you
back to Faith Award Baptist Church. It's very nice to see you all here for our Sunday night service.
Find your seats, please. Grab a song book and go to hymn number 161, hymn number 161.
Our great Savior, hymn number 161. There's five verses there. We'll sing all five,
begin our service this morning. This evening hymn number 161.
Jesus, what a friend for sinners, hymn number 161. Sing it out together now.
Jesus God
We want to go before the Lord and ask His blessing on the service so I've asked
Brother Nix, Macintosh, if you'd like to say some prayer, please.
Thank you for allowing us to be gathered here tonight.
We pray that you would bless all aspects of the service
and fill Pastor Anderson with the power of Holy Spirit as he preaches to us later.
Isn't Jesus going to pray? Amen.
Amen. Up to him, number 233, number 233.
Tell me the old, old story.
We'll begin on that first verse together.
233, tell me the old old story of Unseen Things Above.
Him number 233, lift it up now.
Tell me the old old story of Unseen Things Above.
Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love.
The glowing is causing me to fear
Yes and without
If you don't have a bulletin,
slip up your hand nice and high.
We'll get to you with one.
On the inside, we have our service time.
Sunday mornings at 10 30 is our preaching service.
Sunday nights at six.
Wednesday nights at seven is our Bible study,
but this week we will be having a special guest preacher,
Pastor Aaron Thompson from Sure Foundation
in Vancouver, Washington.
And so you won't want to miss that.
So plan to be here this Wednesday night
to get to say hi to him and hear him preach in person.
Also, across the page, of course, congratulations
to the Furbys on their wedding yesterday.
And thank you to everybody who came and celebrated.
Pray for the ladies that are pregnant,
that they'll have a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery.
On the back, we've got the note
about the baby shower coming up two weeks from now.
Sunday afternoon, right here, two to four
for all ladies and teenage girls to attend.
And then other upcoming events, I'm gonna be preaching,
that's supposed to say Friday, January 31st
in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, at Anchor Baptist Church,
Pastor Dylan Oz.
And so I'm gonna be preaching there
on Friday, January 31st.
If you know anyone in that region, let them know.
We'd love to have them there for that.
And then we got Pastor Jonathan Shelley preaching here on Wednesday night, February the 19th.
So that's about a month away.
And then the Bahamas cruise mission strip is coming up on March 23rd through 28th.
And here's the thing, really the whole thing behind these cruise mission strips is that
Really, they're flexible, they're scalable meaning that you don't necessarily have to
go with a big group or the big group because we're thinking that there's probably going
to be a lot of these trips happening throughout the year.
This is just kind of one that we're putting out there as an example
because it can be kind of overwhelming sometimes
looking at all the cruises, trying to figure out which ones are going to work good for missions
and which ones are the good deals and have the right logistics and everything.
So basically we just found one that is going to be hitting at least three really good ports
in just a five night cruise. It's going to hit three really good ports.
So there should be a ton of great soul winning.
I think it's going to be extremely productive.
We've got like 20 people signed up so far.
And so, you know, 20 people at these receptive places,
I have a feeling God's going to bless mightily.
It's going to be a huge harvest of people getting saved.
And so this is just an example.
If there's another, if you find another good deal
or a good place and you want to just, you know,
can start another one you know and we'll get another one going and we'll advertise
in the bulletin other options and and cruises that different people find
and really all you need you really could just get one other person
and the two of you could just go do it
on your own in fact because it's so easy and if you want more details about it
you can ask us we've done some videos where we kind of explained the concept explain the methods
give some tips and things and I'm sure we'll make more videos in the future going over different
tips and things that we learn as we kind of go on this adventure this year doing these mission
strips mainly in the Bahamas but lots of other places as well and so let us know if you have
a bunch of people are going on.
So if you think it'd be fun to go
with a whole bunch of other people
and I'll give you more confidence,
then this is a good one to think about,
March 23rd through 28th.
All right, and that is about it for announcements.
Let's go ahead and count up the soul winning
from the past few days.
So going back to Thursday, anything from Thursday?
Yes.
Okay, got it.
Okay, how about Friday?
Got it, okay, and then Saturday, okay, got it, got it.
Gotcha, gotcha.
Okay, all right, and then today, Sunday, got, boom.
Is that a three or a two?
How many is that?
Okay, two, sorry.
Okay, brother Scott, main group.
All right, and then any other groups, gotcha here.
Got it.
Okay, did I miss anybody?
All right, very good.
Keep up the great work on soul winning.
And with that, let's sing our next song.
Come lead us.
All right, very good.
You should find the insert in front of your hymnal
with Psalm 19.
If you don't have an insert, you can raise your hand.
And we'll sing it on that first together.
The law of the Lord is perfect.
The law of the Lord.
is perfect converting the soul the testimony of the Lord is sure making
wise the sample more to be desired are they then gold yeah then much fine gold
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
The commandments of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
More to be desired are they than gold, gay than much fine gold.
The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous all together.
Man, get singing everybody.
Take your hymnos now.
Go to hymn number 459, hymn number 459.
Ferris Lord Jesus, hymn number 459.
Let's sing this out together.
Starting out at first verse,
Ferris Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature.
Hymn number 459, lift it up now.
All right, at this time,
we'll pass our offering plates around.
As the plates go around,
let's turn on our Bibles to First Samuel chapter 19.
First Samuel chapter number 19.
As we always do, we'll read the entire chapter
beginning in verse number one.
Fall along silently with Brother Dan as he reads.
First Samuel 19, beginning in verse number one.
First Samuel 19, the Bible reads,
and Saul spoke to Jonathan his son
and to all his servants that they should kill David.
But Jonathan Saul's son delighted much in David, and Jonathan told David, saying,
Saul my father seeketh to kill thee. Now therefore I pray thee, take heed thyself until the morning,
and abide in a secret place, and hide thyself. And I will go out and stand beside my father in
the field where thou art. And I will commune with my father of thee, and what I see, that I will tell thee.
And Jonathan spake good of David unto Saul his father, and said unto him,
Let not the king sin against his servant, against David,
because he hath not sinned against thee, and because his works have been to thee
word very good. For he did put his life in his hand,
and slew the Philistine, and the Lord wrought a great salvation for all Israel.
Thou sauced it, and didst rejoice. Wherefore then,
and Saul hearkened under the voice of Jonathan, and Saul swear, as the Lord liveth, he shall not be slain.
And Jonathan called David, and Jonathan showed him all those things, and Jonathan brought David to Saul,
and he was in his presence as in times past.
And there was war again, and David went out and fought with the Philistines and slew them with a great slaughter,
and they fled from him. And the evil spirit from the Lord was upon Saul,
as he sat in his house with his javelin in his hand, and David played with his hand.
and Saul sought to smite David, even to the wall with the javelin,
but he slipped away out of Saul's presence and he smote the javelin into the wall
and David fled and escaped that night.
Saul also sent messengers unto David's house to watch him and to slay him in the morning and my call David's wife told him saying if thou
If thou save not thy life tonight tomorrow thou shall be slain
So my call let David down through a window and he went and fled and escaped and my call took an image and laid it in the
Bed and put a pillow of goats hair for his bolster and covered it with a cloth and when Saul sent messengers to take David
She said he is sick
And Saul sent the messengers again to see David, saying,
bring him up to me in the bed that I may slay him.
And when the messengers were come in, behold,
there was an image in the bed with a pillow of goat's hair
for his bolster.
