And he came across a mirror that some tourist had left at a camping site. And the hillbilly didn't know what in the world this thing was. He saw a reflecting there, and as he picked it up and looked in it, he was astonished. And he said, I didn't know Pappy had his picture made. And so he stuck the picture in his pocket and took it back home. His wife was a rather suspicious sort of person, and she saw him come in and watched him.
And he went over, took the picture out and looked at it again, actually a mirror, and turned it upside down, slipped it and hit it. And she waited until he went back outside, and she walked over to where he had hit it and pulled it out and looked in it. And she said, just like I thought. So that's the old hag he's been running around with. Well you say, what in the world has that got to do with 1 Samuel? Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing.
So now we can start the tape recorder, Mark, and go to 1 Samuel chapter 18. We're going to talk tonight about friendship that sticks. First Samuel chapter 18. We're going to talk about the friendship that developed between David and Jonathan. Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself. And Saul took him that day and did not let him return to his father's house.
Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt. Turn over page to chapter 19, verse 1. Now Saul told Jonathan, his son, and all his servants to put David to death. But Jonathan, Saul's son, greatly delighted in David. So Jonathan told David, saying, Saul, my father is seeking to put you to death.
Now therefore, please be on guard in the morning and stay in a secret place and hide yourself. And I will go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are, and I will speak with my father about you. If I find out anything, then I shall tell you. Then Jonathan spoke well of David to Saul, his father, and said to him, Do not let the king sin against his servant David. Since he has not sinned against you, and since his deeds have been very beneficial to you.
For he took his life in his hand and struck the Philistine, and the Lord brought about a great deliverance for all Israel. You saw it and rejoiced. Why then will you sin against innocent blood by putting David to death without a cause? And Saul listened to the voice of Jonathan, and Saul vowed, As the Lord lives, he shall not be put to death. Then Jonathan called David, and Jonathan told him all these words. And Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he was in his presence as formerly.
Chapter 20, verse 1. Then David fled from Naoth in Ramah, and came and said to Jonathan, What have I done? What is my iniquity, and what is my sin before your Father that he is seeking my life? He said to him, Far from it, you shall not die. Behold, my Father does nothing either great or small without disclosing it to me. So why should my Father hide this thing from me? It is not so. Yet David vowed again, saying, Your Father knows well that I have found favor in your sight.
And he has said, Do not let Jonathan know this, lest he be grieved. But truly, as the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, there is hardly a step between me and death. Jonathan said to David, Whatever you say, I will do for you. Down to verse 17. And Jonathan made David vow again because of his love for him, because he loved him as he loved his own life. Verse 35. Now it came about in the morning that Jonathan went out into the field for the appointment with David, and a little lad was with him.
And he said to his lad, Run, find now the arrows which I am about to shoot. And as the lad was running, he shot an arrow past him. And when the lad reached the place of the arrow which Jonathan had shot, Jonathan called after the lad and said, Is not the arrow beyond you? And Jonathan called after the lad, Hurry, be quick, do not stay. And Jonathan's lad picked up the arrow and came to his master, but the lad was not aware of anything. Only Jonathan and David knew about the matter.
Then Jonathan gave his weapons to his lad and said to him, Go, bring them to the city. And when the lad was gone, David rose from the south side and fell on his face to the ground and bowed three times. And they kissed each other and wept together, but David more. And Jonathan said to David, Go in safety, inasmuch as we have sworn to each other in the name of the Lord, saying, The Lord will be between me and you and between my descendants and your descendants forever.
Then he rose and departed while Jonathan went into the city. Chapter 23, verse 13. Then David and his men, about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah. And they went wherever they could go. When it was told Saul that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the pursuit. And David stayed in the wilderness in the strongholds and remained in the hill country in the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every day, but God did not deliver him into his hand.
