Now we're going to be reading from the scriptures. This morning we are in the book of 1 Samuel, and I'm going to read chapter 18. As you're able, was that right? Okay, 1 Samuel 18, I invite you as you're able to stand for the reading of God's word. 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. Then Jonathan and David made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul, and Jonathan took off the robe that was on him and gave it to David with his armor, even to his sword and his bow and his belt. So David went out wherever Saul sent him and behaved wisely. And Saul set him over the men of war. And he was accepted in the sight of all the people and also in the sight of Saul's servants. Now it had 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 ten thousands. Then Saul was very angry and the saying displeased him. And he said, they have ascribed to David ten 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 forward. And 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 will pin David to the wall. But David escaped his presence twice. Now 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, and 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. Then Saul said to David, here is my older daughter Merab. 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. 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 But it happened at that time when Merab, Saul's daughter, should have been given to David, that she was given to Adriel, the Meholathite, as a wife. Now Michal, 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. And 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 am a poor and lightly esteemed man." And the servants of Saul told him, saying, in this manner David spoke. Then Saul said, thus you shall say to David, the king does not desire any dowry but 100 foreskins of the Philistines to take vengeance on the king's enemies. But Saul fought 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 foreskins, and they gave them in full count to the king that he might become the king's son-in-law. Then Saul gave him Michal, his daughter, as a wife. Thus Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David and that Michal, Saul's daughter, loved him. And Saul was still more afraid of David. So Saul became David's enemy continually. Then the princes of 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. This is God's word. Well, what we see this morning is that success can come with stress. You could have financial success, you could become wealthy, but it comes with stress as well. Now, you don't know if your friends like you or if your friends just like your money. Beauty can come with stress. People flock around beautiful people because of their looks, because of your looks, but beauty can also incite jealousy. A beautiful person becomes aware that the people who are around you, some of them resent you. Some of them cut you down behind your back. So stress, success can come with stress. In our text today, we see David. He is a man who is enjoying considerable success. And he enjoys the highest kinds of success. David enjoys the favor of God. God has chosen David. God is for David. And now everything that David touches, it just seems to turn out. It seems to turn golden. But the blessing comes with challenges. As David's star is rising, Saul, the king, starts to fall. And as Saul unravels more and more, that brings a stress in David's success. So we're going to look at three things. First of all, we see this. The favor of God comes with blessing. The favor of God comes with blessing. But secondly, the favor of God comes with trouble. The favor of God comes with blessing. The favor of God comes with trouble. And thirdly, how to handle that trouble. So first of all, the favor of God comes with blessing. And the passage shows all these ways that David, he seemingly has a charmed life. And it's because the favor of God is resting on David. It's one of the repeated refrains in this chapter. God's favor, God's presence with David. You see this in verses 12, 14, and 28. Look at how God shows his favor and his presence with David. Verse 12, now Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him, but had departed from Saul. Then verse 14, David behaved wisely in all his ways and the Lord was with him. Then at the end, verse 28, thus Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David. Now, do you know what that's like? Do you know something of what that is like? To have the favor of God on you, to know that God is on your side, to know that whatever is going on, God is with you. You sense his presence with you in your life. Well, David's got that, the favor of God. Look at four ways that you can see the favor of God in David's life. You see it in friendship, you see it in marriage, you see it in acclaim, you see it in his wins. We see the favor of God in his friendship. Verses one through four, after seeing David, triumph over this giant, the Prince of Israel, Jonathan. Jonathan's heart goes out to David. Jonathan's also a young man like David, and Jonathan's also a warrior, and he becomes the closest of friends with David. Verse one, it says, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And so these two men, Jonathan and David, they have connected at a deep level as people, as friends, not just as friends who have a shared interest over hunting or over music, but they've got this soul friendship. And it goes deeper than their military service. It says that Jonathan loved David all the way to the bone. Now, when you hear that, it might sound kind of extreme, like, well, that's too much, isn't it? But that's only because in our day, we're not accustomed anymore to seeing people have deep friendships. Friendships. In our day and place, friendships are few. And really, our lives suffer for the lack of deep friendships. As human beings, we need love. We were made for that. We're not machines. We need to receive love. We need to be able to give love. And without love, we won't be complete, we won't be