CALL TO CONFESSION

Psalm 89:28-32

28 My steadfast love I will keep for him forever,

    and my covenant will stand firm for him.

29 I will establish his offspring forever

    and his throne as the days of the heavens.

30 If his children forsake my law

    and do not walk according to my rules,

31 if they violate my statutes

    and do not keep my commandments,

32 then I will punish their transgression with the rod

    and their iniquity with stripes.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION

Faithful, heavenly Father, you are a covenant-keeping God, but we have forsaken your law and violated your statutes. We have not walked according to your rules or kept your commandments. Though you have always been faithful to us, we are unfaithful to you many times each day in our thoughts, words and actions. We know that we deserve to be punished for our sin. Father, because of your steadfast love, forgive us we pray.

Jesus, you have been faithful in all things for us, keeping covenant with your Father on our behalf. You kept the law perfectly, the perfect Son who walked according to your Father's commandments, and now you have become the Rock of our salvation. You truly earned the steadfast, love and faithfulness of God, but willingly surrendered to the punishment that we deserve for all our rebellion. You freely took our place, enduring our shame on the cross. Now the empty tomb proclaim God's faithfulness to you, his obedient Son, and to all of us who are united to you.

Holy Spirit, in our great weakness help us to believe that guilty and vile sinners like ourselves become spotlessly clean in the redeeming blood of Christ. Grant us overwhelming joy in this Man of Sorrows who made full atonement for us, and help us to believe and enjoy the truth that it is truly finished. Make us steadfast and faithful until that wonderful day when we see our glorious King and we are brought safely home. Amen.

“Take a few moments to personally confess your sins to the Lord.”

ASSURANCE OF PARDON

“Hear these words of comfort and assurance.” 

Hebrews 6:17-20

So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. 19 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

• We live in a world where loyalty is often treated as a transaction.
• People stay loyal as long as it is comfortable, as long as it serves their interests. 
• We see this in marriages and workplaces and even in the local church. 
• The moment a relationship costs us something, our instinct is to protect ourselves. 
• How wonderful it is when we find someone who keeps their word to us, especially when keeping it is costly. That kind of faithfulness is rare. 

• That’s what makes our passage today so striking. 
• We have been watching the transition from the failed leadership of Saul to the rising, God-anointed leadership of David. 
• David is a man on the run, hunted by the jealous, murderous rage of a king.  
• And here in 1 Samuel 20 we come to a deeply personal crossroads in the story.  
• It’s not only about David’s survival. It’s about friendship. And underneath that, it’s about covenant loyalty. 

• In the middle of a very dangerous story, we find a covenant that holds even as the stakes are high. 
• Two men, in the worst of circumstances, bound together by a love for God and for each other. 

• There’s a Hebrew word that runs as an undercurrent in the whole chapter. 
• It is the word, ‘hesed.’ Our Bibles render it as “kindness” or “steadfast love.” 
• It means loyal love, covenant love. It is the word used for God’s love toward his people; the God who keeps covenant and never goes back on his promises. 

• Jonathan and David's loyalty is a beautiful picture of a much greater reality. 
• It points us to the covenant faithfulness of God. 
• Because God keeps covenant, his people can love and be loved with a faithfulness that outlasts fear, betrayal, and even death. And that faithfulness finds its source and its fulfillment in Jesus Christ our faithful King. 

1 Samuel 20:1-11

• David fled from Naioth and sought out Jonathan. 
• “What have I done? Why’s your father trying to kill me? How have I sinned against him?”
• You can feel the desperation in those questions. He wanted to know what he had done to warrant being hunted. 
• He had served Saul faithfully, fought his battles, played his heart out on the lyre to soothe Saul’s troubled soul, and this was his reward.
• Where do you run when your life is falling apart? You turn to the person you trust the most. 
• Jonathan, at first, seems incredulous. He can’t believe that his father was being this evil. 
• It’s hard to come to grips with the reality that someone you love, someone who is close to you, is really someone you don’t really know.
• Jonathan loves his father. To admit that his father was a murderous tyrant meant that his family dynasty is collapsing and his father is not the kind of man he thought he was. 

• David pushes back. “I’m one step away from death.” That’s how close David feels to being put in the grave. 
• He explains that Saul is hiding his murderous plans from Jonathan because he knows how close he is to David and doesn’t want him to warn his friend. 

• Jonathan hears the desperation in his friend’s voice and makes a beautiful declaration of support. 
• “Whatever you say, I will do for you.” 
• That is radical loyalty. No excuses, no covering for others, just leaning in to help those who are hurting and in need. 

