Jonathan's Faith and Friendship - 1 Samuel - with Steve Ferris

Welcome to the Grace Church Weekly Podcast. We're an international church right

in the heart of Stockholm, Sweden.

Each week, we share a message that's rooted in the faithful teaching of God's

Word and open to the vibrant work of the Holy Spirit among His people.

Here's this week's message.

Who is Jonathan? Real quick, a snapshot of who this guy is. He is the son of King Saul.

He's the crown prince. He's next in line for the throne.

He's a skilled warrior. He's leading in his father's army.

He also has a deep covenant friendship with David we're going to learn about today.

And sadly, he dies fairly young in battle next to his father and his brothers.

And when we look at his life, there's two things that stand out about Jonathan

that we're going to focus on today. There's two things about Jonathan.

It's his faith in God and his friendship

towards others. He's an amazing example of both of those things.

So first, let's take a look at Jonathan's faith.

So in chapter 14, what Karen was just reading, we hear this kind of,

this very brave thing they do.

He and his armor bearer go up against an army.

No small thing, and some details on that, just so you know just how risky this operation was, okay?

His father's army was in a horrible position.

So in the previous chapter, some really inconvenient things happened.

So you know, prophet Samuel is extremely important to the nation.

That's the way God communicates to his people.

And in chapter 13, the king has broken God's laws and has been rebuked by Samuel,

pretty much told, God's not with you.

After this happens, most of his army, in fear that he's just lost the endorsement

of the prophet of the nation, most of his soldiers leave, leaving him with 600 men.

Not a huge army.

And they're severely outnumbered now, because the Philistines aren't too far

away, and we'll find out they're in numbers, but they're in the tens of thousands.

It's a huge army.

So there's really no hope there. And so on top of that, they don't have any weapons.

Actually, it says that the only people that have weapons are Saul and Jonathan.

And that's because the Philistines, they were controlling the iron work in the region.

Israel was not allowed to have any blacksmiths to do any of the work.

If you needed something, some weapon sharpened, you had to go to a Philistine blacksmith.

And so obviously they got a monopoly. This makes it quite inconvenient if you're

an army trying to go against them.

And then as a side effect of all this the people

who are in the fighting force many of them they go

they're in they're fearful as they should be and many

of them are hiding they're hiding in caves and all

sorts of places where maybe a soldier probably shouldn't be

they should be kind of be in a formation i would think they're going to be successful

and now they're back at the site at the beginning of this there's this place

called gaba when you when you in the previous chapter we find now that Jonathan

was the one who went and attacked the Philistine garrison at Geba and he took over that spot.

And now his father's arm is falling apart. And now they're back at the place

where he just had a victory.

I want you just for a moment to

take a moment and let the frustration of Jonathan kind of come over you.

Take a moment. Imagine what this must be like. You led your fighting men.

You had a successful mission.

Your father lost all the traction and momentum that you had going on.

Now you're in a horrible situation. You're terribly outnumbered.

And people are back where you just had an amazing victory. And people are fearful.

There's very low morale. And there you are. What are you going to do?

Jonathan says let's go over to the Philistines to his armor here just the two of us,

so he has this conviction that rises up in him as he's looking at his situation,

and he must have great faith and he must remember what God has done in the past

to actually justify why he would feel the certain kind of a way,

he remembers God's past and the amazing military victories that God has given

his people when they really didn't do much.

Do you remember marching around Jericho and blowing trumpets and breaks down the walls?

That's not really a strategy that people think of, but that's what God had done.

There was things like that all throughout their history, and he knew it.

And he knows that the army of Israel should have a greater expectation of this God.

So he speaks his faith out loud. He says to our armor bearer,

perhaps the Lord will help us for nothing can hinder the lord he can win a battle

whether he has many warriors or only a few,

that's the declaration he's feeling the faith he says it out loud to the guy with him and,

when it when he verbalizes that it sort of sets the tone for the guy who's with

him like oh this is what we're believing for but then also when you speak out

something that's what you have faith in and you're actually stirring up faith in other people.

How many of you have been in a situation where you've been praying with other

Christians and you hear them pray something that you actually didn't know you

could actually pray for?