And Saul said unto my call, why hast thou deceived me so,
and sent away my enemy that he has escaped?
And my call answered Saul, he said unto me,
let me go, why should I kill thee?
So David fled and escaped and came to Samuel to Rama and told him all that Saul had done to him and he and
Samuel went and dwelt in Neoth and it was told Saul saying behold David is at Neoth in Ramah Ramah
And Saul sent messengers to take David, and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying and Samuel standing as appointed over them,
the Spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied.
And when it was told Saul, he sent other messengers, and they prophesied likewise.
And Saul sent messengers again the third time, and they prophesied also.
Then went he also to Rama, and came to a great well that is in Siku.
And he asked and said, Where are Samuel and David?
And he went thither to Neoth and Rama, and the Spirit of God was upon him also.
And he went on and prophesied until he came to Neoth and Rama.
And he stripped off his clothes also and prophesied before Samuel in like manner,
and lay down naked all that day and all that night,
wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets?
Dear Lord, thank you for faith. We're Baptist Church Lord and I pray that you would help us all to love you more and love one another more
And Lord, I pray that you'd feel
a pastor's interest in with your Holy Spirit
and give us all yours to hear
and help us to grow in the Lord.
And Jesus, I pray, amen.
Men, this evening I'm gonna be continuing my sermon
from this morning where I preached about
being loyal to your friends.
And in that sermon, of course,
we looked at the dictionary definition of loyal
and every one of the dictionary definitions
contained the word faithful or faithfulness.
And that's a Bible word,
even if the word loyalty is not in the Bible,
Faithfulness is in the Bible and we saw a ton of scripture this morning about being loyal to
your friends. One of the verses that was the main thrust of the sermon this morning was Proverbs
27-10, "'Thine own friend and thy father's friend forsake not.'"
Do not forsake your friends, don't abandon your friends.
And we talked about in the book of Job,
those fair weather friends that are like the deceitful brooks
that are just seasonal.
And when you need them the most, they aren't there.
It's funny, I was thinking about it,
and you know, as a famous preacher
from the 20th century, Brother Hiles,
and there's a famous quote from Dr. Jack Hiles
where he said, I will be loyal to principles
not to institutions.
And so that's a quote that you hear people repeat from him a lot.
But what's funny is that I feel like a lot of times people are
misusing or misapplying that quote because I personally listened
to like probably seven or eight hundred hours
of Brother Hile sermons back in the day just on recordings because
you know I never heard him in person or anything like that.
But just listening to recordings of literally seven or eight hundred
of his sermons
And in his sermons, he talked a lot about loyalty and about being loyal to people.
and being loyal to friends and being loyal to mentors
and people that have blessed us.
And so I think people are misunderstanding
that when he said, I'll be loyal to principles,
not institutions.
He's talking about like organizations, institutions.
He's not saying I'll be loyal to principles,
but not to people.
That's not what he said.
Okay, because he wasn't teaching
that you shouldn't be loyal to your friends
or people that have invested in you
because he taught the opposite.
many, many, many times, because I listened to a lot of his preaching and I heard him talk about that.
But this is an important subject because friendship is something that should be a part of our lives.
And if we think about it, when we're in the local church, we're amongst friends, right?
A lot of our friend circle is the local church itself.
A lot of our social life takes place here.
And so we want to make sure that we are the type of friend that people can rely on
and that we're going to be there for people when they need us
and it's more important to be a friend than to have friends.
And so that's what we talked about this morning.
But tonight I want to really focus in on one specific example of friendship
which is that of David and Jonathan in the Bible.
This is kind of a classic example of friendship and really of loyalty.
among friends. But before we do that, I just want to read for you a couple more verses because
being stabbed in the back by your so-called friends is a very sad part of life. But it's
something that virtually everyone's going to experience at some point or another. And Jesus
Christ himself went through the exact same thing. He was tempted in all points like as we are yet
Stabbed him in the back, betrayed him, and so, of course, that's something that's going to happen to us as well as Christ's followers.
But I found this passage interesting in Psalm 55 verse 12. You don't have to turn there,
but it says,
For it was not an enemy that reproached me,
then I could have borne it.
He said, look, if it were an enemy that were reproaching me, then I could have handled it, would be another way of saying that, right?
If it were an enemy, I could have borne it.
Neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me.
Then I would have hid myself from him,
but it was thou a man mine equal,
my guide and mine acquaintance.
We took sweet counsel together and
walked unto the house of God in company.
He said, we were friends,
we went to church together.
And that's what makes it so grievous that you have stabbed me in the back.
I mean, think about that.
He says, look, if it would have been an enemy, I can handle that.
But it hurts more when it's friends or so-called friends stabbing you in the back.
And then he says in the next verse,
Let death seize upon them.
Let them go down quick into hell for wickedness is in their dwellings that among them.
As for me, I will call upon God and the Lord shall save me.
And so he's pretty upset in the psalm.
Obviously there's the human psalmist speaking, David or whoever,
but then there's also kind of the prophetic element
about Jesus being betrayed by Judas Iscariot,
who is also supposedly his friend and close associate.
The Bible also tells us in Luke 21 about the end times,
you shall be betrayed both by parents and brethren
and kin's folks and friends and some of you
shall they cause to be put to death. Right? So we have
even parents and relatives and friends betraying you unto death in the end times.
And then of course elsewhere we have the flip side where it says the children shall rise up
against their parents
and cause them to be put to death. And so this betrayal
lack of loyalty, lack of fidelity, lack of faithfulness
is also an end times phenomenon
when men are lovers of their own selves.
And so they will prioritize themselves over their friends
and they would rather throw their friends under the bus,
betray a friend than to suffer any inconvenience themselves.
All right, let's get into this example of David and Jonathan tonight.
Look at 1 Samuel chapter 18 verse 1,
First Samuel chapter 18 verse 1, it says,
And it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul
that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David,
and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
So this is a great example of friendship in the Bible.
And of course, we know the end of the story.
Jonathan,
and David are gonna remain loyal to one another
all the way to the end.
They're gonna remain faithful to one another.
And it starts out here with their souls being knit together
and it says that Jonathan loved David.
And of course, the key to fidelity and loyalty
is that if you actually love someone,
you're not gonna betray them.
You're not gonna stab them in the back.
As we said this morning,
love worketh no ill to his neighbor.
And so we see that this friendship starts in chapter 18, verse 1.
It says, and Saul took him that day, he took David that day,
and would let him go no more home to his father's house
because he's basically recruiting him into full-time service in the military.
Then Jonathan and David made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul.
Now, what is a covenant?
A covenant is an agreement, a deal, a contract.
And the idea here is that they are going to be loyal to each other as friends.
Now, here's the thing. Friendship does not always contain this kind of an explicit agreement or coming out like,
hey, you're going to have my back, right? And I'm always going to have your back, right?
You know, you might never exchange those words, but in friendship, there is an implicit idea that, yeah.
We are going to be there for each other.
We're going to love each other.
We're going to help each other out through thick and thin.
And I'm going to be there for you when you need me and vice versa.
Even if these words are not verbally expressed,
that is implicit in the very idea of what friendship even is.
In this case, though, it's actually made explicit.
They actually tell one another, you are my friend
and it says that they made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul.
Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him
and gave it to David and his garments even to his sword.
