A Wonderful Love

II Samuel 1:26 I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.


The fruit of the Spirit is love. His Spirit in our hearts produces love.
Jesus spoke about our love for one another as being the thing by which all men would know we are His disciples. It is God's plan for us to have His love growing in an increasing measure in our hearts.

In I Corinthians 13, Paul, the apostle, describes what love is.

Jesus demonstrated God's love for us. As God's Son He laid down His life for us to save us from our sins. He became the sacrifice for our sins.

Then we have all kinds of wonderful examples of that self sacrificing love in the Word of God. The relationship that existed between David and Saul's son Jonathan stands as a wonderful example of the love we ought to have for one another.

This morning we are going to look at this picture in God's Word of His love between two of His people, David, son of Jesse and Jonathan, Saul's son.

1. Brotherly Love
How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.
Psalm 133.1

The word friend in Hebrew is from the root word, raah, which means:
to pasture, tend, graze, feed, to shepherd, teacher,
of people as flock
shepherd, shepherdess

True friends watch over our souls... warn us about danger.
They nourish our minds and hearts.
They care about us.
They speak to our hearts.

Included in this wonderful love is that of Philadelphia.


2.A Love More Wonderful
to be pleasant, be beautiful, be sweet, be delightful, be lovely

Love here means:
human love for human object
of man toward man
of man toward himself
between man and woman love of wife towards her husband.
sexual desire
God's love to His people

There was great risk of personal danger in this relationship between Jonathan and David. Saul hated David and was trying to kill him. Jonathan was Saul's oldest son. Saul would look at this as treason. Jonathan was under a higher law of love.

Saul expressed concern and anger about this relationship.
1 Samuel 20:27-31 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!”

1 Samuel 20:16-17, 42 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. 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.

This love was one of protection and wanting God's perfect will in one another's lives. Jonathan, by his love for David, was giving up his right to the throne of Israel. Jesus left heaven, His throne, to die on a cross for us. So we ought to give up our "rights" for one another. We are bond servants of the LORD Jesus Christ. We are our own.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

Amazingly even before, far before Jesus came from heaven to earth, Jonathan and David got it! Their love for one another is what Christ desires for His church.

I pray we can grow in this love, strengthening the Body of Christ, building each other up.

Another facet of this love is

3. Being One In Spirit
1 Samuel 18:1-4 After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family. And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt.

The early church experienced this phenomena.
Acts 4:32 All the believers were one in heart and mind.

This results in a laying down our lives for each other, serving each other with joy. The most "devout" atheist cannot argue with this. How do you criticize love unless there is a Judas among us?
John 12:4-6 But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.
To those Jesus says about His Church, "Leave her alone. She is doing a beautiful thing."

1 Corinthians 1:10 I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.

There are people we are compatible with.
This sense and experience can come to whole body of believers as it did in the church at Jerusalem in the first century. One heart, one mind, one spirit
Overlooking our differences, majoring on our common calling in Christ.

4. This Kind of Love Assures A Broken Heart For The One Who Gives It

C.S. Lewis
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

David mourned the loss of a very close friend who from all appearances was closer to him than any of his 7 brothers.
I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan: David's mourning for Jonathan makes more sense to us. Jonathan was David's deep friend and partner in serving God.
Your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women: We remember that David's own experience of love with women was not according to God's will. His multiple marriages kept him from God's ideal: one man and one woman in a one-flesh relationship.
They had a deep, godly love for each other - but not a sexual love. Our present world has a hard time believing that love can be deep and real without it having a sexual aspect.

5. Heartbroken but Changed
So the plans David and Jonathan made never came to full fruition. ..they planned to work together. Jonathan died a young man as a result of his father's sin. Yes, our sin can effect our children.

David, who had endured a decade of hell being hunted by Saul was now without his arch enemy but he was also without his dear close friend and brother.

God can use pain and loneliness in your life to soften your heart and make you more like Him. Experiences of emotional pain can result in us being more like Jesus.

A wonderful love is born many times out of pain. So it is with each child born into this world. So it is with each child of God in His Kingdom.

David went onto to become Israel's most beloved King. The trials and suffering he went through gave him a tender heart. They made him sensitive to all in need. They have a way of killing the ugliness in our hearts and in its place giving us something wonderfully Christlike.


I Thessalonians4.9 Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more,
I Thessalonians 3.12 May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. 13 May He strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all His holy ones.