• To test Saul’s true intentions, David proposes a plan. 
• The next day is the new moon festival. This was a religious festival where the king’s inner circle dined together at his table, each with an assigned seat. 
• As commander and the king’s son-in-law, David’s absence would be noticed. 

• David will stay in hiding. If Saul asks where David is, Jonathan will say that he asked leave to go to Bethlehem to offer a yearly sacrifice with his family. 
• And here is the test. If Saul is satisfied with that response then David is safe. 
• But if Saul is enraged, then his murderous plot is confirmed. Saul means to kill him. 

• Listen to how David makes his appeal. Not just on the basis of friendship but he appeals to the covenant they had previously made. 
• “Therefore deal kindly with your servant, for you have brought your servant into a covenant of the Lord with you.” (8) 
• Hesed., translated, “deal kindly.” "Deal with me on the basis of covenant love."
• That’s the ground of the request. Not just their deep friendship. But covenant. 
• Remember in chapter 18, when David first came to court, Jonathan made a covenant with David and loved him as his own soul. 
• He took off his royal robes, his armor, and his sword and gave them to David. 

• In our culture, vows don’t mean much. But in the biblical world, a covenant was a solemn, life-and-death bond. It was made before the Lord. He was witness to the stipulations and promises of the covenant. 
• And now David reaches back to that covenant in essence saying, “You promised before God.” 

• This is where covenant love gets tested. It’s easy to be loyal when it’s not costly to fulfill your commitment, when all is well and there’s nothing at stake. 
• It is quite another matter to love your friend when loving him puts you in the path of your father’s spear. 
• Covenant love is not proven in the good days. 
• It is proven on the day fulfilling the promise costs you something. 

• If you’re married you made covenant promises at a wedding altar. You said, “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.” 
• Those weren’t suggestions. Those were covenant promises. 
• And the test of those never comes on the easy days. It’s not hard on the better days and the healthy days. 
• No, it comes on the worse day. It comes in the sickness. 
• The measure of a man is not the promises he makes when the sun is shining and all is well. 
• It’s the promises he keeps when the storm clouds roll in and the ground is shifting. 
• David is asking Jonathan for the kind of faithfulness that shows up when it’s dangerous. 
• That’s the kind of faithfulness God asks of us. 

• Jonathan agrees without hesitation. He is not going to shrink back from his covenant bond. “If I knew my father meant to harm you I would tell you.” 

1 Samuel 20:12-23

• Jonathan was a man of profound faith. He makes a solemn oath. He calls upon the Lord, the God of Israel, as a witness. He promises to discover his father’s true intentions and report back to David. 
• But look at v13 again, he says, “May the Lord be with you, as he has been with my father.” 
• Jonathan knows, deep down inside, what is really happening. The Lord who was with Saul is now with David. The kingdom is passing, but it’s not going to pass to him.
• He is blessing the very man who will take his throne and end Saul’s dynasty. 

• Jonathan isn’t clinging to his claim on the crown. He is not scheming to protect his inheritance. 
• Instead of seeing a rival, he sees the one God has chosen, the Lord’s anointed, and he bows his heart to the Lord’s will. 
• He asks something for himself.  V14 “If I am still alive, show me the steadfast love of the Lord, that I may not die; and do not cut off your steadfast love from my house forever…”
• There it is again twice, hesed. “Show me and my house covenant love.” 
• Jonathan looks to the future and sees what God is doing. He knows that David will sit on the throne and his kingdom will be established and that all of David’s enemies will be cut off. 
• In the ancient world, when a new king takes the throne, all surviving heirs of the previous king are usually executed to prevent any rivals or from someone taking revenge.  
• Jonathan is thinking about his children and his children’s children, and he is asking David, “When you are king, remember us. Keep covenant with my house.” 
• David is under threat from the house of Saul but Jonathan recognizes that it is really the house of Saul which is under threat from David. 
• He trusts himself and his family to the hesed of the future king. 
• V16, Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David and made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul. 

• The covenant made in this field, in the dark, in a dangerous moment, held. 
• Years later, after Jonathan had died, and Saul’s house had fallen, and David was finally king, the covenant promises still held. 
• In 2 Samuel 9, David shows hesed, covenant love, to Jonathan’s only living heir, a son, a man who was crippled and hiding out. And David brings him to the palace and receives him at his table to be treated like one of the king’s own sons.
• That’s covenant love and faithfulness. It keeps its word. 