And to his bow and to his girdle, it's funny how it says even the sword because you know, obviously this is kind of personal to him, I guess his sword is special to him, you know, obviously we can't really relate to that because we don't walk around carrying swords, but obviously this is something just really personal to him and he gives it to David.
Now think about it, Jonathan's the son of the king.
He's got the robe, he's got the fancy kingly garments and the sword and the bow and the girdle,
whereas David's profession is that of a shepherd. So he's a very humble, rustic kind of a guy,
probably in some really humble clothes. And so Jonathan basically strips himself of his wealthy,
lavish garments and gives them to David and sets him up, outfits him like a king.
And so this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship between David and Jonathan.
Flip over to chapter 19 verse 1.
Now of course we know it doesn't take long for things to go sour.
between Saul and David.
Not Jonathan.
Jonathan and David are fine.
But Jonathan's father, King Saul,
becomes envious of David almost right away, right?
Right after David kills Goliath,
it doesn't take long before David
starts to get a little too popular
and it makes Saul uncomfortable
and Saul starts to feel a little bit threatened
in his position as king,
thinking that he's gonna lose the position.
And what's so ironic about this is that
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because here's the thing, you know,
Saul in his envy and that wicked desire to hang on to power,
of course, ironically, that's what caused him to end up losing power.
You know, he's trying to cling to...
That power and here and there's the thing he could have obviously had that power if he would have just obeyed the Lord
Kept his heart right with God
He could have just kept on being the king and Jonathan could have fallen in his footsteps and everything
But he ended up messing it up
He ended up becoming his own worst enemy and because of his envy for David
He goes downhill fast and so that relationship goes bad right away
Between David and salt and so it says in verse 1 of chapter 19
Saul spoke to Jonathan and his son and to all the servants that they should kill David.
So, there's really no question about how Saul feels about David in chapter 19 verse 1.
He's telling Jonathan, you need to kill David.
He's telling the soldiers, we're going to kill David.
But Jonathan saw his son delighted much in David, and Jonathan told David saying, Saul,
my father, seeketh to kill thee.
Now therefore I pray thee, take heed to thyself until the morning, and abide in a secret place
and hide thyself.
and I will commune with my father of thee, and what I see, that I will tell thee.
So, Jonathan's number one concern here is for David's safety.
So, before anything else, he says,
look, the first thing we need to do is just get you to safety,
because everyone has just been instructed to kill you,
even I've been told to kill you.
And so, the first thing he says is, you need to go hide right away.
So, the first thing he wants to do is protect David, okay?
But then next, he's going to actually jump to David's defense
and actually speak on David's behalf
to try to remove the danger in general.
So he says, you go hide and then I'm going to go talk to my dad
and then we'll see how this all turns out.
Verse 4, Jonathan spake good of David unto Saul his father
and said unto him, Let not the king sin against his servant
against David, because he hath not sinned against thee,
and because his works
have been to the word very good.
He'd put his life in his hand and slew the Philistine.
And the Lord wrought a great salvation for all Israel.
Thou sawest it, and didst rejoice,
wherefore then, with thy sin against innocent blood,
to slay David without a cause."
And you see here, when you have real friends
who actually love you,
they are going to just not just sit back and say,
well, you know, Dad told us all to kill David.
I'm not gonna kill David,
because David is my friend.
I'm not gonna do it,
but I'm just gonna sit back
while everybody else kills David.
and sit back and let no he not only doesn't participate in hunting and and trying to murder David
but he actually fights back and says hey this is wrong this is sin leave David he goes to bat for
David and he brings up of course you know the fact that David has been a loyal servant of
solid has done these great works for God and everything and that there's no reason for it
And Saul actually listens to him, you know, it says in verse number six,
and Saul hearkened under the voice of Jonathan,
and Saul swore as the Lord liveth, he shall not be slain.
And so you see that speaking up for your friends actually can make a difference.
It's not that it just doesn't matter and that you can just kind of sit back and see how things turn out kind of like Peter
Right before he denied the Lord Jesus Christ. He's following afar off to see what would be the end there of you know
Just kind of seeing how it's gonna turn out and just oh, I don't know him and so forth
No, because actually
Standing up for your friends
Helping your friends being there for your friends can make a difference in the life of your friends
And that's what we see here, that there's an actual difference in the outcome,
because Saul and his men, they call off this hunt for David.
And it says, Jonathan called David, and Jonathan showed him all those things,
and Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he was in his presence as in time past.
So David gets totally restored to his position, everything's fixed, everything's resolved,
and David is again serving Saul.
Why? Because Jonathan actually helped him out.
When he was in a bind, he went to bat for him.
Now you say, well, yeah, but you know, in the long run, you know,
there's going to be more problems down the road with Saul.
Of course there are, because here's the thing.
Life is a series of tests. Life is a series of challenges.
Life is a series of setbacks.
We're always going to have trials and tribulations and problems.
That's not the point.
The point is, though, that for now, things have been fixed.
Now, David can live a normal life.
Now, he can continue serving God and serving the king.
And so this is a great outcome because Jonathan actually stands for his friend and stands
up and helps him in his time of need.
Now let's go to chapter 20 and we're skipping a lot for a second time.
Obviously we can just read every line of the story and comment on it and think about it and
everything but I'm just kind of hitting the main highlights here just to show you some principles
that the Bible is giving us on friendship because what you have to understand is that
in the New Testament we have a lot of statements that are made in the epistles and the apostle
Paul talks about friendship and we have statements made by Jesus Christ and we have some stories in
But the real storybook of the Bible is more kind of in the Old Testament,
you have a lot more stories to go on, don't you?
I mean, how many examples do we really have in the New Testament
of things like marriage, childrearing, sibling rivalries?
Do we really have a lot of stories like that in the New Testament to go on?
No, because the New Testament's much shorter.
And the New Testament's really focused on doctrine.
It's really focused on ideas and thoughts and Jesus Christ and the gospel and salvation, right?
A lot of the stories of the Bible are found in the Old Testament.
The Old Testament's much longer and just has lots of stories.
And so I think people make a mistake when they don't really spend enough time reading the Old Testament.
and looking at those stories because those stories are illustrating and bringing to life
the statements and principles and doctrine of the New Testament.
So the New Testament explains the doctrine,
but then we go back into the Old Testament and read all these stories,
then we kind of see those things playing out in real life.
And you have to understand that the Old Testament is written for us in 2025.
A lot of people have this attitude of, well, it's not really as relevant because
we're in the New Testament now, and so those things aren't quite as relevant, but if you stop and think about it,
that would mean that this giant chunk of the Bible, the Old Testament, was only relevant for like a really short time.
because a lot of these books were only written a few hundred years before Christ.
If you think about it, right? A lot of it was written maybe a thousand years before Christ.
Obviously the oldest portions of it were written around 1500 years before Christ,
but a lot of it was only written a few hundred years before Christ.
You know, and if you think about it, a lot of times it wasn't even really always compiled in one place.
You know, it's really in the New Testament that we have it all kind of bundled up real nicely.
39 books of the Old Testament, leather bound, coupled with our New Testament, right?
And what does the Bible say in 1 Corinthians chapter 10?
It says all these things, talking about Old Testament stories in particular.
The stories in particular, it says all these things were written for our
admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come.
And so let me ask you this question. How many
Christians have read the story of David and Jonathan
versus Old Testament Israelites read the story of David and Jonathan?
I mean, stop and think about it.
