- Good morning.
- [Congregation] Morning.
I wanna welcome our online community,
it's great to have you be
a part of this message.
We're continuing in this
series looking at the life
of King David, a man after God's own heart
as described in the Bible.
Amazingly, he was an
adulterer, a murderer,
a really bad dad who had children
rebel all over the place,
yet was still considered a
man after God's own heart.
That's what kept him close to him in spite
of his foibles and frailties.
Let's look today at David
and his friendships,
particularly the life
of David and Jonathan.
Would you pray with me?
Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name,
may the words of my mouth
and the meditations of all of our hearts
be acceptable in your sight,
O God, our strength
and our redeemer.
Amen and amen.
Well, I have a friend who
came down from the North,
and he wanted to taste for the first time
this phenomenon that we
have in the South called
white ice cream,
that which we eat a breakfast time.
And he went into a restaurant
and he said to the waitress,
I think I'll have a grit.
(congregation laughing)
She said, lawd, honey,
what you talkin' about?
She said, you can't have a grit.
If you're gonna have a grit,
you gotta have grits, sweetheart.
Grits plural, they come
together, they stick together.
You gotta have not a grit,
you gotta have grits.
And I thought myself
when I heard that story,
that's the church.
We're saved by grace
alone, but we were never
intended to live alone.
We're supposed to live
together in community.
In fact, it's been
recently proved in a study
that isolation causes the brain to change.
That isolation causes
people to be more impulsive
and less able to control themselves.
So if you're isolated and
don't have many friends,
you are damaging
your brain.
American friendships are in crisis.
In the early 1990s, there
was an epic work by Putnam
who said that we are now
as Americans bowling alone.
The premise being that before the 1990s,
we had bowling teams, we had friends.
Now people don't have
friends, we are bowling alone.
What's the reason for it?
I have five reasons that
I've been able to think of.
First of all, the breakup of the family.
The closest friendships are supposed to be
between child and parent
and brother and sister.
But with the breakup of the family,
those relationships have been isolated.
Secondly,
there are no longer any roots in America.
It's been estimated that by the year 35
in an average American's life,
we will have gone through 30 jobs.
We move from city to city to city
trying to find the next best job,
and our rootlessness causes
a lack of relationships,
a lack of friendships.
Thirdly, our jobs.
Where before, jobs would
often form teams of people
who would have a task they
would try to accomplish,
and in that task, they would
develop close friendships.
Now today, the primary
motivation of all jobs is
profit, not people.
So people just get the task done,
and there's a failure to
build close friendships
in the workplace.
Fourth, what I will call
garage door openers.
We work hard all day long, we come home,
we press the garage door, the door opens,
we get inside, we close the door,
then we put alligators in
the moat around our house,
and we don't wanna have
anything to do with anybody.
Isn't it true?
We used to have front porches
in a lot of homes in America,
implying that we would sit
on those front porches, rock,
and someone from next
door might come by and sit
and we'd build a friendship
with them face to face
which leads to the fifth
reason, social media.
We now flip up a screen, text,
email, Facebook people,
but we seldom sit face to face with them
just a few feet apart and share
our lives with one another,
become close, intimate
friends with one another.
God created us for friendships, folks.
Friends, the term friends is mentioned
150 times in the Bible.
I would suggest to you
that we need to understand
close, intimate friendships
as a spiritual discipline,
the same way we understand
prayer and fasting.
Jesus said as I have loved
you, now love one another.
The call to love one another
is a spiritual discipline
to be taken as seriously
as prayer or fasting.
Let me ask you this question.
If you needed to bury
a body at three o'clock
in the morning, would
you have anybody to call?
Not that I'm suggesting you bury a body
at three o'clock in the morning.
Just to make my point, okay?
Or would you have somebody you could call
if you were in jail to
get you out immediately?
Do you have that kind of close friend?
Well, the Bible says we're
supposed to have them.
Proverbs 18:24 is a great verse.
Would you read it with me?
