kent: First friend Eliphaz came and said, well, you must have sinned because there's no other explanation.
Vicki: And the second guy, Bildad, he said, repent because God is always just. So repent, get this off of you.
Kent: It's still your fault.
Vicki: It's your fault. Yeah.
Nathan: And when his third friend came, Zophar, he said Job should thank his lucky stars because he deserves something even worse.
Kent: And was any of that advice helpful?
Vicki: It wasn't helpful and it wasn't true. It was just guilt-inducing on top of everything else.
Nathan: Right. And at the end of all things, God even says of his friends, "Because they did not speak true of me." Right?
Kent: Right. So an unreliable friend is a friend who doesn't do what they're supposed to do. These friends were unreliable because they were not giving him the right perspective. They were not giving him the encouragement that he needed in this midst of difficulty. In fact, on his own, he came up with, and perhaps one of my favorite lines at the end of the Book of Job, is when he finally says to God, Some things are too wonderful for me. I know you are just. I know I was righteous and I do not understand you, God, but I trust you. That's what he came to on his own. But his friends, well, they were like a pen that doesn't write or a—
Vicki: Or worse.
Kent: Or a refrigerator that's hot.
Brian: There you go.
Kent: That's what they are. I see the word here, unreliable, is also used in Genesis 38 with Judah and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. A little bit obscure passage compared to Job, but do you remember that one, Nathan?
Nathan: Kick this one over to Nathan. He likes talking about awful, terrible narratives.
Kent: That's why I do it.
Nathan: Yeah. So Judah slept with his daughter-in-law, not knowing it was his daughter-in-law, but thinking that she was a prostitute.
Vicki: Oh, that makes it better.
Nathan: That makes it so much better, right?
Vicki: Yes.
Nathan: So here the friend went to go pay the prostitute on behalf of Judah so that Judah would not have to, I don't know, go see her face to face again.
Kent: Yeah. So Judah was using him to protect his own reputation. That's what you need. You need a friend who will help cover up your sin so you don't have to pay the consequences. Yay! That's— Solomon is right when he says, one who has unreliable friends, like Job's friends or Judah's friends, one who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin. An unreliable friend is someone who leads you away from God and godly behavior. And we've seen that, haven't we? Haven't we seen people whose choice of friends have been hurtful for them spiritually, who gave them ungodly advice and perspective?
Vicki: Well, my dad grew up in the slums of New York, and he was in a gang. And he said you had to be in a gang or you'd lose your life. It was just, you just had to be in one. But praise God, he had a good Sunday school teacher and a praying father, because man, the kids would kill each other. You get led away from godly behavior. You see it in nice neighborhoods around the nation where friends lead you into drugs and alcohol abuse, and some people never get away from it. And it ruins them.
Kent: If those are your kind of friends, they normalize that kind of behavior, don't they?
Vicki: Yep.
Nathan: Yeah, I was just reading a book of a friend, formerly a good friend, last night that my wife picked up. And we knew that she had kind of wandered away from the faith, but she had gotten into friendship with some people into one of these kind of New Age culty things. And She, uh, she dedicates the book to herself, the great I Am.
Vicki: Wow.
Kent: Wow.
Nathan: So it's not only like you, you abandon Christianity, you abandon Christ, but you've, you've committed blasphemy thinking that you yourself are God.
Vicki: Wow.
Nathan: And this happened because of relationships. She, she entered into a relationship with people who You know, hey, we know something better. We know something deeper. We have secret knowledge. And it's horrendous and heartbreaking to watch.
Kent: So Solomon is telling us that there are unreliable friends that will give us bad advice and can lead us to ruin. So be careful not to have unreliable friends. But then he moves positively to tell us what we can do.
Vicki: Well, he suggests faithful friends, which is a good suggestion.
Kent: He says in verse 18:24, "But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." That word "friend" in the last part of that verse is significant because it literally means love, and I mean genuine love between people. There are friends who will genuinely love us, not use us, but love us. It's used to describe how Abraham loved Isaac.