Now David became aware that Saul had come out to seek his life while David was in the wilderness of Ziph at Horish. And Jonathan, Saul's son, arose and went to David at Horish and encouraged him in God. Thus he said to him, Do not be afraid, because the hand of my father, of Saul my father, shall not find you, and you will be king over Israel, and I will be next to you. And Saul my father knows that also.
So the two of them made a covenant before the Lord, and David stayed in Horish while Jonathan went to his house. And that was the last meeting of the two men. We have read every time that the Word of God records that they met together. But there is one more passage that is significant as we talk about their friendship and is found in 2 Samuel chapter 1. Then David chanted with this lament over Saul and Jonathan his son. And he told them to teach the sons of Judah the song of the bow.
And then David begins to give a poem, an expression, a lamentation of great sorrow because of the death of Saul and Jonathan. We'll skip down for times sake to verse 23. Saul and Jonathan, beloved and pleasant in their life, and in their death they were not parted. They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions. O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.
How have the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle? Jonathan is slain on your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. You have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was more wonderful than the love of women. How have the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished? We see in this part of Samuel a contrast in two of David's relationships. There is the relationship on the one hand with the king, Saul.
And I suppose the word that would summarize that relationship is the word deterioration. For very shortly after the battle in which David killed Goliath, the relationship with King Saul began to fall apart. And the reason for that was very simple. Saul became jealous of David's popularity. For the women of Israel began to sing songs about their heroes in war. And they talked about Saul killing his thousands and David his tens of thousands.
The implication being that David was ten times better than Saul. And Saul just could not stand that. It would seem also that he saw David as a rival to the throne, although he was not aware, as far as we know, of David's secret anointing by Samuel to be the next king. As much as we know, Saul was not aware of that incident that had occurred sometime before this. Nonetheless, Saul put two and two together and he was able to see that David was a definite threat to his reign.
He knew that his reign had been condemned and judged by God and that someone was going to have to take his spot. And it might well be this young David. On the other hand, there is the relationship between David and Saul's son, the prince, the one who would be the next king after Saul, naturally speaking, the boy Jonathan. The one word that would summarize their relationship is the word development. It was a friendship that was immediate and which then grew. It is a blessed friendship.
It is the intertwining of two similar spirits, two kindred hearts. And their friendship was pure, wholesome, and edifying. There are some in this day who, with their perverted minds, try to make something more out of David and Jonathan's relationship than it was. Their relationship was one that was absolutely aboveboard and pure in the most profound sense of that word. David speaking about his love for Jonathan, Jonathan speaking about his love for David, was a pure and wholesome love.
Friendships are to be treasured. As was the friendship treasured by these two men of the other. There are a couple of verses in Proverbs that deal with friends. Perhaps you'd like to turn with me to Proverbs 17. And notice what the writer says regarding friends. Proverbs 17, verse 17. A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. The thought seems to be there that when trouble comes, you really find out who your friends are.
For a friend is one who loves at all times, not just when things are smooth or pleasant or when it's convenient, but a friend is one who sticks. And how much does he stick? Well chapter 18, verse 24 puts it this way. A man of many friends comes to ruin. It seems like a strange statement, doesn't it? But the thought apparently is that if a person chooses his friends indiscriminately, he puts himself in the place of danger. What kind of friend should he choose?
The kind that's described in the last half of the verse. There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. And perhaps many of us tonight can say, perhaps even with some sadness, that we have friends who are closer to us than our own brothers. Friends stick together even when things are tough. And that is the kind of friendship that David and Jonathan enjoyed. You can imagine how David, or rather how Jonathan might have felt. He knew that his father's reign was judged by God.
In chapter 13 of 1 Samuel, chapter 15 of 1 Samuel, God had pronounced judgment upon Saul's reign, had told him that he would raise up a king after his own heart. Jonathan might have been threatened by this. He might have been suspicious. He might have been envious or even scheming. He might have been the one with a murderous attitude instead of his father. For if David were in fact that next king, he would be the one who would keep Jonathan from reigning.