A man of many companions may come to ruin,
but there is a friend who
sticks closer than a brother.
We all need a friend who sticks closer
than a brother or a sister.
1 Corinthians 15:33 is
a fascinating verse.
Would you read it with me?
Paul writes, do not be deceived.
Bad company ruins good morals.
My dad used to say all the time,
friends are like elevators.
They'll take you up or
they'll take you down.
Isn't it true?
Well, as this verse says,
bad company, bad friends
corrupts morals, is the
elevator that takes you down.
Good friends are good elevators
that will take you up.
And by the way, one friend of
mine came to faith in Christ
and read this verse and went
home and burned and buried
and broke all of his Bad Company albums
from the 1980s and '90s.
Not what this verse is
trying to say, okay?
It's simply saying we
all need good friends,
and good friends will either take us up
or they'll take us down.
If Marilynn was here with me, we would say
to all you parents you have every right
to intercede with your kids' friends.
Because you're a lot smarter
than they are, right?
And they can bring your
kids down, be careful.
So here begs the question.
What are the qualities I need
for a great personal friendship?
Well, let's look at the life of David
and his close friend Jonathan,
much like what I have
with my dear friend Jonathan
Scott here on staff.
The kind of qualities that made
their close friendship occur.
Let's look at these four qualities.
First of all, there was a common interest
that both of them shared.
A common interest that
both of them shared.
Let's look briefly at
the life of Jonathan.
He was Saul's son, Saul was
the first king of Israel.
Saul was a paranoid
schizophrenic who rebelled
against God, was not in the
heart of God after a while,
but Jonathan still loved his dad,
as we'll see in just a moment.
Jonathan had skills of his
own that were exceptional.
In 1 Samuel chapter 14,
we see those skills being manifested.
The Philistines were the
Jews' mortal enemies,
and they were in yet
another conflict with them.
The Jews were hiding, unable
to continue the battle.
Jonathan is with his
armor-bearer, and he says
we have a great God, nothing's
impossible with our God.
Come on with me, let's just you and me
go fight the Philistines.
So they start climbing
up some craggy rocks,
and one of the members of
the Philistine garrison
looks down and says, hey, look, the Jews
are finally coming out
of their holes hiding.
And they yelled down to
Jonathan, are you coming up here
to fight us, or do we need to
come down there and fight you?
Jonathan says, I'm coming up there.
So he climbs up the mountain,
gets amidst the Philistine
garrison, about 20 people,
and he just goes superhero.
He takes them all on.
And in just a few minutes, he
kills 20 of the Philistines.
Well, all the others watched this happen,
and suddenly an earthquake breaks out.
God's miraculous supernatural intervention
on Jonathan's behalf.
Jonathan believed nothing's
impossible with God.
Had a great huge faith
and a courageous heart.
And whenever the earthquake
broke out and they saw
Jonathan kung fu-ing, all
of the guys around him,
they started running away.
And all the Jews came out of their holes
and they started pursuing them.
Jonathan comes back as a hero
before all of the people.
So Jonathan is a remarkable guy.
Then we saw in the first lesson on David
a couple of weeks ago in 1 Samuel 16
how Samuel, the great prophet and judge,
came and chose David from among
all the brothers of Jesse,
the last one, the runt, the
one who was least expected
to be chosen as the next
king over all of Israel.
And Samuel anoints him
right then and there
as the king, and then he leaves.
Now what completes that
chapter then is a story
about Saul in his paranoia
falling into large,
long, deep moods of depression.
So someone asked the question,
is there somebody out there
who can play music and help
Saul through these dark days?
Someone says, yeah, Jesse
has a son named David
from Bethlehem, he can play the harp,
he puts music together,
he's really, really good.
So they go and get him and
bring him into the court.
And when Saul falls into
one of these mood swings
of depression, David
starts playing his harp
and Saul comes out of the depression.
It's the first example
biblically of music therapy.
And now we see David
having access to the court.
He went home some, but then
had access to the court
to play songs for Saul.
