CBFC Worship 6/21/2026

Good morning.

And happy Father's Day.

Can I just add again a huge thank you to all of you fathers here for all that you've done, for all that you're doing, for all that you carry?

I just want to say on behalf of our church and on behalf of the Lord Jesus, thank you for your work, for your service.

It is not a light thing to be a father.

I've been told I'm not a father, but the the weights that you carry, seen and unseen, are significant.

And they are seen by the Lord.

The Lord sees you.

So I want you to hear that this morning.

If you're a father, we thank you.

The Lord sees you.

No matter what insecurities and exhaustion you're up against, or what the lies of the devil may say to you about who you are or your worth or value as a father.

He is working in you.

He is doing great things through you.

So hear him say to you this morning, Well done, brothers, for all your working, your striving, in your weakness, in your brokenness.

Well done.

The Lord sees you.

I heard uh recently about a man that worked for this uh NGO in a rural African village.

And over time he befriended the tribal chief, and they they got to talking one day, and the chief asks him, Tell me about the American man, he says.

And the the worker intuitively responded, Well, the American man works a lot.

And as he explained more, the chief was shocked to find that the man, the American man, leaves his home each morning.

He leaves the people that know him best and love him most and his place of belonging, and then spends most of his waking hours somewhere else, often working alone in isolation behind a screen or in a cubicle, and he added as a saving grace.

But the American man makes a lot of money.

And hearing all of this, without hesitation, the tribal chief said this.

Oh.

So the American man is lonely.

It doesn't take an expert to know that to look at our culture and to know something's wrong.

We're missing something and we're suffering the consequences.

57% of Americans today eat every single meal alone.

54% of Americans today say that no one knows them well.

In the last two decades alone, the percentage of Americans who say that they have no close friends has quadrupled.

There is a crisis of loneliness and of friendlessness in our culture.

In prison, they often refer to solitary confinement as the prison within the prison.

I've heard again, I haven't been there.

But they they refer to that way because of how uniquely torturous and mentally debilitating it is to be cut off from people, cut off from relationships.

It's dehumanizing.

In fact, there's an increasingly widespread consensus among human rights experts and medical professionals and international bodies that prolonged solitary confinement is a form of psychological torture that constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Humans are designed for connection, for relationship, for community, for friendship.

And so to remove that is to remove something core to what it means to be a human, to unravel a person's humanity and send them spiraling into anxiety and depression and all sorts of mental illnesses.

And yet, this is exactly what we have been doing to ourselves on a larger, more subtle scale.

And thus the American man is lonely.

As a culture, we're lonelier and more lacking in true friendship than ever.

And this is at odds with the way that we were created, the way we're designed by God.

Friendship, in many ways, is why we exist.

Bible says in Genesis 2, before sin entered the world, before there was death or suffering or anything wrong with creation, there was one thing that God declared not good.

It is not good for the man to be alone.

Genesis 2, 18.

We're created for relationship, not just mar, not even ultimately marriage, but for community, friendship.

And that's what makes this passage, 1 Samuel 20, so remarkable, because this chapter takes place in an especially dark moment for David's life, out of which the glorious gift of friendship shines bright.

1 Samuel 20 is one of the most beautiful portraits of friendship in all of Scripture.

And in David and Jonathan, here we see what true covenantal, biblical, God-centered friendship looks like.

And through their friendship, we're ultimately pointed to an even greater friend, the Lord Jesus Christ, who meets us in our loneliness and gives us what our hearts long for.

So let's just pray once more and ask for God's guidance as we hear from his word.

Lord Jesus, our great King and Friend, would you meet with us right now?

Speak through your word, speak through my mouth, Lord, that we may believe and receive your good news, your gospel with joy.

We pray this in your name, Lord, and for your glory.

Amen.

And this morning, as we walk through this chapter, we're gonna look at friendship from three angles.

First, we'll see the friendship of David and what it teaches us about vulnerable, honest, faithful friendship.

Second, we'll consider the friendship of Jonathan and what it teaches us about loving, sympathetic, selfless friendship.

And finally, we'll see how both of these point beyond themselves to the friendship of Jesus Christ, the friend who embodies every virtue of friendship perfectly and who laid down his life for his friends.

So first the friendship of David, then the friendship of Jonathan, and finally the friendship of Jesus.

First, the friendship of David.

What does David show us about friendship?

Well, the first thing we see is vulnerability.

Notice how this story begins.

David is scared.

And he's in a weak point.

He's confused, he's on the run.

Saul has tried repeatedly to kill him.

