Leading The Way

Guest (Female): An up-close look at Jonathan and David, encouragement from their challenging and inspiring friendship. Today on Leading the Way.

Dr. Michael Youssef: While Jonathan was privileged, David was despised by his brothers. While Jonathan was surrounded by servants, David was serving his older brothers. While Jonathan was a prince, David was a shepherd boy, and the list goes on and on.

Yet Jonathan and David's heart were knitted together in eternal friendship because each sought to honor God and sought to obey the revealed will of God in their life.

Guest (Male): Hello and welcome to Leading the Way with long-time pastor and author of more than 50 books, Dr. Michael Youssef. David, the soon-to-be king of Israel, and Jonathan, the son of the current king of Israel, Saul, had a remarkable relationship. Obviously an awkward situation, but God used their friendship to shine light on godly relationships. And you’ll hear more about that today from Dr. Youssef on Leading the Way.

Please do remember that Leading the Way is a listener-supported ministry made possible right here in your neighborhood and in neighborhoods just like yours all around the world through the faithful prayers and generosity of people like you. Dr. Youssef invites you to learn ways to stand with him so the gospel can reach even into the remotest of villages. Give us a call at 866-626-4356 or visit ltw.org. Right now though, eternal friendships with Dr. Michael Youssef.

Dr. Michael Youssef: A story is told about General William Westmoreland. One day he was reviewing a platoon of paratroopers. As he came down that line, he was asking every one of them as he was shaking their hand one question: "How do you like jumping, son?" He just went one question, one after the other.

The first one said, "I love it, sir." The next one said, "It's the greatest experience of my life, sir." Then the third one said, "I hate it, sir." The unflappable general was kind of taken back and said, "Son, why are you doing it?" He said, "Because I love to be around guys who love jumping, sir."

And how true it is in many of our lives. I know it’s true in my life, being around people who are truly jumpers for Jesus. People who are godly and full of grace, people who are visionaries for Christ, people who are passionate about the love for Christ, people who are totally committed to Christ, people who are sold out to Christ, people who have dedicated their life for Christ.

Ever since I remember, whether 9, 10, 11 years old to this day, I have always loved to sit at the feet of great jumpers for Jesus. I really do. I’ve always sought to be in friendship and in fellowship with such people. I am convinced in my heart that each one of us needs giants in our lives. Every one of us needs to be a giant for somebody else.

The Bible is full of examples of such eternal friendships. You find it, for example, in the friendship between Moses and Joshua. Then you find it in the relationship between Elijah and Elisha. You find it again between Paul and Timothy. But one of the greatest examples of eternal friendships was that friendship that was between David and Jonathan. And I’m going to tell you all about it today because that is a role model for eternal friendship.

For those of you who are not familiar with that part of Old Testament history, I’m going to give you a very quick overview. The nation of Israel came out of slavery out of Egypt into the Sinai Desert and then into the Promised Land. For hundreds of years, ever since they came out of Egypt, they did not have an earthly king. They did not have a human king. They had God as their king.

After hundreds of years of God guiding them and leading them and being their king and being the leader and being their God and being their provider, they turned to the prophet Samuel and said to him, "We don’t like it. We want to have a real king. We want to have a human king that we can feel and touch, that we can manipulate." Now they didn't say that, but that's really what they had in mind.

"We are not contented to tell our neighbors when they ask us, 'Who is your king?' and we embarrassingly say, 'God.' And so when they ask us, 'Have you seen your king lately?' we embarrassingly say, 'No.' And then when they ask us, 'How do you choose your king? How do you lobby your king?' we embarrassingly say, 'He chooses us.'" That is a loose translation, but that's exactly what they were saying.

And so Samuel cries to the Lord. And then the Lord says to Samuel, "Samuel, they are not rejecting you. They are rejecting me, and I see through this. I understand what they're doing. They are tired of me being their king. They want to replace me by an earthly king. They've rejected me." And so Saul becomes the very first human king upon the nation of Israel.

But he was a disaster of a king. He was a disaster, but he had a godly son, and that godly son’s name was Jonathan. But God did not tell Samuel to anoint Jonathan, the son of Saul, to be the heir apparent or the successor of his father. He said, "No, I want you to go back yonder and find the son of Jesse, David, a 16-year-old boy, and anoint him to be a king to take over after Saul goes."

And so he does, but at 16, David had to wait. Listen, let me just stop here for a moment and speak to you who are waiting for God. Some of you know the promises of God and you’ve been waiting for God. And you are disappointed with your waiting time. God has given you some great dream and you’re waiting for it and you’re sitting there and saying, "How long, God?" Remember this: God’s timing is always perfect.

Waiting is not always bad. In fact, waiting is good because waiting can be truly a sacred time from the hand of God. Because during that waiting time, do you know what God is doing with you? He’s shaping you, he’s molding you, he’s building you up and preparing you. And so wicked King Saul knew that David was anointed of God to become his successor, so he brings him into the palace so he can keep an eye on him.

