What is it you like to do at the weekends?
For some of us it could be just simply resting from work, or it could be a nice meal or going out for a drink or watching sports or cutting the grass or whatever it might be and as well as obviously making Sunday church attendance a priority.
For me, I love spending my time out running in the mountains. A particular event that I do is called the Mourne Mountain Marathon which happens on the third weekend in September, and I've done it a number of times now and many of those times with a good friend of mine called Richard who's good friend who lives in Carrick.
We run a fair amount together and we partner up in this event which usually takes place over the Saturday and the Sunday and that requires you to navigate your way over and around and across the mountains carrying with you your tent and your sleeping bag or a number of other things and the reason why you have to do this particular event in pairs is simply because if something happens to one of you you've got the other one to help look after you and it has happened before I had a pretty nasty injury one particular year. I cut my shin open having fallen down in the hole in the ground which I didn't see because it was covered with heather. It is just good safety measurement and requirement for such an event that you do it in pairs that you don't do it alone.
In Ecclesiastes chapter 4:9-10 it says
“Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labour. If either of them falls down one can help the other up but pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.”
During our sabbatical that we had this summer we had chosen and we were advised not to connect with people from within our church simply to get a complete and utter break from church life and church work and that was kind of quite challenging simply because many of our friends are people within our own church and so it really forced us to look outside of the church in terms of friendships that we have both here in Northern Ireland but also further afield in England and it really helped me understand the importance of cultivating really healthy life -giving friendships and Chantel and I enjoyed many times catching up with friends and sharing our life and where we were at and they, likewise with us, and it really made me think ‘goodness how important is it for me personally but for all of us that we would have friends.’
C .S. Lewis's book The Four Loves he wrote the following
“In friendship we think we have chosen our peers in reality a few years difference in the dates of our births a few more miles between certain houses the choice of one university instead of another the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at the first meeting, any of these chances might have kept us apart. But for a Christian, there are strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work, Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." Can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”
As it says at the beginning of the Bible, “It's not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). God ordained friendship. It emanates from his heart, from this Trinitarian being and His nature.
And so into our post -COVID recovery, where friendship took such a pounding, into our modern day era, where we have countless numbers of online friends and followers, into a culture that's filled with all manner of different mental health issues and things that which affect many of our lives and into our value of community and family and doing lives together, we want to address in this session and in next Sunday's teaching the importance of having friendship. Friendship is right across the scriptures.
There are lots of scriptures that we could point towards. The book of Proverbs, for example, is full of nuggets, these one-liner gems which really help us forge good friendship, but also warn us against bad friendship as well. And then, of course, we look to the person of Jesus. He Himself modelled good friendship the obvious people we could point towards would be Mary and Martha and Lazarus, his brother and sisters who would have often played host to Jesus and would have befriended him and had hospitality together.
Then of course we have Jesus’ relationship with his disciples. We do need to remember, however, that first of all that they were his students, they were his apprentices, but as time wore on we can gather from reading the scriptures quite clearly that it goes beyond the teacher-student relationship and that, in fact, in John 15 He says “I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business instead I have called you friends for everything I learned from my father I've made known to you”
There are lots of other examples about friendship throughout the Bible we could look at; Naomi and Ruth, Elijah and Elisha, Abraham and Lot, Daniel (Shadrach), Meshach, and Abednego, Paul Priscilla and Aquila but today, during this time want to look at the example of David and Jonathan.
David and Jonathan were an unlikely friendship. First of all David was a shepherd, Jonathan was a prince. He was of course the son of the then king Saul Jonathan had his own armour, David had a harp and a slingshot. Jonathan grew up in the palace and was trained in the art of war, David grew up in the little town of Bethlehem and was trained to tend sheep. Jonathan was the oldest son and in line to inherit the throne whereas David was the youngest of eight boys and was anointed to be the king later after Saul. Jonathan was of the tribe of Benjamin, David the tribe of Judah.