Like, I didn't know God actually cares about that. Or I didn't actually know

that was a promise that was actually in the scripture.

Well, this is where the effect of faith, faith comes by hearing the word.

And this is just Jonathan's string of faith in the God of Israel, what he's done before.

And so when they're united in this faith, they're in agreement that,

yes, God can do this thing.

They begin to order their steps and walk towards this certain disaster, right?

I did some research in Google Maps. I wanted to see if these places still are

around. Jeeva is one place.

Yeah, and Mikash is the other. And they actually do still exist.

Their names are a little bit different. You can look at them in Google Maps.

You can see where they're at. You can get driving directions between the two areas.

And actually, they probably didn't take the road route. They probably just went

straight, you know, as a crow flies.

And it was about three kilometers from where they were.

Three kilometers to have second thoughts. Think about what you're about to do.

And he moves towards these men, knowing that they could easily kill him.

They're on the higher ground. They're up on the hill.

And there's actually 3,000 chariots, 6,000 charioteers, and it says,

as many warriors as grains of sand on the seashore.

So it's quite a significant fighting force that two guys are walking up towards.

But this kind of highlights exactly what courage is.

Courage is actually being afraid and continuing to move forward.

It's acting in the presence of fear. So those of you who wish you were more

courageous because you're always feeling afraid, well, you already got half of the equation.

You've already got the fear. You're halfway there.

The second part is you just got to just move anyways. How uncomfortable that

is. But this is what courage is.

That's why we celebrate it because this is not an easy feat to move when you are afraid.

It's hardwired into us as a survival mechanism to stop and stay away from the

thing that can hurt us, the thing we perceive as harmful.

Courage stirs us to do the thing that's counter to our nature.

And then you notice he actually says something. He puts a test before the Lord.

And he's looking for a sign for direction from God.

And he says, if they say to us, they're going to see us coming up.

And if they, let's, they'll say something.

So if they say to us, stay where you are or we'll kill you, then we will stop and not go up to them.

He says, but if they say, come on up and fight, then we will go up.

That will be the Lord's sign that he will help us defeat them.

Wow. All right. What a test. If they say we'll kill you, we run.

If they say come in a fight, well, we go fight.

And what's as impressive as the next part, it's one thing to say something with

your mouth. You know, it's another thing to follow through.

He honors the results of this test that he's put before the Lord.

How many of you would have heard them say, coming up and fight?

And say, you know what? I think we're just going to go back that way.

It's just a bad idea. I got lost.

Also consider the fact that he is the king's son. Like, there's some prize kills in a battle.

That's probably one on the top. Actually, they probably wouldn't kill him.

They had a habit of taking them and making sort of like a circus act,

you know, bring them back home, torture them, you know, dehumanize them, all sorts of things.

That's probably what was going to happen to him if they were to capture him.

But boy, the fact that he's still in this word and he's honoring this.

And if you look through scripture, there's a lot of times people do put tests

to the Lord throughout scripture and God does respond.

So what do we learn from that? Like, can we just go around testing God all the time?

Well, I think it's important for us to look at what the heart behind these things are.

Because God seems to be willing to answer when He's being looked to as a source

of hope. He's being looked to for a source of direction.

People are saying, God, I can't do this without you. God, what do you have to

say? God, what do you have to say?

I have a test. What about this? The reason is they're seeking God.

The test is because, God, I want to understand your will a little bit clearer.

Now, there's also instruction. Do not tempt the Lord your God.

Now, there's a line you can cross there. And I can help you kind of determine where that's at.

If you're challenging and provoking God, if you're behaving recklessly and demanding

proof of his power, well, then you could be in a worse off situation.

Biblically, those kind of tests don't go over too well. That kind of heart towards

God doesn't go over too well, but God does respond to hearts that are looking to him.

Our eyes look to the Lord. That's our hope. So not to say, just go ahead and make any test you want.

Do it prayerfully. There's decisions in life you need to make.

Now on this side of the cross, we now have the Holy Spirit to help lead us and

guide us, which they didn't have at that time.

We also have the church, which is the body of Christ.

We are the temple of God. And actually, we can give each other godly counsel.

So if that's coming into your life, you've got those things.

