Boot Camp: Band of Brothers
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Transforming Truth: We all need people who will help us fulfill the purposes of God in our lives.
Today, as we look further into King David's preparation for purpose, we will highlight why we all need a little help from our friends, the dynamics of living in covenant relationships and, finally, the power of a shared life.
A Little Help from My Friends
1 Samuel 20:1-11 Then David fled from Naioth at Ramah and went to Jonathan and asked, “What have I done? What is my crime? How have I wronged your father, that he is trying to kill me?” “Never!” Jonathan replied. “You are not going to die! Look, my father doesn’t do anything, great or small, without letting me know. Why would he hide this from me? It isn’t so!” But David took an oath and said, “Your father knows very well that I have found favor in your eyes, and he has said to himself, ‘Jonathan must not know this or he will be grieved.’ Yet as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.” Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do for you.” So David said, “Look, tomorrow is the New Moon feast, and I am supposed to dine with the king; but let me go and hide in the field until the evening of the day after tomorrow. If your father misses me at all, tell him, ‘David earnestly asked my permission to hurry to Bethlehem, his hometown, because an annual sacrifice is being made there for his whole clan.’ If he says, ‘Very well,’ then your servant is safe. But if he loses his temper, you can be sure that he is determined to harm me. As for you, show kindness to your servant, for you have brought him into a covenant with you before the Lord. If I am guilty, then kill me yourself! Why hand me over to your father?” “Never!” Jonathan said. “If I had the least inkling that my father was determined to harm you, wouldn’t I tell you?” David asked, “Who will tell me if your father answers you harshly?” “Come,” Jonathan said, “let’s go out into the field.” So they went there together.
You must make plans for your faith survival and kingdom advance in the marketplace. The deception that you can successfully stand alone in your industry and still maintain the fire of the Lord is deadly.
As Saul relentlessly pursued David, there is an incessant attack on both your focus and faith in the marketplace, the academic sphere and the daily weight of responsibility in your home life to dull your devotion to Jesus and His kingdom vision. In fact, the enemy wants to kill it and have you forget about the promises, the prophetic words and the purposes of God. He wants you to assimilate and become like everyone else fruitlessly living the American dream for your own ends.
God says you need others who will help you survive, be sharpened in your kingdom focus and thrive in the life of God.
“All men desire peace, but very few desire those things that make for peace.” ― Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Just as we ended last week speaking about God fighting for us, we see over and over again in the Scripture that Jesus uses people to help bring us into His Kingdom purposes. These people help you see clearly when you are blinded by your emotions, relationships or circumstances. This is what David did for Jonathan in helping him see who his father really was. This is what Jonathan did for David in continually encouraging him in the promise of his kingship. In every relationship, you are meant to be a David as you pursue the purposes of God. In every relationship, you are meant to be a Jonathan as you look to support and encourage those around you. This attitude cuts off the superiority complex that we are so prone to adopt.
Everyone needs a David. Everyone needs a Jonathan.
In essence, you need to, "Be a disciple and help make disciples."
Who is your David that you are helping to ascend to the throne? Who is your Jonathan that you are looking to for guidance, help and support as you follow Jesus?
The truth is there was only one king in Israel at the time. In our culture's proclivity towards self-obsession and aggrandizement, everyone wants to be the David, the one special one. This is easy to lean toward when you find your value is in position, praise and power rather than in Jesus. To truly follow the example of Christ, you need to come to serve, not to be served. Who glories in having a gift of helps, administration, working behind the scenes and being a support? The Holy Spirit does. If your heart is not in this place, you are serving your "call" as an idol rather than a submitted act of obedience. Summarized, your first goal in relationships should be how you can be a Jonathan to others and not focus on your obsession with being the David.
If you don't feel like you have a specific direction from God in your life, that's ok. You can serve and reflect Jesus' character and kingdom priorities right where you are.
To be clear, the call of God to every person is to reflect the glory of God in the earth: to become like, to live like and to cultivate the earth like Jesus would. If you are on a trajectory in your perception of your "individualized call" that competes with that, you are heading in the wrong direction and need to repent. If it persists, you need to change your environment.
Mark 8:34-36 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?
To keep an honest pulse of this in your life, you need to follow the advice of a recent Facebook post I saw which read, "Don't just go to church, belong to one."
This is where you will harness the power of godly relationships and unlock God's grace found in covenant.
Living in Covenant
1 Samuel 20:12-17 Then Jonathan said to David, “I swear by the Lord, the God of Israel, that I will surely sound out my father by this time the day after tomorrow! If he is favorably disposed toward you, will I not send you word and let you know? But if my father intends to harm you, may the Lord deal with Jonathan, be it ever so severely, if I do not let you know and send you away in peace. May the Lord be with you as he has been with my father. But show me unfailing kindness like the Lord’s kindness as long as I live, so that I may not be killed, and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family—not even when the Lord has cut off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth.” So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the Lord call David’s enemies to account.” And Jonathan had David reaffirm his oath out of love for him, because he loved him as he loved himself.
A covenant essentially means a commitment.