You know, and I know, that probably a thousand times more Christians, or ten thousand times
more Christians, or a hundredth, I mean, way more Christians, are reading these stories
about David and Jonathan than any ancient Israelite ever got these before Christ.
Okay, so the reality is that these stories are more relevant, even in my opinion,
I think they're more relevant to us than they even were to the Old Testament Saint.
The Bible says these things were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come.
And if you think about it, the Old Testament states they didn't even have as good of tools for understanding these things as we do.
We have the New Testament lens to look at the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament
and have a much greater understanding of what's going on in these stories.
much deeper understanding, much clearer understanding
than the Israelites of the Old Testament who were really just
seeing things through a glass darkly as it were and not as clearly as we can see
them now
in the New Testament and dwelled by the Holy Spirit with the whole book
Genesis Revelation and all this New Testament teaching to explain it to us.
And so these stories in the Old Testament are there for a reason.
David and Jonathan. Why does the relationship between David and Jonathan matter?
It matters because friendship matters, because we're supposed to be taking
verses about friendship from Proverbs, verses about friendship from the New Testament,
and then looking at these things, playing out in the lives of David and Jonathan.
You know and understanding what does it mean to love your enemies and seeing David's interactions with Saul and so forth
And so, you know, I just want to really emphasize that because it's really important to understand that this is not just me
Grabbing a random Bible story from the Old Testament. Hey, let's just talk about the story. Hey, these stories are meant to be instructive
They're written for our
admonition
upon whom the ends of the world are coming.
What does it mean to admonish someone?
And an admonition is saying,
hey, you need to be doing this.
Or hey, you need to stop doing this.
That's what an admonition is.
And so this story is not meant to just be
an entertaining story,
although it is an entertaining story.
It's a great story.
But you know what?
It's also to admonish us.
We're supposed to look at it as a mirror.
and reflect upon our own situation and our own lives.
And you know what's funny is I've heard some people say,
oh, you know, these preachers are always putting themselves into the Bible.
You know, it's like they're projecting themselves in the Bible,
like as if they're Jesus or as if they're David or as if they're Jonathan.
Folks, that is the only right way to read the Bible.
So I don't even know what these people are talking about.
Well, you think you're Job?
Yeah, I do.
You know, oh, you think you're Jonathan?
You know, oh, you think you're Jesus?
I don't think I'm Jesus, but let me tell you something.
I'm supposed to walk in his steps.
I'm supposed to realize, okay, he's done it.
He was tempted at all points, like as we are, yet without sin.
He left us an example that we should follow in his steps.
And so how can you not read the Bible and try to relate your own situation to Moses situation?
or fill in the Joshua situation.
And it's not that we're thinking that we're as good as these people or something,
because, you know, some of these people are better than us.
Some are worse than us, honestly.
Some of these Bible characters, I'm like, you know, they're not that great.
of people. They did some stupid stuff or some rotten things.
But the bottom line is, it's not about comparing yourself to them.
It's more about seeing the things they did right
and doing likewise. Seeing the things that they did wrong
and doing likewise. Seeing them go through something painful and say,
oh, I went through something painful that was similar to that. So what can I learn
from the story?
And so, you know, of course, preachers get up
and put themselves in the story,
and the audience is putting that,
I hope you guys are putting yourself in the story.
And thinking about these things
and making it real in your life.
So that's a very absurd criticism
that I've heard over the years.
It wasn't, I don't think anybody's ever said that about me,
but I've heard people say that about other preachers
that, you know, that they're putting themselves
into the story or something.
It's like, well, yeah.
You know, that's the whole point of reading the Bible is to apply it to your life.
You know, that's what you should be doing every single time you read it.
And so, back to the story here.
We're jumping forward.
We just looked at a little bit of chapter 18, chapter 19.
Let's go to chapter 20.
Okay, verse 8.
And it says in chapter 20, verse 8,
Therefore thou shalt deal kindly with thy servant,
for thou hast brought thy servant
into a covenant of the Lord with thee.
And we talked about that earlier.
Notwithstanding, if there be in me iniquity,
slay me thyself.
for why shouldest thou bring me thy father?"
So David's basically saying,
look man, if I'm a traitor, if I've committed treason,
then why don't you just execute me right now?
Let's just save a step.
Don't even deliver me to your father,
because he's trying to tell Jonathan,
look, your dad is trying to kill me again.
And Jonathan's like, no man, he promised
he was never gonna do that.
He wouldn't do that and David's like look he's going to and if you bring me to dad
Then I'm just gonna be killed. So if I've done wrong then just kill me yourself
Let's save a step because if you bring me to him, I'm gonna be killed
Verse 9 Jonathan said far be it from thee for if I knew certainly that evil were determined by my father to come upon
The then would not I tell it thee and so we see that Jonathan as a good friend
He's worried about his friend. He wants to look out for his friend's safety. Number one, we saw that.
Number two, we saw that he was willing to speak in defense of his friend, go to bat for his friend,
help his friend out of a predicament that he was in.
But now we also see that he is ready to warn his friend of
impending evil or doom. He's not just gonna sit back and let something bad happen to his friend.
He's gonna warn him and he says, look, if I knew,
that something bad were going to happen to you,
I would have told you that.
I would let you know that, right?
I wouldn't just let it happen to you.
I would warn you.
And of course, we as good friends
should do the same thing for our friends.
If we see evil coming upon someone,
we give them a heads up, we warn them.
Look what the Bible says in verse 13.
The Lord do so much, excuse me,
the Lord do so and much more to Jonathan,
but if it please my Father to do the evil,
then I will show it thee.
That means that a good friend, if somebody's talking bad about you,
if somebody's conniving and conspiring against you, you know what they're going to do?
They're going to come and tell you about it.
And they're going to warn you about it and say,
hey, this person is devising evil against you.
They're not just going to sit back and say,
well, I'm just neutral. I'm just going to let it happen.
No, they're going to warn you and bring it to you.
And that's what Jonathan says.
But if it pleases my father to do the evil, then I will show it to you.
and send thee away, that thou mayest go in peace,
and the Lord be with thee as he hath been with my father."
We're in verse 14 of 1 Samuel chapter 20.
And thou shalt not only while yet I live,
show me the kindness of the Lord that I die not,
but also thou shalt not cut off thy kindness from my house forever.
Know not when the Lord hath cut off the enemies of David,
everyone from the face of the earth,
So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David saying,
let the Lord even require it at the hand of David's enemies.
And Jonathan caused David to swear again because he loved him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul.
And again, we see that friendship is supposed to be a two-way street, not a one-way valve.
This friendship is not just Jonathan going to bat for David.
Jonathan warning David when people are conspiring against him.
Jonathan trying to convince other people that David's a good guy
and trying to fix David's problems and protect David.
It's not one-sided because Jonathan says, hey, I expect the same from you.
I'm going to bat for you, well guess what, someday you're going to be in power, David,
and I want you to show kindness unto me, and even after I'm dead, you know, I want you
to show kindness even beyond that to my seed after me.
Because friendship's a two-way street.
It's mutual, it's reciprocal, it's not supposed to be a one-wayed valve.
And I think that probably many people have experienced this kind of one-sided friendship
in our lives.
People that take and take and take, but then they don't want to give.
And you're always the one who's having to make all the effort.
You're always the one who's doing stuff for them.
And then when you need something from them, they're not there.
And so this is not the case with David and Jonathan.
It's a two-way street.