well. Without love, something is lacking in our human experiences. Now, the Christian thinker C.S. Lewis observes there are four loves. Love is not just this generic, bland quantity. You can see even in scripture, there are four loves. You can see it in human experience. C.S. Lewis observes that human beings can experience four distinct, you could call them flavors, of love. For instance, there's family love or parental love. It's what you could call natural affection. The Greek word for that is storge. Natural affection in families between parents, siblings, because they love one another, their family, in a healthy family, all the family members have this love, this natural affection for each other. The mother loves her baby. a father has fatherly affection for his children. So there's family love, that's one of the four kinds of love. Another flavor of love, another kind of love is maybe you could call it romantic love, eros. This kind of love is in view when we talk about falling in love with someone. It can be a sexual love, but more generally, it's a pleasure love. It's getting pleasure from the other. It's giving pleasure to the other. And people who have this kind of love, it's kind of funny, but if you've experienced it, you know what I'm talking about. They love to talk about the romantic love. They'll say things like, we are in love, and it feels so amazing. To some degree, they both look at the love that they have for the other person, but they also, they just love the love itself. So this romantic love, eros, a third kind of love. Another kind of love is friendship love, philia. In this kind of love, you've got, maybe you've got something in common with the other person whom you love. Maybe you bond over a shared experience, you bond over raising kids, or you bond over a love of poetry. In this kind of love, this third kind of love, a friend says, I know what that's like. I love it too. In this kind of a love, a friend says, I also enjoy that. A friend says, when this new album came out, I called you right away. I had to share it with you. So that's a third kind of love, this friendship love. And then there's this divine love. That's the fourth kind of love, agape. And here, agape, this fourth kind of love, it's God's love. It's God's unconditional love. God loves us because he loves us. And we respond and we love him when we receive this. And with this divine love, we aspire to love one another with this agape love. We aspire to love one another with the unconditional love with which we have been loved by God in Christ. Now, when we're talking about the love between Jonathan and David, they share love. We see maybe two, especially two of those kinds of loves. We see a friendship love between these two. We also see a divine love. Jonathan and David are friends, and they're the deepest of friends. A question for you, do you have friends? Do you have friends? Do you have a few really close friends? I'm going to guess that many of you do, but I'm also going to guess that maybe for some of you, you don't have someone that you could say is a really close friend. Friendships in our time, they're fewer than they used to be. And it's somewhat ironic. We've got all these, we've got unparalleled ways to electronically connect and to communicate. And at the same time, it's never been more difficult to make friends and to keep the friends. In some ways, the devices and the social media, they impair our ability to make and to keep friends. Speaking about friendship, C.S. Lewis says, Few value it because few experience it. According to studies in America, people have fewer friends than they ever had before. But David here, he's favored by God and he's got this friend in Jonathan. And the depth of love between them, it surprised even the readers at that time. And that's why it's noted here. Verse three, the two of them make a covenant. to always be true and good to each other as friends. Then verse four, it takes it to another level. Jonathan, who is heir to the throne of the country, heir to the throne of Saul, Jonathan takes his armor, he takes his sword, he takes his bow, and he gives them all to David. And it's not just personal military arms. Jonathan gives David his robe, his robe. The robe signified the throne. Jonathan, the prince of Israel, by that action, Jonathan says, I lay down my crown rights for you, my friend. They're yours, David. David, you, you take the crown. You take my crown. Now, perhaps in this action, we see the height of the friendship love that these two men have. It's the height of friendship love that's described by Jesus when Jesus says, greater love has no person than to lay down your life for your friend. Friends push us higher. Friends don't mind looking up at us. And perhaps the most highly placed young man in Israel, in the country at that time, Jonathan, he takes David as his closest friend. God favors David and gives David that kind of friend. Now, not only a friend, because God favors David, God also gives David a wife, a bride. Now, look here at how David finds a wife. Verse 20, it says, now Michal, Saul's daughter, she loved David. and they told Saul and the thing pleased him. Then verse 27, then Saul gave him, gave David, Michal, his daughter, as a wife. Thus Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David and that Michal, Saul's daughter, loved him. So here David not only gets a friend, but David also gets a wife, a woman who loves him with another love, one of these other kinds of love, The romantic love, there was friendship love from Jonathan and here there's romantic love from Michal. And so David gets Michal as a wife because God favors him. Proverbs 18.22, he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. Do you long, do you long to have a spouse? Do you long to be married? or being married, do you long for love in your marriage? Like maybe you're married, but love has left the marriage and you long for that. Whether you want a spouse to love or whether you're wanting love from your spouse, this is