Pray, you can listen to the spirits. You can listen to the people around you.

And God still does these things sometimes. And it's quite amazing when God decides

to meet us on our terms just to give us peace of mind, to give us the nudge that we need.

And we see that from these two guys that God can take this small act of obedience

and you can multiply it to a crazy degree.

There's two men, they defeat 20. Okay?

Pretty impressive, but it's still

not what they need to do. That's tens of thousands of left in the army.

It continues here in verse 15. Suddenly, panic broke out on the Philistines,

both in the camp and in the field, including even the outposts and the raiding parties.

And just then, an earthquake struck.

And everyone was terrified.

An earthquake! What timing! That was obviously God. God brought the earthquake.

And it creates this chaos in the camp.

And they begin to kill each other, which if you think about the best battle

strategy is just having your enemy just take care of itself.

That's an amazing plan that they weren't really counting on.

Just to let you know that God is that much more creative than any one of us.

It continues on, verse 20.

It says, Then Saul and his men rushed out to the battle and found the Philistines killing each other.

There was terrible confusion everywhere.

Even the Hebrews, who had previously gone over to the Philistine army,

revolted and joined in with Saul, Jonathan, and the rest of the Israelites.

Likewise, the men of Israel who were hiding in the hill country of Ephraim joined

the chase when they saw the Philistines running away.

So the Lord saved Israel that day, and the battle continued to rage even beyond Beth-Avon.

Amazing success.

And as this goes, it shows us that whatever little we commit to God.

He blesses it. He can multiply it.

And He can do much more than we think or imagine with it.

So I want you to just be mindful of these small areas of obedience in your life.

You feel the Holy Spirit has prompted you. You feel like, I should do this thing.

This is the right thing to do. I should do this thing. This will glorify God.

It may be small, but you need to do it.

If you've got the smallest sense, the smallest inkling that this is the thing

that God wants for you to do. Just do it.

See what will happen. Those guys could have never expected what happened to

happen from their act of just, we're going to go up and potentially end our lives, but we have,

trust in God and they have no idea how that will work out.

Then we can look again and you would expect after the second great, brave,

act of bravery from Jonathan that he's going to have a great award there's going

to be a celebration there's going to be some praise there's going to be some

time remarks with his father this is my son second time wow he's just doing

amazing one of the greatest you know that's what you would hope for him right.

Well, this is the word he actually gets. As we go through this,

I want you to consider the growing offense on Jonathan's part when we see how his father treats him.

So right after this battle, Saul makes this kind of foolish oath that they have

to chase the Philistine army after this. They're running.

And after a day of battle, you can imagine you're at a calorie deficit.

You're probably tired. and to help things along, King Saul says,

hey, whoever eats in a thing before we're done with this, sure,

those guys are going to die.

Jonathan doesn't care this. Jonathan does take some honey on the way and everyone's like, oh no.

So it gets to where they have to find out who broke this command.

And they do a casting of lots and they determine that it's not everyone else.

It's either Saul and Jonathan And then Saul's like, well, obviously it wasn't

me. Jonathan, what'd you do?

And then when he finds out that his own son, who was their champion of the day,

was the one who ate some honey, he doesn't say, oh, that was a really steep

thing for me to say. I'm sorry.

He really wants to hold his ground in front of everybody.

And he says, we're going to kill my son.

I don't know if surely he's going to have to die. And the soldiers, they know better.

They have some common sense. And they're like, no, no, no, he shouldn't die, king.

And luckily he relents. They've stayed with him enough that he does that.

But man, what a rough day for Jonathan.

Let's contrast that to what we know happens later on.

The guy named David comes to the palace. A guy named David Does this act of

bravery He wins the battle of the day Against Goliath,

And Saul pours out all this praise and reward and celebration from David.

You know John watched that, right? You know John saw all the favor and reward

that he should have received for his diligence and his good work.

He saw it going to somebody else.

Some of us have experienced that same thing. We know exactly what that feels like. It feels awful.

And Jonathan could have felt really crushed at this time. He could have felt

overlooked and betrayed. He could have felt sidelined by his father.

But instead of offense and envy, or having a sense of competition towards David,

Jonathan becomes a devoted friend to David.

