You’ve Got a Friend in Me, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. You are one friend away from changing the course of your destiny. You're one friend away from being a better parent, being a better spouse, a better Christian, one friend away from being a better one of those, or a worse one. Thanks for joining us today on Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. Today we'll continue our brand new teaching series through the life of David and we're looking at his friendship with King Saul's son, Jonathan. The truth is we all need the kind of friendships in our lives that will shield us, strengthen us, and shape us into the person God created us to be. Pastor J.D. will show us how Jonathan's friendship with David modeled this kind of relationship and ultimately how knowing Jesus enables us to be this kind of friend to others. Healthy, complete, trusting, and forgiving. Let's join pastor J.D.

now. Selfless love, intentionality, and a commitment to speaking truth. Those are the three things that will characterize all biblical friendship.

Now, I wish I didn't have to say this next part, but I do because this is the world we now live in. There are some who have tried to say that David and Jonathan must have been gay. So close and so intimate and so committed was this friendship. And I just want to say that it is sad to me that some people go there because what that tells me is that our culture is so impoverished by friendlessness that we cannot imagine a loyal, loving connection with somebody without there being some sexual component to it. But the Bible frequently points to friendships that are loving and supportive and life-giving that are not sexual in any way. You say, well, how do you know it wasn't sexual?

Well, two reasons. First, the writer presents David as somebody zealous to honor God's laws. And the Jewish law could not have been clearer on this. The writer would never present David as a man who upheld the law if David had this glaring inconsistency. Plus, we're going to later see that the writer of 1 and 2 Samuel pulls no punches when David deviates from those laws. The idea that the writer is hinting around about him being gay is, quite frankly, ridiculous. And it's a prime example of reading the Bible with an agenda rather than just reading it on its own terms. We've got lots of references in ancient literature to same-sex relationships.

They never read like this. Maybe more conventionally, however, is that David contrasts his love for Jonathan with sexual love. After Jonathan dies, here's what David says, 2 Samuel 1.26, I grieve for you, Jonathan, my brother. You were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women. Now, at first you read that, and you're like, whoa, that's intense.

And it is intense. But notice that David is contrasting his love for Jonathan with sexual love. He's saying this is a different kind of love and commitment than sexual love, but it is real and it is significant. The temptation to read Jonathan and David's love as sexual love, again, just reveals how impoverished our culture is with the biblical concept of friendship. We don't even have a category for this anymore.

And that's a tragedy. We need this category of relationships. Both heterosexual people need it, and those with same-sex attraction need this kind of category that consists of genuine love and commitment that is not sexual. And that category is called biblical friendship, which leads me to number two. Number two, the importance of friendship, the importance of friendship. There are several things that this friendship provided for David.

These are what true friendship does for us too. Letter A, again, if you're taking notes, this friendship shielded David. Jonathan alerted David to danger that David was unaware of. He saw things that David could not see. I love this verse, in Ecclesiastes.

Again, written by Solomon, wisdom might may be coming from David. Two are better than one. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up, but pity the fool who falls alone and has nobody to help him up. If two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves, but a cord of three strands, that is not easily broken.

Now, I will freely tell you, there is a part of that verse that does not speak to me. I am not lying down with another dude to keep warm, unless we are in the tundra, and it is literally a matter of life and death. I have a strict no-spooning rule with my friends, okay? But still, but still, the central point is solid.

Together is better. And that's partially because our friends see danger in our lives before we do. Y'all, the definition of a blind spot is something you can't see because you're blind to it. When I've challenged certain people on their lack of friends, sometimes they'll be like, why don't we have these blind spots? I'm like, if you knew they were there, they wouldn't be called blind spots.

You can't see it, but your friends can. Often that blind spot is in your own heart. Proverbs 18, one, an isolated man ends up seeking his own desire and will rage against all sound judgment. When you get isolated, selfish heart deformities like weeds begin to grow unchecked. Think of it like the yard of a blind person.

They wouldn't know where to pull up the weeds. That's what happens to an isolated man. The late David Pauluson, a Christian counselor, used to paraphrase Proverbs 18, one, this way.

He would say, things that grow in a secret garden always grow mutant. I've told you this before, but I think it bears repeating. I was speaking at a conference a few years ago with a guy named Paul Tripp, who's a Christian counselor who's been spoken here. Great guy, read all of his books. We were backstage and news had just come out that week on yet another one of these mega pastors, a good guy, a good guy who had fallen.

I can't remember exactly what it was in his case, abusing power or inappropriate relationship or something. And so I just asked Dr. Tripp, I was really kind of shaken by it, and I just said, I don't understand why these spiritual giants, or at least those who seem to me like they are spiritual giants, why are they so easy to fall? I'll never forget what he said.

