Sermon - Lent Midweek 2, 2022 - David and Jonathan - 1 Samuel 18:1-5, 20:1-42, 2 Samuel 1:17-27

David and Jonathan, Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano, 1505

Some of the events in David’s life are well known, such as our reading from last week with his battle against Goliath, and one of our future readings: his affair with Bathsheba. Today’s account of David’s friendship with Jonathan, however, is less well known. If anything this account is more confused in recent years since our sex obcessed world has made the ludicrous assertion that theirs was a homosexual relationship. It’s a sad commentary on our civilization that when we hear that two men love each other we think of sodomy before we think of friendship.

David and Jonathan weren’t engaged in disgusting behavior, they were quite simply friends. It seems as if our current civilization has forgotten what friends even are, and for that reason before we go much further we should make a few basic comments on friendship. Often when we think of friendship, at least as an adult, we think immediately of marriage. While husbands and wives should definitely be friends, marriage is not really the best example of friendship, because marriage is much more than friendship, and it’s a whole lot more complicated than friendship.

Friendship is really premised upon equality, that the two are the same. But marriage is premised upon two different people, a man and a woman, being joined together. Men and women have different experiences, bodies, minds, ambitions, and emotions; this isn’t a value judgment, they’re just not equals because they’re not the same. 

Not only is this a matter of similarity, but it’s also not particularly appropriate for a man and a woman, who aren’t married, to be such close friends. For example, I’m good friends with pastor Schulz from Mallard, we can go out to eat or have coffee with just the two of us, we can sit in the car alone on trips talking for hours, we could share a hotel room at a pastor’s conference. That friendship is good and wholesome. But it obviously would be wildly inappropriate for me to have that kind of friendship with his wife Clara. Thus friendship is premised upon the companionship between two equals, uncomplicated by the differences between the sexes. 

 Friendship is a good and wholesome gift from God. The friendship between David and Jonathan teaches us about the friendship we should try cultivating with one another, and it also reveals to us something about the friendship we have with Jesus. So let’s dive into looking at David and Jonathan’s friendship a little more closely.

Jonathan was one of the sons of Saul, and Saul was the king of Israel. After Saul had stopped following the word of the Lord, the Lord rejected Saul from being king over Israel and secretly anointed David to be the new king. In the meanwhile, Saul was in a bad mood because the Lord sent a harmful spirit to torment him, so he sent for a young skilled musician to play the lyre for him and dispel the harmful spirit, that musician was David. 

David thus grew up in the king’s palace and would’ve been around Jonathan. After David brought the head of Goliath to Saul and they finished speaking, “the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” Today we might simply say that they were Best Friends Forever. 

They didn’t just get along during the good times, but especially during the bad times they remained close friends, and it was particularly during the bad times that they needed each other. In fact, God raised up Jonathan to be David’s friend so that he would be able to endure all of the bad times. Remember, David’s life is more than just about him, but David is among the Messianic lineage, so through David our Lord Jesus was born.

Anyways, David wasn’t just a skilled musician playing the lyre and writing many psalms, but he was a skilled warrior. He would go to the battlefield with Saul, and on their return from wars the women would sing: “Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” This made Saul incredibly jealous of David and so sought to kill him. At first he tried to kill him by proxy; Saul saw that his daughter Michal loved David, and thought that if he set the price of marriage high by requiring David to kill 100 Philistines, that David would die in battle. But that plan failed, since David successfully killed 200 Philistines and survived.

After this Saul tried a few more times to kill David; he threw a spear at him but David evaded, he tried to kill him while sleeping but Michal helped David escape, he sent assassins after him but God prevented them from harming David. This is where the bulk of our reading came in this evening. David met with Jonathan, who was conflicted as both the son of Saul and the friend of David. In order to test the waters and see if Saul still wanted to kill David, David asked Jonathan to lie to his father about David. Amazingly, at risk to his own life, Jonathan chose to protect his friend. When he defended David to his father Saul, Saul called him names and threw his spear at him in his anger, attempting to kill him.

Jonathan protected David, risking his own life and reputation, out of friendship. Though David and Jonathan weren’t around each other much after this point, after Jonathan died at the hands of the Philistines, David wrote a psalm of lament, saying of his friend: “Jonathan lies slain on your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women.”

From this account we learn what comprises friendship, namely companionship, honesty, devotion, and self-sacrifice for the sake of the other. Jonathan was willing to risk everything to protect his friend. Likewise should we strive to be such good friends with one another.

But even greater than our friendship with each other, we get a glimpse into our friendship with Jesus. We’re not just buddies with our Lord, talking about stupid things and making lude jokes, but we’re friends. Like Jonathan, Jesus risked everything to rescue us. Jesus however is a greater friend than Jonathan. Jonathan risked losing his life, but Jesus actually did lay down his life for us. Jonathan risked being forsaken by his father, but Jesus on the cross was forsaken by His Father for us (“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”). Jonathan attempted to justify his friend, where Jesus atoned for the sins of His friends, us, and actually justified us before the Father.

Thus, David and Jonathan were two best friends and from them we have a model for our friendships with each other. From David and Jonathan we are reminded of our great friendship with Jesus, which surpasses the love we may have with any other human. Let us also learn from David to forsake friendship with the world, and depend on our friendship with Christ, who is our greatest friend.