But that’s not all that he wanted to do. He wanted to kill David. I mean, he wanted to kill him and he went after him with a vengeance. So many times you read in the scripture how many times Saul tried to kill David and failed. Whenever there are people who try to kill God’s vision or God’s plan or God’s woman or God’s man, they will always fail. They will always fail because that is the will of God and it cannot be thwarted.

And here is where this incredible eternal friendship becomes so unique in all of the Old Testament. It is so incredible. David was chosen by God to be the future king. He develops a friendship, eternal friendship, holy friendship with the son of the very man who’s trying to kill him, Jonathan.

As their eternal friendship began to unfold, we see that the one thing that has bound their hearts together, the one thing that bound their hearts together, was obedience to the revealed will of God. It was obedience to the revealed word of God. In fact, that’s all they had in common, nothing else.

It is mesmerizing for me how sometimes when I see a husband and wife and they want to split and the first thing they say is, "Well, we just don’t have anything in common." I say, give me a break. Of course you do. You seek the glory of God, don’t you? You love Jesus, don't you? Yes. Well, you have that in common, that's enough.

When you get two brothers or two sisters in Christ, after a wonderful friendship they're breaking up, saying, "We just don’t have anything in common." Yes, you do. You love Jesus. You want the glory of God. You have something in common far more important than anything else.

Please listen to me. David and Jonathan could not be more different from each other. I mean, they couldn't be more different. These two guys were the most unlikely eternal friends, and yet they were such eternal friends that they have set an example for 3,000 years of God’s people looking back and seeing what an eternal friendship looks like.

Let me show you what I mean. Jonathan was the oldest son of King Saul. Jonathan was the heir apparent from the human point of view, not from God's point of view. David, on the other hand, was the youngest son of an unknown father. David was God’s chosen successor. And he was anointed at the age of 16 and he was waiting, being hunted by Saul.

But the contrast between these two doesn't stop here. While Jonathan was pampered in the palace of the king, David was working for minimum wages since he was a boy. While Jonathan was privileged, David was despised by his brothers. While Jonathan was well-known, David was hidden from view.

While Jonathan was surrounded by servants, David was serving his brother and his older brothers. While Jonathan was a prince, David was a shepherd boy, and the list goes on and on. I’m trying to make the point, did you get it?

And yet Jonathan and David’s heart were knitted together in eternal friendship because each sought to honor God and sought to obey the revealed will of God in their life. It was based on willingness to be obedient to God’s vision.

I am going to read to you four verses that will summarize to you the power of eternal friendship. Four verses, First Samuel 23, beginning at verse 15. Just remember this: this was a very distressful time in David’s life, probably one of the most distressful times that he’s ever experienced. This was a time when David had been on the run from Jonathan’s father, Saul, and he had come to the end of his rope.

But I want you to listen to what an eternal friendship looks like. I want you to listen to what an eternal friendship should be all about. Verse 15 of chapter 23: "While David was at Horesh in the Desert of Ziph, he learned that Saul had come out to take his life. And Saul’s son Jonathan went to David at Horesh and helped him find strength where? In God."

Here is what Jonathan said: "Don’t be afraid. My father Saul will not lay a hand on you." Isn't it great to be around somebody who trusts God so much that he wouldn't flinch, no matter what and who? "You will be king over Israel because God says so. And I will be second to you. Even my father knows that." And then the Bible said that the two of them made a covenant before the Lord. Then Jonathan went home, but David remained at Horesh.

Now here is what eternal friendship does. It does two things: first, it encourages, secondly, it affirms. It encourages and it affirms. You know, I don’t have to tell you that in a world friendship, terms, friendship in the world is basically built on my needs and how I can have a friend who can meet my needs. You hear it, you see it, it's everywhere. My needs and how can I have somebody meet my needs.

No wonder that these types of friendships do not last for very long because they don't view them from an eternal perspective. They are not eternal friendships as we saw in the last message and seeing in this message.

Now, I want you to hear me out on this one. Eternal friendship turns the question around and asks, "Who needs my encouragement? How can I meet the needs for encouraging somebody else? What can I do to be of an encouragement?"

And when Jonathan went to encourage David, he had everything to lose. He had everything to lose and nothing to gain. The "what’s in it for me" was not even part of his vocabulary. After all, David was a fugitive from his father Saul, and Jonathan was encouraging the very man who's a threat to his father. Jonathan was risking everything, including his own father’s wrath. But Jonathan was a friend who understood that the very essence of eternal friendship is encouragement.

Today’s friendship asks what’s in it for me, what can I get out of it? No, Jonathan said, what can I give, what can I give? In fact, Jonathan’s name means "the Lord has given." That's what Jonathan means. If your name is Jonathan, it means "the Lord has given." And Jonathan gave encouragement to his eternal friend.

We all know David. People outside of the church, people who are not believers, they know David. Everybody knows about David. They know that David was a man after God’s own heart. We know David as a man who walked by faith. We know David as the man who won victory over Goliath. We know David as the man who wrote all these beautiful magnificent Psalms that encourage so many of us when we're going through the valley.

