Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.
The series Son of David, as presented at Rinaldin Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program today, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org.
That's PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860. Now more on this later in the program, but now let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. And yet this is also so deep and so rich. So you're surprised by the fact that there are, there is a friendship between David and Jonathan, but then the thing you're surprised by is how deeply they love.
Twice it is said Jonathan loved David as his own soul. Jesus said, love others as you love yourself. This is profound.
This isn't just an exhortation to say be nice to other people and do nice things for them like you'd like them to do nice things for you. This is something much deeper than that. God is saying as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have in a triune mystery and eternal co-eternal love, the Father loves the Son as he loves himself. The Son loves the Father.
This is the model for life. You will never ever know the true nature of the love of God until you have that sense that you love somebody as your own soul. But when you do, you've come very close to understanding the love of God. Such a love is seated in a covenant. And that's the emphasis point in this relationship.
You can't miss it. It is at least twice affirmed that their friendship is a covenant friendship. Now you've heard me talk about this often and I will continue because I can't think of anything more important in understanding the gospel than understanding covenant. The word that is used in 1 Samuel 20 that you continue to show steadfast love to me. This word for steadfast love maybe in other translations rendered loving kindness. But this word chesed, one of the most important Old Testament words is the word that describes covenantal love. Covenantal love is a very different sort of love because it's not simply based on what we have in common.
It's based instead on a choice or a binding commitment. You know it's a good thing when you have friends that you have things in common with them. Right. I mean you might like to play golf and you like to have some people like to play golf with you. You might enjoy good books and you might enjoy friends that like to talk about good books.
You might enjoy cooking and have friends that you like to talk about good recipes with. I mean all these things are good to have things in common. It's a good thing to have things in common with the person you decide to marry. It's good to be able to have things that are fun that you do together.
So that that is an ingredient of course that that is important is that you hold things that that are in common. I like I like Jesus a lot. So if you're going to be with me I'm going to talk about Jesus a lot. And if you don't like Jesus a lot you probably won't be my friend very long because you'll go this guy is boring.
All he does is talk about Jesus. And so commonalities are good. But this relationship between David and Jonathan there's no emphasis on what they hold in common. As important as that may be there's an emphasis on the covenant. Now a covenantal love is one that is hard to describe. And yet this happens all the time sometimes without you even realizing it. You have oftentimes in unspoken ways you have made covenants and then sometimes we have them in spoken ways. But in any sense I think you could begin to wrap your mind around it. If you just think about the people that you're committed to and how you feel about them the more committed you are to somebody the more you you you care for them. It's an odd thing. You might think it would just be the more committed they are to me the more I care for them.
But actually it works the other way around. It's the more committed you are to them the more you care for them. Yesterday I had an opportunity to join with some other staff and helping share some principles of leadership with one of the Wake Forest Divinity School classes. And so as as we were just beginning the class and I was asked to share something about my leadership philosophy without even thinking about it.
I didn't have no prompting hadn't made any notes. I was just going to share what is the first thing that I think about leadership and who am I and how would I define it just comes out of me not even thinking about it just absolutely the top of the list. I said if you're going to be a minister if you're going to be a pastor here's the number one thing. Love your people. Love your people. And I just said here's here's the fact I love my people.
I think we're an older people are the best people in the world. I love my people. I'll defend them. I won't anybody talk bad about them.
And that includes all of them. And I said the fact of the matter is the reason that I love them is because they're my people. That's my flock. See what happened was 18 years ago when I was called to be pastor here I came into a covenant love relationship with the flock of an older church.
So what happened was and I'm not saying something I'm not saying this theoretically I'm saying this is actually what happened. I love the people. And not only that but some of the people started loving me even before I got here.
I was very thankful for that. I was an elder in our church. His name was King Brown. He's in heaven now. And he sent me a note about a month before I ever started here.
This is 17 and a half years ago. And King called me brother pastor. And he wrote me brother pastor.
That was already a blessing right there. I had never met the man but I was his brother and I was his pastor. And he said we're looking so forward to having you so forth. And in fact he wrote me many times. But every time he'd write me he'd say we love you though we hadn't met you yet. There was a sense in which what happened you see when there's a call is that there's love because there's a call. The love didn't happen first and then the call the call happened and then the love. See what I'm describing to you is covenantal love.