And David genuinely believes he's on the verge of death.

In verse 3, he says, There is but a step between me and death.

And where does David go with this?

He runs to Jonathan.

He runs to his friend.

Now don't miss how remarkable that is.

We've said before, Jonathan is Saul's son.

He's the crown prince, who has nothing to gain from being a friend to David and everything to lose, his whole kingdom to lose.

If there was ever a moment for David to withdraw from those around him into isolation, into himself, this was the moment.

David could have easily given in, like so many of us, like I do all the time, to the temptation that said, you know, Jonathan doesn't want to hear this.

Jonathan's relationship with his dad is fine.

I don't need to spoil that.

It's Father's Day, right?

I don't need to put this on him today.

I don't want to involve him in my mess.

I don't want to put my burden on him, so I'll just absorb it into myself and move on, carry it alone.

David doesn't do that.

He he shows incredible vulnerability here.

A vulnerability that he has the courage to initiate.

And that's risky.

Right?

It's risky to initiate vulnerability like this.

And in fact, for David, um, in verse 8, he gives himself over to Jonathan completely to be killed if he thinks he deserves it.

So there's risk involved in him coming to Jonathan in his weakness, even a risk of death, a risk that he accepts in order to open himself up in vulnerability to his friend.

In a moment like this, isolation is what would have felt most naturally like safety.

And it often feels that way.

But David doesn't isolate, he doesn't pretend everything is fine, he doesn't suffer in silence, he runs to his friend and he opens up his heart.

He exposes his fears to Jonathan and he lets Jonathan see his weakness.

And that is what real friendship requires.

Real biblical friendship requires not merely a degree of transparency.

Transparency is where I'm in control and I'm willing to show you what I want to show you about my heart.

I can show you a piece of it.

Vulnerability is where I give up control and give myself over to you completely, trusting you with whatever it is I'm handing over.

With transparency, it's like if I have a shield, I can choose to move it aside to show you a part of myself.

I can give you a part of myself.

But true vulnerability is dropping the shield and handing you my sword and trusting that you're not going to use it to harm me.

There's risk there, there's real risk, but it's giving you my deepest hopes and fears and dreams and wounds and faults and failures, which you could potentially weaponize and hurt me with, but I'm trusting you as a friend, and I can be completely vulnerable.

And so I drop my guard and I hand you my very heart.

And I'll admit, I'm bad at this point, especially.

This is difficult.

Um I heard someone say this week that to be 90% known is to be completely unknown.

That hit me like a truck, because I'm a 90% guy.

I'll show you a lot, but there's always stuff that I want to keep concealed.

But deep friendship, close biblical friendship requires this sort of vulnerability.

Which requires that we give it in order to receive it.

And that's what David is doing here.

But David shows us not only vulnerability, he shows us candor, a sort of open, honest sincerity, a truthfulness in his willingness to correct Jonathan.

Jonathan initially doesn't believe David.

David says, Your dad's crazy, he's gonna try to kill me.

And Jonathan says, verse 2, far from it, you shall not die.

Jonathan can't imagine that his father would ever hide anything from him.

And honestly, he's being naive.

Okay, Jonathan is being a bit naive here.

And now at this point, David could have simply nodded and moved on and said, Yeah, whatever.

I don't need you.

Instead, he lovingly and honestly pushes back.

He tells Jonathan the truth, even though it's painful for him.

He challenges Jonathan's assumptions.

He helps him to see reality more clearly.

That's really what most of this story is about.

It's David creating this whole plan to see how Saul reacts to David's absence.

Not for David.

David already knows that Saul's trying to kill him.

He watched the spears get thrown at him like three times.

This is for Jonathan, to help Jonathan see the truth.

And that is what friends do.

A real friend is not merely someone who agrees with you.

A real friend is someone who loves you enough to tell you what you need to hear, to point you in a new direction, and to patiently walk there with you.

Proverbs 27 says, Faithful are the wounds of friends.

Sometimes friendship means correction and honesty and helping someone to see what they can't see for themselves.

We live in a culture that often values agreement more than honesty.

Biblical friendship values truth over comfort.

David is willing to have the hard conversation because he loved his friend.

And finally, David shows us constancy, a sort of faithful friendship that endures.

This chapter is saturated with covenant language.

It's full of David and Jonathan again and again speaking of steadfast love and loyalty and faithfulness.

David promises that if God preserves him and gives him the kingdom, he will continue to show kindness to Jonathan and to Jonathan's descendants.

And David keeps that promise in remarkable, generous, beautiful ways.