But none of those attitudes characterize this man Jonathan. I think that we can say without doubt of being wrong that Jonathan is one of the most outstanding men of character in all of the Old Testament. You will not find a man who had the qualities, the sterling qualities that Jonathan had very frequently. As we look at the friendship between these two men, there are several lessons that we can learn about what real friendship is.
We'll learn what friendship that sticks is all about, what characterizes it. And as we do this, we're also going to see that you and I have one friend who does stick closer than a brother, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. For he is the dearest friend that any of us could know. The first lesson we see regarding friendship that sticks is this. A friend gives himself for a friend. In other words, a friend is one who is willing to sacrifice for another.
We see this, for example, in Jonathan's attitude in the first passage we read in chapter 18. Do you find it strange that Jonathan took his robe off, gave it to David? He took his armor, including his sword, his bow, his belt, and handed that to David as well. What is Jonathan doing in this symbolic act? Listen, it's significant. For it seems to indicate that Jonathan was aware, somehow, that David was anointed to be the next king.
Jonathan seems to be aware of that, and far from trying to stop that or be envious of it even, he in fact encourages it because in giving David these items, he is saying to David, here, you take my inheritance. And his inheritance was the throne of Israel. So you see, Jonathan is one who gave himself for his friend. The highest expression of love is an act of voluntary self-sacrifice. And that is what Jonathan did. He was not going to be the next king. God had already determined that.
But Jonathan voluntarily, out of his own heart, sacrificed that position and symbolically did so by giving to David these items that are mentioned. They represented his inheritance. May I suggest to you tonight that there is one who is our friend, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has done a similar thing for us? Go back to John chapter 15 for a moment. Don't lose sight of Samuel, but go back to John 15 and look at these words, perhaps familiar words of the Lord Jesus, regarding a friend.
Verse 12, he says, This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends. For all things that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you.
The Lord Jesus Christ here calls us his friends. He identifies with us, and he says that the greatest test of love is for one to lay down his life for his friend. And that is exactly what the Lord Jesus did for you. And he did it so that he might share his inheritance with you, his inheritance as God the Son. For as God the Son, he is the heir of all things, all things. And he has designated you as his friend and shares with you his inheritance, making you a joint heir with himself.
In other words, the Lord Jesus in giving you that designation has made it clear that he cannot inherit what is rightfully his unless you are there with him to inherit it. You are a joint heir with him. And furthermore, a joint heir shares equally in the inheritance. And so the Lord Jesus is not giving you a little bit of his inheritance. He is not meagerly portioning it out to you, but he so loves you and me.
He so calls us his friends that he has said he will share equally with us in the inheritance that is his from his Father. That is real friendship. A friend gives himself for a friend. Let's apply it this way to our lives. We should give ourselves for others. There have been some occasions when people literally have laid down their lives to save a friend. But not often do we have that challenge before us.
But there are times when we can choose to put the other person first and take the second position or the last position for ourselves and in so doing make a sacrifice for our friend. If we really are a friend of another person, we will give ourselves for him or her. I would like to apply that especially to husbands and wives because we should have no dearer friend on the earth than the one that we are married to.
There should be no one with whom we would share intimate secrets like we do that one who is our beloved. Are you giving yourself for your wife, for your husband? Is the spirit of your marriage one of mutual self-sacrifice? For it is that kind of a spirit that gives marriage life and vitality. How easy it is for subtle selfishness to creep in and for us to begin claiming our own turf in the marriage in very clever and even disguised ways.
How vital it is that we realize when that takes place we have left something of the spirit of the marriage that God intends for us to know. We need to get back to that place where we give ourselves completely to the other. People talk to me about marriage and I try to make it clear to them that marriage is not a 50-50 proposition. It is 100-100. Each giving himself fully to the other. That is what makes a marriage work. That is what makes a friendship work.
