 Today, we're here in chapter 18, and I actually could have spent the entire morning looking at just verses one through four. We're going to look at the whole chapter, but I'm going to spend some time with you looking at verses one through four and then basically look at the rest of the chapter and put it together, hopefully bringing it to a conclusion and making some sense of it. But chapter 18 verses one through four especially spoke to my heart as I was preparing the study. So let's begin reading here in 1 Samuel chapter 18 at verse one. I'll read verses one through four and we'll get into our study. Now when 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. Saul took him that day and would not let him go home to his father's house anymore. And Jonathan and David made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan took off the robe that was on him, gave it to David with his armor, even to his sword, his bow, and his belt. Now chapter 17 records how David fought and slew a giant by the name of Goliath. And as we looked at chapter 17, we saw that King Saul had made a promise. It's found in verse 25 of 1 Samuel chapter 17. And the promise was that if anyone slew the giant, Saul would enrich him, would give him his daughter in marriage, and would exempt him from taxes in Israel. And so what we see here in chapter 18 is a continuation of an interview that had begun at the conclusion of chapter 17. You see, David is there being interviewed by King Saul. And as David is there being interviewed by King Saul, there are people present, including another young man by the name of Jonathan. And as Jonathan is listening to David, he has an instant connection to this young warrior. David is a man after Jonathan's own heart. And so he cannot help but be drawn to him. But not only is Jonathan being drawn to David, notice verse 2, so is Saul. It says in verse 2, Saul took him that day and would not let him go home to his father's house anymore. Saul saw something in David. He didn't want to lose this courageous young man. And as we've seen earlier, Saul had the habit of adding warriors to his entourage. We saw that in chapter 14 when it says, when Saul saw any strong man or any valiant man, he took him for himself. And so Saul had a tendency of taking the strongest and most valiant and bringing them into his military. Now Saul wanted to use David because David was a skilled musician and an awesome fighter. But Saul was also aware of the promise that had been made concerning the man who slew the giant. So for Saul, it would be wise to have David close by so he could keep an eye on him. Also it would be good to have him around so he might be able to win him over onto his side. But Jonathan had a special love for David immediately. Notice again verse 3, Jonathan and David made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul. I'm going to spend some time with you looking at relationships. Because as we look at this, notice verse 1, it says, Jonathan was knit to the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Notice verse 3, Jonathan and David made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul. What you see here is a relationship that's being developed. But it's something that I have to address because in the society that we live in today, in the context of the culture wars, there's a tendency of taking this love that Jonathan has for David and sexualizing it. Making it into something that it's not. Making it into something that the Bible is not stating. There's a tendency of taking this love that Jonathan has for David and this covenantal relationship that they established between one another. There's a tendency in our culture today to actually approach this as if it's a homosexual relationship that's being developed. All you need to do is open up the internet and Google Jonathan loved David. And you'll find homosexual websites that will point to this and will say that this is speaking of a relationship between David and Jonathan that was sexual in nature. I did that and I opened up and exerted from one website. There are so many others, but I just use one as an example just to demonstrate this. This came off of a particular website. It says Jonathan loved David in the context of a 15-year intimate partnership. Jonathan loved David as fully, as intimately, as any man ever loved a woman. The Hebrew words God uses to describe the Jonathan and David relationship indicate romantic, lifelong, covenant, committed love. Now, when it says that he loved him, that word love there in the original language in the Hebrew is actually interpreted based on context. That word love there can speak of the kind of love that a man has with another man as it does here. It can speak of the kind of love a man has with a woman. It can speak of the love a man has for himself. And it can speak of sexual desire. It has to be interpreted in context. So when you look at 1 Samuel chapter 18 and you see in verses 1-3 that Jonathan declared that Jonathan has love for David, you have to see the context and you also have to take this relationship in light of other scripture. And so the question has to be asked, does God in any way, shape or form condone homosexual relationships? And is that what God is saying here in 1 Samuel 18? And the answer to that question is an obvious no. Because when you look through the old as well as the new, you find that the Bible itself speaks in opposition