v. 56 It is not at all to be expected that Abner would necessarily know who David was. He would not have any particular reason to know a young man who played the lyre for the king when he was disturbed. But, it has long thought to be a problem that Saul didn’t seem to know, given the fact that David was, by this time apparently, the king’s own minstrel, whose personal acquaintance with David – to the point of the narrator telling us that Saul liked David very much – has already been mentioned in 16:21. It is possible that 16:14-23 is a prolepsis, and, in fact David’s service as a minstrel began after not before he killed Goliath. That would explain why David is described in 16:18 as a mighty man of valor even though at that time he is only a shepherd boy and had never been in a military engagement. However, that suggestion seems to raise as many problems as it solves and, in any case, 17:15 seems to suggest rather clearly that this narrator himself understood David already to have been brought into Saul’s service before he killed the Philistine giant.

However, what has become clearer and clearer as we have been studying the OT narratives, both in Genesis and in 1 Samuel, is that the narrator knows precisely what he is doing and that everything in his account is there for a purpose. The old idea of liberal scholarship, that we have a clumsy patchwork of different sources, telling the story in different ways, no longer is plausible. This narrator knew very well his readers would wonder how Saul could be unaware of David’s identity in 17:56. So what does he want us to think about this? What is he telling us?

One common explanation is that 17:55ff. are another demonstration of the effect of David’s exploit in killing Goliath. When Saul asks, "Whose son is that young man?" he is not really asking merely for a name, as if he didn’t know who David was or where he was from. He is asking instead: "what kind of father has produced such a son?" You’ll notice that we are told in v. 55 that Saul had this conversation with Abner not after the battle was over but as David made his way out to Goliath. It is an expression of his amazement at David's courage, not a request for the identification of the boy. [Keil, 177-178]. There may be something to that, but I suspect the answer lies in another direction, for it does seem to me that the narrator treats Saul’s question in the verses that follow as a an actual request for information.

It seems to me that the most likely answer to this surprising ignorance on Saul’s part is that we are being shown the extent and the nature of Saul’s derangement. David is entering the scene because Saul has disqualified himself and has been rejected by the Lord. We see David and all Israel sees David as the man that Saul should have been. But, in contrast, the Lord has taken his Spirit from Saul and, what is more, he has sent an evil spirit to torment Saul. We have noticed all through the Saul narrative to this point that in one way or another – but seldom by coming right out and saying so – this narrator has pictured Saul to us first in his failure of faith and then in the disintegration of his personality. Now we are entering the last chapter of the story of that disintegration. And, frankly, Saul’s inability to remember who David was, will not be the worst evidence of Saul’s disordered mind or of his inability to hold things in mind.

In 24:16-21, for example, after David spared Saul’s life for the first time, we are going to hear Saul apologize profusely for the harm he intended David, declare publicly that the kingdom of Israel would surely be established in his hands, and invoke God’s blessing upon the young man. So certain is he of the calling of David to be king that he asks David to swear that David will not kill any of Saul’s family when he becomes king. But, in the very next scene, Saul is seeking to kill David once more, as if he couldn’t remember any of what had just transpired between them. Indeed, their conversation in 26:18-21 is virtually a reprise of that in chapter 24. It is as if Saul has "spiritual Alzheimer’s" and can never remember a good, honest, or holy thought that he has had or fact that he has known. His mind has been lost to him because he did not devote it to the Lord. In any case, what we will find as the narrative continues is more of what we see already here at the end of chapter 17: a disordered mind unable to hold thoughts and retain knowledge from day to day. The man is clueless. Here is but one demonstration of that. The narrator knows full well that the reader knows that Saul has already met David and already learned the name of his father. Why doesn’t the man remember now? The reader is being invited to answer that question for himself.

v. 4 All Israel loved David, as we will hear, and so did Jonathan, proof, of course, that Saul should have loved him too. Jonathan’s love, of course, is extraordinary, in that it is so selfless. And yet, as the events unfold, it will be Jonathan’s protection of David while he is at court, that secures the safety of the very one who would take Jonathan’s place on the throne of Israel. Jonathan would have been expected to become king, the eldest son of Saul as he was. What is more, Jonathan was a celebrated warrior himself and we could easily understand the difficulty he might have seeing another eclipse him in the eyes of the people. The gifts of tunic and armor seem to indicate that Jonathan himself recognized David’s status as the Lord’s anointed. These gifts, one scholar says, amount to a "virtual abdication by Jonathan, the crown prince." [Gordon, 159] Remember that Samuel had associated the robe with the kingship in 15:27.