Vicki: His son that he waited for so long.
Kent: It is used to describe the love Israel had for Joseph, his one son who turned out to be righteous and who turned the course of the family's history and their nation.
Vicki: Yeah.
Kent: It's used to describe the Ruth, the love that Ruth had for her mother-in-law Naomi. That said, "I will be with you. Your God will be my God. Your land will be my land." That's positive love. That's healthy kind of love. There is a friend, there is someone who loves us, who sticks closer than a brother. There are friends we can have who genuinely love us, not trying to use us, but love us, who will stick closer than a brother. Again, this word I found fascinating because, um, it's used—
Vicki: which word is that? Brother?
Kent: Yeah, I'm sorry, thank you. The word brother fascinates me because of how it's used elsewhere in the Old Testament. It's used to describe a full brother, not a half-brother, a full brother, as opposed to half-brother who you might have because you were part of a polygamous family. So there are brothers who may have the same fathers but don't have the same mother, so they're half-brothers. But when your brother is a full brother, there is a deeper connection, and this person will stick closer to you than a full brother, which means a wise person who belongs to the community of the faithful, they are fully like you. You love the Lord, they love the Lord. They share values, they share objectives, they, they have the same goals in life. In Genesis 4, we read that God said Cain needed to be his brother's keeper. You need to look after Abel. You need to be his keeper because you are his full brother. He failed in that.
Vicki: Oh yeah, it killed him. That's a failure. Yeah.
Kent: But that is what God asked of him. And that's the kind of person, a true brother, that we are to seek hold of. Fact is, crises that we face in life, and we will all face them, lead to disorientation. We need our internal compasses, re-aligned. And it is a true friend who sticks closer than a brother, who can come alongside of us and help us and guide us, who can anchor us, if you will, when the winds and waters of adversity threaten to overwhelm us. Solomon wants us to know that there are unreliable friends who hurt us and lead us astray. But there are friends that we can make that will stick closer than any brother, who will love us, care for us, and want our best. So how should we choose our friends? How can we make sure we choose the good ones and not the bad ones? Well, it's fascinating to me that the next 3 Proverbs answer that question. So these are all talking about the same topic. And the first thing we read in Proverbs 19:1, it's that characters matter.
Nathan: It says, "Better the poor whose walk is blameless than a fool whose lips are perverse." Hmm.
Kent: So if you're looking for a friend, Character matters. Look for people whose walk is blameless. When people are prone to take shortcuts, make moral compromises, not good for a friend. Not that you can't be friendly, hoping to have some influence on them, but not a true friend, not one that you genuinely share life with. No, be very careful. Character matters when you go looking for a friend. And there's a second characteristic that comes in verses 2 and 3.
Vicki: It says, "Desire without knowledge is not good. How much more will hasty feet miss the way." I got to think about that. Desire without knowledge. Let's talk about that. "A person's own folly," it goes on, "leads to their ruin, and yet their heart rages against the Lord." What does desire without knowledge mean?
Kent: Desire is you've got a purpose, you have an ambition, there's something you want to do, but it is not based on knowledge.
Vicki: Biblical knowledge?
Kent: Yes.
Vicki: It's not a wise thing to do. Okay.
Kent: And I'd say that because the next verse says, "A person's own folly leads to their ruin." So the knowledge they have is not wisdom that comes from God and found in Scripture, No, it is folly. It is sin. And if we follow people without true knowledge, whose understanding is just folly, well, that leads to ruin. How many times have I met people who knew there were shortcuts we could take, ways to beat the system? We can get ahead. Often that's just a shortcut That's just shorthand for sin. If we cut corners morally, we can get ahead. And, uh, Scripture matters. We need to have friends who choose, uh, who come to our lives with biblical perspectives on the situations we face on earth, that can say, this is what the Lord says, this is what Scripture says. If we live our life according to it, we will flourish. So how do we choose our friends? By looking for people with the right character. How do we choose our friends? By also looking for people who know the scriptures, who don't lead us according to folly, who don't give their advice based on social media and whatever we've heard on the news channel for that evening, but whose advice is rooted in the firmness of God's word. And thirdly, well, Solomon gives us some caution when it comes to choosing friends, doesn't he?