We know all about David. But listen to me: at this specific moment in David’s life, he was down and discouraged. The great man of God that we know all about him, or we think we do, was in despair. He was in fear. He did not know where to turn. The man who wrote those great Psalms, perhaps without Jonathan’s encouragement, he might not have made it another day.

I want you to look at the essence of Jonathan's encouragement. I want you to look at that and try to model it in your ministry of encouraging others because it’s really a wonderful example. The one thing you notice, he never minimized David’s problem. He never trivialized David’s pain. He never made light of David’s fear.

He did not try to present himself as the answer to David’s problem. He did not try to present himself as a solution to David’s problem. No, no, no. You know what he did? He immediately reminded him of the promises of God. That's all he did. He was reminding him of the promise of God. He was reminding him of the word of God. He was reminding him of what God said to Samuel those many years ago.

And that’s what the ministry of encouragement is all about. It has only one purpose, and that is to remind one another of the promises of God. It is to remind one another of the word of God. And Jonathan reminded David of the promises of God.

What he helped David to do is instead of allowing his fears of Saul to overwhelm him and to overcome him, he allowed him to become God-focused and God-centered. That's what he's doing here. But he also affirmed him. I want you to look at the text, verse 17. There's something here that is absolutely incredible. I hope you didn't miss it.

It’s one thing to believe the revealed will of God. It’s one thing to know the word of God. And it’s another thing to totally trust the word of God regardless of the circumstances. If everything is turning the wrong way, you know God said and therefore it cannot be. And this is what he’s doing here.

He affirmed to David, he was reminding him what God did a few years ago. Look at verse 17. He said, "Don’t be afraid. My father Saul will not lay a hand on you." Because when you are in the will of God, when you are walking with God, the enemy cannot touch you. The enemy cannot harm you. Nobody can touch you. He said, "You shall be king over Israel, and I’ll be second to you."

I cannot help but have a kind of sense of humor in me reading that verse. He said you'll be the king and I'll be second. I thought about this in about all of our competitiveness in this world. I imagine two golfing buddies going in there before they're teeing off. One says, "You know, I want you to win today. I'm not going to overdrive. I just want to lose to you."

Imagine two guys who are competing for the same job and they’re working hard to get the same job. And one goes and says, "You know, brother, I want you to have that job. I'm just going to serve you." It’s so alien to our thinking these days. It's so alien, but that's exactly what Jonathan is doing. He is saying, "I know what God said. I know what God is going to do. And all you need to do is just focus on what God said."

There's something else about Jonathan and David's eternal friendship. They did not drift in and out of friendship. They were committed to one another. And commitment needs to constantly be nurtured and affirmed. Verse 18: "The two of them made a covenant before the Lord."

Where did they get this idea of making a covenant with one another? Where did they get the idea? You see, they knew God. They knew God to be the covenant God. They knew God to be the covenant-making God, and they knew God to be the covenant-keeping God. And because they knew God, they were imitating God, and they made a covenant with one another.

And in developing eternal friendships, we must learn what it means to be in covenant. I don’t have to tell you that in our culture today, covenants are not taken seriously. They really aren't. In days gone by, people made a covenant by shaking hands, and they would die before going back and reneging on the covenant.

Today, you can have a 100-page contract and you can get out of it somehow. Today, we don’t take the power of agreement seriously because we really don’t understand it. Now we think that power comes from activities. We think that power comes from activism. We think that power comes from plans and strategies, good as all these things may be. Power comes, the supernatural power of God comes in commitment, in covenant, in agreement.

Have you ever reneged on a covenant or a commitment you made? Only you can answer that between you and God. I can tell you this: if you have, we have a God of grace. You can go back and you can repent and you can turn to him and you can ask him for the strength to go back and re-keep the covenant.

If you’ve never made a covenant with God, if you’ve never surrendered your life to him, you can today. If you’ve never known what it is to be in covenant with a brother in Christ or a sister in Christ, try it. Try it and see how eternal friendship not only encourages the other person but it also affirms the other person.

Guest (Female): Is there someone in your life encouraging and affirming you? Or maybe a bigger question is: are you giving biblical encouragement and affirmation to those who call you friend? Thank you for making time for Leading the Way audio with Dr. Michael Youssef.

Dr. Michael Youssef: Hello friends. You have seen the wave of extremism on college campuses, in conversation with some young people in your life, even in many churches. Two radical ideologies, once enemies, now they are marching together. They shut down debate, excuse violence, and they target biblical truth.

That alliance is real, and it is deliberate. In my new book, An Unholy Alliance, I explain what these two radical opposed forces are, why they are working together, and also give you the 1,400-year back story many people are entirely ignorant about that is shaping today's headlines. Get my new book, An Unholy Alliance. It's going to open your eyes and give you practical ways to make a difference for Christ.

Guest (Female): Use this number to learn more about current special offers available so that you can get your copy of An Unholy Alliance. Call 866-626-4356. And the website is ltw.org. That's ltw.org. This program is furnished by Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef, passionately proclaiming uncompromising truth.