Now again for sake of time we're going to jump ahead but as you know King Saul
gets worse and worse and he ends up spiraling out of control. Ultimately he's
killed by the Philistines and unfortunately his sons are also killed
with him the same day including Jonathan. So Jonathan ends up dying in battle
fighting with King Saul against the Philistines.
So in second Samuel chapter one if you want to flip ahead there second Samuel chapter one David is eulogizing
Saul and Jonathan when he finds out that they've been killed and
As David is eulogizing them
He says in verse number 23 of chapter 1,
2 Samuel, Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives,
and in their death they were not divided.
They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.
Ye daughters of Israel weep over Saul,
who clothed you in scarlet with other delights,
who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel.
And you know what?
The main thing that stands out here to me is that David,
was loyal to Saul, even after Saul had tried to kill him,
even after Saul had been hunting him and making his life very difficult,
David remained loyal to Saul all the way to the end.
And even after Saul is dead,
he still is saying good things about Saul,
and he's saying, hey, you got to admit,
Saul was great on the economy.
You know, whatever you say about any of us, you know, foreign policy or, you know, him
persecuting me, he clothed you in scarlet and other delights, he put ornaments of gold
upon your apparel.
That Saul economy was great, you know.
Hopefully we're about to head into like a Trump economy here, you know.
We can all have more money, you know, in our pockets.
Just don't let it go to your head.
Disrespectful, and to dishonor his elders and people who had invested in him, it was David with King Saul, because King Saul is conniving, conspiring, lying, and even trying to murder him.
Repeatedly!
David does not do anything to harm Saul at all.
David flees from Saul.
And David has two different occasions where he has the opportunity to kill Saul.
And not only that, I mean, Saul's trying to kill him.
You could say, oh, it's self-defense.
People in David's enthrase are begging him,
please let me kill Saul.
I can kill him right now and we can just end this whole thing.
And he says, nope, I'm not going to put forth my hand and touch the Lord's anointed.
Now, here's the thing.
Right who's just out there as a shepherd obviously we know that it was God
That was the one who anointed him and Samuel the prophet poured oil on his head and everything like that
But you know Saul is the one who actually hired him and brought him into the military and made him a general and put
Him in a position of power made him the king's son-in-law and did these things
And so because of the fact that Saul had done these things for David in the past David's loyal to him
And not only that, he's loyal to God and the Israel of God because, of course, Israel in the Old Testament was God's chosen people.
And so their anointed king is special in the eyes of God.
He's the king of Israel.
Even if you don't like the person, even if you don't respect necessarily the man and his behavior,
he's in a position that should be respected.
Just like the high priest was supposed to be respected, you know, and he's the king of Israel.
You know, you're not supposed to just kill the king of Israel.
He's not going to take it upon himself to do that. He's very loyal.
to King Saul, even in spite of everything.
And I think it's such a beautiful example
of loving your enemies,
because if anybody was David's enemy, it's Saul.
I mean, he's after him, he's trying to kill him,
and yet David still loved Saul, still respected Saul,
and is loyal to him.
You know, I've had a mentor in my life,
somebody who invested in me spiritually in the past
and taught me a lot of things,
and who frankly, I wouldn't be here for weren't for him.
And I think that we all have people like that in our lives
that have put into us their spiritual teachings
and they've invested in us with the work of God.
And so I look back at a certain guy
who really invested in me and mentored me
and I wouldn't be here without him.
And this guy later became an enemy unto me
and just slandered me, attacked me, lied about me,
treated me very ill.
And it was it was it was a lot like King Saul to be honest in many ways
There were a lot of parallels with kind of the back and forth of oh, I'm so sorry. I'm proud of you
You're a good boy, and then it's just like you know
More attacks and slander and so forth and the thing about that is that you know, I've never spoken ill of him
You know, I've never gone out and attacked him or tried to harm him anyway, and I never would
Because I will respect and honor him and his investment in my life until the bitter end, okay?
And it's just one of those things, you know, your parents have raised you, taught you, made sacrifices for you.
You don't go out and attack your parents.
You don't go out attack the person that won you to Christ.
You don't go out and attack your spiritual mentors and Sunday school teachers and pastors and people
that have taught you and invested in you and made you who you are.
You don't bite the hand that feeds you, okay?
And so if anybody had an excuse to do it, it's David.
And look, the Bible gives us these really extreme stories just so that you don't think,
well, my situation's different.
It's like, oh, okay, so your Sunday school teacher is trying to kill you now?
Is that what's going on?
So mom and dad trying to murder you?
You know, but that's the kind of thing that we see in the Bible that's so extreme like Job's situation is so extreme
where he's covered in boils head to toe and everything and just loses everything loses all his money
And it's like the most extreme situation in every way so that nobody could come along and say like, you know, hey
I'm going through something that's beyond this and so therefore, you know, I you know
I I'm in a special circumstance and the Bible doesn't apply or something and you know
I think that
Some people could maybe look at the Job story and and maybe say well my situations worse in this one area
Because you know I'll be honest with you
I looked at the Job story before and thought well in some ways what I went through is worse than what Job went through
But then I read the part with the boils and I'm like no I'd rather have my situation
than to be covered in boils.
You know, and I mean, think about it,
the guy's scraping himself and all this horrible stuff.
So it's like, if the financial part doesn't get you,
if the family part doesn't get you,
if the wife telling you to curse God and die doesn't get you,
if the, you know, then the boils will get you.
Something in that story, you're gonna be like,
okay, that's it, Job had it worse.
At some point in that story, you know,
something's gonna resonate with you there.
And so, the point is, God gives these extreme stories, and I think that David being persecuted by Saul is a really extreme story,
where you have extreme loyalty on the side of David and just extreme persecution coming from Saul without a cause.
And I think this is instructive to us to say, okay, David's a man after God's own heart,
David can show some loyalty to Saul if David can be respectful to Saul if David says I'm not gonna harm Saul
I mean, what did David do to harm Saul? You know what he did? He just cut a little piece off of his clothes
Right Saul goes into the cave to use the bathroom
And while he's in the bathroom, David sneaks up on him
and just cuts off a little piece of the cloth
just to show him and say, I could have killed you
because I had you on the John
and I cut this off and I could have cut your throat.
I could have killed you so easily.
But he shows him that.
But you know what the Bible even says?
The Bible even says that David felt bad
about even cutting his clothing.
He even felt bad about that.
and his heart smote him just for having cut his clothes.
He didn't even cut his body, he didn't even do anything to him.
Okay, and again, is this just a fun story?
Or are we supposed to be reading this as an admonition, right?
And again, how do we know in these stories who's right and who's wrong?
We take the Bible statements of the New Testament,
the Bible statements in the book of Proverbs,
and we use them to interpret the story.
and to let the story admonish us in our lives.
And so we see that David's loyal to Saul and Jonathan.
Look at verse 25.
How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle?
Oh, Jonathan, thou wast slain in high places.
I'm distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan.
Very pleasant hast thou been unto me.
Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.
How are the mighty fallen the weapons of war perish now? Of course perverted filthy minds will say oh, you know
David's a homo because he said that Jonathan's love was better than the love of women
But you know what unto the pure all things are pure
But unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure
But even their mind and conscience is defiled
Because they have a wicked mind, a wicked conscience, they will read those kind of things into this.
What you don't understand is that this whole faggoty society we're living in has not been normal throughout history.
It's a new phenomenon.
And I don't think I'm that old, but this is something that I've seen happen in my lifetime.