The renunciation of pride in kingdom relationships is vital. If you are constantly thinking that you are better than others, that your work or calling is more important than everyone else's, you will never build the relationships that God intends for you to have through His people to bring you into His purposes. Jonathan understood this. Jonathan could have looked down on David as the natural heir to the throne and disassociated himself from David, the decorated soldier. However, Jonathan humbled himself and, in fact, fulfilled the purposes of God to help spare David's life on the way to his ascendency to the throne.
With whom are you committed to walking out the purposes of God until their fruition?
The Power of a Shared Life
You are meant to face the realities of life together with these friends. For David to save others, he needed to first have a friend who would help save him and keep him on track. This took humility.
1 Samuel 20:18-42 Then Jonathan said to David, “Tomorrow is the New Moon feast. You will be missed, because your seat will be empty. The day after tomorrow, toward evening, go to the place where you hid when this trouble began, and wait by the stone Ezel. I will shoot three arrows to the side of it, as though I were shooting at a target. Then I will send a boy and say, ‘Go, find the arrows.’ If I say to him, ‘Look, the arrows are on this side of you; bring them here,’ then come, because, as surely as the Lord lives, you are safe; there is no danger. But if I say to the boy, ‘Look, the arrows are beyond you,’ then you must go, because the Lord has sent you away. And about the matter you and I discussed—remember, the Lord is witness between you and me forever.” So David hid in the field, and when the New Moon feast came, the king sat down to eat. He sat in his customary place by the wall, opposite Jonathan, and Abner sat next to Saul, but David’s place was empty. Saul said nothing that day, for he thought, “Something must have happened to David to make him ceremonially unclean—surely he is unclean.” But the next day, the second day of the month, David’s place was empty again. Then Saul said to his son Jonathan, “Why hasn’t the son of Jesse come to the meal, either yesterday or today?” Jonathan answered, “David earnestly asked me for permission to go to Bethlehem. He said, ‘Let me go, because our family is observing a sacrifice in the town and my brother has ordered me to be there. If I have found favor in your eyes, let me get away to see my brothers.’ That is why he has not come to the king’s table.” Saul’s anger flared up at Jonathan and he said 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 has he done?” Jonathan asked his father. But Saul hurled his spear at him to kill him. Then Jonathan knew that his father intended to kill David. Jonathan got up from the table in fierce anger; on that second day of the feast he did not eat, because he was grieved at his father’s shameful treatment of David. In the morning Jonathan went out to the field for his meeting with David. He had a small boy with him, and he said to the boy, “Run and find the arrows I shoot.” As the boy ran, he shot an arrow beyond him. When the boy came to the place where Jonathan’s arrow had fallen, Jonathan called out after him, “Isn’t the arrow beyond you?” Then he shouted, “Hurry! Go quickly! Don’t stop!” The boy picked up the arrow and returned to his master. The boy knew nothing about all this; only Jonathan and David knew. Then Jonathan gave his weapons to the boy and said, “Go, carry them back to town.” After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground. Then they kissed each other and wept together—but David wept the most. Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord is witness between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants forever.’” Then David left, and Jonathan went back to the town.
Once again we see the gospel in Jonathan, the heir to the throne, humbling himself to be the advocate of David, the object of wrath. He speaks to his murderous father, but Jesus speaks to His righteous Father in our defense who sent His only Son to save lives, not take them. The story of Jesus and the cross is the story of this type of shared life.
“Surround yourself with people who make you happy. People who make you laugh, who help you when you’re in need. People who genuinely care. They are the ones worth keeping in your life. Everyone else is just passing through.” ―Karl Marx
Karl Marx got it partially right. It is incomplete because life is not always about fun and games. Sometimes, the very people that you need in your life will be the ones who tell you not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear to survive spiritually. They keep you on course by telling you where you need to be and what you need to do to stay on track with Jesus. This is what Jonathan did for David.
Band of Brothers clip - "You're already dead': https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1DFReW8KMuA
When so many of us serve comfort in our nation as our god, the question has to be asked, "Do uncomfortable circumstances mean that you are not in the will of God for your life?" David in the fields was definitely uncomfortable but on the road to the throne. The friends that are gifts from God will lead you to the cross, where you can learn to deny yourself, find the forgiveness of Jesus as you repent of your sin and grace to follow Him through obedience.
Who are you making kingdom plans with, for the saving of your life and others through your individual witness and industry?
You must make efforts to form growing godly friendships and fight off the attacks that come to steal it. People often say, "I'd like to live that way, but I don't know anyone." Go to lunch with someone from church today, join a community group or at least have an appointment set up to be realized by the end of this week. Find people who can help spark your zeal for Jesus.
Also, Roots Class begins today. Everyone can go through it who hasn't already. It is a launching pad for one-on-one discipleship, taking a progression around Next Steps, and culminating in the Making Disciples Class.
The importance of godly friendships with those who are pursuing Jesus wholeheartedly can not be overstated. These friends are the people who remind you of the priority of God's kingdom in your life and help you to flesh out devotion to Christ's cause. Through committed relationship with these brothers and sisters, you can come into the purposes of God for your life and fight off the attacks that come against God's promises. Let's meet Jesus and commit to His people freshly today.
Second City Church- Boot Camp Sermon Series 2014