something that comes from God. This love is something that comes from God. This love comes from God. So pray, ask God for it. Like the faithful servant of Isaac, When he went to find a wife, he prayed to God. He said, show kindness, Lord. Show me the wife. Now, my wife and I, we used to think it was easy to find this kind of love. We used to think it was easy to find a spouse. We just thought, well, it worked out so easily and it worked out so well for us. Just do what we did. It's so easy. As the decades have gone by, we look back and we realize that we were young, we were naive, we knew less than we thought we knew. It turns out that we were just a very naturally compatible couple. We thought at first that it was just that we were so good at this marriage thing, but it turns out, and we both agree on this, it turns out God was just incredibly gracious to the two of us in our marriage, God and grace brought together two people who we just happen to be, in God's arrangement of things, we happen to be two people who are naturally, highly compatible. It wasn't that we were so good at becoming compatible. It wasn't that we were so good at detecting compatibility. God and his kindness just made the match for us. And so what that means for you, it means pray. It means ask God. to show you favor, ask God to give you someone, if that's your desire. God shows David favor in giving David a friend. God shows David favor in giving God, in giving David a wife. Now next, we also see God showing David favor in giving David acclaim, in giving David a good reputation. Another repeated refrain about David is this, everybody loves him. Everyone loves David. 1 Samuel 18 verse five, so David went out wherever Saul sent him and behaved wisely. And Saul set him over the men of war and he was accepted in the sight of all the people and also in the sight of Saul's servants. And so places like verse six, David returns, he comes back from battle, the triumph parade is led by all the women as was the custom. They're leading the victory parade as they come back into town. They're dancing, they're singing, they're praising David for his battle triumphs. Everyone loves him. As David enters the military service of the king, his fame, David's fame, David's reputation, they just get greater and they grow brighter. Verse 16, all Israel and Judah loved David. Verse 30, when the princes of the Philistines went out to war, so it was whenever they went out, David behaved more wisely than all the servants of Saul so that his name became highly esteemed. David became prominent and the public loved David. So God is showing David favor in giving David acclaim, in giving David public approval. David's got God's favor. David increased in favor with God and man. It's a fulfillment of Proverbs 3, verse 4. So find favor and high esteem in the sight of God and of man. We also see this though, not only is David receiving acclaim and public love, God shows David favor in giving David wins, professional success, success in his work. Like David was a soldier, David, his work was to go fight battles and he was winning battles. David attempts military operations that would have killed any other soldier, verses 21 through 27 for example, as a dowry for his bride, David defeats 200 Philistine men and he brings the proof of it to Saul. And so you look at David's professional success, his career success, and the reader asks the question, is there anything David can't do? Is there anything David cannot get right? Verse 14, David behaves wisely in all his ways, and the Lord was with him. So David enjoyed professional success in everything, and it was because the Lord was with him. He had the favor of God. One of the most surprising things about all the good that comes to David with all of the blessings with all the public admiration, with all of the professional success, it does not go to David's head. David stays humble. You look at places like verse 18, verse 23. How does David, with all of this success, with all the positive affirmation from the people, how does David see himself? What he says is, I'm no one special. I don't deserve this any more than anyone else. Verse 18, he says, who am I? What is my life or my father's family in Israel? Verse 23, he says, I don't have the true greatness needed to be the son of a king. So David's sincere. This is not some kind of false humility saying like, oh, I know I came in first place. But it wasn't that I was faster. Everyone else just like, they had an upset stomach that day. I'm just like the rest of y'all. David is sincere. David is sincere. He's not overestimating his importance. He doesn't overestimate his abilities. He doesn't overestimate himself. David's humble. Success, fame, they have not gone to David's head. They have not made him proud. You can see how it comes out in verse 10. When the bad spirit is troubling the king, Saul, David plays music to comfort him. This is a sign of humility. David has compassion for troubled people. A humble person has compassion for troubled people. Pride lacks compassion. Proud people lack compassion. Proud people, they might do compassion work. A proud person can be very involved with helping troubled people, giving them rides, distributing food. But for a proud person, those charitable actions, it may just feed their pride. Like, see how good I am. See how good I am at helping the needy. But a proud person does compassion work. without compassion in the heart. First Corinthians 13, three, though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, doing compassion work, but have not love, it profits me nothing. If you find yourself helping troubled people, like Saul was a troubled man. He was raving, it says. If you find yourself helping troubled people, but you're doing it without compassion in your heart, then what you find, even if you're doing compassion work, you find that you dislike the troubled people. You resent the troubled people. You're doing compassion work without compassion for the people. But a humble person, as