I'm 43 years old, and when I was in elementary school, junior high, and the first few years of high school,
homosexuality might as well not have even existed.
It was not a thing. It was like non-existent and you say well, you know pastor
I said well, you know when I go back and listen to old-time preachers
I don't hear them preaching a bunch of sermons against homos. That's because they didn't have to
It's the same reason. I don't get up and just preach week after week against incest
You know and it's blessed God. I'm gonna keep ringing this bell as much as I have it's just like whoa, buddy
We get it like
You know, I'm bestiality, my friend, and I'm just like, what?
Why are you even talking about that?
Folks, let me tell you something.
I was born in 1981, okay?
I lived in California.
Not exactly the Bible Belt or the most conservative place.
And living in California in the 1980s,
it might as well have not existed.
It was something that you just never encountered.
The first time I've ever met someone who was a sodomite, I was like 15, 16 years old and
the guy was just seemed like a completely normal person.
You would have never known in a million years just totally normal.
The only reason I knew is because someone told me I know this guy and I know him to be a
homo and I was like, whoa, this is like the first homo I've ever even heard of in real life.
Besides just some joke on a TV show or you know, they obviously Hollywood's been promoting this garbage even before that
But in real life, and you know what anybody who's my age is or older knows that I'm telling the truth
That this just wasn't a thing. It just didn't exist
We could have all said like President Akhmedina job. There just are no homos here, you know
But basically I remember in 19 we were talking about this this morning in 1998
I remember Ellen DeGeneret
was a sitcom
That I'd never seen or watched but I remember she comes out as a lesbian and
It was pulled from the TV. They removed the show. They pulled it off the air because people freaked out and
Said we will not have a homo character on primetime TV. Get rid of it
It was it was pulled it was yanked from the air. It was like I was like amen, but then a year later
It came back
A year later they brought it back and crammed it down everybody's throat and then the year after that
Every single sitcom had a homo character before that none of them did and
I remember going to high school. I'd never known one in my life
Until I get to my senior year of high school and all of a sudden I had one in every class
All of a sudden just open sodomites in every single class in the year 1999
And it, I mean, it was like one year to the next.
It was just that fast.
It just went from something that you just never saw,
never heard of, to just now all of a sudden,
it's just, there's one every.
But even then, it would pale in comparison to now.
Fast forward 25 years later, they're everywhere.
Does everybody understand?
And so here's the thing.
If you're living in a normal society amongst normal people,
this is not something that you're thinking about.
It's not something that's on your radar.
You're just kind of going through life and it's just it's something that you only hear about like when you get to like Leviticus 18
And your Bible reading and you're like what the heck God? Why are you even bringing that up? I?
Remember the first time I read Leviticus 20. I was like God. Why are you bringing up all this weird stuff?
Now fast forward and I'm like man. I wish God would have said more
But I used to think he said too much
I'm like, why does he keep bringing this up?
It's gross.
But then I got to the end of the chapter and said,
oh, well, the nations in Canaan have done all these things.
I was like, what?
They actually did this stuff?
Because it's not on the radar.
So here's the thing, normal people throughout history,
when they read the story about David and Jonathan,
and David said, oh man, my love for you, Jonathan,
was so pleasant, and it was passing the love of women.
They're not having some weird, faggity thought.
They're just thinking, wow, you really loved his friend.
So now you have this agenda to go back all throughout history and to just find any historical
figure who had a close male friend and to declare them a homo now.
And that's where you get these stupid ideas that, oh, King James was a homo, or this guy
is homo.
There's no evidence for these things except for the fact that they had close male friends.
Well guess what, men throughout history have had close friendships with other men.
Just normal dudes, and it had nothing to do with being a pervert.
It just had to do with companionship, friendship, and so forth.
And so that's what we see with David and Jonathan is that they had a close relationship.
And in fact, David's relationship with Jonathan surpassed the relationship that he had with women in its emotional depth.
Okay, and this isn't really a shock because David, you know didn't necessarily have normal marriage relationships in his life
so, you know, it's
Maybe this isn't the highest possible praise
To say that it was greater than his love, you know of women because of the fact that of course his first wife
My call we know how that ended up
She's estranged with him. She ends up being given to another dude
Then she comes back and then she's talking smack and then he's just like okay
Well, I'm never gonna touch you again with a 10-foot pole because I already got a couple other wives going and what you know
It's just it's a mess
but the you know the point is though that
This is a male friendship that meant a lot to him and he was loyal to Jonathan Jonathan was loyal to him
Now flip over you into 2 Samuel chapter 16 let's get off of David and
Jonathan for a moment, but I just I do want to bring up this one thing though
Years and years later in 2 Samuel chapter 9 right because 2 Samuel chapter 1 is when Jonathan has just died in
2 Samuel chapter 9
David asked his servants is there
Yet any that is left of the house of Saul that I may show him kindness for Jonathan's sake
so notice that David
is looking for ways to be loyal to his friend.
Even after his friend's dead and gone,
he's looking for ways to be loyal.
But you know, a lot of people,
they're looking for excuses to be disloyal.
They're looking for excuses to throw their friend
under the bus, to turn on their friend,
to stab their friend on the back.
You know, it really should be the opposite
where we're looking for ways to be loyal,
looking for ways to be a good friend.
Even after Jonathan's gone,
he's still looking for ways to be a blessing to him.
Now, here's an interesting story also from the life of David about Hushai the Archite.
Okay, now Hushai the Archite was a friend of David's that in this passage we're going
to look at is accused of being a disloyal friend.
He's accused of being a bad friend.
Now, he's acting like a really bad friend, but in reality he's being a good friend.
He's undercover.
And so let's look at it quickly, but this is where Absalom has rebelled against David and David had to flee Jerusalem
and he's out in the wilderness with his men and the people that were loyal to David, they followed him into the wilderness.
But Hushai the Archite is sent in as a spy and so Hushai the Archite is pretending to be disloyal to David.
In reality, of course, we know that he is David's loyal friend.
But it's interesting what we see in these verses.
Look at 2 Samuel chapter 16 verse 16.
It says, And it came to pass,
when Hushai the Archite,
David's friend was come unto Absalom,
that Hushai said unto Absalom,
God save the king, God save the king.
And of course, it's an act.
But he's pretending like he's excited about King Absalom.
Is this thy kindness to thy friend?
He's like, really?
Why, you know, why are you being disloyal to your friend?
Is this thy kindness to thy friend?
Why when is not thou out with thy friend?
Why thou, excuse me, why when is thou not with thy friend?
Like, why didn't you go with your friend, right?
David is out in the wilderness, his buddies all followed him.
People that were loyal to him, people that loved him,
people that cared about him,
is this your kindness to your friend
that you're just going to just side with Absalom against him?
And remember, this is Absalom talking.
Absalom's like, I mean, I'm glad you're on my side,
but really, you're just gonna just forsake your friend,
David, and just jump on my bandwagon?
And who shall I send unto Absalom?
Nay, but whom the Lord and this people,
and all the men of Israel choose, his will I be,
and with him will I abide.
And again, whom should I serve?
Should I not serve in the presence of his son?
As I've served in thy father's presence, so will I be in thy presence.
Now obviously we know he's a spy and he ends up tricking Absalom into doing something stupid
and he ends up being instrumental in David's success over Absalom because he's a spy.
But let's just pretend for a moment that Houshai is really
being sincere here. We know that that's not the truth, but let's just pretend for a minute
that he is. And so stop and think about this.