to this and doesn't bless it. For example, in Leviticus in chapter 18 verse 22, the commandment is you shall not lie with a male as with a woman, it's an abomination. In 1 Kings 14 verse 24, there were also perverted persons in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. The term perverted persons is a euphemism in scripture in the Old Testament speaking of homosexuals. In the New Testament Romans chapter 1 verses 26 and 27, for this reason God gave them up to vile passions, for even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature, likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust for one another. Men with men committing what is shameful, receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due. In chapter 6 verse 9, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites. Or in Jude 1-7, Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. The term strange flesh is another way of speaking of homosexual behavior. And so you find from the Old to the New that homosexuality is condemned. You see that that is something that God states very clearly. And so you'd have to be reading into the Bible to say that Jonathan and David had a homosexual relationship because indeed the scripture is not saying that. Jonathan was not falling in love with David. Jonathan and David did not get married. That goes against all scripture and it's a twisting of scripture. In 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 16, Peter writes, some things are hard to understand which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction as they do also the rest of the scriptures. And so that's what's taking place when you read these websites that try to present Jonathan as having a sexual relationship with David. Jonathan and David did not have a homosexual relationship. It was one of those fine and noble love relationships that men can have with one another. You see in our culture friendship with the same sex person has been sexualized. And it becomes really difficult for two guys to have a friendship. You know I have a very close friend of mine. He's my best friend. His name is Randy. Randy's a pastor at Calvary Chapel of Uthland. And together he and I have traveled and ministered together. And there have been times when we've stayed in a hotel because we're ministering and we're there together. And we'll walk up to the desk and as we're signing in, you know, we'll say we have a room here and Randy and I are standing next to each other and I get very awkward. And so I'll look at Randy and I'll say, well, I got to call my wife Marie pretty soon. I mean, I get really kind of awkward about that, you know? And I think a lot of people do today, at least people my age do. I mean, I get awkward about that. I mean, just this Friday we went out for an early dinner and Randy and I were seated there at the table and Marie and Jeanette hadn't shown up yet. And we tell the young lady who's seating us, I tell her, we're waiting for our wives, you know? Because I wanted to know that there are two women coming. Now it would have been funny if two guys would have come and sat next to us. Now that would have been a lot of fun. But no, it's just that way we can be awkward in these relationships. I mean, Randy and I will be walking together. There have been many times he and I are walking together, hanging around, because we've been friends for like 28 years. And so we've been very dear friends and we vacation together and we spend a lot of time together and he's like a brother more than a friend. And so we've spent so much time together, we'll be walking together. And we have passed up young homosexual men who have passed us by. And I'll turn to Randy and I'll say, they're using us as a role model, you know? And we laugh, you know, together, but it's very, very, very awkward. And men understand this. I mean, I don't know how many of you know what a bench seat is in a car because they don't have them anymore. But when I grew up, you get a 55 Chevy, you didn't have bucket seats, you had bench seats. But if you drove around in your pickup truck, you had a bench seat. And so you could seat three people there. And I normally would call shotgun, so I sat next to the window. And so my buddies would be there, the driver, the guy in the center and me. And I always did this. We'd be driving someplace and I'd been down as if I was tying my shoe, leaving the guy in the center next to the other guy like this and it looked like that, you know? And they wouldn't pick up on it for a while, you know? And then after a while they go, hey, they'd be trying to pull me up and I'd be staying down just because it looks so funny. And so relationships, I mean, you can have relationships that are non-sexual but are very deep. And men need to have friendships with other men. Friendships with men aren't friendships with women. It's not like that. Normally a man cannot be a best friend with a woman. He can be very close to her but he can't be as close to her in the same way as he is with another guy. Women and men just relate differently. I mean, you know this and I know this. You're at a table, there's two couples there and the woman says, I gotta go to the bathroom. And the other woman invariably has to go too. And so, oh, okay, they both get up and they go walking to the bathroom. And I have to go to the bathroom and I'm with Randy. I don't say I'll go to go to the bathroom and he doesn't say I'll go