You’ve Got a Friend in Me

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer.

When you are the one responsible to maintain your identity, security, and happiness, when the weight of those things sits on your shoulders, you will live with a constant undercurrent of anxiety and envy. Happy Monday, and thanks for joining us for Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Today, Pastor J.D. looks at one of the greatest friendship stories of all time between the presumptive heir, Prince Jonathan, and the anointed king, David. This unlikely friendship challenges us to choose our own response to the one true king, Jesus. Will we, like Saul, resist him? Or will we, like Jonathan, yield the throne of our life to him? As we continue our brand new teaching series through the life of David, remember that you can always catch up anytime at jdgreer.com. Now, go ahead and warm up your singing voice, and here's why. Today's teaching is titled, You've Got a Friend in Me.

Are you ready? Here's Pastor J.D. First Samuel 18, if you have your Bibles, and I hope that you do. In fact, I think we ought to be sort of a responsive reading here kind of thing.

I'll say, you know, I always say the Bible, and then you say, if you have your Bibles, and you say, and you hope that we do. That will probably be pretty predictable. But First Samuel 18, as you are turning there, First Samuel 18, back in 2010, Burger King ran a Facebook ad, the campaign, in which they offered a coupon for a free whopper to anybody who would unfriend at least 10 of their Facebook friends. The marketing scheme was, when you unfriended the person, then Burger King would send them a Facebook notification that they had been unfriended for a delicious hamburger, which was supposed to make you say, well, wow, this burger must really be something if I got booted as a friend over it.

Brilliant, right? Thank you, Burger King, for making our world a little brighter place for us to live in. Well, the New York Times reported that the stunt worked too well. Within the first week, 233,906 friendships had been terminated, and Burger King was on the hook for 23,000 free whoppers.

They immediately discontinued the ad. Now, I know, listen, I know Facebook friends are not always real friends, but I do think that the success of that ad highlights a genuine issue in our culture, and that is that friendship is just not that much of a highly valued commodity anymore. A recent survey asked respondents here in the United States, in the last six months, with how many people have you, outside of your family, have you deeply discussed an important matter, a personal matter? Over half of the people surveyed could not come up with a single person that they had discussed these kind of deeper issues with outside of their family. This seems to be an especially serious problem for men. Most men stop making friends after they get married.

I mean, think about it. Can you name your dad's close friends? Did you name your dad's close friends?

Not people he worked with or people he hung out with, but I mean like close friends. Most men don't have these relationships particularly as they get older. When men aren't connected at all, it's on usually unsuperficial things, work, sports, poker, hunting, something like that. Only one in 10 men in this survey had somebody outside of his family with whom he discussed issues related to money or life or kids or marriage.

Only one in 20 had a friendship in which they disclosed information about how they were feeling or if they were distressed. First Samuel 18 is all about friendship. And in this message, I'm going to make some pointed applications specifically toward men. I'm applying this to men specifically for two reasons.

Number one, the story is about the friendship of two men. Secondly, men, we are especially bad at this. Ladies, I promise there's plenty of good stuff in here for you too, but you're a little better at this just sort of naturally.

And if we men we could get the men in here straight on this, we'd all be better off. Amen. Here's a question. How many of you have been at our church for less than a year? Why don't you raise your hand? If you've been at our church for less than a year, all right, if you're grateful these people are here, put your hands together, excited about that. All right. But here is the deal. For those of you that just raised your hand, they say every study they've done says that unless you know seven people by name at the end of that first year, you likely will not be back for a second.

Unless you know and can call seven people by name. And so one of our goals is to help you be able to do that, but it's going to take some initiative on your part. So consider today my biblical motivation for you to do that. First Samuel 18 is one of the great friendship stories of all time. It shows us not only why friendships are important, it also shows us how we can go about developing those friendships. And it weaves these beautiful lessons along the thread line of the main point of these David stories, and that is how God used David to prepare Israel for the Messiah.

Okay, let's get to work. Verse one, verse one, and the soul of Jonathan, the son of Saul, was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Literally in Hebrew it says they were knit together in one spirit. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, and Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him, and he gave it to David and his armor, even his sword and his bow and his belt. By the way, what were those things that he gave him? Those were his princely garments that he's giving to him.

Here's what's remarkable about this. In normal circumstances, who would have become king after Saul? It would have been Jonathan, right?