And that loyal, loving heart of friendship, it leads to the second part where

we're going to and look at his life, is just how devoted and faithful of a friend he was.

So we're going to move over into chapter 18. Okay, this is right after David's victory over Goliath.

Read from verses 1 to 4. After David had finished talking with Saul,

he met Jonathan, the king's son.

There was an immediate bond between them. For Jonathan loved David.

From that day on, Saul kept David with him and wouldn't let him return home.

And Jonathan made a solemn pact with David.

Because he loved him as he loved himself, Jonathan sealed the pact by taking

off his robe and giving it to David, together with his tunic, sword, bow, and belt.

Now, we may not understand the significance of these gifts that he's just given

this person. And he said, I'm committing to be your friend to the end.

There's nothing that's going to break this bond between us. And he's giving them these things.

A lot of times, throughout scripture, there is some transfer of personal belongings.

Elijah and Elisha, there was a mantle that was passed.

And usually you didn't have a full wardrobe back in those days.

This was your identity. This was a bit who you were. And so,

especially if you were in a royal family, that carried a lot of significance.

So handing over those things that marked you as crown prince to someone else,

was a way of lifting that person up to your status.

It was a way of committing yourself. Like, all that I am, I'm giving it to you.

And this transfer, scholars have said, this is, these items,

they represent him kind of effectively yielding the rights of succession to David.

Recognizing God's anointing on David. Recognizing God's removal of favor and

anointing on his own household.

He's seeing what his father's done to the military.

He's seeing what his father's done in the kingdom. He's seen it all over.

He sees his family deteriorating in the soul, and he sees someone come in who he sees.

This is someone who's anointed, someone who's walking in truth.

He recognizes that at his own expense. He recognizes what's going on.

You see in him is a friend who is humble, and he's meek.

Meek is strength that's been reserved. He could easily held on to his rights

as crown prince and fought for it.

But he didn't here. We're going to look at some parts of their friendship.

Jonathan was a friend who preserved David. So he promises to tell David about

any schemes of his father.

Eventually, we know that King Saul gets very jealous of David.

He can't handle the fact that there's someone who could possibly take the throne

from him and begins to plot to kill David.

And Jonathan, who was in a position where he has to be loyal to family,

loyal to friends, comes in and he promises to keep David safe.

And then there's an incident that happens. I'm just going to briefly just tell David.

David fears for his life. He says, listen, I've got to go, but please just tell

your father the story that I've gone to do sacrifices with my family.

And that's why I'm not at your table.

And so when that moment comes and actually Jonathan has to stand and do what

he promised his friend he would do and say, listen, I let David go to see his family.

He is then cussed out by his father.

He is shamed for the whole family. His father then, well, almost takes his own son's life again.

So it says in verse 20, verse 32, it says he's responding to his angry father.

And he says, but why should he, David, be put to death? Jonathan asked his father.

What has he done? Then Saul hurled his spear at Jonathan, intending to kill him.

So at last, Jonathan realized that his father was really determined to kill David.

David left the, sorry, Jonathan left the table in fierce anger and refused to

eat on the second day of the festival.

For he was crushed by his father's shameful behavior towards David.

And then you see on this picture behind me, there's a bow and arrow.

And that's from the next thing that happens.

He he promises he makes this a sign

with david to let him know when it's safe if it's safe or if it's not

safe part of this is he's just going to be out shooting arrows and he knows

where david's hiding and he's like you'll see me when i come out mission's arrows

and if and if you hear me tell the boy he's catching the arrows the arrows are

still further ahead that means your life's endangering you need to run that's

a signal that's the significance.

And so they do that. He has to tell his friend, there's no doubt in my mind,

my father wants to kill you. You have to leave.

And now these best friends, they've got to part ways. They don't know where they're going to go.

David doesn't know yet what it's going to do. All he knows is that the king

of his nation has a lot of resources and he intends to kill him. And so he has to go.

Later on in this story, we come to chapter 23.

David protects some of this town called Thila. Saul finds out.

And is on his way. And David is hiding in the wilderness with 600 men.

And Saul's in pursuit to kill him.

So it reads, this one will start from verse 15, chapter 23.

