Good Morning Friends,
“Then David fled from Naioth at Ramah and went to Jonathan and asked, ‘What have I done? What is my crime? How have I wronged your father, that he is trying to take my life?’ ‘Never!’ Jonathan replied. ‘You are not going to die! Look, my father doesn't do anything, great or small, without confiding in me. Why would he hide this from me? It's not so!’ But David took an oath and said, ‘Your father knows very well that I have found favor in your eyes, and he has said to himself, “Jonathan must not know this or he will be grieved.” Yet as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.’ Jonathan said to David, ‘Whatever you want me to do, I'll do for you.’" (1 Samuel 20:1-4)
Jonathan was Saul’s oldest son. He was heir to the throne of Israel. By all rights, when Saul died Jonathan would become king. If anyone should have been threatened by David it was Jonathan. But instead of being threatened by David’s popularity and the evidence of God’s hand upon him, Jonathan was drawn to David as his closest friend. In this passage, Jonathan puts his friendship with David above his relationship with his father. He promises David that he would protect him from his father and warn him about his father’s secret plans. Jonathan was promising to betray his own father!
Family relationships are important to the Lord. The honor and respect that a son is to give his father and mother is so important to God and so critical to a stable society that God included that instruction in His Ten Commandments, the basic law of the society of those who follow Him. God commands that children honor their parents.
But doing what is right supersedes doing what parents want. Jonathan knew that Saul’s plotting to kill David was wrong. It would have been wrong for Jonathan to join in the conspiracy to destroy David’s life. It would have been wrong for Jonathan to sit idly by and allow his father’s conspiracy to go forward without warning David and allowing him opportunity to protect himself.
It must have been a difficult choice for Jonathan, but he made the right choice. He chose to do is right instead of what his father wanted him to do.
Our hope is never to be faced with that kind of choice. Parents should be those who lead us toward God, not away from Him. They should instruct us in what is right and discourage us from what is wrong. But when parents lead their children toward wrong – the right choice is to say “no” to being involved in that. Jonathan’s example is a very positive one in that regard.
His, by Grace,
Steve
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