We know how this works. Queen Elizabeth, the beloved queen of England, when she passes, it is her son Charles that inherits the throne and becomes king. But Jonathan, Jonathan, though he was supposed to become king after Saul, he recognizes that God had chosen David to be the next king, and without the slightest hint of jealousy or resentment, Jonathan divests himself of his garments, and he gives them to David. Verse five, and David was successful wherever Saul sent him, so that Saul set him over the men of war as they were coming home when David returned from striking down the Philistine Goliath.

The women, the women on one of these of these returns home, they came out singing and dancing. And the women saying, Saul has struck his thousands and David his tens of thousands. Now, just so you know, this was not supposed to favor David over Saul. In Hebrew poetry, it was common to have two statements that basically said the same thing, where the second statement intensified the first. Just read the book of Proverbs, you'll see this. For example, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking guile. That is not meant to contrast the wickedness that the tongue and the lips can do. The second phrase just reiterates and intensifies the first phrase. In the same way, these women are not trying to say that David is so much better than Saul.

This is a song that is giving thanks to God for both of them. And they mentioned Saul first simply because Saul had been king first. But Saul did not like that his name was associated with the lower number. And so Saul said, they have ascribed to David his tens of thousands, and to me, they have ascribed to mere thousands.

What more can he have but the kingdom? It's a little bit of a jump if you ask me, but verse nine. And Saul gave David the stink eye from that day on.

Jump forward now to chapter 19 and go down to verse eight. And then there was war again, and David went out and fought again with the Philistines and struck them with a great blow so that they fled before him. Then after that, a harmful spirit from the Lord came upon Saul as he sat in his house with his spear in his hand. David was playing the liar, and Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear. But David with his cat-like reflexes eluded Saul. People complain that I never say anything positive about cats.

That was a positive statement about cats. Eluded Saul, and the spear struck directly into the wall, and David fled and escaped that very night. Eventually, Saul's going to cool down and David's going to come back, but in the next couple of chapters, Saul tries four more times to kill David. Saul vacillates back and forth, up on David one day, trying to turn him into a dartboard the next. When Saul goes on one of his murderous rages, Jonathan, his son, pleads David's case with his dad, saying, Dad, what has David ever done to you?

You've had no better friend in your kingdom, Dad, than David. And that usually calms Saul down for a while, and they bring David back. But then, you know, after everything goes well for a little bit, Saul flips again, and this happens a total of five times. Well, after that fifth time, when David runs away, after a while, it seems like Saul has cooled down, but nobody knows for sure. So David and Jonathan come up with a plan to test Saul to see what's in his heart.

Here's the plan. David's going to skip the monthly banquet that Saul has with all of his generals, and when Saul asks Jonathan where David is, Jonathan will tell him that David had a family issue come up that made him go home to Bethlehem. And they figure if Saul gets furious, then that reveals that he had a plan to kill David. Well, sure enough, when Jonathan relays the message to Saul, Saul becomes furious. And when Jonathan pushes back, y'all, just a little bit, just a little bit, says, hey, Dad, what's the big deal? Saul picks up the javelin and throws it at Jonathan.

So there they got their answer. Saul clearly wants to kill David. So Jonathan goes out to David, who is hiding in the woods now about 30 miles away from the palace.

They have this little prearranged signal worked out. Jonathan shoots some arrows out into a field and tells his servant boy to go and retrieve those arrows. And David knows if he hears Jonathan tell the servant boy the arrows are beyond you, well, that means David is in danger. But if he says the arrows are in front of you, well, that means David is safe.

So Jonathan fires the arrows, and he says, hey, boy, the arrows are way beyond you. So David knows that he is in mortal danger. Later, he finds David hiding out there in the woods. David rose from behind the stone heap where he was hiding and fell on his face to the ground and bowed three times. And they kissed one another and wept with one another, David weeping the most. Then Jonathan said to David, go in peace because we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord, saying the Lord shall be between me and you and between my offspring and your offspring forever. And he rose and departed, and Jonathan went into the city.

Y'all, there's so much good stuff about friendship in this story, but before we impact those things, I want us to make sure that we do not lose the larger threads in this story. First, we are witnessing the complete unraveling of Saul. Saul is literally going insane. I know that mental health often has multiple causes, but Saul's insanity had a spiritual root. Disconnecting himself from God caused deep feelings of insecurity in him. No longer, no longer could he depend on God to be his shield and his sufficiency and to fight his battles, Saul now carried the weight of all those things. And that brought all kinds of anxiety.

I mean, how could it not? Thanks for joining us today for Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. We'll get back to today's teaching soon, but first, did you know that each month we offer a special featured resource for all of our gospel partners and financial supporters? We create them specifically for two reasons. One, to say thank you for your support, but two, and more importantly, we want to encourage you in your relationship with God.

