1 Samuel 20: David and Jonathan

Outline

  • David’s anxiety
  • Jonathan’s friendship

Introduction

‘We can be surrounded by the evidences of God’s love towards us; we can be exhilarated in our hearts by a sense of His presence, His mercy, His forgiveness and His gracious promises for the future; and suddenly we falter, doubts arise, we are tempted to fear the future and we start to behave as if we had never known the Lord and had never been convinced of the reality of His grace towards us in the past.’1 Does this sound familiar to you? You can be going along well, rejoicing in God, and then the next moment all that joy and worship and God-centeredness is gone. This is David’s experience in this section. David has just had his life saved by God 9 times, he has had his enemy lying prostrate on the floor unable to attack him under the power of the Spirit for a day and night, but all of this is too much for David. In this section we are starting a chapter which reveals the faltering faith of David, and some of the mistakes that he makes. However, God does not forsake His faltering saint we see the provision of support through friendship in Jonathan. There are times when we are weak and we need the strength of others to help us stand, this is one of the ways God provides for us.

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