Absalom says to him, oh, is this your kindness to your friend? Why when is thou not with thy friend?
You know, and Absalom's obviously right in that sense that and he, you know,
Absalom should have gone with his gut that this guy's not really that disloyal because he's shocked. He's surprised.
He's like, what? What are you doing? I thought you and David were like this.
You're that quick to throw them under the bus and then look what Hushai says. He says,
''Nay, but whom the Lord and this people and all the men of Israel choose, his will I be and his will I be.''
You know, a lot of people will, sometimes put a little spiritual slant on their disloyalty and
unfaithfulness, right? They'll have a little spiritual slant that says, ''I'm only loyal to God.''
I'm only faithful to God, you know, I'm not going to be loyal to people.
I'm only going to be loyal to God, right?
And this is their way of kind of putting a spiritual veneer
on their disloyalty, unfaithfulness, and really wickedness in many cases.
And this is what people do.
And again, this is what I was kind of talking about
with the brother Hiles, the famous brother Hiles quote,
I will be loyal to principles, not to institutions.
Okay, what he's talking about is
he's not going to be loyal
to the Southern Baptist Convention, okay, because if you actually get the context
of where that quote came from, it had to do with
the Bible college that he attended, the seminary that he attended,
and the organization that he started out being a part of, the Southern Baptist
Convention. And so he's going to be loyal to
his principles, standing on the Word of God,
not just, well, whatever the Southern Baptist Convention does, you know, I'm just
going to be loyal to that.
That's the actual context of that quote.
What he's not saying is,
well, I'm going to be loyal to my biblical principles,
therefore I'm not going to be loyal to my parents,
I'm not going to be loyal to my friends,
I'm not going to be loyal to my church, my past.
That's not what he's saying.
And again, like I said, I've listened to 700, 800 hours of his preaching.
That's not what he taught.
That's not what he believed, you know?
And so it's sometimes a misuse of that idea.
where people have this idea of, well, you know, my only loyalty is to God.
Now here's the thing, obviously, our primary loyalty is to God.
No question about that.
Our number one primary loyalty is to God.
Okay, and what does the Bible say?
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.
He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
That's what the Bible says.
Right? You've got to be willing to sever any relationship.
You've got to be willing, obviously, to follow Christ,
even to the point of death.
He says you've got to hate.
Oh, let's go there quickly.
In fact, let's just finish the sermon there
because we're low on time.
But let's go to Luke chapter 14.
I think that's where it is.
Hopefully.
It's not in my notes.
This is kind of popped into my mind.
But Luke chapter 14,
Verse 26, yeah, verse 26 of Luke 14,
If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother
and wife and children and brethren and sisters,
yea, in his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
And whosoever does not bear his cross
and come after me cannot be my disciple.
Now this is not about being saved.
Being saved is really easy.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
Being saved is receiving a free gift.
But being a disciple of Christ, folks, there were very few disciples of Christ, right?
People who actually were following Christ, you know, you got the 12 disciples.
That's not really a lot when you think about Jesus preaching to thousands and thousands of people at a time.
It's got 12 disciples.
And then in Acts chapter 1, the early church in the upper room is only 120 people, including
women and children.
That means that our church is way bigger than the church in Acts chapter 1.
So what you have to understand is that there's a big difference between being saved and being
a disciple of Christ.
Because being a disciple takes a huge commitment.
Being a really serious, sold out, die hard follower of Christ is a big difference from
Thank God there weren't just only 120 people saved in Acts chapter 1.
There had already been tens and thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people saved
throughout Christ and the apostles' ministry, okay.
But what do we see here if any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters
Obviously, this is hyperbole. It's not saying necessarily to literally hate those people
But the idea is that they are put at such a lower priority like like Christ is
number one and everything else is
expendable if it comes to it
even your own life, just Christ is number one and you've got to be willing to forsake
anything and everything if it becomes necessary to do so. You got to count the cost. If you really want to be a
die-hard follower of Christ.
Now look, this is a pretty strong statement, isn't it?
And that's why the word hate is used, even though it's hyperbole and exaggeration in that sense,
it is still making a very strong point that there is no doubt
that Christ comes before your spouse, period.
Like, how can you read this verse and say,
no, I think your marriage comes first, Christ second?
Really? You can't read this verse and come away with that.
That's why the strong language is used,
even though it's hyperbole.
We could also say, hey, there's no way
that God wants you to put your children before Jesus.
or to put your parents before Jesus, or to put your spouse, or anyone else before Jesus,
he says, if any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children,
and brethren, and sisters,
yea, in his own life also he cannot be my disciple.
Very strong statement here about the fact that Jesus Christ is number one.
So, obviously, we know that is our number one loyalty, right?
Is there any question about that? No.
But is Christ our only loyalty? Is that what the Bible says? No, it doesn't
Because elsewhere the Bible is very clear on being loyal to your spouse like we saw this morning like we talked about this morning
So I'm loyal not just only to God only to Jesus only to the word of God. No, I'm also loyal to my wife as a person
I am loyal to her as a person
I'm also loyal to my friends
I'm also loyal to my parents, okay?
I am loyal to people who I consider my friends, who have been loyal to me.
I'm going to reciprocate and be loyal to them.
People who've been loyal to me, I'm going to be loyal to them, okay?
People that the Bible is telling me to be loyal to.
I'm going to be loyal to them.
The Bible is telling me to honor my father and mother, I'm going to do it, okay?
People who've invested in me, I'm going to be loyal to them.
Okay, and obviously if I want to have friends I got to show myself friendly
I got to be loyal to friends and and expect that to be reciprocal
Now here's the thing when you have friends stabbing you in the back betraying you pulling a Judas Iscariot
Pulling an Absalom pulling a whoever pulling a Job's three friends or whatever, you know, obviously those people aren't your friends anymore
You're not necessarily going to stay friends with those people once they've shown you that the friendship is meaningless to them
Once there's kind of that material breach of contract you kind of realize the kind of people you're dealing with in many cases
And you move on and it's sad, but that's life
But the Bible is clear that Jesus Christ is number one
He's our number one loyalty
But the twisting and perversion of this doctrine would be that he is our only loyalty and that is not true
Okay, because obviously we are supposed to be loyal to these other people in our lives too, right?
I mean, obviously we should be loyal to family, we should be loyal to friends,
we should be loyal especially to our spouse for crying out loud.
But Christ is number one, but what people will often do though is they will burn people in their lives
They will throw friends and family under the bus
they will harm hurt and
destroy people that have been good unto them and say well
This is me just taking a stand for what's right putting a spiritual veneer on their wickedness
And that's what we see with who shy the archite who's obviously of course
not actually saying this, but he's basically
dissimulating and saying like, oh, yeah, well, you know, whoever God chooses and you know
I'm just here to serve God and so if this is what God wants
then I'm just gonna follow the Lord when in reality if he were really doing this
This would be super wicked and ungodly on this part
The only reason he's not wicked is because he's faking it
And so beware of this kind of hyper spiritual veneer
That basically says, oh, you know what I had to discard my wife because she just didn't want to serve God
You know so I just had to move on to someone else that wanted to serve God
And you know you think that people don't say that they actually do say that I've literally heard and you know the followers of Peter Ruckman
These hyper dispensational types who follow Peter Ruckman
They will say that from the pulpit
I've heard them say from the pulpit if your wife doesn't serve got want to serve God
You need to ditch her and find a woman that'll serve God with you. I've literally heard those exact words verbatim
out of some of these ruck-tards mouths,
and I'm telling you, you know, that's horrible teaching.