David is here, a humble person has a heart for troubled people. And so this is a sign of David's humility. He has compassion for troubled people. The favor of God comes with blessing, and these are some of the blessings that David enjoys. The favor of God, though, also, it comes with trouble. David's got the favor of God, but David also has trouble. The favor of God does not spare you from trouble. What kind of trouble does David have? Well, someone tries to hurt him. It's Saul. Someone tries to hurt him. Has someone tried to hurt you? Is someone hurting you? Well, it doesn't mean that you are without the favor of God. David had the favor of God, but someone was trying to hurt him. Who is it? Well, in his case, it's his boss. It's Saul, his supervisor. Saul has a troubled mind. Saul is jealous of David. Saul's paranoid. Saul is manipulative and murderous. And not only for David is this difficult because Saul is like David's supervisor. Saul is also king of the country. And Saul is going to become David's father-in-law. And look at the trouble, all the trouble that this brings for David. Saul is in the grip of this powerful jealousy. Verses eight and nine, when the victory parade comes home, Saul is jealous. of the victory songs that the women compose. Saul has his thousands, David has his 10,000s, and Saul says, what? They rank David higher than me? They respect David more than me? And Saul's saying, I can't stand this. I can't stand being lower. Have you ever been the object of resentment? Have you ever been the object of someone's jealousy? Other people. admire you, others admire you, but the jealous person resents something about you. Jealousy is this discontentment of what God has given or what God has held back. Feeling like God is withholding from you children. Feeling like God is withholding from you prestige. Someone else got it. Feeling like God is withholding from you possessions. Someone else has all the stuff that you wanted. Jealousy is a self-love that turns to hatred for the other. I hear stories from some cultures where a person invites you to a meal in their home. And it seems like, oh, they must love you. They must be trying to show good by having you into their home. But in their heart, in inviting you, they've got this secret jealousy. And they have you into their home for a meal, but they poison the food. They show outward love. but there's poison in the dinner. Verse nine, Saul was deeply suspicious of David from that day forward, it says, and so verse 28, Saul secretly became an enemy of David. Do you have a secret enemy? Are you someone's secret enemy? There's jealousy there. There's paranoia. Saul fears David. It says in verses 12, verse 15, verse 29, Saul is afraid of David. He's afraid that David will take his place. He's afraid that David will overthrow him. He's afraid that people will love David more than they love him. But his fear is paranoid. It's unjustified suspicion. Saul suffers from distorted perception. This is part of what is just amping up Saul's paranoia. He's got this distorted perception. David has no intention. David has no desire to take Saul down. And yet Saul is convinced that David wants to remove him. Have you dealt with a jealous person in your life? Have you dealt with a paranoid person in your life? Do you have someone in your life, a person who has distorted perceptions about your life? That's trouble. The person's always looking at you and imputing bad intentions, always interpreting your good works as badly motivated. Verse 15, when Saul saw that David behaved wisely, he was afraid of him. Have you lived and worked with people And no matter what you say or do, you can't get it right. They accuse. They over-inspect you. They over-suspect you. They over-accuse you. It's trouble. And for David, the jealousy, the paranoia, the insecurity that he's getting from Saul, it results in manipulation. It results in murder, manipulation. Saul says good things. He says words that are publicly fine. He says good, but he intends evil. Saul says, David, you should marry my daughter, but the reality is that Saul doesn't want David as a son. Saul wants David dead, but David, who's oblivious at first to Saul's manipulation, David sincerely believes Saul. He believes Saul means it, but the reader knows that Saul is just manipulating. Have you ever looked back? Have you ever looked back on one of your relationships? And in hindsight, you now realize that you were dealing with a troubled person, a manipulative person, a person who had distorted perceptions. With all this talk of union, like Saul is saying, marry my daughter. He's love bombing. Saul actually wanted David's destruction. So verse 11, Saul literally, attempts to impale David twice, it says. And then there's just this explanation. Oh, Saul says, that was just my troubled spirit. I was just raving. You know how I get worked up. Verses 17 through 21, Saul gets more subtle about it. He realizes, I've got to dial this down. He conceals the jealousy. Saul sets up this engagement with his own daughter, Michal, and he requests 100 Philistine foreskins. And Saul, by asking that, it looks like a grand offer, a noble offer. Saul is sure, though, that David will attempt the dowry, but the Philistines will be the death of David. But David has the favor of the Lord, and to Saul's surprise, David succeeds, and David does not die. In fact, David doubles the count. What is the lesson? Troubles, for the believer, troubles accompany success. Even if you are faithful, expect troubles to accompany success in this life. God's favor doesn't mean you get a good marriage. God's favor doesn't mean you'll be free of messy family. God's favor, and David has this, God's favor doesn't mean you will get the position that you were promised. I mean, Samuel anointed David as king, but it would be many years, and it would be many troubled years before he took the throne. The favor of God can mean a life surrounded by troubled people. The favor of God can mean a delay in receiving what God has