SERMON NOTES

Pastor Gio Harris

PRIOR RECAP
• Pastor Tim — David & Wilderness on the run (1 Samuel 23:14–29

• God wants to produce in you a heart after God — and He uses thewilderness to do it.
• You can’t do hard things for a long time without God.

“When relationships are done wrong, they create a wilderness. But God, in His
grace, sometimes places a Jonathan right in the middle of that wilderness — not
to remove the desert, but to show you that covenant love can survive it, and even
thrive in it.”

INTRODUCTION — The Question Beneath the Story

• Most people carry a story of a relationship that did not hold.
• The question is never whether love existed — often it did.
• The question is what was underneath the love when pressure came.
• What does a relationship look like when the foundation is not human

sentiment, but the living God himself?

The answer is 1 Samuel 20

SET THE SCENE
1 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 kill me?"  1 Samuel 20:1

• David has been anointed king but is a marked man — Saul has tried to kill

him multiple times.

• Jonathan is crown prince — heir to the throne — son of the man trying to

kill him.

• That one move tells us everything about what has been built between

these two men.

PART ONE — When Everything Is on the Line, Love Shows Its Hand
Jonathan doubts the reality of the situation…

• This is not a comfortable friendship story
• The beauty we are tracing in this story does not stand alone…
• Real conflict, real adversity real danger

“As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and
death.” 1 Samuel 20:3

• David names the danger soberly — not panicking, not pretending.
• He invokes God before he names the threat. The danger is real. But we

can grab from Davids sober mindedness that God is more real than the danger
.
Rivalry is a REAL thing

Rivalry is the ongoing competition or conflict between two people or groups who are both pursuing the same goal, position, or prize — where one's gain typically means the other's loss.

It's built on three things:

• Proximity — rivals are usually close to each other in status, skill, orambition
• Incompatibility — both can't win; the goal belongs to only one• 
• Tension — the competition creates ongoing friction, sometimes hostility

What makes David and Jonathan so striking is that by every natural definition,
they should have been rivals. Same throne. Same kingdom. Only one crown.
Jonathan was born to it — David was anointed for it. That's a perfect recipe for
rivalry.

“‘Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do for you,’ Jonathan said to David.”  1 Samuel 20:4

• One sentence. No conditions. No qualifications.
• This response is only possible from a man whose security lives vertically in

God.

• The horizontal relationship is beautiful not because two remarkable men

found each other — but because two men rooted vertically in God are loving
each other from that place.

PART TWO — The house isn't built on Trust, it's built on the Covenant

The Assumption

• Most people believe trust must come before commitment.
• You prove yourself over time, build a track record, then commit.
• What that actually produces: relationships always provisional, always one

failure away from renegotiation, a relational homelessness — never quite fully
inside anything.

• The deepest problem: if trust is the foundation of covenant, covenant

becomes something we earn. That is a works-based framework applied to
relationship.

The Biblical Reversal
Reference Genesis 15

• God puts Abraham into a deep sleep and passes through the pieces alone.
• The covenant is entirely God’s initiative — unilateral, unconditional.
• Abraham contributes nothing except belief.
• The trust Abraham develops grows inside the covenant — it does not

produce it.

“Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself...
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.”
— 1 Samuel 18:1–4

• The covenant comes first. Chapter 20 is what that covenant looks like

after being lived inside for a season.

• Trust is the fruit — it grew inside the covenant, it did not produce it.
• 
  

The Key Statement

• Trust is not the prerequisite for covenant — it is the fruit of living inside

one.

• If covenant depends on accumulated trust it is always fragile — people will

always eventually fail.

Your spouse will disappoint you.
Your friend will betray you.
 Your church will wound you.

But if covenant is the foundation — held by God’s character rather than
ours — then failure does not have the final word.

“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions
never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
— Lamentations 3:22–23

PART THREE — When God Is the Witness, the Relationship Can't Be
Broken

“The Lord is witness between you and me forever.”
— 1 Samuel 20:23 & 42

•  In the ancient Near East, a covenant witness was not a passive observer

— a witness was a guarantor.

• When Jonathan says “the Lord is witness,” he is not saying God watched

us. He is saying God is keeping this promise.

• Ecclesiastes 4:12 — a cord of three strands is not quickly broken. The third

strand is not a metaphor for strong friendship. The third strand is God himself.

Question:
What is the witness in your most important relationships? Feelings,
compatibility, shared history — those things are real but they are not
sufficient foundations.

• But if God is the witness, adversity changes character. It becomes the very

thing that proves what the relationship is made of.

PART FOUR — A goodbye that Never dies.

“Then they kissed each other and wept together — but David wept the most.
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 your descendants forever.’”
— 1 Samuel 20:41–42

• The sorrow be real — do not rush past it. David wept the most. He felt the

weight of what he was losing in the moment

• Jonathan’s final words are not goodbye — they are a declaration. Shalom.

Wholeness. The presence of God over every step.

• He is not sending David into the unknown — he is sending David into the

custody of the God who witnessed the covenant. What God witnesses, God
keeps.

Reference 2 Samuel 9

• Years later David is king — Jonathan is dead.
• David finds Mephibosheth — crippled, forgotten, hiding in Lo Debar.
• Brings him to the palace and seats him at the king’s table.
•  The covenant made in a field under extreme pressure — still alive years

later. Because the Lord was witness and the Lord never forgets.

• That is the beauty overriding the sorrow. Not by erasing it. But by

outlasting it.

CONCLUSION — Jesus as the Ultimate Mirror

• David and Jonathan are a beautiful story — but they are a shadow pointing

to something greater.

• Jesus is the ultimate Jonathan. He surrenders a throne willingly at infinite

personal cost. Enters covenant with humanity not because we deserved it, but
because love compelled him.

• Reference Luke 22:44 — the sweat like drops of blood in Gethsemane. He

faced every threat we traced in this chapter and none of it broke the covenant.

“Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in
Christ Jesus our Lord.”
— Romans 8:38–39

★ “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one
another.”
— John 13:35

• David and Jonathan did not just feel this love — the world saw it. Jonathan

stripped off his crown. David wept openly. Their covenant was visible.

• Jesus says the mark of belonging to Him is not a doctrine or a badge — it

is the way we love each other.

• Rooted vertically in God. Expressed horizontally toward each other. Held

together by the one whose faithfulness never fails.

• The beauty overrides the sorrow — not by removing it, but because what

God holds lasts forever. And forever is longer than any sorrow.

CLOSING VERSE
“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions
never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
— Lamentations 3:22–23

A love only found in Christ, a love bound by covenant.


THREE PRACTICAL TAKEAWAYS
Takeaway One — Examine Your Foundation

• Ask yourself honestly this week: Is God actually the witness in my most

important relationships, or is he an afterthought?

• Covenant does not happen by accident — make it intentional.
• 
  

Takeaway Two — Stop Waiting to Feel Safe

• Name the relationship God has already placed in front of you where you

are withholding full commitment until it feels safe enough.

• The safety you are waiting for does not arrive before the commitment — it

arrives inside it.

• Take one step toward full commitment this week — not a feeling, a

decision.

Takeaway Three — Let God Reframe Your Wilderness

• Write down what feels like Saul winning in your life right now.
• Write next to it: The Lord has sent me here.
• The adversity is not the end of the story — it is what God is building inside

you for the next chapter.