with you. Are you kidding? I can find the bathroom. I'll be back in a minute. I don't need you to hold my hand. Men are different. I mean, women will walk into bathrooms and they talk and you can hear talk in the bathroom. They're still talking. They go into the stalls and they talk to one another. Men don't, men don't, you can be talking with your buddy up to the door of the bathroom. The door swings open, you're quiet. You don't say another word until you go and wash your hands and you walk out and then you start talking again. Guys don't talk to other men in bathrooms. It doesn't happen. We don't even look at other men in bathrooms. We walk in and we get out. We're entirely different. Women and men are absolutely different. We just have different relationships. That's the way it is. Women can talk to strangers about intimate things in a grocery line. I mean, they'll be there talking to you before you know what they're talking about, their childbirth and how they went through it and all of the agonizing, I've seen it. And I think, how men don't do that. Men don't walk up to one another and say, you ever had a hernia? We don't do that kind of thing. That is not the stuff of men. We're just entirely different. And that's the way it is. And that's why it's so sad when Jonathan and David's relationship is sexualized. That's why it's so bad. Because men have relationships with other men that's deep and personal and real. Normally what happens when men make friends with other men is we find things that are similar. That's why you'll talk to a guy and you'll say, you like him, he's a car guy. Because guys know what that means, he's a car guy. You know, they'll speak, yeah, he's a guy like sports. He likes the same teams that I like. There are things like that that we associate with. The guy's a family guy. The guy likes to camp. The guy likes to hunt. The guy likes to go fishing. I mean, we have a tendency of becoming dear friends with guys who have similarities to us. Friendships develop because we have things that are the same about us as with them. And so we have a tendency of being attracted to people with the same interests. And Jonathan was a man's man. He was a warrior. A man of great faith. We saw that in chapters 13 as well as 14. So he was instantly attracted to David's courage, his confidence in God, because he possessed the same. He saw something in David that was making David a kindred spirit to him. That's why his soul loved him. There was something about this guy that he united instantly. There was something about David, a charisma, a power, just a sense of personality that when Jonathan, who was a man's man, saw this guy, he says, now this is the kind of guy who could be my friend. This is the kind of guy that I could be close to. And there was a love that developed instantly. There was just something there. He was attracted to that. You know, men very often actually become lonely for male companionship. And sometimes they don't even realize that's happening. You see, my earliest memories of fun and fellowship all revolve around my friendships, my buddies, my partners, the guys I used to hang around with. You know, I had a lot of friends from the time I was in kindergarten that I hung around with all the way through high school. And we would hang around all the time. We'd go to the beach together when we got older. We played sports together, went to parties together, took road trips together. Sometimes we would just hang around just talking all afternoon into the night. And we would visit and we'd laugh and we'd share and we had dreams that we would talk about. What do you want to do when you get older? What is the kind of adventure that you'd like to get into? And I have fond memories of that, great memories of very close relationships with guys that were more like brothers than just friends. They were guys that I hung around with, guys that I enjoyed being with. And we had a ton of us that would hang around and would be silly and laugh and talk. And one of my friends' name was Bill. Bill lived across the street from me. He was very close to me like a brother for a long time. Bill and I went to kindergarten together and I knew him all through high school. We even went into the military with him. We're very close in many ways for a long time. When he was about 12, when we were 12, I can still remember spending the night at his house. And that was a time when you'd stay up late. You'd try to watch TV, but the TV would turn off. I mean, you didn't have 24-hour TV. You'd get this little signal that would come on. But there was Alvira, Mistress of the Dark or something, I can't remember. There were these, you know, they'd show monster movies like Frankenstein and Dracula and things like that. And we would stay up watching it together. And we would talk, Bill and I would. And I can still remember, we would sit there in our BBDs in the front room, you know, and watch TV. And then one night, I remember this very well, I can give you a lot of stories like this, but I remember one night, Bill, we were about 12, Bill said, let's raise cars in our underwear. I said, okay. And so we looked out the door. And I mean, it's two o'clock in the morning in Norwalk on Oran Day Road. There's no traffic there at all. There's no traffic, 25 mile an hour zone. No traffic, but we could see down the street some headlights coming in our direction. And I still remember it like it was