Most assuredly this is the
first time he met Jonathan.
David's around 18 years
of age at this time.
An adolescent.
Jonathan is probably about 10 years older,
but their hearts started melting together.
Their hearts started connecting, why?
They started seeing, I think first of all,
their common faith in God.
Because David, like
Jonathan, believed nothing
is impossible with God.
I think they also started
talking courage stories.
And I think during this
time, David probably said
to Jonathan, the strangest
thing happened to me.
Samuel, the great prophet
and judge, came to my home
one day and anointed me king over Israel.
And Jonathan must've gone, that is weird,
because Dad is king over
Israel, and he anointed you
to be king over Israel?
That doesn't make much sense.
And then 1 Samuel 17
happens, the story of Goliath
that Clifford Jones unfolded
for all of last week,
the story of that big, bodacious,
belligerent, baritone giant
calling out Israel, and
everybody is afraid to fight him
except David, the little shepherd boy
who will not put on Saul's
armor, but goes and meets Goliath
only with a slingshot
and five smooth stones.
He doesn't need five, he just needs one,
kills the giant, and all
of Israel goes crazy.
And I can't help but wonder
if right after that happened,
David went into Jonathan's
pavilion at the battlefield,
and Jonathan looked at him and said
wow.
I thought I had faith.
You have greater faith than I do.
I thought I was courageous
with the Philistine garrison.
You put me to shame with your courage.
They had common interests.
Close friends are people with
whom you have common interests
whether it's sports or faith
or whatever it might be,
there are common interests
that bind you together.
Keep that in mind.
The next point is there's no
competition between people
who are real close friends.
Right after Jonathan
sees David slay Goliath,
in 1 Samuel 18 verses one through four,
listen to the narrative.
As soon as he had
finished speaking to Saul,
the soul of Jonathan was
knit to the soul of David,
and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
And Saul took him that
day and would not let him
return to his father's house.
Then Jonathan made a covenant with David,
because he loved him as his own soul.
And Jonathan stripped himself
of the robe that was on him
and gave it to David, and
his armor, and even his sword
and his bow and his belt.
Now you need to know,
Jonathan had what's called
primogeniture, what does that mean?
Primogeniture is the firstborn
son in the Israelite days
had right to the
inheritance of the father.
The firstborn son got
twofold of the inheritance,
the next born son would get a third,
and then less than for the next boys.
But Jonathan was the
next in line to be king.
Yet he looks at David,
probably remembers the story
that David told him of
how Samuel anointed him
to be the next king over Saul,
and at some moment after Goliath,
Jonathan takes David, and
their hearts are knit together
in what's called a covenant friendship.
They make vows to one another
that will last forever.
They become knit together in their hearts.
And not only that, Jonathan
takes it to another extreme.
Before David, as they
knit their hearts together
in a covenant friendship,
he takes off his armor,
his sword, his bow,
and his belt, and the implication
is he gave them to David.
Do you see what he did?
He's in line to be king, he says, David,
you're more gifted than I am.
You should be king.
Whew.
What a friendship.
Do you know where
shaking hands comes from?
Some people have said, oh,
that means people walking
down the road and saying I
don't have a sword in my hand.
Balderdash, that's not
from where it comes.
Here's the meaning of shaking hands.
When you hold out your hand to somebody,
what you're saying to them is
I need something from you.
When you have an open
hand, you're expecting
a reception of something given to you.
But when two people come
together and they clasp hands,
their fingers enwrapping
each other's palm,
what you're basically
saying is I don't need
anything from you.
I just want to be your friend.
I'm not expecting anything from you,
I'm not going to use you for my purposes.
I just want to be your friend.
The same implication, by
the way, parenthetically,
is when we lift our
hands to God in worship.
Some of you may look around and think
that person's really weird.
But from God's standpoint,
do you know what?
He loves it, why?
Because that person with
their open hand or hands
in worship is saying I need you, O God.
I need everything that
you have, I'm nothing,
you're everything, all of my
life is totally dependent,
surrendered to you.