When they first met Jonathan had was already a great man of war he would have he had already have killed 20 Philistines in battle. David, on the other hand, he was this young shepherd boy who would have come round to the house, or the palace, to play the harp for his dad, for Saul, who was emotionally tormented by a spirit. And whenever David, this musician, would come round and would have played the harp, it would have eased the suffering of Saul. And that's probably where they first would have encountered each other and met each other.
David also at this moment would have slain Goliath as well and the well -known much -loved story. And so, in this moment we read 1 Samuel 18 verse 1 to 4.
“After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David. He loved him as himself. From that day Saul kept David from with him and did not let him return home to his family. Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe. He was wearing, gave it to David along with his tunic and even his sword, his bow and his belt.”
For those of you who've seen the best film ever made, Gladiator, you'll know that the story unfolds where the then Caesar Marcus Aurelius passes the title and role of Caesar in his last days to his top general, Maximus Thesmus Meridius, because he found him to be honourable and faithful and competent in battle instead of the true and rightful heir to the throne which was his son Commodus.
If you've watched the movie, you'll know that Commodus gets wind of his father's intentions and therefore hatches a plan and, in fact he murders his own father and then hatches this plan to have Maximus arrested and executed. Commodus, of course, was jealous of Maximus that the throne, the title of Caesar, was being passed to him instead of himself, the rightful heir.
In contrast, Jonathan could have acted like Commodus. He could have been jealous. How dare this other young man, this David from the little town of Bethlehem? Why does it have to be passed to him?
But Jonathan was not jealous and he was not threatened. Jonathan saw what God saw, that the Lord does not look at the things that people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart and that David himself was a man after God's own heart. And Jonathan saw these things in David.
Both of them, whilst they were from different backgrounds, they were both warriors. They were both men of faith who served the living God and that they were provided God-given courage and strength. They needed each other.
I want to just touch on just five things, five things that we learn from David and Jonathan, from their friendship, of what we would do well to think about and to seek to cultivate in the friendships in which we have in our lives.
First of all, that we recognise that friendship is ordained. It's set up by God. It's not fluke as we read earlier the C .S. Lewis quotation. It's a gift from God and he's already orchestrated these things. And as we consider and ponder friendships that we've made in our lives, both current and maybe in the past, how they came about, in what circumstances did we find ourselves in when we first met that person, or those people that have become our friends.
As we've mentioned already in 1 Samuel 16, that it just so happened that David was in the palace playing his harp and that's where his friendship with Jonathan began and where it grew up.
I remember when I first moved here to Northern Ireland, 22 years ago, in preparation for coming I was beginning to think, ‘goodness, I'm making a whole new life for myself, all of my family and my friendships, they're all in England where I was raised and where I grew up and I was leaving behind some really quality, brilliant relationships’ and in preparation I was speaking to a friend of mine who said, “I know this guy in Northern Ireland, he is amazing, he's such a great guy, his name's Jasper, at some point you're going to want to meet this guy and I could just really see you two getting on together.” I thought that's great, I'll certainly bear that in mind but I'm not going to fly over and then suddenly put an ad in the newspaper “where's Jasper?”
I thought if it happens, it happens and it did happen! It just so happened that Jasper's fiancée, now wife, Lynn was a volunteer with Chantel when Chantel first worked for Tearfund when we moved over here all those years ago and through that friendship, through Chantel and Lynn, we got to meet Jasper and I guess that the rest is history. Jasper has became a good friend and has been for many years now and it's just one of those things, God set it up, had it out there, had it ready that that would happen.
Secondly, friendship is intentional and probably the strongest and biggest thing that I really want to communicate is the importance of being intentional when it comes to friendship.
Jonathan saw in David what God saw and instead of choosing jealousy over the title of future king or rivalry, he laid that stuff aside and he sought friendship, and he sought out David in terms of friendship.
Proverbs 17 says, "A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for a time of adversity."