yesterday. As a matter of fact, it was yesterday, no it wasn't. I can remember it so well. We stood there at the door and I was by the door and we see the car coming. And I said, here, it's almost here, Bill. You ready? And he goes, yeah. I said, there it is, let's go. And I took two steps out the door like I was running. He ran out. He ran to the sidewalk when I went back in the house. I went back in the house and hid behind the door and watched him as his little 12 year old boys running down the sidewalk in his underwear next to a car and they're slowing down looking at him like, what is wrong with his crazy kid, you know? And he turns around and I'm waving at him in the door and I go, we used to do the dumbest things. And we had the most, most fun. I mean, you have relationship with guys. You usually have a few friends. You might have a very close friend. And that's pretty much all of your memories. I can tell you story after story of staying up late, drinking coffee, talking. That was so precious to me, so important to me. Taking a long drive where you started out on your motorcycles. You drove up to San Luis Obispo like we did on occasion and just, I can tell you story after story. You know, stopping into Santa Barbara, getting some coffee, getting some toast and visiting with friends and off we go and it's two o'clock by the time you get there. It's 30 degrees and I just story after story that I can give to you about memories. And what happens is eventually you meet that gal as from a man's perspective, that young woman that that you wanna marry and you marry her. And before you know it, you're a family guy. She's your best friend. But something inside of you still longs for a buddy because you can talk to your wife on certain levels but she doesn't always understand exactly what it is you're trying to say and that's okay, that's part of the chemistry that God gives to us, there's nothing wrong with that. But we know that, we don't always connect. My wife Marie can turn to a stranger and can say to her, I remember labor pain and that stranger, if she gave birth also, can say, oh, I remember, you know, they've got an instant connection. You know, I can't do that. I can't turn to some guy and say, I remember labor pain. It doesn't work that way. Women have a connection but men have connections also and there are things that we men experience over time that are best shared with other guys. Guys who understand. Guy loses his job, tells his wife, I lost my job. And the wife may come around and say, honey, don't worry about it. God's gonna provide and we'll be okay and that's all true, that's all true. But a woman doesn't understand a man. That is who I am, that's not just what I do, that's what I've done all these years. That's how I've been able to pay for the food on this table. That's how I've taken care of the bills. That's how I've been able to put clothes on our kids' back and a man has lost his identity just because somebody says to him, you've lost your job. The woman may not understand to the degree that the man does. A man can speak concerning, I'm feeling older and the woman will say, yeah, cause you are. But you talk to another guy and there's a connection there because you might say, you know what, I remember when I was 20 years old or when I was 25, and you can talk about that, how you used to run and how you used to do these things and how you had this strength and now there are pains in your shoulder and your back and your knees that you don't identify with, what's going on? Whereas your wife will say, honey, you're just growing older. Another man will say, you know, I understand the feeling, I know what it's like. Where you used to say, I'm gonna go pick that up and you can't pick it up anymore so you have to call somebody else to do it and you feel humbled. Well, that's how men can feel that. A woman doesn't understand. Men can lose things in their life that a woman simply will not relate to. She can't because she's a woman. He needs a man. He needs a man in his life that he can relate well to. We need buddies. We need partners. We need friends. I thank God for my wife. I thank God for my children but I thank God for the friendships he's given to me. The guys that I have in my life that I can sit down and drink a cup of coffee with and say this is how I'm feeling. This is what I am. This is what I'm doing. This is how I'm experiencing life. These are the things that I am dealing with right now from a man's perspective. Man, I encourage you. You need some friends. I encourage you. There was a book written a long time ago called The Lonely American Male. There are a lot of men, when you start thinking about this and as I'm trying to make you think about it, there's a lot of men who've been absorbed so much in their job and in other things that they don't have a guy that's in their life, married men, if they're married. It's not wise for a single guy to hang around with married people. A married guy, if he's hanging around with a lot of singles, begin to think of himself as a single guy and he's not, but it's good to have a buddy. It's good to have more than one if you can that you can sit down with on occasion and you can say this is where I'm at. This is how I'm feeling. This is what's going on in me. It's called accountability, but it's deeper than that. I need that. I have that and I need that. I need that with all of my heart. Human beings need social