This month's resource is certainly no exception to that. It's a Bible study through the life of King David that expands on our new teaching series that we're working our way through here on the program. It's an eight week study that'll take you through key passages in David's life with thought provoking questions to deepen your faith and your understanding of this portion of God's word.

To get your copy, give a gift of $35 or more, or become a monthly gospel partner by calling us at 866-335-5220 or by giving online at jdgreer.com. Now let's get back to today's teaching on Summit Life. Once again, here's Pastor JD. Being out of the will of God also made Saul jealous because now everybody else is a potential threat. Saul has to maintain his image by always being successful. Other people who might be more successful than him become a threat to his self image. Everybody's a threat, so that makes him start acting insane. Proverbs 28 says this, by the way, the book of Proverbs we know was written by Solomon, but most scholars think that Solomon got a lot of that wisdom from David. This likely originated with David. Proverbs 28 says the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion. The wicked flees when nobody pursues.

Doesn't that sound like an insane person? This is Saul. Everybody else is a threat, and it gives us a picture of every person who is out of the will of God. When you are the one responsible to maintain your identity, security, and happiness, when the weight of those things sits on your shoulders, you will live with a constant undercurrent of anxiety and envy.

Again, how could you not? You might experience that as a low-grade hum in the back of your life, only popping out from time to time in the occasional sleepless night or panic attack. That envy might only come out every once in a while in the occasional unguarded, cutting, jealous comment that you make about a friend or to a friend, or it could get really intense like Saul's does. Many of you live with this anxiety and jealousy. Saint Augustine said that anxiety and envy and hatefulness toward others are like smoke from a fire that you can trace back down to the idolatrous altars that you have built in defiance of God. Anxiety and envy are not the primary problem. They are the fruits of the primary problem. The real problem is, like Saul, you have gotten disconnected from God and you've taken the weight of maintaining your identity, security, and happiness.

You've taken the weight of those things onto you, which you were never designed to do. Trying to play the role of God in your life will make you insane. So don't just try to correct the fruits of the problem. Don't just read books on strategies to reduce your anxiety and stress. You've got to address the problem at the roots.

You've got to surrender to God and lean on him and trust. So that's the first thread. We are seeing the unraveling of Saul. Here's the second thread to note about this passage. The author is using, catch this, the stories of Saul and Jonathan to illustrate, watch this, the two ways that we respond to God's anointed king. Saul rejects God's king because he's a threat and he tries to kill David to keep David off of his throne. Jonathan, however, gladly bowels his knee to David even though to do so he had to give up all of his claims to the throne and even though it caused a lot of strain in his family. Jonathan gives us a picture of what it will mean one day to surrender to King Jesus. Jesus said to come to him we would have to walk away from our claim to the throne.

We had to be willing to forsake even our father and mother if we wanted to become his disciples. So the question this whole story asks is which one of those categories are you going to be in? Are you going to like Saul, resist Jesus, or are you going to advocate the throne of your heart to him? There are only two choices.

You either bow before him and surrender or you call out for his crucifixion. You either like Jonathan or you like Saul. Those are the two big threads from this story but we're going to spend the rest of our time focusing on the third thread and that is the importance of friendship. We're going to look at three things here. Number one we're going to look at the character of friendship. We're going to look at the importance of friendship and then number three we're going to look at the power behind friendship. Number one here we go the character of friendship maybe more so than anybody else in the Bible. Jonathan demonstrates the character of a true friend. Now several things I could comment on here. I made a list of a bunch of them.

I'm only going to focus on three. If you're taking notes, letter A. Selfless love. Jonathan loved David as his own soul even though David inherited what in other circumstances would have come to Jonathan. How easy would it have been for Jonathan to have gotten jealous? In fact every indication is Jonathan had not done anything wrong.

His family lost the throne because his dad sinned not him. How would you have responded to that? I can tell you how I would have responded. It would have been so tempting for me to say that's not fair. It's not fair God and then to resent David because David got all the blessings that that I wanted. See that wasn't Jonathan.

Jonathan respected what God appointed and he genuinely loved David. So let me just ask you how jealous are you of those that you call your friends? Are you secretly resentful when some blessing comes into their lives? When they get the boyfriend?

When they get the starting position? When they get the good grade or the recognition or the promotion that you wanted? Are you resentful about how fabulous they look as they age? Why do they have so much money? Why are their kids excelling at school and getting scholarships while yours are struggling? All you can do is look at them and think God why not me?