Let me put it even simpler terms. I've actually used this silly illustration with you before but let me just bring it down to the most mundane level and show you how basic this operates in life is we have a dog named Recy. He's a beagle and we love Recy. We've had him a pretty long time and we think a lot of Recy and we take care of Recy and we feed Recy and we provide water and we give him treats and when he needs to go to the vet we take him to the vet and we spend money on this beagle. Now is he the best beagle in the world?
Not really, not exactly. He has a little issue with other dogs. We didn't socialize him I think when he was a little dog with other dogs and so he's fantastic with people. I mean with kids they could just pull his ears off and he wouldn't ever bother him but another dog he becomes like a Tasmanian devil when he gets around. But never mind he's our beagle so we love him, right? Now if you have a beagle I'm sure he's wonderful and I love all animals but you've noticed I haven't been feeding your animal and I'm not going to take your animal to the vet either.
It's cause what? Recy's our dog. Why do we love this dog? Cause he's our dog. We're in a covenant with this dog. Our covenant is we feed him, his covenant is he eats it. It's a pretty good arrangement for him.
I'm just making this point. Beloved, if a human being can love a dog just because it's the family pet that belongs to them, just because of the belonging, can God love you just because you belong to him? And there's a covenant that's been made and kept in Jesus Christ. Got some giants to slay? Need some encouragement in the midst of a trial?
Wondering if God really cares? Meet David. Who can compare to him? He was the ruddy, handsome, youth-tending sheep riding psalms and worshipping God in the humble Bethlehem fields. He was the lone Israelite, brave enough to decapitate Goliath and the sole warrior, adept enough to cut off the scourge of the Philistines.
He was the stately king who established peace, expanded the borders and reigned in prosperity for forty years. Who else could be a gentle shepherd, a glorious hero and a noble king? Would there ever be another leader like David? Yes, the son of David. His name is Jesus and he is a better David than David could ever be. He came to be your shepherd, your hero and your king. In a 12-message audio series, Alan Wright takes you on a thrilling adventure with David in order to point you to the answer for your every need, the son of David.
Discover how Christ enables you to face your biggest obstacles, deal with your fiercest persecution and live as an heir of grace. It's an audio series from Alan Wright. As our thanks for your donation, we'll be delighted to send you Pastor Alan's audio messages in either a digital download or a CD album format.
Son of David, shepherd, hero, king. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, pastoralan.org. Today's teaching now continues.
Here once again is Alan Wright. Christian gospel is not about you and your commitment to God. It is about God and his commitment to you as proven in Jesus Christ. And when you say yes to him, you have entered into a covenant that you did not initiate, you did not complete, and yet you have become a full recipient of all of its privileges.
So much so, you could say with Paul, I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. It's a covenantal relationship between David and Jonathan and that's a secret of this story, right? In that covenantal relationship, what you get the opportunity for that you don't get in other sorts of relationships is the deepest expression of love. See, every relationship, every friendship, any type of relationship has some measure of availability and vulnerability and accountability, every single relationship. But only a covenantal kind of friendship has these at the rich deep level that is the kind of love that God has.
Think about these things, availability and vulnerability and accountability. Every relationship has some measure of this. And it depends on the extent of that relationship as to how much you have of those three things, like being available. There are many different levels of availability in a relationship, right? You have some people that you're very available to and some that you're only partially available to.
Just think of it this way. You had a church today, sermon goes a little long, I predict. You get a little hungry and so you're really ready for your lunch and you go out to a restaurant and a server comes to your table and the server introduces himself and he says, my name is Joe and I'm going to be taking care of you today. You usually don't tell Joe your name, do you? You're not even available enough to give him your name. Joe comes and tells you his name but he doesn't give you his cell phone or his street address and you don't give him yours.
Hopefully you don't. And you have this arrangement and this relationship that everybody understands. You're available to me in this sense. Joe, I need some more water over here.