One day near Horesh, David received the news that Saul was on his way to Ziph

to search for him and kill him.

Jonathan went to find David and encourage him to stay strong in his faith in God.

Don't be afraid, Jonathan reassured him.

My father will never find you. You are going to be king of Israel,

and I will be next to you as my father Saul is well aware.

So the two of them renewed their solemn pact before the Lord.

Then Jonathan returned home while David stayed at Horehash.

Other translations of this verse 16 say that Jonathan strengthened him and the Lord.

I want to just kind of dive into what that actually means here.

So the Hebrew word is hazak, and it's paired with hand.

And it means to, the hazak means to strengthen the resolve, to give courage,

to fortify the will of someone, to restore the ability to act.

And it's got this preposition with the word God in it that's pointing to,

it marks the source of that strengthening.

So effectively what's happening is he's strengthening his hand by pointing him to God.

Or you could say he's strengthening him with God as focus and foundation.

I think we need to learn to do this.

How many have you been strengthened in the Lord the right person someone came

to you and said the right thing at the right time reminded you to look up and

beyond yourself and beyond the circumstance,

reminded you of the promises that God's made to you reminded you of the word

that he's given you reminded you of the path that you have with God and you

were able to carry on when before you were sure you weren't able to.

What if we learned to do this for our spouses? What if we learned to do this

for our children, for our friends?

How much stronger will the people

around us be? Because we are good at strengthening people in the Lord.

We are good at directing people to focus on God in the midst of really hard times.

We put God as the focus and the foundation of where we can secure our hope.

It's one of the things that we're called to as believers to be stirring each

other up to go to words. We're going to be encouraging each other.

And it needs to be something that we need to be proactive in thinking about.

Because if we don't do it, people can suffer.

They don't need to do something. We can do that. We can learn to encourage.

We don't need to be stingy with our words. Those words can come really,

it doesn't cost too much.

And sometimes all you need to know is this, I know a little bit of truth.

And I can apply it to the situation, here it is.

You can start really simple. Just remember to point each other to the Lord.

And Jonathan, he lives out this biblical friendship of love.

And I was seeing how he loved his friend, and it reminded me of 1 Corinthians

13, where actually Paul's telling us about what love looks like as far as God's

definition goes. We learn that love is patient.

Kind, not envious, not self-seeking, rejoices with truth, bears all things like

Jonathan, like Jonathan did.

Jonathan demonstrated that for us. You want to know what it looks like in practice?

There's a story right there. We see Jonathan and David.

And that love that he showed to his friend, it helped position him.

It helped prepare him to be the greatest king Israel ever had.

It had to be an amazing thing to be David, who is already a warrior,

who already has been anointed,

to have a friend who is also a warrior, who also knows everything about the

palace, who is on his side, who is fighting for him every step of the way.

You know it makes me think though that so

many lives have actually been ruined and they

could have ended up if you hear through people's stories there's usually

a point where you go you know what if somebody was there during

this stage or at this point in their life somebody was there

to encourage them they would

have not probably gone off that way we know people

in our family people we've grown up with there's usually

a point we can look and go you know what if only

there was someone there at that moment there at that season

that person could have been in such

a a better place and i want to just put this to you right now i want you to

be thinking about your life at the moment are there people around you who are

at risk are there people right now in your life who need someone to be on their

side I don't need someone who will be devoted to them, someone who is looking out for them.

I know it's easy for us to be looking at ourselves and wanting that for us. I know.

We're naturally selfish beings. Of course, we'd all like to have our own Jonathan.

Actually, some of us probably feel entitled to some Jonathans.

Why don't we resolve to actually be the Jonathan for somebody else?

Let's stop assuming that we're the David, okay?

You may have an opportunity to step up into that.

But God's love he's demonstrated to us is he's the proactive one.

He lays down his love first before anyone else does anything.

So there is precedence for the believer or the one who follows Jesus to determine

to, I'm going to lay my heart out first.

This person isn't worthy of it right now. They're not deserving of it at the

moment. But I will go first.

I will be this person's support. I will be a person, I will commit myself to

this person, to what I believe, to what God has called them to do.

Imagine what would happen in our lives if we all had those people.

