Your Friends & Your Future
1 Samuel 20
1 Samuel 20:1–3
Then David fled from Naioth at Ramah and went to Jonathan and asked, “What have I done? What is my crime? How have I wronged your father, that he is trying to kill me?” “Never!” Jonathan replied. “You are not going to die! Look, my father doesn’t do anything, great or small, without letting me know. Why would he hide this from me? It isn’t so!” But David took an oath and said, “Your father knows very well that I have found favor in your eyes, and he has said to himself, ‘Jonathan must not know this or he will be grieved.’ Yet as surely as the LORD lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.”
1. The Right Friend Faces Trouble with You
1 Samuel 20:3b–4
Yet as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.” Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do for you.”
1 Samuel 18:1
After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself.
1 Samuel 20:41
After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground. Then they kissed each other and wept together—but David wept the most.
Acts 20:37
They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him.
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.
“Homosexuality was clearly forbidden by God’s law. The writer of Samuel is not afraid to highlight David’s sin. But he gives no indication of any law-breaking in their relationship... The suggestion of homosexuality probably reveals more about the sexualization of our culture than it does about their relationship.”
---Dr. Tim Chester
“Were David and Jonathan homosexual lovers? That‘s a fair question, though it’s a question that would have been strange to anyone in the biblical world and really would have been strange to almost anyone until a generation or two ago. The fact of the matter is that homosexual behavior was almost unheard of within Israel and even revisionist scholars have argued that in ancient Judaism and in early Christianity it would have been completely forbidden...”
---Dr. Kevin DeYoung
Proverbs 17:17
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
“You’ll never get through your hardest times without friends, and you’ll never get through life without adversity. Therefore, you’ll never get through life without friends. You have to have friends.”
---Dr. Tim Keller
2. The Right Friend Wisely Warns You
1 Samuel 20:12–13
Then Jonathan told David, “I promise by the LORD, the God of Israel, that by this time tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, I will talk to my father and let you know at once how he feels about you. If he speaks favorably about you, I will let you know. But if he is angry and wants you killed, may the LORD strike me and even kill me if I don’t warn you so you can escape and live."
Choose friends who live based on godly principles not on peer pressure.
3. The Right Friend Celebrates God’s Calling on Your Life
1 Samuel 20:13b–15
May the LORD be with you as he has been with my father. But show me unfailing kindness like the LORD’s kindness as long as I live, so that I may not be killed, and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family—not even when the LORD has cut off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth.”
1 Thessalonians 5:11
Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
4. The Right Friend Defends You in Your Absence
1 Samuel 20:30–34
Saul’s anger flared up at Jonathan and he said to him, “You son of a perverse and rebellious woman! Don’t I know that you have sided with the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of the mother who bore you? As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be established. Now send someone to bring him to me, for he must die!” “Why should he be put to death? What has he done?” Jonathan asked his father. But Saul hurled his spear at him to kill him. Then Jonathan knew that his father intended to kill David. Jonathan got up from the table in fierce anger; on that second day of the feast he did not eat, because he was grieved at his father’s shameful treatment of David.
"Don't tell me what they said about me, tell me why they were so comfortable saying it to you."
5. The Right Friend Keeps God at the Center
1 Samuel 20:42
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.
You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
---Jim Rohn