• Jonathan sets up the plan with the arrows to convey the message. 
• David is to remain in hiding by a certain stone. Jonathan will shoot three arrows and will send his young servant to fetch them. Here is the code that will disclose to David the outcome.
• If Jonathan says to the boy, “The arrows are on this side of you,” David is safe. 
• If he says, “The arrows are beyond you,” then David must flee because the Lord has sent him away.
• If the outcome is undesirable, Jonathan recognizes that it is the Lord’s plan to send David away. It is God’s providence. 
• It is a clever plan but very risky. By protecting a fugitive from his own father, the king, Jonathan is putting his life on the line for David. 
• And he seals it with these words, “The Lord is between us.” 
• The Lord himself stands as a witness and the guarantee of this covenant. 
• God is holding this together. And when God holds a covenant together, it is unbreakable. 

1 Samuel 20:24-42

• The story moves to the king’s table on the new moon feast.  Everyone takes their place and David’s chair is noticeably empty. 
• The first day, Saul says nothing. He assumed David was ceremonially unclean, which would have kept a man from the feast for a day. 
• But on the second day, David’s seat is still empty. And Saul demands to know where he is. 
• Notice he calls him “the son of Jesse,” he doesn’t even say his name. David has become to him, a nobody from Bethlehem. 
• Jonathan gives the agreed upon answer. 
• And Saul erupts in a fit of rage. “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman. I know you’ve chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and your mother’s shame.” 
• He insults his own son by insulting his own wife. The truth is that Jonathan is the son of a perverse, rebellious man. But that is how far gone Saul is. 

• And he finally reveals what has really been driving him all along. V31 “As long as he is alive on the earth, neither you nor your kingdom shall be established.” 
• Saul is terrified of losing the throne. And he is trying to hand that same fear to his son. 
• He can’t fathom that his son doesn’t want the crown. He can’t imagine loving someone more than loving your own advancement. Saul has made an idol of a throne. 

• Saul is trying to appeal to Jonathan’s self-interest. This is the voice of the world. The world always tells us to look out for number one. To protect our own interests. It tells us that anyone who stands in the way of our success is an enemy. 
• But Jonathan is operating under a different kingdom. He is loyal to God and his anointed, not to his own ambition. 

• Jonathan makes a final attempt to reason with his father.
• “Why should he be put to death? What has he done?” That’s the same question David asked at the beginning. 
• David has done nothing. This is murderous hatred without cause. 
• But this is too much for Saul. His rage has consumed him to the point that he has lost all natural affections for his firstborn son. 
• Saul is so desperate to cling to power that he is willing to murder his own son to protect it. 
• The same spear he has thrown at David he throws at his own son. 
• And Jonathan now knows the truth, beyond any shadow of doubt. A father who would kill his own son to protect his throne would certainly kill David. 
• Jonathan rose from the table in fierce anger. He refused to eat. He is grieved
• He is grieved for his friend who is sentenced to death. 
• And he is grieved because his father has disgraced him. 

• That is the radical cost of Jonathan’s covenant loyalty. By choosing David, he lost his relationship with his father. He lost his safety at court. He was publicly humiliated. He had a spear thrown at him. 
• Jesus made a statement about the radical demand of discipleship.
• Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 
• Jonathan is one of the clearest examples in Scripture of what Jesus meant. 
• Jonathan must love David more than he loved his father. 
• It’s the same for us who claim to follow the greater David. 
• To “hate” means to love less by comparison. To follow Christ means our love for him must be so supreme, that all other legitimate, earthly loves (family, parents, spouse) look like hatred by comparison. 
• We have to choose between peace with Christ or peace with our family, friends or culture.
• Following Jesus may mean being rejected by those closest to us. A costly decision. 
• Jonathan chose the shame of being aligned with the fugitive king over the comfort of sitting at the rejected tyrant’s table. 

• The next morning Jonathan goes out into the field according to plan, with a young servant boy who had no idea what was happening. Jonathan shoots the arrows and the coded word is sent, “The arrow is beyond you.” That’s the signal. David is not safe and must flee.
• Jonathan sends the boy back to the city with his weapons, and they are alone in the field. 
• David comes out of his hiding place and the two men say goodbye. 
• They kissed one another and wept. These are two warriors. Yet, here they are, weeping openly. 
• They are weeping because their lives have been torn apart. They don’t know if they will ever see each other again in this life. 
• David wept the most. He is losing the one friend who has stood by him. He is about to walk into years of running and hiding, sleeping in caves, being hunted like an animal. 
• Life is not going to be easy for the Lord’s anointed. 