Some of us do have those people. We're so grateful for them.

And beyond that friendship, we know that Jonathan does tragically die.

He leaves behind a son. And that

legacy of loyalty that he had towards David, it carries on to his son.

King David looks after Jonathan's son, Mephibosheth.

And takes him into the palace and cares for him for the rest of his days.

And when we look at Jonathan's life,

I want us just to be challenged to be walking out our faith and our friendship

in a way that's so demonstrable.

I pray that this room does not have people at our funerals, people get up and

talk about how we had a quiet faith.

I hope that they get up and they talk about how our faith and our loyalty were extreme.

They were loud. It moved things around us.

There was an impact from how we walked out our convictions.

There's many people who don't want anything to do with this.

They don't want anything to do with Jesus.

And part of it is they haven't seen enough people willing to go ahead and lay it out online.

Too many of us being half-hearted, uncommitted, refusing to lay anything down

that feels a little bit too much, a little bit costly.

I mean, and this just this one example we see in Jonathan's life, it costs him so much.

He didn't benefit greatly from this devotion and this faith that he had in heaven.

Of course, he has a great heavenly reward on earth.

He was overlooked and he actually, he lost pretty much everything.

Some of us here, we're thinking, actually, I need a friend. I need someone.

I recognize I'm one of those people that needs someone speaking into my life.

I feel the lack of it. My heart's getting weaker.

The scouragement in my life is growing.

I'm struggling to see hope for a future.

Some of us in this room may be able to identify with more than one of those things.

And I want to point you real quickly to Jesus one more time.

The only reason we get up here week after week is to dive into the Word of God

and continue to strengthen you in the Lord. And I hope that's what's happening today.

But then we want you to be keeping your eyes on Jesus.

And all throughout Scripture, we see types and shadows of Christ.

And Jonathan is definitely a shadow of Christ, we see this bit of Christ's character

shining through the life of Jonathan.

So why Jesus? If we're in need of a friend, if we're in need of that person, why this Jesus?

Why am I so convinced he's the one? Well, he's the one who's promised his own

people that he'll never leave and forsake them.

He'll be with us through it all.

And many of us in this room We can testify to that We've been through horrible

things And Jesus has been with us He has kept us and carried us through it.

He's going to lavish his riches and his royal status on you. This is what happens.

Christ puts his royal garments over us.

His pure blood washes over us and we're clean.

It's an amazing exchange. He gives us his status as sons of God.

He will save you from death Just as Jonathan Saved David from death He Jesus

will be our advocate before the

heavenly father Just as Jonathan was the advocate To his corrupt father.

And he'll send his spirit to you To comfort you and guide you And strengthen

you in the Lord Whenever you need it It's right there.

We turn our minds and hearts towards him.

And he'll be the lover of your soul. There's not too many people who can do

that as well as him. In fact, there's nobody.

Only Jesus can love your soul like it really needs to be loved.

Unconditional in a way that it changes it and brings it back to life and restores

the things that are broken. And that's the kind of friend that you and I need.

You can have him today if you call on his name.

Whoever calls on Jesus gets that friend And I can stand in front of you testifying

I have that friend Do I see him? No Do I feel him?

Yes Do I see his activity in my life? Yes Do I see his activity in the lives of people around me?

Yes That proves to me he's real He's living He's active He is faithful to his word,

Can I ask you to stand with me, please?

Let's just pray to close.

Jesus, we just thank you for being the friend that we need.

For being so devoted to us, your people.

Jesus, for looking past our weaknesses so that you can come and you can administer your love.

For lavishing gifts on us, God,

for lavishing your love on us when we're not, when we're worthy of it.

God, we thank you, Lord, that you've preserved these accounts through millennia,

that we would see what it looks like to live out the character of God in our life.

God, we ask, Lord, would you give us faith, God, that we would believe you for greater things.

God, that we would have enough faith to be obedient in the little things,

knowing that they can spark amazing change.

And God, we ask, Lord, would you give us compassion and awareness for the people

in our lives who need a friend.

They need someone to be there for them. to be devoted, just as we see with Jonathan and David.

We ask the Lord to use us in this way. In Jesus' name, amen.