Years later, after Jonathan is gone, after Saul is gone, after David has taken the throne, he discovers that Jonathan has another living son still, Mephibosheth, who's crippled in his legs.

And rather than having Mephibosheth as a member of the former dynasty eliminated, killed, like every other king on the planet at that time would have done, what David does is has mercy and he adopts this disabled young man into his family.

He gives him a home and land and a seat at his table and makes him royalty.

He makes him a prince.

David remains faithful to his friendship with Jonathan.

He remains a constant, faithful friend even when Jonathan is no longer around to see it.

That's covenant friendship.

We live in a world filled with consumer friendships, friendships that last as long as they are useful to us, as long as they're convenient for us, as long as they're fun for me, as long as they benefit me in some way.

Biblical friendship is a different kind of friendship.

Biblical friendship remains steadfast for the good of another.

It remains faithful, it keeps its word, it endures.

And David, we we get this glimpse of this kind of friendship, vulnerable enough to be known in weakness, honest enough to tell the truth, and faithful enough to last.

Even through death.

That's the the friendship of David.

Which brings us to the friendship of Jonathan.

If David teaches us about opening himself up to a friend, Jonathan teaches us about giving himself away for a friend.

And that that selfless, self-giving friendship begins with affection.

Three times in this chapter, we are reminded of Jonathan's love for David.

Verse 17 says that Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he, Jonathan, loved him, David, as he loved his own soul.

That's a remarkable statement of love and affection.

Jonathan didn't just appreciate David, he didn't just like the same movies as David, he loved David.

Chapter 19 told us that he delighted in him.

One of the most common Hebrew words for friend literally means one who loves.

And it's something it's something our culture struggles to understand.

We tend to reduce love and affection to romantic relationships, or maybe feminine relationships, leading to a total distortion of affectionate friendship.

I came across this um social media post recently about the Lord of the Rings novels, which really beautifully display male friendship and affection and love and loyalty in a really helpful way.

But the post was uh essentially mocking Tolkien, the author, for writing in so many allegedly homosexual characters, which is the same old, absurd, obnoxious, historically ignorant, intellectually dishonest claim that is made about David and Jonathan.

Uh thankfully, a much wiser social media user replied by quoting C.S.

Lewis, a good friend of Tolkien's, saying, Those who cannot conceive friendship as a substantive love, but only as a disguise or elaboration of romantic love, betray the fact that they have never had a friend.

True friendship, real, deep, genuine friendship must have love at its center.

Jonathan loved David as his own soul, and he wasn't embarrassed by it.

There's real, deep affection here, and we desperately need to recover that.

Biblical friendship is not merely shared interest, it is shared love.

Which leads us to Jonathan's sympathy.

He doesn't merely feel affection for David, he enters into David's suffering.

And that's what sympathy is.

The word sympathy comes from the Greek word sympathea, meaning to suffer with, to co-suffer.

So it's one thing to say, you know, I'm sorry you're going through that.

I'll pray for you.

It's another thing to actively step into that pain yourself, to bear it in some way with your friend.

So what Jonathan does.

He investigates Saul's intentions, he places himself between David and danger, he risks his father's anger, he risks his own safety, his own life, he bears the emotional cost, and then in the end, when David is forced to flee, Jonathan doesn't stand at a distance and offer advice.

He embraces him and he weeps with him.

Romans 12 says, to weep with those who weep.

And Jonathan's attitude is your burden has become my burden.

We will share in this together.

That's what true friendship does.

It enters the pain of another person and refuses to leave them alone there.

So it's not enough.

It's good, but it's not enough for us to clasp our hands together in prayer for our friends.

We need to reach out our hands toward them in love and in active sympathy.

It's so much easier for me to sit alone in my room and pray for the hurting widow or the sick child or the wayward teen than it is to reach out with my time and my heart and my wallet and my attention, my life, and say, what's mine is yours.

How can I share in this burden with you?

And even when we have nothing else to give, we have our tears to weep with those who weep, as Christ himself did.

This is the kind of sympathetic co-suffering that we see on display in the friendship of Jonathan.

But maybe the most remarkable aspect of Jonathan's friendship is not his affection, not even his sympathy, it's his selflessness.

Jonathan sees that David will be king.

He knows it.

God has anointed him, it's going to happen.

And that's what makes this chapter really astonishing, because David's rise means Jonathan's fall.

David's gain means Jonathan's loss.

Jonathan's the crown prince.

The throne belongs to him.

The kingdom belongs to him.

The future belongs to Jonathan.

It's supposed to be his.

And yet he gladly gives it away to pursue what the Lord has called for David.