A friendship that sticks is a friendship in which the two people give themselves unreservedly and with sacrifice for the other. Lesson number two from the life of David and Jonathan. A friend protects a friend. We see Jonathan doing this on behalf of David. He placed himself between his father and David on several occasions.
On one occasion it nearly lost him his life when Saul in his confused mental state picked up a javelin and threw it at his own son seeking to nail him to the wall and kill him because he was so envious of David and of Jonathan's loyalty and love for David. Jonathan protected his friend. He put himself between Saul the enemy and David his friend. There is a sense in which the Lord Jesus Christ has done the same for us, isn't there? There is a difference because we were not friends of God.
We were enemies of God, sinners. Those who had declared hostility against God. And yet the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world and stepped in between us and God. And that white hot wrath of God that flowed from his holy throne of justice and righteousness was coming to lick us up and to carry us away to our eternal destiny in hell.
But the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross stepped in between us and God and died for us even while we were yet sinners and absorbed in himself that judgment of God, that condemnation that we deserve and in so doing protected us from God's wrath. God's wrath which is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.
And still today now that we have trusted the Lord Jesus as Savior assuming that you have done that, that you've received him into your life to be your own Lord and Savior. Even today he acts as our advocate. God in no sense is our enemy now. We've been reconciled to God. And yet God in his holiness and we in our occasional sinning have a problem. We need someone to be our mediator or our advocate. And the Lord Jesus Christ is just that. John says, I write to you that you stop sinning.
But if any man sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. And so he is the one who stands between us and the Father when we do sin as the children of God. And he is our advocate. He is there for our intercession to keep us with the Father, our advocate. And we need that advocate, don't we? Every day, every day you and I sin as children of God. There are times when we do it almost in carelessness.
There are times when we do it even by choice and we allow the flesh to make provision for its fulfillment. When we do that, we need to confess it, come in repentance to the Father. But let us never forget that the Father has established an advocate on our behalf, the Lord Jesus Christ, who always intercedes for us at the throne of grace. Let me apply that to us. A friend protects a friend. Do you realize that your friend needs protection, that one that you call a friend?
There may be a time when you would be called upon to protect his life. There are other times you may be called upon to protect his testimony. An example of that would be if you see your friend heading into a period of carnality. You see him straying into sin. What should you do if you're his friend? To protect his testimony, to protect his fellowship with God, you must go to your friend and say, my beloved friend, here is something that I observe. Please tell me where I am wrong if I am.
I come to you because I love you and because I don't want you to stray from the Lord. We cannot call another our friend unless we are willing to take that step of loving admonition. By the way, that's where church discipline begins. That's the first step of it all.
And it's the responsibility of all of us to protect our friend from the hurts and the sorrows that come by straying into Satan's territory and to go to that friend and protect him by putting our arms around him and seeking to restore him with the spirit of meekness, considering ourselves lest we also be tempted.
There are times we may need to protect our friend from his reputation being harmed by intervening on his behalf and gossip and stopping the gossip, standing up in his defense and saying, wait just a minute. I'm not going to allow you to talk about him that way. You don't know of what you're speaking. And so we intervene to protect. A friendship that sticks is a friendship that involves the friends protecting each other. Lesson number three. From the life, the friendship of David and Jonathan.
A friend sympathizes with a friend. He sympathizes with a friend. Turn to chapter 20 once more and let's look at verse 30. We'll see here the incident that I referred to a moment ago when Saul's anger burned against Jonathan, verse 30. And he said to him, you son of a perverse rebellious woman, I don't think I have to give you the more up-to-date rendition of that, do I? Do I not know that you are choosing the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother's nakedness?
Saul could not have found language that was more coarse, that was more cutting than the language that he used upon his son in verse 30. For as long as the son of Jesse lives on the earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be established. Therefore now send and bring him to me for he must surely die. But Jonathan answered Saul, his father, and said to him, why should he be put to death? What has he done? Then Saul hurled his spear at him to strike him down.
