Cultivate Godly Friendships - I Samuel 18 - 24

One of the saddest charges against the American family today is that there are very few families that have developed and maintained a group of Godly friends. Many parents are working four regular jobs. Most of the time the man works his regular job or profession for eight hours and then goes to his second choice work place while his wife arises early and helps the family get off to work and school and then she goes to her Dolly Parton secular job from nine to five. She returns home and finishes her sixteen hour day keeping the home presentable, cleaning, and doing a hundred tasks over and over week after week. The family is lucky if there is three or four hours each week when they can be friends with each other.

There are very few parents that realize that children go through three or four specific periods of psychological change when they are in desperate need of parental friendship and adult guidance. Many parents do not feel that the problems that children encounter are of any significance and that they will just go away. The truth is that even though childish problems seem of little importance to the adult—they are sometimes a matter of life and death to the teenager. Mom, Dad…their problems are pretty serious to them and all they want is for you to act like you care and want the best for them. It is so very important for young people to choose Godly friendships that parents should feel proud when their children are willing to confide in them. Far too often they feel forced to seek friendships outside of the home. The most valuable quality of a friendship is personal loyalty and one can not always be sure that a new friend will continue being loyal through rough times.

To my knowledge there is no better example of two Godly friends that got together by chance than that of David and Jonathan. Jonathan was loyal to his father Saul, who was serving as king but had really not been the type of loving and caring father that always was there for his son. Jonathan had gone outside of this royal home and found David, son of Jessie whom he appreciated and befriended often. He found himself caught up in the conflict between his father and David and proved that by acting Godly he could be a friend to both.

The story of David is probably one of the best known that is written in the Bible. And the bond between these two young men forever set a pattern for all of us to live by if we propose to be a neighbor and friend to man kind.

Many have wondered why God chose to list David as a man after His own heart considering the fact that he had sinned often and that his sins include even murder and adultery. I have searched for an explicit answer and found none. The one thing that stands out is that David knew when he did wrong and he immediately repented and asked for forgiveness. He proved the immediate and constant necessity for a Christian to practice obedience, and confirmed the fact that God is always willing to forgive us when we seek forgiveness and remain loyal to Him.

The Old Testament is a book of conflicts that arose between Satan and God in the Garden of Eden and will finally close with the fighting of the battle of Armageddon. Saul became the first king and found that there were already two or three nations set and ready to attack him. One of these conflicts included the Giant of the Philistines who was taunted as a super-man. Well known is the fact that David had been chosen by God to be the next king, and that God used this incident to introduce the young man David, to the world of war and conflict.

Saul watched the fight when and where David slew the giant, and he inquired as to who he was. In the last verses of chapter 19, we read about their first meeting. Then the lesson for today begins in chapter 18 with the story of how Saul respected David and did not let him return to his father. There is no doubt that Jonathan saw something great in this man David, because they became very good friends. In fact there indication that Jonathan and David became more than just friends… there was a Christian love that blossomed that first day and neither man ever broke that brotherly bond.

The killing of the giant was the key to their bonding but it also was the inspiration for a song that was written that was the beginning of their problems that would grow worse very soon. The new song indicated that Saul was a great war hero who had killed thousands; but it also implied that David would be greater and would kill millions. Saul was adamant and outraged and because of his jealously he began to plot ways that he could get rid of David.

The lesson today has a total of five chapters included in it and deals with several years of struggles in battle after battle and many incidences that proved that David was superior to Saul. Saul had actually begun to lose his mind, and his hatred for David had obsessed him.

These chapters contain a running history of daily happenings. Saul was continually finding new reasons why David had to be dealt with. Saul ordered that David be killed, and he also attempted to do it himself. There are several occasions when Jonathan met with his dad and pleaded for him to allow David to exist since there was no reason for him to be killed. Then there were also several occasions when Jonathan met with David and cautioned him when his dad was about to be successful in destroying David.

There are very few of us who work together in the church where there is no danger to our livelihoods that will ever be able to develop a brotherly love for each other as did Jonathan for David and David for Jonathan. There is no doubt that God led Samuel to tell the story about these two young men to show the world how important friends can really be.

One of the greatest applications that can be made of this lesson that regards the importance of close friends is recommended to the young people that are making life changes. The change from elementary to junior high school or to high school, and finally those that are entering college will be meeting and making new friends. Would you like to be just like the one you have chosen? The closer one gets to another person, the more apt you are to immolate or adopt his/her way of doing things or living life. Take a good look first and ask yourself if you really want to look and act like your new friend.

There is a second side to this coin. As you start living your new life among new friends, are you carefully choosing and living your life in a way that it will set the right example for someone that may like you and pattern their ways after you. Do you want to be the bad example that leads some soul astray? Do you realize that there is a penalty for misleading people? The Bible says that it would be better for you to have a millstone tied about your neck and be cast into the sea than for you to intentionally lead some little one astray.

One more caution! It is also dangerous for you to allow someone else to choose you as their friend if they have ulterior motives in doing so. It is so easy for one to make this fatal mistake…evaluate them real good.