And there is not a trace of jealousy on Jonathan's lips in all of 1 Samuel.

There's not a hint of rivalry, not a whisper of resentment or envy or competition.

Instead, Jonathan spends his life helping David become what God has called him to be, namely king.

As one pastor Kent Hughes put it, the deepest of friendships have in common this desire, to make the other person royalty.

This is what friends are doing for one another.

Friends celebrate the other's flourishing.

They want the very best for the other person.

There's no manipulation, there's no rivalry, no envy, just a sincere desire to see the other person become what God intends them to be.

Namely, kings and queens in his kingdom ruling the earth with King Jesus in glory.

That's the destiny of the people of God.

And that's Jonathan's desire for David.

He sees God's will for David's life, and he chooses to lay down his own interest to help him become that.

When Michelangelo was asked how he carved his magnificent David sculpture, his reply was reportedly, I looked inside the marble and just took away the bits that weren't David.

Which is not really helpful advice if you're trying to be a sculptor.

But but that's that's the friendship of Jonathan.

Right?

He looks inside David and he sees this magnificent, glorious king that God is making him to be.

He loves him despite his lack of that, all the way until he is that by walking with him to help make him that.

And our friendships in Christ are no different.

In Christ, our brothers and sisters around us, though they may not look all that glorious today, are destined by the sovereign will of God for glorious, majestic royalty in his kingdom.

And we need to see that inside one another and help each other as friends chip away at what doesn't align with that and build up what does.

C.S.

Lewis famously said it this way.

He said, It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses.

To remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.

Or else a horror and a corruption, such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are in some degree helping each other to one or other of these destinations.

It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them that we should conduct all our dealings.

With one another.

All friendships.

All loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal.

This is what friendship is for, as embodied in the friendship of Jonathan.

But as great as all of that is, and as much as we should pursue friendships like that in this church, it's seriously lacking on its own.

The story of David and Jonathan is beautiful, but it's not enough.

And that's because David and Jonathan were never meant to be the destination.

And their friendship was never meant to be the end goal.

They were meant to be a signpost pointing ahead toward the destination.

In fact, every friendship in the world, at its very best, is meant to be a reflection of something greater than us.

Because friendship didn't originate with us, it originated with the triune God, the eternal friendship.

And the reason friendship is so precious to us is because it reflects something of God Himself and His creation and His love for His own people.

Which brings us to the greatest friendship in this story and in the history of the world, not the friendship of David or the friendship of Jonathan, but the friendship of Jesus.

Every good thing that we admire in David and Jonathan finds its source and fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Consider the vulnerability of Jesus.

Whereas David offered his weaknesses and fears to Jonathan, Jesus offers us his very self in its fullness of his heart, holding nothing back.

In John 15, Jesus says to his disciples, and thus to all of us, no longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends.

For everything that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

You see what he's saying?

He's saying, we aren't just servants to a king anymore, though he is our king.

We are his friends because Jesus has opened up his deepest purposes for us to share in them with him.

He doesn't open up some of what the Father has given him, but everything.

There's nothing held back.

Jesus lets his friends completely into his life, his desires, and his purposes.

Consider Jesus' candor, his open, honest sincerity, his truthfulness in correcting his friends.

David was honest with his friend to help set him straight.

But no friend has ever been more honest than Jesus.

He loves us enough to tell us the truth about our sin and about ourselves.

He refuses to flatter us.

He refuses to leave us alone in our self-deception and our self-destruction.

Like a skilled surgeon, he wounds only to heal, only to bring about our greatest good.

Faithful are the wounds of friends, and no friend has ever wounded so faithfully or healed so fully as Jesus.

He convicts us of sin, points out our error gently and with compassion as a tender, loving friend to lead us into truth and life.

Consider Jesus' constancy.

Jonathan eventually died, David died, Mephibosheth died, and many of our friendships too have fallen away, either to death or betrayal or drifting or distance.

Every earthly friendship ends for now.

But Jesus says to his people, I will never leave you or forsake you.

There is no circumstance that can separate you from him.

There's no sin, no failure, no shame, no brokenness, no satanic or demonic opposition.

Nothing can end or damage or hinder your friendship with Jesus for those of you who are in Christ.

As the Puritan theologian Richard Sibbs put it, he said, As his friendship is sweet, so it is constant in all conditions.

If other friends fail, as friends may fail, yet this friend will never fail us.

He will never be ashamed of us.

How comfortable would our life be if we could draw out the comfort that this title of friend affords.

It is a comfortable, a fruitful, and eternal friendship.