This deep friendship, this brotherly love for one another which grew and developed over time, bailed David out of some tricky situations, time and time again. We're going touch on them but I'd encourage you to go to the scriptures yourself. Read 1 Samuel 18 and just read a few chapters there. You'll see time and time again this deep protective, faithful, honouring, trustworthy friendship between the two of them that came into play on many a significant occasion.
We need to be intentional about friendship. We need to make moves towards it, and we need to make it a priority in our lives. It won't just happen. We need to cultivate friendship.
And if you have friends, good friends, the friends that we're sort of talking about today, call them, text them today, appreciate them, show how much you care and how much you love them and perhaps if you've not seen them for a while, well, get out the diaries and arrange to meet up. And if as you're reading this today, you feel like the kind of friendship or the depth and level of friendship that you're talking about, I just don't have that. My encouragement to you is pray and seek, and ask the Lord for this ordained friendship and seek. Who is there? Who is God drawing to yourself to become friends with?
About a month ago, I was a part of a group. We went across to the islands of Isla and Dura, the closest Scottish islands to us here in Northern Ireland. On a boat, there were eight of us. We went across, we got breakfast there and visited a couple of the distilleries over there and then eventually ended up on this tiny island called Eilean Mòr, part of the Cormac Islands. We were able to moor the boat and get up onto the island and we camped over. We visited this incredible 12th century church, or the remains of it, and we gathered the eight of us. Eight men, our middle son Owen who was 18, right the way through the ages to our friend who is 68 and every age in between. Eight of us men together, spent time worshiping the Lord, praying for each other, having fun, drinking together and having just a lot of really quality, healthy time together as blokes.
Being open, being honest, being vulnerable, but also having a great laugh together as well. I remember a conversation that we had around a fire pit late at night and it was by this other fellow who leads a church in a different stream, different denomination to ourselves here in Northern Ireland, and he was kind of putting across his view that the church or the churches need to do better at providing support and encouragement and friendship for those of us who lead churches and I agree to a certain degree with him and I did agree on the night within our kind of conversation that we were having.
I said “I think that kind of system and structure and support and that sort of thing is really important for us that lead and especially sometimes given the loneliness of what we do, but if I'm honest what we're doing right here, right now, being away together, being intentional with our time and being open and being honest about where we're at, that's where it really happens. That's where true friendship, which is our individual responsibility to be intentional about and carve out the time for. We could put in the best person to befriend someone, oversee someone and do all that. But if you don't actually get on or don't really kind of connect, well, we're just putting something in place, true and meaningful and God-ordained friendship, which is also intentional is really what we're looking for here.”
Thirdly, what we learn from Jonathan David's friendship is honesty and vulnerability.
As David's popularity grows, Saul becomes increasingly jealous of his fame and so as time goes on, Saul plots to have David killed.
We read in 1 Samuel 20, David flees to this place and Jonathan asks, and so he goes to John and says, "What have I done? What is my crime? What have I wronged your father? Why is he trying to kill me?" And Jonathan says, "Never, you're not going to die. Look, my father doesn't do anything great or small without letting me know, why should he hide this from me? It isn't so."
He's looking out for his friend. He's looking to reassure him. Time and time again he does this and looks to protect Jonathan, even as things unfold and Jonathan realises that Saul's intentions are in fact to kill David.
We need to have friendships which are open and honest where we can share not only the good but also the bad and especially the ugly. That reminds me of a story some time ago, I was talking to an older gentleman. He was just telling me how he was and that one of his friends was in was dying. He had cancer and it was terminal. Over a number of weeks this friend of mine was really faithful to his friend and he was faithful in that he met with him on a on a fairly frequent basis, just journeying with him in those very difficult and very painful and very challenging times and they would meet together and chat and hang out.
As I was talking to my friend I said “how's he doing? Goodness that must be so difficult, how does he feel about what so what's his emotional state? Is he is he worried about dying?”
And he said “oh, I don't know”
I said “well, how do you not know? Do you not talk about that?” and his reply really took me back.