So Jonathan knew that his father had decided conclusively to put David to death. But Jonathan arose from the table in fierce anger and did not eat food on the second day of the new moon, for he was grieved over David because his father had dishonored him. The lesson that I see here is that a friend sympathizes with a friend. Jonathan identified with David in his rejection by suspicious Saul.
There is great empathy in the heart of Jonathan for David, and the empathy here takes the specific form of anger because he was so grieved that his friend had been misunderstood. A friend sympathizes with a friend. Need I tell you that the Lord Jesus Christ is our sympathetic friend? That perfectly He knows how we feel? When you and I rejoice, He rejoices. When we are sad, He is sad with us. He sympathizes with us where we are.
He feels with you the temptations that face you because He has been tempted just like you have, and yet without falling into temptation, He is able to perfectly sympathize with you as your friend and your great high priest. And if we are going to have a friendship that sticks, we must learn something of what it is to sympathize with others. One who does not know how to empathize with other people in their various seasons of life is one who will have few friends.
If one's heart is cold and untouched and unfeeling toward others as they pass through the valley or the mountaintops, then he will likely have very few friendships that stick. Because a friendship that sticks is between two people who feel for each other, and that is why the apostle says, bear ye one another's burdens. In another place, he says, rejoice with them that rejoice and weep with them that weep.
What kind of a French are you to that friend of yours who is in need tonight, that one who is weeping, that one who is going through a difficult time? One Indian tribe in North America had this eloquent expression to describe friend in their language. A friend was one who carries my sorrows on his back. That is the English equivalent to their word for friend. One who carries my sorrows on his back.
Maybe one of the reasons that someone here has had a difficult time developing close friendships has been right here at this point. A fourth lesson that I see in the relationship between David and Jonathan to tell us how to have a friendship that sticks is this, a friend can be transparent with a friend. Look in chapter 20, and let's look again at verses 41 and 42. When the lad was gone, David rose from the south side and fell on his face to the ground and bowed three times.
The language here indicates that he did this several times. He bowed three times, he fell on his face before Jonathan, and they kissed each other and wept together. David shed more tears than did Jonathan. Jonathan said to David, go in safety in the name of the Lord saying, the Lord will be between me and you and between my descendants and your descendants forever. Then he arose and departed while Jonathan went back into the city. David was able to express his real heart with Jonathan.
Do you notice that? As great a warrior, as courageous a man as he was, he was a man who had tears. Now you know that, don't you, from the Psalms that he wrote. But those tears were not always shed in private. On this occasion, he was with his friend and was not embarrassed, he was not hindered by any thoughts. He shared his tears, and his friend shared tears with him. A true friend loves another, even with the imperfections, the blemishes, the inconsistencies.
And because there is that kind of understanding between friends, there is no embarrassment, there is no fear in allowing true emotions to surface, the real thoughts of the heart to be expressed. In a friendship that sticks, there is a transparency without threat. A teenager described a friend this way, a friend is one in front of whom you can be your own true self. Now because David and Jonathan were that way, they had the friendship they did. Do you have somebody that way?
Someone with whom you can be honest and genuine and true? Someone with whom you can put away the mask and the facade that we all so easily build up in our lives? I think George Eliot expressed it so eloquently when she wrote, oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person.
Feeling neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. How well is expressed there, the kind of friendship that sticks, a friendship in which a friend can be transparent, be real with his friend.
And a final lesson that we want to see in closing is this, a friendship that sticks is characterized by a friend remembering a friend. David did not forget Jonathan. All together too quickly, Jonathan was killed. He was taken from the earth. Their plan seems to have been that when David would become king, Jonathan would be right there beside him. They would almost share the throne. So greatly was their love and their trust for one another. But alas, that was not the plan of God.
And Jonathan was killed the same time that his father Saul was killed on the mountains of Gilboa. Turn with me to 2 Samuel chapter 9, and you will see that sometime later, David remembers his friend. 2 Samuel chapter 9, verse 1, then David said, Is there yet anyone left of the house of Saul that I may show him kindness for Jonathan's sake? Now there was a servant of the house of Saul whose name was Ziba, and they called him to David and the king said to him, Are you Ziba?