Nathan: Yeah, he says in verse 4 of chapter 19, "Wealth attracts many friends, but even the closest friend of the poor person deserts them." Hmm.
Kent: Wealth attracts many friends, You know, that's true, don't you?
Nathan: Sure does. I've often thought how terrible it is to be wealthy because then you don't really know who's your actual friend, or if you even have actual friends, right?
Vicki: And, and to be fair, they may not know either.
Kent: I know.
Nathan: Yeah, well, no, that's my point. Like, if, if I were wealthy and I, I don't know who's my friend because they like me or because they like being around my money No, absolutely.
Vicki: But I'm saying even the friends may not know.
Brian: Oh yeah, you're right.
Vicki: Yeah, yeah.
Nathan: You're right.
Kent: I thought sometimes if my wife passed away and I won a lottery, which won't happen because I never buy tickets, but if I suddenly came into $10 million, I'd be paralyzed. I mean, every woman might think I'm better looking than I am.
Vicki: Oh, that would be impossible. You've saturated the gorgeous meter.
Kent: But how would you know? You know, like, I know the character of my wife. I know how godly she is. I know God has brought us together. But in that kind of situation, man, it would be distorting. It would be hard to know how to choose wisely. And to your point, I know rich people as well. When I see people circling them and I go, "I don't know if you realize these people love your money maybe at least as much as they love you." No, you want to choose a friend. Choose a person with character who can give scriptural advice and are coming money-neutral. They're not after your money, but their motives are pure.
Nathan: I know many people think that making friends just kind of happens naturally, but that's actually not true. You actually go and make friends. And so as we're looking at this proverb and you're trying to find people like this, the best thing to do is to go up and decide this person's going to be my friend and invite them out for coffee, invite them out for lunch, invite them over to your home. Invite them out to a movie, something. Hey, you know, let's, let's read a book together. We make friends who we choose to pursue is typically how friendships are made.
Kent: Friendships today are as popular than ever. Just look at Facebook and TikTok and all the rest of the social media. But they're also shallower than ever before. We can have thousands of Facebook friends, but Which of them will show up on a Saturday to help you move furniture? Who will bring you soup when you are sick, or even look after your cat while you're on vacation? Friendship requires people outside of social media, people who can move beyond clichés and cultivate a deep, positive, self-sacrificing relationship with you. You need good friends. You need to escape from the prison of solitary confinement, so go find them. And while you're looking, make sure you're looking for people who have godly character. Make sure you're looking for people who can apply the balm of Scripture to the wounds of life. And be especially cautious of those whose agenda is to use you to benefit themselves. Because one who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin. But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Let me give you some friendly advice: go find him.
Brian: When we look for friends, what criteria should we use to decide who to befriend? We should look for people who will encourage us in the Lord and be faithful during our times of need. We need to cultivate godly friends. I trust that today's discussion of God's Word has been helpful and served as an encouragement to not just be hearers of the Word but doers. Together, let's bring God's Word to life, to our lives this week. The Crosstalk Podcast is a production of Crosstalk Global, equipping biblical communicators so every culture hears God's voice. To find out more about this educational nonprofit organization, please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org. Crosstalk just finished successful trainings in Bucharest, Moldova, Southern California, and Kansas this season, and we're getting ready for another training in Kenya this summer and Cuba and Nepal in in the fall. Help us train the next generation of biblical communicators. All you have to do is click donate in the show notes and make a donation of any size. You can also support this show by rating it on whatever platform you're listening to us. Be sure to join us next week as we continue to learn from God's wisdom in the book of Proverbs. You won't want to miss it.