promised you. Now, finally, how to handle trouble. How does a person who is favored by God handle trouble? How do you handle trouble? And how do you handle trouble without yourself turning into a troubled person? Two things here. First of all, trouble can humble you. When you have trouble, it can humble you, and that's a good thing. If you were to just receive God's favor now in this life, the wins, the success, the admiration, there would be this huge danger of pride and presumption. Like, look at me, look at how important I am. Success so easily, it goes to our head. But if you get trouble with your success, if God gives you trouble with your success, trouble can keep you humble. Like, many people love me, they all love, well, they don't all love me, not everyone. And all this success is nice, but it doesn't define me. All this admiration feels great, but I realize, I understand, it's temporary. All these blessings are wonderful and fine, but it's not my identity. Trouble keeps the promotion from going to your head. Trouble keeps your fabulous family, it keeps your fabulous family from becoming your identity. Trouble keeps your beauty from becoming your value and your worth. Trouble can keep you humble. But last, how do you deal with troubled people? How do you deal with troubled people without yourself becoming proud? How do you deal with troubled people without yourself becoming a punishing person or becoming paranoid or panicking? How do you deal with Saul in your life? How do you deal with a Saul in your life without becoming Saul yourself? You can see how David, with all of Saul's abuse and all of Saul's lies and manipulation, you can see how David could have become paranoid. You can see how David could have panicked. You can see how when Saul betrayed him, David could have become this overly self-protective person, this punishing person. Saul was trying to murder him, but David, instead of going down that same path, Saul, David just became a compassionate, more and more a compassionate person. David remained humble, and it was because the Spirit of the Lord filled David. David enjoyed the favor of the Lord in spite of all that trouble. In this text, we've got a contrast between two men. One man, Saul, is troubled. He's spiritually troubled, he's insecure, he's mentally troubled. The other man, David, he's got the favor of God. And the more that his troubles increase, the more the favor of God rests on him, remains on him. Why did Saul become troubled? Verse 12, now Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with David, with him, but had departed from Saul. Because Saul once knew the favor of God, but the Lord departed from Saul. And so Saul became a troubled man when the Lord left him. In the gospel, Jesus became the troubled man. Jesus once knew the favor of God. Like he said, this is my son with whom I am well pleased. Jesus lost the favor of God. The Lord departed from him on the cross in our place. Jesus sensed God's wrath. Jesus sensed God's displeasure on him for sin, for our sin. Jesus lost the favor of God so that we could know the pleasure of God. Jesus became the troubled man so that we could have peace with God. So Saul lost the presence of God. Jesus lost the presence of God so that you can be sure that God is with you and God is for you. And so when you look at Jesus, you can look at Jesus and you can know, Jesus, you went through the worst trouble of soul for me. And so I will never deal with that depth of trouble. I have God's favor because of you, Jesus. It can give you this personal confidence that trouble, if you're a believer, it gives you this personal confidence that trouble is what scripture calls light and momentary affliction. You can have this confidence that trouble won't destroy you because Jesus was destroyed for you. That trouble won't turn you into a troubled person. Jonathan and David, they both live closely connected to a very troubled person. They both live very closely connected to an abusive father, Saul. And that man, Saul, ruins so much of their lives. And there are these mind games that Saul is always playing. There's the emotional turbulence of living with Saul. There's the raving, there's the harm, the harassment from him. But by the spirit of God, you see this, even though they are living, with this troubled person Saul, and he brings all kinds of trouble to David and to Jonathan. It doesn't make them into troubled people. It doesn't make them troubled men. It doesn't stop them from becoming good people, compassionate people. It doesn't stop them, having a Saul in their life doesn't stop them from being loving and spiritually healthy people. When you can see that Jesus became the troubled man for you, it gives you a compassion for troubled people. Like they may rage, they may threaten, but they cannot take God's favor from you. They cannot turn you into a troubled person. You're gonna need wisdom. You're gonna need wisdom to discern manipulation. You're gonna need wisdom to discern the distorted perceptions that get put on you. You're gonna need wisdom to discern what's abuse. But instead of it making you panic, instead of it making you proud, you can be kind. I've seen it. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, you became troubled so that we will never have to fear the abandonment of God. And we thank you that you were troubled for us. And we thank you that though we were unworthy, you loved us, you set your love upon us. And you have gained for us, Jesus, the approval of God. And so we know that you will not cast us off, but you embrace us. And you give us such a protection that even if we have to deal with all kinds of abuse and trouble and lies, it can't change us. It can't take away the love and the salvation that you've given us, and it can't turn us into scared and bitter people. We thank you for the favor that we have in Christ. And so we pray, Lord, that you would make us to be people who walk in that confidence and in that joy, even in our troubles. In Jesus' name we ask, amen.