That's what an open hand means.
Well, David and Jonathan clasped hands,
saying we're in a covenant
friendship with one another,
and then Jonathan turns around
and gives him everything
that he has that signifies
power, basically saying
David, you're now the king.
The closest thing I think
we come to in our day
is remember the camp days
when you were 10, 11,
12 years old, and you would go to camp,
and you would usually
be around a campfire.
And you will have sung Kumbaya 500 times,
and then at the end of the final Kumbaya,
you'll turn to the special
person that you've made
a friendship with during
your weeks at the camp,
and you'll say let's be friends for life.
And how do you signify that?
You then take a little
pin and prick your finger.
And you ooze out a little blood.
The other person does the same thing,
then what do you do,
what do you do, folks?
You put your fingers together
and you say we are now blood brothers
or blood sisters forever.
This implication is your
blood's intermingling
with my blood, my blood's
intermingling with your blood.
We are set together for everything.
And that friendship
lasts through the summer.
(congregation laughing)
And then it ends.
Just like in high school,
I discovered I had a lot
of acquaintances, not real friends.
Because I don't talk to them anymore.
But a friend is someone
with whom your life is bound
for a long, long period of time.
Did you see here how true friendships
don't have competition?
Jonathan wasn't competing with David,
David wasn't competing with Jonathan.
If you have a true friend,
you love when they succeed.
You love it.
You love when their kids succeed.
You just love it.
Because friendship's what
binds you, not competition
and being better than the other person.
Thirdly, a true friend is a
source of verbal encouragement.
After Goliath was
defeated, Saul said, David,
you can't go home anymore,
and he made him a general
in his army, and so
David went out and fought
the Philistines several times,
and he won every single battle.
It was astounding.
So when David would come
back from the battles
along with Saul who was
also out there fighting,
the women in the city
would do the Harlem Shake.
(congregation laughing)
And they would start
crying out, Saul has killed
us thousands, David has
killed us 10 thousands.
And they would shout with their songs
of victory for David.
And Saul, already in this paranoid state,
would become increasingly
paranoid toward David.
So he comes up with an ingenious scheme.
He says to David, hey, I
have a daughter named Merab,
M-E-R-A-B,
and I'll give her to you in marriage
if you go and fight several more war
against the Philistines.
Now Saul's calculating in his
mind, surely at some point
this guy's gonna run out of good luck
and the Philistines are gonna get him,
and he'll be forever
eliminated from my life.
But David goes out and fights the battle,
comes back and wins them all.
Says, where's your daughter's hand?
Saul goes, uh, I'm giving
her to another man.
But then he goes back to David and says,
tell you what, if you'll
go back out and get me
100 Philistine warriors' foreskins,
now if you don't know what a foreskin is,
just google it later this afternoon
and you'll find out, okay?
Go get me 100 foreskins,
bring them back to me,
and Michal, my daughter who's
fallen in love with you,
wasn't that a punch to his gut, too?
I'll give her to you in marriage.
So David goes out and fights the battle,
and Saul's back home thinking, I'm sure,
the odds are against this kid.
I mean, in 100 Philistine warriors,
somebody's gonna get him.
But David not only comes back with 100
Philistines' foreskins,
he comes back with 200.
Call that a disgusting dowry, if you will.
And he comes back, and
Saul has to give Michal now
to David in marriage,
and so the third scheme
he comes up with is he hires a hit squad
to go kill David after
he's married Michal.
And Michal works out
a plan and a strategy,
David escapes out the back window,
and David's on the run now.
Saul's trying to kill him, and that'll be
next week's message, David in the caves.
What it's like to go through a depression.
What it's like to go
through tough times in life.
You see, 1 and 2 Samuel
describe the life of David,
the Psalms describe the heart of David.
And we'll look at some of his psalms
while he's in the cave,
but he's on the run now.
Now here's my point.
During all of this paranoia toward Saul,
two interesting things happen.