Yeah, coming. And you're available to him and thank you for the service. Here's a nice tip. And you might talk a little bit during the time and be friendly with one another and I hope as a Christian you leave a good tip and you'll be friendly to people that serve you. But this relationship has very limited availability. So it would be very odd, wouldn't it, that if at dinner time tonight, it'd be 6 o'clock and lunch has worn off and you start getting a little hungry, it'd be very odd if you called up at the restaurant and said, could I speak to Joe? And Joe answered the phone and you said, hey Joe, it's Alan. I was over earlier today and you said you're going to be taking care of me today. I'm feeling kind of hungry now.
You don't mind running something over here? Joe, Joe's not that available to you. I tell you it would be also odd if you went out after you'd eaten your meal, left him a nice tip, go out to your car and imagine Joe comes up, knocks on your window and he rolled window down and Joe says, thank you for the nice tip. But I tell you, now that we're friends, could you give me 10 more bucks? I tell you, I just need a little help. I'm going through a tight spot right now. You'd be like, Joe, Joe, I'm not that available to you.
See, that's kind of low level availability. Now today, right after this service, I'm going to rush out of here and scoot to the National Religious Broadcasters conventions going on in Nashville. This is because we need to be there and continue to learn and grow and develop relationships within the broadcasting industry. And so we have some people that we know well that we'll have real friendships with, but a lot of what happens and you business folk know, it's a convention and there'll be thousands of people there from all over the world and everybody's there because they like Jesus too and they want to tell other people through broadcast.
So we already have something in common so that's fun. But it's a convention so what you do is you walk around, you got business cards in your pocket and you meet somebody you hadn't met. You're, you know, you're networking and you say, oh, what do you do? Oh, I do such and such. Oh yeah, I've got a radio program. Oh yeah, can you have a card?
And I always go, no, I don't have one, but you know, I should. And then you exchange business cards and you talk a little bit and you say, you know, if I could help you some way, let me know. All right, let me know. Okay, I got your number. Good. Okay, I'll look you up sometime. Yeah, let's have lunch sometime. And then you go on to the next person.
What are you doing there? You're now in an availability that's a different level than you were with the server, but this level also has real limits on it, right? There are many different levels of availability, but then there's a kind of availability.
And, and I got some people like this in my life starting with my wife, but I also have friends like this. I'm available 24 seven. If you, if you're just going through a spiritual battle, you know, you can just call just available, right? How available you are measures the depth of the covenantal nature of the relationship. This is what David and Jonathan agreed upon.
We're available to each other now. But what this does is it introduces this second component of every relationship and that is vulnerability. As soon as David agrees to be Jonathan's covenant friend, well, David makes himself extremely vulnerable. This is the son of the man who's trying to kill him. If Jonathan ever wanted to betray David, he could in an instant have David killed.
He would know where David was when nobody else knew where David was and David could betray Jonathan at any point in order for his own self promotion and made themselves quite vulnerable. But the vulnerability of a relationship is not just that we could do things to each other, but it is because the more that you love, the more it hurts when the other hurts. See, when you love somebody and they go through something sad, you're sad. You actually share that sadness. That's vulnerability.
But I'll tell you that there's another vulnerability and that is when someone you love is celebrating and you can't celebrate with them, that also will hurt. It's just like that. So Abby, our 15-year-old, she had her first speech contest this weekend and I've been telling her, nudging her, you can be good at this. Bennett, our son who's in college now, was into debate and speech and we love this national league that they're in and I said, I think Abby's speech.
So she had three speeches, her first ever speech contest and it was huge because it was a national tournament, happened to be just right here up in our mountains, 500 contestants from all over the nation. And I've been telling her, I said, Abby, I said, you don't understand. There's a big learning curve on this because I'm kind of preparing her. I'm like, your brother did well in these things but not until he was older and this is a learning experience.
You know those weird things, you're not trying to take away their faith but you're also trying to prepare for disappointment. So she's texting me on Friday night, my wife's up there with her, I can't be there and Abby's like, I think the speeches have gone well but I don't think, there's no chance of me making what basically are the playoff rounds where they suddenly narrow it down to 16 people. And she said, because there's just too many people here, even though it's gone well and I said, well, main thing is a learning experience, so forth.