He said “Oh goodness, no! We don't talk about that! We talk about the football, we talk about the rugby ,we talk about the weather” and I was just like oh my goodness, fair play. He was doing the great thing of visiting this guy and spending time with him, and in many ways, that's part and parcel of friendship isn't it? Let’s acknowledge that: it's about being present, it's about showing up and that is really important, but friendships need to go beyond a certain facade and lots of friendships can just be kind of low level and they're just people that we know. But the kind of friendship I think many of us are longing for is a much deeper connection, a much more open and honest and vulnerable connection and we see this with David and Jonathan.
Fourthly, from their example, we see that friendship often is sacrificial. Jonathan sacrificed the throne. In fact, he ends up serving this shepherd boy and puts his David's needs in front of his own. And Jonathan stands in front of his own father and actually takes the side of friendship over family, which is incredibly difficult. We read another confrontation as Saul is pursuing David. We read in 1 Samuel 20, verse 30,
"Saul's anger flares up at Jonathan. He says to him, 'You son of a perverse and rebellious woman, don't I know that you have sided with the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of the mother who bore you. As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be established. Now, send someone to bring him to me, for he must die. ‘Why should he be put to death? What is he done?' Jonathan asks his father. But Samuel holds his spear at him to kill him. Then Jonathan knew that his father intended to kill David.”
In this really angry confrontation that Jonathan is having now with his father, Saul, Jonathan learns that Saul does intend to kill David. Jonathan stands up for David and says, 'What has he done wrong to you?' Saul just gets even more angry and in fact throws his spear in order to kill his own son, Jonathan. Friendship sometimes is sacrificial and can be costly. It requires us to stand alongside our brother and sister in all times and especially in times of adversity.
In my role, as a Pastor, I'm often brought into situations and circumstances alongside people in very difficult situations. It could be a relational fallout. It could be poor health or poor health of a loved one or the death of someone or all number of different difficult and painful events that just happen in life and happen in our lives.
It's an absolute honour and privilege to draw alongside people in that way and in that role. But often when these moments arise, one of my first questions that I'm pondering and sometimes I ask is who else does this person have in their life? Who is their friend? Who are their go-to people? Who is it that they have intentionally built relationship over years who can draw alongside and actually do a way better job than I can do in my pastoral, professional kind of role? That person is the person that is in the trenches alongside them in those difficult times.
Lastly, we learn from Jonathan and David that their friendship was inspirational. Jonathan inspired and encouraged David with his walk before the Lord.
The story unfolds, David's on the run again and we read in 1 Samuel 23, that Saul's son Jonathan went to David at Horesh and helped him to find strength in the Lord. He went all that way, he went out of his way, to David in this place to encourage him to help him find strength in the Lord. We need these kind of people, don't we, in our friendships? We need these people that are going to really spur us on towards our own relationship with God.
The best-known proverb about friendship is Proverbs 27:17, "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another."
I'm so grateful to God, that over many years now, in different churches that I've been a part of, there have been friends that I've had, friends that encourage me to continue to pursue friendship and relationship with Jesus. There have been people in my life that, as my gaze has come away, as my love that I have for God has sometimes just diminished, that there's been people that have inspired me, encouraged me, picked me up and pushed me towards loving Him again and getting my own gaze upon Him. I'm so grateful to those kind of friendships and so that also is so important for our friendships.
And so just to conclude our time together, we need to be open to the ordained friendships that God brings into our lives, that He sets them up for us, but we need to be intentional. And men, especially, I think some of us, with time and over time, we begin to pull back from the true, deeper, authentic, honest, open, vulnerable relationships with one another. And we kind of pull back and then sometimes we recognise and realise that we can be quite lonely and sometimes that can be quite a dangerous place, a vulnerable place to put ourselves into.
So, my encouragement to you and to all of us regardless of who we are or what age we are, what our background is that we would place the importance and the intentionality about having friends, friends which are authentic and honest, and friends that help us pursue relationship with Jesus. I hope that this has been helpful to you. Do pray about these things. Pray for your friends or pray for friends.