First of all, Jonathan,
David's close friend,
goes before his dad, in 1 Samuel 19:4,
and he says this, and
Jonathan spoke well of David
to Saul, his father, and said to him,
let not the king sin
against his servant David
because he has not sinned against you
and because his deeds
have brought good to you.
Dad, David's done nothing wrong.
His heart's good.
He's trying to expand the
kingdom, he's trying to help you.
Dad, stop this pursuit of him.
And for a moment, Saul
relented, the point being,
a good friend will always
speak words of encouragement
about you to others.
Let me say it again.
A close friend will always
speak words of encouragement
about you to others.
They're not in competition,
they're not jealous,
they won't slander you, they
won't gossip against you.
They'll only speak
words of life, blessing,
and encouragement to
other people about you.
And as Saul then
continued to pursue David,
Jonathan helped David escape finally.
And in 1 Samuel 23:15 and 16, we see this.
David saw that Saul had
come out to seek his life.
David was in the wilderness
of Ziph at Horesh.
And Jonathan, Saul's son,
rose and went to David
at Horesh and strengthened
his hand in God.
So a close friend not only
speaks words of encouragement
about you to other people, a
close friend will come to you
in your dark days and speak
words of encouragement to you.
A close friend lets words
of encouragement flow
from their lips about you and to you
in your deepest and darkest days.
Fourth, a true friend is a friend forever.
A friend forever.
Now David's on the run, okay?
Saul's pursuing him.
But eventually, he has
to turn away from David
and go fight the Philistines.
Interestingly, Jonathan
chose to remain with his dad
even over his friendship with David.
Now the question's asked, why?
They had this close covenant
blood friendship, why?
And here's the answer, because Jonathan
was a faithful God-fearing Jew,
and he honored the Ten Commandments,
one of which says you shall
honor your mother and father.
So Jonathan chose his dad, he
chose duty over his desires.
Oh, that we would do
that, that we would choose
principle over our passions.
That's what made Jonathan so great
is he chose to honor God
even above what he felt.
And so in a battle
against the Philistines,
both Saul and Jonathan are killed.
When David hears about it
in 2 Samuel chapter one,
he cries out, oh, how
the mighty have fallen.
He saw how his dear friend
Jonathan was now dead,
how the mighty have fallen.
Now after David then took the throne,
he gathers together
his people and he says,
you know what, I made a
covenant with Jonathan
to be a friend forever, but not only that,
I promised to him I would take care of him
and his descendants,
scour the land and see
if there's any descendant
left of Jonathan's.
Now what David didn't know
is when David came into
Jerusalem to take over the kingship,
there was a nurse who
was holding in her arms
a little boy by the name of
Mephibosheth, Jonathan's son.
David didn't know that this son existed.
And trying to run away, she fell,
Mephibosheth broke both his ankles.
They did not heal rightly,
and he was crippled for life.
They fled to the other
side of the Jordan River
to live in quiet, thinking this David
will try to eliminate any seed of Saul.
He'll try to exterminate
any hope for zealous
nationalistic rebellious
overthrow of his kingdom.
So they sent out these
spies to try to find
any remaining descendants of Jonathan,
and sure enough, they find Mephibosheth.
And they bring him back to the court.
And can't you imagine what
Mephibosheth was feeling?
I am toast.
I'm dead.
This king is gonna kill me immediately.
But he comes before David,
and David does three remarkable things.
First of all, he restores the family farm.
This beautiful acreage was
now given to Mephibosheth.
Saul's acreage was given to Mephibosheth.
Jonathan's acreage was
given to Mephibosheth.
Secondly, he put in charge of that land
a steward who was to take
care of it and make sure
Mephibosheth had all of his needs met.
And thirdly, he said to
Mephibosheth, you may come
before my table anytime that you want.
You may come and eat of any
breakfast, lunch, or dinner
that's ever being offered.
You will always have your needs met.
Isn't it a beautiful example
of covenant friendship?
Friends forevers.
Not acquaintances, but friends
for life.