contact. We need somebody who knows our soul, knows us inside, knows what we're feeling, at least can identify with us. That's what you have here. God created us to have fellowship with one another. It's interesting how in Genesis 2.18, it says it's not good that the man should be alone. God created us to have fellowship. We understand one another. I can tell my wife, like I said, almost anything, but another man can understand some of the things that I feel, some of the things that I think. That's why we have men's ministry. That's why we have Tuesday morning Bible studies and small groups and men's prayer and men's discipleship. That's why we have the new man ministry and men's breakfasts and issues of life. That's why we have men's retreats and men's conferences and community outreaches and church projects and sports teams to give us an opportunity to get to know other people, to have relationship. It's not a good thing to avoid those things. It's an important thing to enjoy those things. And that's what we see taking place. You see, as Saul is speaking to David and David is responding to Saul, Jonathan is watching this. And as he's listening to the responses of David and hearing the heart of David, he instantly has a love for this young man. He says, this is a guy after my own heart. He's like me. And he demonstrates that in a very dramatic way. Notice verse four. It says, Jonathan took off the robe that was on him and gave it to David with his armor, even to a sword and his bow and his belt. These garments and the armor signified Jonathan's status in Israel. It was a picture of him being the prince, the son of the king. So in giving these items to David, Jonathan was recognizing David would be his true king. And that's how it takes place there. Now in verse five, David went out wherever Saul sent him and behaved wisely. And Saul sent him over the men of war. He was accepted in the sight of all the people and also in the sight of Saul's servants. So as a warrior, David would go on military campaigns and as he did so because of his bravery, he won the hearts of the men. He had this charisma that instantly drew people to him. And as they looked at him, they appreciated him. The interesting thing is God saw his heart, man saw what he did, which means that he became beautiful inside and out to people. Now as this has taken place, verse six says, it happened as they were coming home when David was returning from the slaughter of the Philistine that the women had come out of all the cities of Israel singing and dancing to meet King Saul with tambourines, with joy and with musical instruments. So the women sang as they danced and said Saul has slain his thousands and David his 10 thousands. Now when it speaks concerning the returning from the slaughter of the Philistine, it's not speaking of Goliath because that took place earlier. This refers to a war or battle that was taking place with the Philistine people and David was returning from doing battle with them. But they give to them a victory parade. I want you to see this because what you see here is really somebody singing and then somebody responding. You actually have two camps that have developed. You have some women when they see Saul coming saying, Saul has slain his thousands. But there's another group of women who are beginning to shout out in their songs and David his 10 thousands. And as they're doing that, Saul is listening to this and he gets a jealous over this. Notice verse eight, Saul was very angry. The saint displeased him. He said they've ascribed to David 10 thousands and to me they have ascribed only thousands. Now what more can he have but the kingdom? So Saul eyed David from that day onward. He had forgotten that the kingdom was to be taken from him. He knew that was gonna take place because Samuel had made it clear several years earlier that that would happen. In chapter 15, we read at verse 28, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to a neighbor of yours who's better than you. So this young man who had slain Goliath is gonna replace him. So he begins to watch him suspiciously. Verse 10, it happened on the next day that the distressing spirit from God came upon Saul and he prophesied inside the house. So David played music with his hand as at other times, but there was a spear in Saul's hand. And Saul cast the spear for he said, I'll pin David to the wall, but David escaped his presence twice. So there's Saul and I want you to see this. It says here in verse 10 that Saul was prophesying. That word prophesying doesn't mean giving forth the mind of God or speaking of future events. In this context, he's ranting and raving. He's a lunatic and the distressing, the terrifying spirit is causing him great agony. So David is there trying to soothe him with music. David's playing music, but Saul has a spear and Saul starts thinking, I'm just gonna kill him and get rid of him. So his rage overcomes him provoked by the evil spirit. He hurls that spear, but David escapes from him. Now verse 12, Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him, but had departed from Saul. Therefore, Saul removed him from his presence and made him his captain over a thousand. And he went out and came in before the people. And David behaved wisely in all his ways. The Lord was with him. Therefore, when Saul saw that, he behaved very wisely. He was afraid of him, but all Israel and Judah loved David because he went