And he said, I am your servant. And the king said, Is there not yet anyone of the house of Saul to whom I may show the kindness of God? And he said to the king, There is still a son of Jonathan, who is crippled in both feet. So the king said to him, Where is he? And Ziba said to the king, Behold, he is in the house of Maccear, the son of Amiel of Lodibar.
Then king David sent and brought him from the house of Maccear, the son of Amiel and Maccear, and Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David and fell on his face and prostrated himself. And David said, Mephibosheth. And he said to him, Here is your servant. And David said to him, Do not fear, for I will surely show kindness to you for the sake of your father Jonathan, and will restore to you all the land of your grandfather Saul, and you shall eat at my table regularly.
So you see, when David was in that place that God had appointed to him, when the kingdom had been consolidated under his authority, when he was the absolute sovereign, he did not forget about his friend Jonathan, who had been dead some time. But rather he purposely sought out to see if there might be some relative of Saul to whom he could show kindness.
Now that would have been a good political move on the one hand, but it was a sincere human move on the other hand, because he wanted to remember Jonathan. And there was Mephibosheth who was still living, and David remembered his friend and showed kindness to the son of Jonathan. Do you know that our God remembers us? There is not a second that goes by but that you are not in his mind.
You say, but wait a minute, there are so many people who love the Lord, there are so many believers, how can he remember all of us at one time? My friend, he is God, and he does. Look at some words that are penned by Isaiah in the 49th chapter of his prophecy. These words written about Judah, about Israel, but which are applicable, I am sure, to us. Isaiah chapter 49 verse 13.
Shout for joy, O heavens, and rejoice, O earth, bring forth into joyful shouting, O mountains, for the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted. Now the tone changes, but Zion said, the Lord has forsaken me and the Lord has forgotten me. Do you ever feel that way? Maybe tonight that is the way you feel. In the midst of the trial, the circumstances that confront you, you say, God has forgotten me, I am on the shelf, he does not remember me.
It goes on to say, can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? The Lord says, even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. Your walls are continually before me. I think in a very wonderful way we can see the Lord Jesus Christ interceding for us in heaven and there on the palms of his hands, inscribed as it were with a nail, is your name and mine.
And continually as he is our high priest and friend, intercedes before us before the Father, we are remembered, inscribed upon the palms of his hand. A friend remembers a friend. There's some friend of yours that needs to be remembered. Who is it? Who is that friend tonight that you need to remember in his difficulty and go to him and say, my friend, I care. My friend, how can I help? Conclusion. Do you have any friends? Better, let me phrase it this way, are you anybody's friend?
Proverbs says if a man would have friends, he must show himself what? Friendly. Are you anybody's friend? Or to put it a different way, if you were another person, would you want to be a friend of yours? What kind of friendships are you building? Someone said, I went out to find a friend, but could not find one there. I went out to be a friend and friends were everywhere. Emerson said the only way to have a friend is to be one.
Let your friendships be characterized by unselfish giving, by courageous protection, by genuine sympathy, by confidential transparency, by careful remembrance. And if your friendships are characterized by that, you'll have friendships that stick and that will endure the storms and the stresses of life. There's happiness in little things. There's joy in passing pleasure. But friendships are, from year to year, the best of all life's treasures.
Our Father, I pray that you will make us to be friends. For as we are friends, then we will have friends. And I pray that our friendships will know something of the character of that friendship between David and Jonathan, the kind of friendship that sticks. Thank you for the friendship that we have with the Lord Jesus Christ and that he is truly a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Lord, if there are some practical applications that we need to follow through on in the areas we've touched on tonight, I pray that we'll be diligent to do that. May we make the right kind of friends, the kind of friends that are worth sticking to. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.