So those are the four
qualities of a deep, abiding
personal friendship that
God wants us to have.
Common interests, no competition
a source of verbal encouragement.
And finally, friends
forever, friends for life.
Now let me take one quick
moment and do parenthesis here,
because you look at David
and Jonathan's friendship
and you think, this guy must've been
an extraordinary friendship machine.
He must've been able to
make friends all of his life
and had tons of friends
forever, didn't have anybody
who didn't like him, eh, not true.
Psalm 55 is interesting.
In verse 12 David writes,
again, 1 and 2 Samuel
tell the life of David, the
Psalms tell the heart of David.
Listen to what he writes in Psalm 55:12.
For it is not an enemy who taunts me,
then I can bear it.
It's not an adversary who
deals insolently with me,
then I can hide from him.
But it is you, a man, my equal,
my companion, my familiar friend.
We used to take sweet council together
within God's house, we
walked in the throng.
Verse 20, my companion
stretched out his hand
against his friends, he
violated his covenant.
His speech was smooth as butter,
yet war was in his heart.
His words were softer than oil,
yet they were drawn swords.
David had a close friend, a close advisor,
his name was Ahithophel.
In his early days of being
king, he counseled him
in wonderful wise ways.
But at some point, Ahithophel's
heart turned against David,
probably because he was
related to Bathsheba,
the woman whom David took in adultery.
We'll look at that story
in a couple of weeks.
And because of probably that incident,
maybe some other things,
Ahithophel turned against David.
He became David's enemy.
Dear friends, David had his Judas.
Just like most of us have.
We've had someone whom we
thought was a close friend
who betrayed us.
Someone we thought was on our side
but disappointed us.
And our hearts have been broken and hurt.
And the question is, how do we handle it
when friends become Judases,
when friends become
Ahithophels, what do we do?
When a husband or a wife commits adultery.
When he or she walks
into the house and says
I don't love you anymore,
I want out of here.
When somebody betrays us in the workplace
and steals an idea that we
have, what do we do with that?
Well, first of all, David
prayed what's called
imprecatory prayers,
fancy word, you impressed?
Imprecatory prayers,
you know what they were?
They were prayers,
basically, God, go get 'em.
God, go destroy 'em.
We see it in the next verses, verse 22,
cast your burden on the Lord
and he will sustain you.
He will never permit the
righteous to be moved,
but you, O God, will cast
them down into the pit
of destruction, men of blood and treachery
shall not live half their
days, but I'll trust you.
You see what he does?
It is okay to get hacked off, honked at
somebody who abuses you.
Somebody who mistreats you.
Somebody who betrays you, it's okay.
But here's the deal.
In your anger, as you cry
out to God, give them to God.
Cast your burdens on the Lord, David said.
You forgive them
not for their benefit,
but for your benefit.
Folks, to continue to hold
a grudge in bitterness
is liking drinking arsenic and expecting
the other person to die.
It's stupid.
You can be angry at the mistreatment,
but you cast your burdens on the Lord.
You give them to God, you trust
that he'll take care of them
in his way, in his time.
And then you move on with your life.
The greatest revenge you can have against
your enemies is to forgive them.
Because they wanna continue to hurt you.
But the moment you forgive
them, they're baffled.
What in the world's going on?
Just remember, even King David,
amidst his great friendships
like with Jonathan also had enemies.
So let me see if I can land this airplane,
this message.
First of all,
let me state very clearly, I
believe with all of my heart
that this close covenant
friendship is supposed to be
primarily with your spouse.
That was God's intention.
You're supposed to care for one another,
be intimately involved with one another,
communicate with one another.
Your spouse is supposed
to be your best friend.
You know, you can leave your spouse.
It's very difficult to
leave your best friend.
Marilynn is my best friend.
And she has practiced
these four truths with me
all of our 30-almost-five
years of marriage.
One that you might find
interesting is back
in the early to mid
'90s, I had reached my,
with the Forest Hill Church.
I had had it.
All the problems, the
difficulties, the oversights,
I had just had it.