• But even in their deep sorrow, they are anchored by something stronger than their circumstances. 
• V42, “Go in peace, because we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord shall be between me and you, and between my offspring and your offspring, forever.’”
• How can Jonathan say, “Go in peace?” Nothing about their circumstances is peaceful. 
• He can say that because the peace does not rest on the circumstances. It rests on the covenant. It rests on the name of the Lord. 
• “The Lord is between us. And if the Lord is holding this, the covenant will outlast our parting and it will outlast our lives. Go in peace.” 
• Neither Saul’s spear, sword, or army can ever touch the covenant that bound these two men together. 
• The covenant will survive the wilderness, Saul’s madness, and even survive Jonathan’s death. 
• God’s faithfulness kept that promise alive across generations. 

CONCLUSION

• In the life of Jonathan, we see a stunning shadow of our Savior. 
• Jonathan was the rightful heir to the throne. Yet, he willingly stepped down. He stripped himself of his royal robes and gave them to David. He gives up his crown so that God’s anointed king can reign. 
• Our Lord Jesus Christ did something infinitely greater. 
• Paul, the apostle of the Lord, tells us in Philippians that Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant. (Phil. 2:6-7)
• Jesus took off his robe of glory, came down and entered our broken world. 
• He aligned himself with us, not when we were strong and successful, but when we were ruined, fugitive sinners, running from God. 
• Jonathan had a spear thrown at him because he defended David. He risked his life for a friend. 
• But Jesus laid his life down. He didn’t just dodge a spear.  He stood in our place and received the full fury of God’s wrath against sin. 
• On the cross, Jesus was pierced for our transgressions. He paid the ultimate price to bring us into an everlasting covenant of peace. 
• He clothed his fugitive people in his own righteousness the way Jonathan clothed David in his own robe. 

• And just as Jonathan promised to show David the hesed of the Lord, so Jesus has brought us into the New Covenant of his blood, showing us the hesed of the Lord. 
• It is a covenant that cannot be broken by our failures. It is a covenant that is anchored in the sovereign faithfulness of God. 
• If you are in Christ today, your security does not depend on your own strength. It depends entirely on the covenant promise of Jesus. 
• He has sworn by his own name to keep you, to protect you, and to bring you safely into his eternal kingdom. 
• John 6:39-40 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

• This is why, as believers, we should love the word covenant. 
• Our whole salvation rests upon it. We are not saved because we managed to keep the promises of God. On the contrary, we break our promises to God on a daily basis. 
• We are saved because God keeps his promise to us. 
• He is the covenant-keeping God. His steadfast love, his hesed, endures forever. 
• Not one of his promises has ever fallen to the ground. 
• “The Lord shall be between me and you forever.” That’s what Jonathan said to David. 
• But it comes true completely only in Christ. Jesus stands between you and God forever as your Mediator who will never break covenant with you. 

• Let this story speak to your relationship with God. Some of you may feel like David today, like there is “but a step between you and death.” You are exhausted by the trials of life. You feel hunted by worry, anxiety, guilt, or by difficult circumstances. 
• Jesus says, “Go in peace.” Your life is not governed by the chaotic rage of a King Saul. It is governed by the sovereign love of King Jesus. 
• He has bound himself to you by an everlasting covenant. He will never leave you nor forsake you.

• And we need this story to challenge our relationships with one another in the household of God. We need to be a covenant-keeping people whose word means something. 
• We live in an individualistic culture that values personal comfort over covenant commitment. 
• But the local church is a covenant community. We are not just a collection of individuals who happen to show up in the same building on Sunday mornings. 
• We are brothers and sisters who have been bound together by the blood of Christ. 
• That means we are to show hesed to one another. 
• It means staying loyal to your brothers and sisters in Christ even when it’s inconvenient. 
• It means defending the reputation of others when they are being slandered behind their backs. 
• It means stepping down from our own thrones of pride and self-righteousness to serve the needy, the broken, and the lonely among us. 

• Husbands and wives, keep the covenant you made.
• Parents be the steady faithful presence your children can count on.
• Men, be the kind of friend Jonathan was, the kind that shows up when it is dangerous and costly.
• The world is starving for that kind of faithfulness and that kind of covenant-keeping community. 
• That kind of community is rare. It is counter-cultural. 
• It will cost you time, energy, and cost you your comfort. 
• But it is the very way we put the love of Jesus on display to a watching and broken world. 

• May God form us into the kind of community that displays the hesed of the Lord. 
• And let us rejoice in the covenant faithfulness and hesed of the Lord. 

APPLICATION AND REFLECTION

In light of today's message....

• What did I learn about the gospel?
• How can I apply what I learned about the gospel to my life?
• With whom can I share the gospel this week?