out and came in before them. Now what he did is he actually made him somebody who was like an officer, but he put him into what would be called military exile. He thought if I get him out of here, I can get rid of my problem. But that was one of the ways that God used him to actually increase David in the sight of people by sending him somewhere else. And all Israel began to love and care for David because of the way that he was. God was with him and they saw that. Well, in verse 17, Saul said to David, here's my older daughter, Merib, I will give her to you as a wife. Only be valiant for me and fight the Lord's battles. For Saul thought, let my hand not be against him, but let the hand of the Philistines be against him. I want you to go out and do battle, but what he's thinking is maybe he'll die at the hand of the Philistines and I won't have any responsibility for that. So David said to Saul, who am I? And what is my life or my father's family in Israel that I should be son-in-law to the king? Saul didn't anticipate the humble response, but it happened at the time when Merib, Saul's daughter, should have been given to David that she was given to Adriel the guy from Chino as a wife. Meholothite as a wife. And so what happened is that large dowry some was given to Saul and so he basically gave this older daughter away. Now this is something I think is very practical. Verse 20, now Michael, Saul's daughter loved David. And they told Saul and the thing pleased him. So Saul said, I will give her to him, that she may be a snare to him and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him. Therefore Saul said to David a second time, you shall be my son-in-law today. Saul commanded his servants, communicate with David secretly and say, look, the king has delight in you and all his servants love you. Now therefore become the king's son-in-law. So Saul's servants spoke those words in the hearing of David and David said, does it seem to you a light thing to be a king's son-in-law, seeing I'm a poor and lightly esteemed man? The servants of Saul told him saying, in this manner, David spoke. I wanna point something out very briefly here and I want you to see it with me in verse 20. I want you to see how it simply says there, Michael Saul's daughter loved David. Now that's interesting to me and I'll tell you why. How could she have loved David? She didn't even know him. When it says here that she loved David, so did all of Israel. David was a superstar. David was handsome. David was valiant. David had a tremendous reputation. This was hero worship. This young woman had a crush on David. Very similar to what we see today when some young man or some boy band is doing their thing, seeing, and the girls will be there at the stage and they'll be yelling at the guy or the guys, I love you, how can you love? You don't even know these guys. But that's a hero worship. There's that sense of affection for someone you don't know based on what they've done. And beyond that, it's the kind of quote unquote love that is really self-serving because when a girl's there yelling at some guy in a band, I love you, in her mind she's thinking, wouldn't it be cool to be married to him and all the benefits I'd have and the associations I'd have? It's more of a selfish thing. It's not a love thing at all. It's a crush. It's one of those things that people can have where they have affection for someone they don't know. Now that's something that we all understand. You can have an affection for a stranger, a sense of kinship with somebody you don't know. Now look what happened just this last week. Michael Jackson dies. And it touches people in ways that it's just amazing to me. Amazing. You know, somehow when my little David, my son David was a little boy, four years old, five maybe, somehow David had seen something Michael Jackson had done, some music of some sort. He was just a little guy. And David really liked Michael Jackson. I mean, he really did. Do you know that at night when we would pray with him, when he was going to bed, that every night my David would pray for Michael Jackson every night? You know, I can still remember his prayer. It's the same prayer every night. Jesus saved Michael Jackson. My son David used to pray and it touches me to remind myself of this. He used to pray every night for a long time for Michael Jackson. And Marie and I would talk amongst ourselves and I'd say, why does David have such an affection for this guy? I don't understand it, but it was in his heart deeply, deeply. So when Michael Jackson died this week, my son was there with me in the house and I looked at him and I said, Dave, how do you feel? How do you feel? Michael Jackson died. And my son looks at me and he says, you want an honest answer, dad? He says, when I heard that he died, I cried. He said, I used to pray for him every night that Jesus would save him. He remembered his little boy prayers as a 30 year old man. And it touched my heart to know that it touched his. Now, I wasn't a Michael Jackson fan. I wear two gloves when I wear gloves. I can't dance. You wouldn't want to see me dance, that's for sure. My heart was touched in two ways. One is the tragic death of a young man and two, the cruelty that I saw some people heep in on him. I thought it was wrong. I thought it was wrong. Even Christians were saying things. And to me, that was just an unkind thing to do. We ought to have more compassion. I