Jesus is a steadfast, constant, faithful, everlasting friend for those who have trusted in him.

Consider Jesus' affection.

Jonathan loved David as his own soul.

Church, Jesus loves you far more.

He loves you.

Jesus, referring to himself, said again in John 15, no one has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends.

You hear that?

Not only are we friends of Jesus in some abstract sense, but we are friends whom he loves with the greatest love possible.

You could not be more loved than you are right now in Christ.

Ephesians 3 tells us his love for us surpasses knowledge.

It's inconceivable.

And Paul goes on and says that it requires divine supernatural empowerment to be able to begin to understand its vastness and depth.

It is an ocean without bottom, without shores, without even a surface.

It is infinite.

God's love for you in Christ could not be greater.

This is unlike any love you have ever experienced or imagined.

Every human love between friends, between family members, between spouses, in movies and in books, all of it is a shadow in comparison to the substance of Jesus' love for his friends.

The deepest love you've ever felt is a faint whisper in comparison to the love that Christ has for you today.

Chapter 19 told us that Jonathan delighted much in David.

Church, your friend Jesus delights in you far more.

He delights in you.

Friends enjoy each other.

And Jesus is a true friend who enjoys his people.

The Bible doesn't just say that God tolerates you or puts up with you.

It says he delights in you.

Listen to this from Zephaniah 3.

I love this verse.

The Lord your God is in your midst.

That's Jesus, a mighty warrior who saves.

He will rejoice over you with gladness.

He will quiet you by his love.

He will delight in you with joyful singing.

We don't have some reluctant, harsh God or God who hesitates to befriend us or merely tolerates us as his people.

In Jesus, we have a true friend whose heart sings with joy in his love for us.

Consider Jesus' sympathy.

Jonathan stood with David in his suffering, but Jesus has entered the depths of ours entirely.

He took on flesh.

He became acquainted with grief.

He was ignored and despised by his peers, betrayed by friends, abandoned by companions, rejected by his own people, tempted in every respect.

We are publicly shamed, beaten, tortured, and crucified in our place.

No one understands human suffering like Jesus.

No one has wept with his people more deeply than Jesus.

No one is more able to sympathize with your brokenness than Jesus.

There's this scene at the end of The Magician's Nephew to reference T.S.

Lewis yet again.

This is the last time.

But the main character, Diggory, is he's crying out to the powerful King Lion, who he sees as terrifying and potentially harsh.

And Diggory is distraught because his mother is sick and nearing death.

And he says to the lion, please.

It's a children's story.

Please, won't you, can't you give me something that will cure mother?

He says.

And then we read this.

Up till then he had been looking down at the lion's great feet and the huge claws on them.

Now in his despair, he looked up at its face.

What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life, for the tawny face was bent down near his own, and, wonder of wonders, great shining tears stood in the lion's eyes.

They were such big, bright tears compared with Diggory's own that for a moment he felt as if the lion must really be sorrier about his mother than he was himself.

That is the kind of king that Jesus is.

Not a harsh or distant ruler, but a sympathetic friend who enters our suffering and shares it with us, weeping with us tears even greater than our own.

Finally, consider Jesus' selflessness.

Jonathan gave up his rights and privileges, his wealth and honor and power, his royalty to make David king.

And in Christ we have an even greater friend who has given up not an earthly kingdom, but the glories of heaven, the power of the throne, the luxury and wealth and honor and rights and privileges of God Himself to become a slave, to suffer and to die, so that we might be made kings and queens in his glorious kingdom.

That is what Jesus is doing in us.

That is the image he is conforming us to today, in all of us who have trusted in him.

You are his friend if you have trusted in Jesus, and he is restoring in you what he made you to be.

He who began this good work in you will bring it to completion.

If you don't yet know Jesus, he offers you his friendship today.

Turn from your sin while there's time.

Trust in him, and you will have a friend in Christ forever.

Let's pray.

King Jesus, our greatest friend, Lord, we cannot find words to express how dearly we love you.

For we are so dearly loved by you.

Lord, I ask that for everyone in this room who does not yet know you, that you would make yourself known to them.

Not as a harsh ruler or a distant, angry, frustrated dictator, but as a loving friend.

And Lord, for all of us who have been made new by you and are being conformed to your image, would you remind us again of your love for us and of what your friendship means for those who are in Christ?

Jesus, we long to see you.

We long for the day that you return.

Please come quickly and give us strength until you do.

It's in your name, Lord, and for your glory we pray.

Amen.

Thank you, Daniel.

Would you please stand with us?