He kind of sat back and he thought for a second, and he said two things, two things. He said, number one, he said, I noticed that all these guys, they begin to separate themselves from peer community. He said, now I use the word peer community, peer, because they are extroverts and they almost always have people around them. He said, but I mean peer community where somebody can look into their lives and say, that's not right.

Somebody who is their equal, somebody that doesn't report to them or worship them. He said, and then that's compounded by the second problem, and that is they forget, they think they've gotten past indwelling sin. And they think that because they've been successful in ministry and because God uses them, that they're somehow no longer susceptible to those early temptations that used to plague them when they were a young Christian.

He said, and it just lies dormant until the right moment, and then it springs up and it overtakes them. One of the best decisions I've ever made, and I've told y'all this, was moving into a neighborhood together with a group of friends, not into the same house obviously, but in the different homes of the neighborhood. These are people who can see into my life. They notice the weeds in my heart.

They ask about them and they help me pull them up. Now, some of you are like, well, that's not a possibility for me right now. That's just one way to apply this. The point is there are things that you can do to open up your life to other people.

For example, I know of one single guy in our church who was struggling with a porn addiction. And so his friend said, you know what? I'm moving into your apartment with you for a month. That's pretty radical, but it helped.

It helped our people close enough to you to speak into your life. When is the last time a friend told you, just looked you in the eye and said, that's a stupid decision. You know, if you do this, it's gonna hurt your relationships. It's gonna hurt your marriage.

It's gonna hurt your testimony. Or they said something to you like this, that just doesn't seem like a wise use of your money. Or they just said to you, I'm not sure this is the wisest relationship for you to be in right now. When's the last time somebody told you something like that? If you can't remember a time, there are two possible explanations for the reason you can't remember. If number one, you're just so perfect that you don't need that kind of a critique anymore.

The other possibility is that you haven't let people in close enough to see what's going on or given them permission to speak. And my money's on that latter one. This friendship shielded David. Here's the second thing it did. It strengthened David. Jonathan spoke courage into David's life when David was ready to give up.

He reminded David that God had great plans for his life, even when David's world seemed to be collapsing around him. True friends multiply your strength. God designed our hearts to work that way. This is fascinating. I was reading this book called Locking Arms by Stu Weber. And he points out that when geese fly in a V formation, they do that because they add at least 71% flying range when they fly than they do when they fly on their own.

71%. And that's because the wings of the bird in front of them create an updraft that makes flying easier. So all the birds in the V are benefiting from the draft coming from the one in front of it. You say, well, what about the poor sap in the front? Yeah, that one meets all the wind resistance. But if you watched them for a while, and usually we can't see this, but each one only does that for a mile or two.

And when he gets tired, he just rotates to the back of the formation and another flies point for a while. You say, well, that's just birds. I mean, come on, man, birds aren't real. Okay.

All right. Here's an example from the animal world. The strongest horse in the world, the strongest horse in the world right now can pull about 5,000 pounds. They can pull a sled weighing about 5,000 pounds. If you harness two horses together though, as a team, just the two of them, they can pull over 14,000 pounds. Putting two horses together doesn't just double their strength. It multiplies their strength.

And that's just because God made us in the animal kingdom, the bird kingdom, the human kingdom. He made us so that our strength multiplies when we pull together with a friend. I don't know about you, but knowing somebody else, y'all, is grieving my problem. And that's rare, I'll admit it, to have a friend that really grieves my problem with me. But when I know that a friend is grieved about my problem with me, worrying about it with me, it just makes my soul feel so much lighter, doesn't it? Have you experienced that?

Have you experienced that? One of the greatest experiences of my life is when somebody looks at me and genuinely says, you got a friend in me. You got troubles?

I got them too. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you. We stick together, we see it through, because you got a friend in me. That's an old hymn, right? No, I'm just kidding. That's Woody from Toy Story, but it's true.

But it's true. Thanks for joining us on Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. We'll get back to our teaching on the life of David in just a moment, but we have another way for you to dig deeper on one of the Bible's most respected and important people. It's a brand new eight-part Bible study through David's Life, and it's this month's featured resource for all of our gospel partners and financial supporters. This is a great companion that expands on the teaching you'll hear on Summit Life for the next few weeks, and it's designed to help you dig into key passages from David's Life. Each individual study features not just the scripture, but also commentary on what you're reading, followed by application questions and prayer prompts to help you truly dwell on the truths you're learning. It's an excellent addition to your daily quiet time or even a great gift for a loved one or someone you're discipling. We'll send a copy with your gift of $35 or more to this ministry.