But again, it's putting a spiritual veneer
on someone who just wants to discard their wife.
Or discard, oh, my husband's so ungodly,
I had to separate from him
because he, you know, smoked a doobie or whatever.
What is that?
It's putting a spiritual veneer on your disloyalty
and unfaithfulness.
Okay, and and and again people will do this all the time
You know because I could sit there and I could find all the false doctrine and things that I don't like
about all of my former pastors and all of my Sunday school teachers and
Christian school teachers and people that invested in me spiritually, mentors,
people who taught me how to go soul-winning, and people who did all this.
I could find things wrong and then attack them, criticize them, hurt them,
make their lives miserable, and say, oh, I'm doing it for the Lord because they have
some wrong doctrine or something. I'm not going to do that because I'm not a wicked person.
And so, again, we want to make sure that we realize that, yes,
Christ is our number one loyalty, but he is not our only loyalty.
Look, I love Jesus Christ more than I love anyone else.
I love Jesus Christ more than my wife,
but that's not an excuse to not love my wife.
No, because guess what?
I can love Jesus and my wife.
And other than Jesus, I love my wife more than anyone else
in this whole world.
But guess what? I love Jesus more.
If I had to choose between her and Jesus,
I'm gonna choose Jesus every single time.
But if I had to choose between her and anyone else,
I'm gonna choose her every single time.
That's the way it's supposed to work.
So we have to understand that yes,
our supreme loyalty is to Christ,
but we also need to be loyal to Jonathan.
And we also need to be loyal to Saul.
And we also need to be loyal to our wife,
husband for you ladies,
parents, pastor, friends.
people who've taught you, people who've invested in you, people who've been a blessing to you.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you, right? Be loyal, be a good friend, be a good child, be a good parent, be a good spouse,
right? We should strive for loyalty and faithfulness in our lives.
So I hope that between this morning sermon and tonight sermon this is really sunken in with you that
you need to think about, hey, how am I treating the people who've done good unto me in my life?
Have I rewarded them evil for good?
Or am I loyal to them?
Am I faithful to them?
Do I honor that implicit agreement
of what friendship means, right?
Which is to do each other no harm, to love one another.
And love work with no ill do is neighbor.
And so just like Jonathan and David had that love
that was reciprocal and that loyalty that was reciprocal,
that's what we should strive to have in our friendships.
Now look.
The sad truth is that, you know, really good David, Jonathan friendships, they don't come along very often in life.
And so if you're a child or a teenager and you say, man, I wish I really wish I had a friend like that, I don't have a friend like that.
Don't feel bad because most people don't have a friend like that when they're a teenager.
You know and it's like and and don't ever look at the public school kids and think oh, man
They have this cool social life that I'm missing out on let me let me tell you something
I've been to Christian school. I've been to public school and let me tell you what it is
You're you're you're surrounded by a bunch of people that you kind of pretend to like and hang out with and those a lot of those
Relationships are really shallow
And in fact, they almost leave you with an emptier feeling than no relationships at all because sometimes they're so shallow and so empty,
they almost make you feel more lonely in some ways.
And so, don't just assume that everybody down at the public school, or the Christian school, or whatever is just having all these really deep, meaningful relationships.
The truth is, and look, I'm a very social person. When I was a teenager, I had a lot of friends, and I was doing stuff constantly.
I wasn't a person, I wasn't sitting around in my room or anything. I mean, I was literally going somewhere like every night.
I was going to like church youth groups, church youth activities. I was involved in like five different churches at a time.
when I was 16, 17, I'm going to this Bible study over here,
this youth activity. I'd be looking up, does any church have a, you know,
church service on Thursday night? Because I just, I just wanted more
church. And look, yeah, I wanted to study the Bible,
but I also just wanted to make more Christian friends.
That was a big reason why I'm going to these, you know, Bible studies and
church services, youth groups. It was mainly because I wanted to, you know,
meet people. So I'm a very social person.
and I've made a lot of friends over the years,
but let me tell you something though,
I've had very few of these really good,
meaningful friendships that last for a long time.
And it's not for lack of getting out there and meeting people.
It's just the reality of the human condition.
And so here's the thing, when you do,
and I want to leave you with this thought,
don't miss this,
when you do find that Jonathan in your life.
When you do find that deep meaningful friendship don't screw it up
Are you listening don't screw it up because let me tell you some of those relationships are few and far between
They rarely happen listen to me
They rarely come along. They are gold
So when you do have that deep relationship where your souls are knit together and you have that meaningful friendship
That lasts for years and years and even decades and you have those deep friendship
Don't just sell your birthright for a bowl of chili
You know what I'm saying
Don't just be ready to just give up that friendship for your convenience or whatever
You know what you should be willing to pay a high price to hang on to that friendship that if that friendship
is real, you'd better hang on to it and if you screw that up, you're a fool.
Because other people, man, they wish for those relationships, they long for those
relationships
and they don't come along very many times in life.
And you know, if you have that, if you have a deep relationship with your
spouse,
you should be thankful for that, you should cherish that. And you know what,
yeah, maybe your spouse is going to be a pain sometimes, but you know what,
just remember those connections that you've had.
Remember those moments that you've had.
Remember that bond that you've had.
That's worth hanging on to.
Even if they go through a weird phase or
something or a stupid phase or a dark phase,
hang on to that bond because it's something rare in this world.
Whether it's a marital bond or even just a friendship,
like between Jonathan and David.
Do not screw up the friendships in your life.
because they're they're they're valuable and
Man, don't you someday you're gonna think like oh man
I was so stupid to sacrifice friendship for whatever whatever the reason
Hang on to those friendships be loyal be faithful and you know what you're gonna want to have those friendships later
So don't screw them up
And especially don't screw things up with your spouse, you know, because you, I really hope you don't have just a shallow relationship with your spouse.
Maybe you do now or something, but I hope that at some point you had some kind of a connection.
Hopefully you don't marry someone that you don't have kind of a connection with.
Hopefully you should have a little bit of that connection even before you get married.
You know and and then and then you know what when when that person is maybe at a low point
remember that
Connection and how rare it is and how valuable it is how precious it is and don't just be ready to just
Ditch that person because you're ashamed of the chain
Whatever the chain is in their life. Let's borrow it's enough water prayer father. We thank you so much for your word
We thank you for obviously the Lord Jesus Christ who stick it closer than a brother
and he is the greatest friend ever.
But Lord God, help us to find some good friendships in this life,
friendships with the same gender, Lord,
and ultimately a marital relationship that has value and meaning.
Lord God, help all of us as your people to be able to develop and cultivate
some meaningful friendships in our lives,
and when we have them, help us not to disdain them,
devalue them or fail to realize how precious they are.
But Lord, help us to hang on to those things
and be faithful to our friends, be loyal to our friends,
and hopefully have some friends that will be loyal to us.
And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Amen, all right, ladies and gentlemen,
take your hymnals please and go to hymn 261,
hymn number 261.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Him number 261
Began together on that first verse. Oh soul. Are you weary and troubled him number?
261 turn your eyes upon Jesus sing it out together now. Oh
soul
at the Savior and life full of abundance and grace.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus.
Look full in His wonderful face.
And the things
Bye!
구독과 좋아요 부탁드려요!
Man, excellent things tonight. We are dismissed.