think believers especially ought to have more compassion. As I read Ezekiel, it says that God says, I do not take joy in the death of the wicked. I don't rejoice over this. So my heart was touched. It was touched in many ways. And I find it interesting that people can have an affection for someone they don't know. Michael did. Michael really didn't know King day or David prior to being King, even though he's anointed. She didn't know David. She was like the many in Israel who had a crush on this warrior, this handsome, courageous, faith-filled, confident man. Her father says, I can use this. I can use my daughter's love for David against him. Notice what he does in verse 25. Saul said, you shall, thus you shall say to David, the king does not desire any dowry, but 104 skins of the Philistines to take vengeance on the king's enemies. Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines. So when his servants told David these words, it pleased David well to become the king's son-in-law. Now the days had not expired, therefore David arose and went he and his men and killed 200 men of the Philistines. And David brought their four skins and they gave them in full count to the king. Then he might become the king's son-in-law. Then Saul gave him Michael the daughter as a wife. Thus Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David and that Michael Saul's daughter loved him. And Saul was still more afraid of David. So Saul became David's enemy continually. Then the princes of the Philistines went out to war. And so it was whenever they went out that David behaved more wisely than all the servants of Saul so that his name became highly esteemed. So Saul says, this is how I'll get him. I'll give him a suicide mission. I'm gonna send him to go and kill 100 Philistines and bring back evidence that he did so. David says, that's a great challenge. I have no problem with that, I'll kill 200. And that's what he did. He went out with his men and they slaughtered 200 enemies of Saul, brought back the evidence. And now Saul doesn't have anything he can do other than give Michael to him as his wife. But as this has taken place, Saul grows more and more angry and hate filled towards David because he keeps losing things. He lost Jonathan. He lost Michael. He lost Israel in terms of their affection. And now he's losing the kingdom. He's losing everything because as he's descending, the nation of Israel is falling more and more in love with David. So as Saul's star is diminishing, David's now becomes the rising star. He's got it all. He's a champion. He's a warrior. He's married to the king's daughter. He's got it all. But Saul is suspicious of him and Saul's gonna do whatever it takes to try and keep him from obtaining the throne because that's what Saul's heart is all about. Our father, we ask that as we study these passages that you would continue giving us insight into some practical things that help us to live our lives in a daily way for you. Lord, I ask for the men in this room as well as the women that there would be friendships that are godly, that are established. Relationships that are built on you that the similarities that draws together would be a love for God, a love for his word, a love for fellowship, a love for service, a love for sharing. I pray that you would work within our lives, Lord, so that we might have relationships that are built on you. And when we encounter people who have similarities, similar loves and passions that you would work within us, Lord, so that we would grow in our grace and knowledge of Jesus. So I lift up this congregation, especially the lonely ones, and I pray that you would make it possible for friendships to develop that are based on you, Lord, and are in you. And even as our eyes are closed and our heads are bowed, perhaps I have some in this room we need to get right with the Lord right now, right where you're at. And if you sense that, you need to get right with the Lord, I want to pray for you. As our eyes are closed and our heads are bowed, if you need to get your life in order with God right now, I ask you, raise your hand, let me pray for you right where you're at. Father, you see these hands, and you know the reason why they're being raised to you. I ask now, in Jesus' name, that you would reach down and touch these lives. Lord, in Jesus' name, wash and cleanse, work within, purify, fill with your spirit and use them for your glory. Lord, meet the deepest recesses of the need, Lord. Go deeply within them, Lord, and work in them, I pray. Show yourself mighty on their behalf. We thank you, Lord, for this, and bless you. You can put your hands down. And Jesus, I ask that you keep moving in us and through us that we might serve you in your name. We pray, amen. Let's all stand. Well, we've been blessed to have our canon tell us, our visiting worship team with us, so they're not all visitors. Why don't we tell them how much we appreciate their service. Our Father, we thank you so much for the work of your Holy Spirit. We ask that you would work in us and through us and use us. And as we leave this place into that mission field, may we be found faithful as we serve you. We give you praise and we give you glory. Draw us back tonight, tomorrow, Wednesday, whenever you give us opportunities, may we fellowship in you and may we grow in our understanding of our need for you and one another. We ask this now in Jesus' name, amen. God bless you.