So Saturday, I'm in a meeting and then I get out and I look under the text and all of a sudden, I had these three texts, boom, boom, boom. And she broke through to the playoff rounds in every one of the speeches. I was like, are you kidding me?
And I'm just like, oh, it's just like hurting me that I can't be there. And then she made it in one of them to the final eight. She got to the final eight and so I know she's going to be walking across the stage and be given three medals on Saturday night up at Ridgecrest Conference Center and I'm just like, you know, so I just rearranged my preaching last night. We just did the whole thing different, did it earlier. I just, this is crazy.
I got in the car at 6.30, I drove up there, waited and watched her walk across the stage and get her medals and then I drove back. And why? Because it's just too painful to not be there in the rejoicing time also. I don't know which is more painful, to not be there in a sad time or not be there in a rejoicing time.
Why? Because you're just in a covenant. You're all wrapped up. You love somebody like your own soul, you know. And I was like, Abby's like, don't come, Daddy, not that big a deal. And I'm like, it is a big deal. I said, I'm coming.
I said, because you love somebody like it is like she's walking across the stage, but it's like I'm walking across the stage. And guess what? She came in sixth place and guess what the speech was on?
Build your home on grace rather than shame. That's what it was. So anyway, it was fun. It was fun. The vulnerability of a relationship runs so deep that there really are no words probably to express it better than the picture of a mother who loves her child.
I absolutely love the words of Dale Hanson Burke who wrote this years ago. She said she was sitting at lunch one day when a friend casually mentioned that she and her husband were thinking of starting a family. We're taking a survey, she says half jokingly.
Do you think I should have a baby? It'll change your life, I say, carefully keeping my tone neutral. I know, she says, no more sleeping in on weekends, no more spontaneous vacations.
And that is not what I meant at all. I look at my friend trying to decide what to tell her. I want her to know what she'll never learn in childbirth classes. I want to tell her that the physical wounds of childbearing will heal, but becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw she will forever be vulnerable.
I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish clothes and think no matter how sophisticated she is that becoming a mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a she bear protecting her cub. Alan Wright and our teaching today on Friends. It's from the greater series that we're currently in called Son of David and Alan is back in the studio in just a moment as he shares his parting good news thought for the day. Want some giants to slay? Need some encouragement in the midst of a trial?
Wondering if God really cares? Meet David. Who can compare to him? He was the ruddy, handsome, youth-tending sheep riding psalms and worshipping God in the humble Bethlehem fields. He was the lone Israelite brave enough to decapitate Goliath and the sole warrior adept enough to cut off the scourge of the Philistines.
He was the stately king who established peace, expanded the borders and reigned in prosperity for forty years. Who else could be a gentle shepherd, a glorious hero and a noble king? Would there ever be another leader like David? Yes, the Son of David. His name is Jesus and he is a better David than David could ever be. He came to be your shepherd, your hero and your king. In a 12-message audio series, Alan Wright takes you on a thrilling adventure with David in order to point you to the answer for your every need, the Son of David.
Discover how Christ enables you to face your biggest obstacles, deal with your fiercest persecution and live as an heir of grace. It's an audio series from Alan Wright. As our thanks for your donation, we'll be delighted to send you Pastor Alan's audio messages in either a digital download or a CD album format.
Son of David, shepherd, hero, king. The Gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860.
Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back here in the studio to share Alan's parting good news thought for the day and simply a teaching on friends and friendship. A good friend is available. And it also means if you're really a good friend to someone, then you're vulnerable. You know, if you have a good friend, you hurt with them and you celebrate with them. And we'll see this tomorrow accountable. And not in the sense of somebody lording over you and bringing the law to bear on you, but everything I care about, then my friend cares about and vice versa.
And that's a deep accountability. Well, all of this is to say that if this is what it means for in the natural sense, as we see in David and Jonathan, a good friend, what does it mean then when Jesus says, I no longer call you servants. I call you friends. It means that Jesus is available and in a very real sense vulnerable. He has tied up his heart with yours. Wow. You're a friend of Jesus. His good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.