To give, call us at 866-335-5220 or give online at jdgreer.com. Now let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. Close friendship sustained and strengthened us. Interestingly, I was rereading something Tim Keller said the other day about marriage.

I thought this was fascinating. He said, in times of distress, it's not the romantic parts of the marriage relationship that help. In times of distress, it's the friendship part. Tim talked about going through one of the most difficult seasons of his life, and he says in the middle of that difficult season, it dawned on him, his wife helped sustain him, not because she was his wife, but because she was his friend.

He said, what I needed during that time wasn't sex, wasn't a roommate, wasn't somebody who I shared a bank account with. What I needed was a true soul friend. And that should be an encouragement, by the way, to all of you, to all of us, whether you're married or not, because it means that what is most helpful to us in times of need is something available, not just to married people, it's available to not married people.

What you need is a friend. And so Dr. Keller says to married people or to those looking to get married, you must do everything possible. You must pay any price to be best friends with your spouse. Good marriages, he says, are not basically romance garnished with a little friendship. Good marriages are friendships that are garnished with a little romance. And for those of you who are not married, it means that the most sustaining parts of marriage are available to you. It's not sex or sharing a bed, it's a friendship.

Listen, y'all, God said, it's not good that man should be alone, but you understand marriage is not the only way that we stop being alone. In fact, in some ways, friendship, eschatologically, or when you look into the future, is more important than marriage, because while marriage is only temporary, friendship is eternal. So this friendship shielded him, it strengthened him. Lastly, it shaped him. Later on, we're gonna see David show extreme generosity and selflessness with others. After tragedy, it struck Saul and Jonathan's house. David asked if there was any of Jonathan's descendants that he could show kindness to, and David found that Jonathan had one living relative, a little boy named Mephibosheth, that this little boy was crippled. And David said, bring him to my table, he will never lack anything. And for the rest of his life, David treated Mephibosheth like a son. That's a generosity of spirit he learned, at least in part, from Jonathan.

Jonathan's character shaped David's character. That's what Proverbs says will happen. Again, you notice how much I'm quoting Proverbs.

This is all stuff that David learned from Jonathan. He that walks with wise men shall be wise, but the companion of fools shall be destroyed. I've heard Craig Groeschel, another pastor, say that this verse means that there's one thing, one thing in your life right now that I can look at that can help me accurately predict your future.

You know what that is? Not your New Year's resolution list, but one thing I can look at to predict your future is who your close friends are. The one who walks with wise men, becomes wise, the companion of fools, they're headed to destruction. Craig says, he says, you show me your friends and I'll show you your future, because you become the average of your five closest friends.

Look at your five closest companions right now. You're going to become the average of them in the days to come. You say, well, that's depressing. Yeah, the good news in that is that if you want to change your future and you're not sure where to start, you have a very actionable step.

Change your close relationships. I often say to you, it's not the dreams you dream that determine your destiny. It's the small decisions you make.

And one of those most important decisions is who you do life with, who you walk closely with. When I'm preaching at a student camp like I did this summer on that last night, right, you give the invitation and all of them make decisions to follow Jesus. It's always this crazy emotional night. They haven't slept all week.

The worship band plays extra long. You tell one emotional story and they all come forward. They come saying, I'll do whatever Jesus wants me to do. And I always tell them that the difference in those who continue on with the decision and those who falter in it is simply determined by who goes home and changes their friendships.

Everybody at camps on a spiritual high, everybody feels the same. You don't change your friendships. You won't change.

I don't care how much you cried because you just become the average of your five closest friends. Craig Groeschel says, he said, we all have something we'd like to become. You want to be a better student. You want to be a better worker. You want to be a more solid Christian.

You want to be a better parent. What if the decision to become that was really a decision about what friends you chose? You are one friend away from changing the course of your destiny. You're one friend away from being a better parent, being a better spouse, a better Christian, one friend away from being a better one of those or a worse one. You say, well, J.D., are you saying that I should kick all my bad mediocre friends to the curb?

Here's a little graph that I've used over the years that I borrow from Andy Stanley. I've changed the words a little bit, but I think this is a great concept. It talks about three kinds of friends that most of us have in our lives. The center one is what we call our core friends.

Those are those one or two Jonathans. And they should all be Christians. They should all be people that you want to be like.

That's your core. Then you've got outside of that your community. That's the 12 to 15 people that you just do life with.

The majority of those ought to be Christians. Not all of them necessarily, but the majority of those because that's your community. Then you've got the circle of concern. Those are people that you genuinely are friends with.

You love them. You're involved in their lives, but they're just in that circle of concern. For some of you, you've got to rethink who's in the core and you've got to rethink who's in the core and you've got to kind of move some people to community and concern. By the way, you don't officially tell somebody when they move to a different circle. I understand that's a helpful thing for you to think about. Friendships are important because they shield us, they strengthen us, and they shape us. That's how God designed us.