By the way, if there is a key word in chapter 18 it is "love." Everyone is said to "love" David, an indication of God’s blessing and the success he had in making others admire him and be loyal to him. Here Jonathan, the people, the king’s attendants, and Michal, Saul’s daughter (vv. 1, 16, 20, 22 [the NIV’s "like" is the same verb "love", 28).

v. 5 At this early stage, everyone was enthusiastic about David, because he was delivering the goods. Only over time would it dawn on them that David posed a threat to Saul’s house and those who served it. Clearly, however, in the context of this history, David is being presented to Israel as the man whom God has chosen to be king and who has the gifts and graces for that calling, as his predecessor did not.

We said, last week, that the biblical narrative was "thick." It has many layers. It can reveal David as the deliverer of Israel as an enacted anticipation of the Messiah. It can reveal salvation of God’s people as the achievement of God’s appointed king and deliverer. And, at the same time, it can be a lesson in faith in God. All of that was obviously taught us in the text we read last week, the account of David and Goliath.

Tonight we have another text with layers. Surely we go on here in the establishment of David’s reputation and preparation for the throne. We have Jonathan perhaps the first to recognize David’s true right to the throne. A recognition all the more significant in coming from the man who would have been thought to be David’s chief rival.

But, along the way, we are given something more, something to do with the practicalities of believing life in the world. I am speaking of the friendship here born between Jonathan and David.

There is a good deal on friendship in the Bible, especially in the wisdom literature, that part of the Bible that deals with the skillful living of a holy life.

1. Anyone can find a fair-weather friend, we read in Proverbs [the rich, for example, have many friends (14:20); everyone is the friend of a man who gives gifts [19:6]; "A poor man is shunned by all his relatives – how much more do his friends avoid him! Though he pursues them with pleading, they are nowhere to be found.""[19:7]). But, common as inconstant friends may be, "there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother" [18:24] and "who loves at all times" [17:17]. Not only are such friends a blessing to those who have them, we are all urged to be such friends ourselves. "Do not forsake your friend and the friend of your father…" [27:10]
2. One of the marks of a friend is that he tells the truth, even when it hurts, but always to do his friend good, not harm. "Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses." [27:6] "Whoever flatters his friend spreads a net for his feet." [29:5] "…the pleasantness of one’s friend springs from his earnest counsel." [27:9] "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." [27:17]
3. But, friendship must be guarded, cared for. Perhaps because one invests so much of oneself in a close friendship, there is a special vulnerability to disappointment. So we read, "a perverse man stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close friends." [16:28] "He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends." [17:9] Friendship requires tact. Not making a joke of what is not funny. "Like a madman shooting firebrands or deadly arrows is a man who deceives his friend and says, ‘I was only joking!’" [26:18-19] Overstaying one’s welcome is another common blow to friendship. "Seldom set foot in your friend’s house – too much of you, and he will hate you." [15:17] Forcing one’s friendship on someone is another common error of tact. "If a man loudly blesses his friend early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse." [27:14]

I’m sure we have all wondered about the rift that separated Paul and Barnabas as a result of Mark’s failure. We’d all like to know who was at fault there and how it might have been avoided. I’m sure Mark went to his grave embarrassed that he had been the cause of the separation of two such great men who had been so close and had done and suffered so much together in the cause of the gospel.

I have seen people who need friends, who are lonely and need someone to invest themselves in, commit all these errors and drive folk away who might otherwise be their friends. Just as I have seen friends betray friends and spoil and ruin what blessing that friendship might have been in years to come. I know two Christian women who were as close friends as you are likely to see. They even stayed together when one of them moved. But they had a falling out and aren’t speaking to one another any more and the loss of that friendship has been as hard a blow as one of them has ever received.