I was ready to quit.
It's the only time it's happened,
but I was ready to quit.
We went away on a vacation.
One night I awakened around three o'clock
in the morning, and I just
sat up in bed shaking my head.
Marilynn awakened, too, she sat up in bed
and said what's going on, I told her.
I said, I've had it, I
can't keep doing this.
All she did was she took my hand,
looked me in the eye, and said, David,
I believe in you.
Dear friends, if any of
you have been touched
by the ministry of Forest
Hill Church in my life
since the mid 1990s, it's
because my best friend
in a time of dire need spoke words
of encouragement and life to me.
(congregation applauding)
Thank Marilynn for that.
She is the one who did it.
It's supposed to begin with
your wife, your spouse.
Let me tell you something
else that happened
this past Thursday night.
Jonathan Scott, my Jonathan on staff,
this wonderful man of God,
renewed his 25th anniversary vows
with his beloved Kathleen.
Isn't it neat, beautiful,
beautiful ceremony.
Some of the closest
friends, and they asked me
to recite the vows, and I gladly did so.
But what some of you may
not know is Kathleen has MS.
She contracted it after the
first year of their marriage.
They've lived for 24
years with this disease
ransacking her body, slowly
but surely debilitating her
to the point now where
she's in a wheelchair.
During the vows, Jonathan
sat down on a chair
next to Kathleen's wheelchair.
He took her hands, and both
of them recited to one another
these extraordinary covenant vows.
For better or for worse.
Richer or poorer.
Sickness and in health.
As long as we both shall live.
And then Jonathan reached
down with his lips
and kissed her on her lips.
And I thought to myself
as I saw it, dear God,
that's the gospel of Jesus Christ.
That the God of this
universe would lower himself
to our crippled conditions
and form his lips in a way
that met our gnarled lips and kissed us
to say I love you forever.
And after it was over, Jonathan
looked at Kathleen and said
you need to know, you are
my best friend.
And she said in her mumbled way,
you're my best friend, too.
So may I take a moment
and just say to all of you
just for a quick second I just
don't wanna hear it from you.
In your marriages, when you tell me,
well, I've fallen out of love.
I just don't feel love anymore.
Or our circumstances have changed.
I will continue to say to you two things,
what does that have to do about anything?
You made a covenant vow, learn to love.
And secondly, if you wanna talk further,
go see Jonathan Scott.
(congregation laughing)
(congregation applauding)
If every Christian marriage
would have that kind
of covenant commitment,
folks, we would change
this nation for Christ.
The fault's in the salt.
If we are the salt of
the world as Christians,
the fault's in the salt.
If we're to make the world less putrefied,
the fault's in the salt.
Okay.
Here is the application, first of all,
no Jesus friendship with us.
Romans five says that we
were enemies with God.
We were enemies with God,
when Jesus came to die
on the cross, we were God's enemies.
Rebels against his holy
way, but he loved us so much
he came for us and died on the
cross to make us his friends.
John 15:13, would you
read this verse with me?
Jesus said greater love has
no one than this, that...
Come on, people, read
it, someone laid down
his life for his--
- [Congregation] Friends.
- For his friends.
That if you have accepted
Jesus Christ as your Lord
and Savior, he is this
kind of Jonathan friend
to David to you.
He will have a common interest with you,
your eternal salvation.
He has no competition, he
just wants to love you.
He is a source of constant
encouragement to you
and it's love forever.
Secondly, if this is true,
we need to have friendships
with one another.
As I have loved you, now love one another.
It's a spiritual discipline,
every follower of Jesus
needs close, intimate, personal friends
like David had with Jonathan.
It's a spiritual discipline as necessary
as prayer and fasting, do
you have that kind of friend?
There's no such thing as a grit.
Right?
Come on, Southern people, is
there such a thing as a grit?
- [Congregation] No.
- There are what?
- Grits.
- Grits, plural.
We're meant to stick together.
To be delicious.
(congregation laughing)
For the glory of God.