I'll say it again. It should disturb us how little value we seem to place on friendship in our culture and how few friends most of us have even in the church, particularly as we get older. In Proverbs 18, an isolated man seeks his own desire and rages against all sound judgment. It is a tragedy that so many men have no real friendships in their later years, and that's why so many of them go wrong in that last chapter. They get apathetic. They get selfish. They get self-absorbed, bitter, controlling. After a good life, you men will squander the best years of your life in selfishness and darkness. It's because of a lack of friends.

You are not too good for that to happen to you. Finally, number three. This story shows us the power behind friendship. Friendship is inspired by Jesus.

Y'all think about it. Jonathan served David even at great personal cost to himself. When David was in need, Jonathan walked 30 miles to warn him. Jesus, of course, came much farther than that. Jesus crossed the gap between eternity and earth, between deity and humanity. Jonathan gave up his right to the palace to put David in. Jesus purchased our place in the palace at the cost of his blood. Jonathan was not even the rightful heir to the throne anymore, but Jesus was the rightful heir to the throne, and he gave it up anyway. Like Jonathan, Jesus laid aside his royal robe, and he took off the belt of his rights and the sword of his judgment, and he gave them all to us, even though he was the rightful heir and we were the traitor.

Then when we turned our back on him and betrayed him, he refused to walk away from us, even when he had every right to. What a friend we had in Jesus. What a friend we have. Jesus' friendship to you enables you to become that kind of friend to somebody else. I love how Crawford Loretz, the daddy of our own Brian Loretz here, Pastor Brian, he said, how can you be this kind of friend that we see here in 1 Samuel? He says the only way is you've got to be overwhelmed with the friendship of Jesus Christ. Jesus gave his own life, his own sword, his own robe so that you could be saved, and in doing so, he transformed you. He transformed your friendships.

How about this? What do you do when a friend disappoints you? When you feel the need for a friend, but they just let you down. We all feel this sometimes. In the Psalms, David reveals multiple times when a friend or close family member disappointed him.

Psalm 55 is a good example. He lamented a deep betrayal he had experienced at the hand of a friend. He was like, yeah, if it was an enemy, he'd done this to me. I could bear it, but it was my companion. It was my close friend. Some of you have been through that. It was a friend betrayed you.

I'll tell you, few things hurt worse than that kind of betrayal, or maybe for you, it wasn't a betrayal. Maybe they just were unaware of or not paying attention to your needs. They didn't call when they should have called. They didn't reach out when you needed them. They were just so preoccupied with themselves or their families that they didn't seem to notice that you were hurting.

We all experience that. Every earthly friend disappoints, even the best ones, even the Jonathans. See, that's where you can lean on Jesus, not just as your example of a friend.

You can lean on Jesus as your actual friend, a man of many companions, Solomon says, may come to ruin. But see, there's a friend who sticks closer than a brother, closer than a brother. It's hard to get closer than a brother. Brothers are obligated to be there.

This is part of the family code. But there's a friend who sticks closer than a brother, because this friend was not only there for us, sympathizing with our pain. This friend took it in our place. He's a friend that will always shield and strengthen and sustain and shape us when others fail. Experiencing friendship with him enables you to be healthy and complete and non-needy and forgiving as a friend. I'll just go out on a limb here and say, some of you can't forgive a friend who hurts you because you're so needy.

So you're always nursing how others have let you down. It's why you can't be a good friend, because hurt people hurt people. And you're a hurt person, so you just hurt other people because you've been hurt. Your woundedness from past relationships makes you a bad friend to others. But see, when you find that completeness, that healing in Jesus, and you experience him as your faithful friend, you won't be so needy anymore, and you'll probably be able to more easily forgive those who hurt you.

And you'll probably realize that you've hurt them also. You see, as with all things in the Christian life, healthy friendships start with Jesus. I hope you're enjoying this new teaching series through the life of King David as much as I am.

And I've got great news. Your study of David doesn't have to stop with our Summit Life broadcasts. As a companion to this series, we've created an eight-week Bible study through key parts of King David's life in 2 Samuel. Each week features an in-depth study of a particular passage, along with application questions and prayer prompts to help the truth of these scriptures really sink in. We'd love to send it to you as our way to say thank you for partnering with us financially to help others hear the good news of the gospel.

Nothing we do would be possible without your support. To give, you can call us now at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or you can give online right now at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vinovich, and we're so thankful that you chose to join us today. Tomorrow, we'll take a look at one of the hardest things to do in the Christian life.

Wait. Sorry, you'll have to wait till Wednesday, but we'll see you right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.