But, I also know people who have an unusually large number of good friends, whose friendship and fellowship is regularly bathing their lives in warmth, cheer, and encouragement. Does not everyone wish he or she had a Jonathan for a friend?

Friendship, in other words, requires cultivation and protection. Spiritual resources are necessary for friendship with one another, just as they are for friendship with God.

Interestingly, our Savior had friends and, then, among them, he had close friends. Perhaps we have all wondered about the wisdom of his placing Peter, James, and John in an inner circle and allowing them an intimacy with him that he did not extend to the rest of the Twelve. We can well imagine that it was the cause of some envy and hurt feelings. But that is what the sinless man did and in doing it gave us some witness to the importance of close friendship.

Now our Savior was not married, and for many of us, our closest friendship is with our husband or wife and that is as it ought to be. In Proverbs 2:17 a spouse is referred to as a "friend" or "confidant." And, in any case, the closest friendships are often a matter of "chemistry" before the are a matter of cultivation. Here in 1 Samuel 18:1 it certainly seems that Jonathan came to have a strong feeling for David before he really knew him. He admired him and loved him for what he had seen of him from afar. George MacDonald puts this phenomenon memorably:

Two clear souls
That see a truth, and, turning, see at once
Each other’s face glow in that truth’s delight,
Are drawn like lovers.

So it was with Jonathan and David. And then they cultivated the friendship that had come upon them unbidden and unexpected. And, as it will happen, that friendship came to David’s rescue and was the means of his escaping Saul’s clutches. Such is life. God gives such strong and close friendships to some and not to others, some friendships are more charmed than others, but all of us can have friends and be friends to the happy effects the Bible describes as the blessing of true friendship. [You may know, that in our day there has been an effort to portray these two men as homosexual lovers in an attempt to justify the homosexual lifestyle. The fact that such language as we find here should suggest such a thing to some people is perhaps some evidence of how isolated and alienated many people are in our societies today, how lacking true friends and the understanding of true friendship.]

If David is an exemplar of the life of faith, as he clearly is in the Bible, not just an exemplar of the Lord Jesus but of those who trust in Christ, then here too he is an example for us. A man who makes friends and who keeps his friends. Later on, after the death of Jonathan, we will find out how strongly David felt for his friend. But, it is clear enough in the next few chapters how close the two men were, how much they admired and respected one another, and how willing they were to sacrifice on one another’s behalf.

This is a detail of the Bible’s presentation of the Christian life. You have friendship in Proverbs and you have a classic illustration of it here in 1 Samuel. There isn’t a great deal more about it in the Bible, though you can detect close friendships from time to time elsewhere. You have Christian fellowship and neighbor love. You have the ministry of the body of Christ to itself and the practice of true Christian brotherhood. But that isn’t the same thing as a special friendship such as Jonathan and David had. Not everyone is given such friendships. Outside of marriage, I can’t say I have had such a friendship, though I have come close to it in a few instances.

But we can all have and be better friends than we are, and we should, if even the two greatest exemplars of the Christian faith in the Bible – Jesus and David – needed and relied on such friendships. It is part of our nature as the social beings the Lord made us to be.

Even the world knows the importance of friendship. Socrates once asked a simple old man for what he was most thankful for, for what he most wanted to thank God, and the old man answered: "That being such as I am I have had the friends I have had."

But, especially Christians know this, who understand how much there is to share with a true friend and how much we need one another and how much we can genuinely assist one another in the most important things of life.

"Is any pleasure on earth as great," C. S. Lewis asked, "as a circle of Christian friends by a fire?" [Letters, 197] For, he went on to say, friendship exalts our lives. The love and regard of others is a means by which the Lord shows us the greatness he attaches to our lives.

"In a circle of true friends each man is simply what he is: stands for nothing but himself. No one care twopence about any one else’s family, profession, class, income, race, or previous history… That is the kingliness of friendship. We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts." [The Four Loves, 103]

It is in a society that values that friendship, seeks it, cultivates it, honors it, respects it, protects it, such blessing is found for many. It isn’t the most important subject in the Bible, it isn’t the most important thing to say about the Christian life by any means. It is a detail. But the fact that the Bible describes it to us so beautifully, and nowhere more beautifully than here, makes it interesting and important to every Christian.