They're not better than me. True friendship is selfless. It rejoices in the blessings that your friends get even when those blessings are things that you would have liked to have had for yourself. Second characteristic you see in Jonathan's life. Intentionality. Intentionality. Jonathan and David are not just two companions brought together by the happenstances of life.

Work colleagues, golf buddies. They're not just people brought together just you know because they happen to be together. Nor did they spend time together just because they made each other laugh or they enjoyed each other's company though I'm sure that was true too. Do you notice it says in chapter 18 verse 3 first verses we read did you notice it said they made a covenant?

That's an extremely weighty Hebrew word. They made a covenant to look to each other look after each other. They swore together and they swore to do that even when it was terribly inconvenient. That means more than just being around each other. It means choosing to get involved in the things that mattered and talking about those things. We men have perfected this category of friendship where all we do is golf or hunt or play poker or watch sports together and that's it. Women tend to be better at this but guys can be together for hours. Never talk about anything substantive.

The best guy that I've ever heard talk about this was the comedian Brian Regan. He does this bit recounting a conversation that he had with his wife. He says I got this he says he he says I have this friend who got divorced. I went golfing with him recently and it's first time I'd seen him since the divorce. So when I got home my wife was like how's Gary coping with the divorce?

He's like fine I think. She said I thought you went golfing with Gary today. I did. You don't know how he's doing with the divorce?

It never came up. Is he dating anybody? I don't know. Were you two in the same golf cart? Yeah. You were in the same golf cart for four hours and you don't know if he's dating anybody?

I know he's got a great new driver. How is that possible? How is it possible that how Gary's doing with the divorce wouldn't even come up? Brian says he says how is it possible that it would have come up? He had 150 markers out there.

I can say probably about 135. Are you dating anybody? You know it's just not it doesn't feel natural. biblical friendships by contrast take intentionality.

It's a choice to be involved in each other's lives and to get into the things that matter. Here's the third thing we see. Let her see a commitment to speaking truth. Jonathan told David hard things. Things that were awkward. Things that David didn't want to hear. And that's because Jonathan was not simply trying to keep the peace or to make David feel good.

He was trying to save David's life. A true friend thinks about your safety and your flourishing more than they do their comfort. That means they're committed to telling you the truth even when it hurts them or you. Again through book of proverbs wisdom that most likely came from David proverbs 27 6.

Here's what David says or here's what Solomon repeats David says. Faith for the wounds of a friend. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy.

Y'all kisses always feel better than wounds and if you only have people around you who give you kisses life will feel mostly good for a while. But it's the faithful wounds of a friend that end up saving your life. Those three things stand out about this friendship to me. Selfless love intentionality and a commitment to speaking truth. Those are the three things that will characterize all biblical friendship.

What a great look at what true friendship is. We'll finish this teaching tomorrow and like I mentioned earlier you can always head over to jdgrier.com to catch up free of charge. While you're on our website feel free to check out our library of other free resources. In addition to all of our summit life sermons you'll also find Pastor JD's blog his ask the pastor podcast and you'll be able to sign up for our daily devotional and weekly newsletter emails and so much more.

Once again that'll all be available to you for free at jdgrier.com. We have a great companion resource to go with the life of David teaching series and this month Pastor JD can you tell us why it works so well with the teaching here on the program? Well it's one thing to listen to preaching on a passage of scripture that's a great thing but it's another to dive into the text yourself. I'm actually just right now we're taking a trip over to Germany for the reformation tour and one of the big things that caused the reformation to really be the reformation was it was ordinary people that were beginning to read the bible for themselves. So I'm grateful I really am humbled that week day by day you would listen to me open the word and I hope that I prove to be a trustworthy source but there is just nothing quite as powerful or as important as you getting into the bible yourself. That means reading the passages because sometimes you might say hey I'm not sure I you know you might look at it differently but more often than not you'll find some application that I just wasn't thinking about that the holy spirit will say here's what I want this passage to do in your life.

So anyway that's the value of a companion resource is it without having my voice crowding out you'll just have the bible and the holy spirit and you as you see what the things in these stories say to you specifically. So if you've loved it if you love the teaching series as I hope you have grab it jdgrare.com and go deep. Thanks J.D. We're excited about this brand new Life of David bible study and we'd love to send it to you with your gift of 35 dollars or more to this ministry.

To give call us now at 866-335-5220 that's 866-335-5220 or you can give online at jdgrare.com. I'm Molly Vidovich tomorrow we'll finish our teaching on the friendship of David and Jonathan. Don't miss it Tuesday right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.